Frodo is a shining example of what a real husband is, single income and struggle and sacrifice so much so that the wife and kids have a good life. Very respectable.
Wah....I don't dare accept such accolades....in any case my wife will surely give a deep discount! :o
As shared before, had we continued living in Singapore, all we would have now would still be our HDB flat. Our SG car would have been gone too because I don't think we can afford the big cash outlay required either to renew the COE or to buy a 2nd hand car (new car is simply fat hope). Moving over to JB gives me a rare chance in my lifetime (seriously!) to own another property (or maybe two:p) which allows me to hand something down to my children in the form of properties, instead of just HDB bedrooms.:(
My sis-in-law who is more loaded, she and my brother (both working) are deeply insured until if they should depart from this world (note I am not cursing them!) their kids basically can no need to work anymore. I...or rather my children...don't have this luxury, even though I reckon I am still worth more dead than alive, being modestly and minimally term-insured to sufficiently pay off all the property loans after lessing funeral expenses:p, they need not worry about having a roof or two over their heads though it means they have to buck up to the new reality and work for their keep.
Yep, we still struggle with our expenses now, even after moving over to JB. But the fact that things are cheaper in JB (also the favourable currency exchange) also means that with that same amount of struggle we actually have "more" than before, which is the irony. For example, I had paid off my Singapore car loan barely just a month before it was scrapped, having taken a full loan on the remaining 7.5 years of the car when I bought it 2nd hand. And at nearly the same time I also paid off my bike loan. (see everything on hire purchase at full tenure, the poor Singaporean that I am:() While it would be ideal to have the freed up cash to go into savings, that would not have worked out because in JB you definitely need a car to move around. So the cash that was "freed" was simply redirected to the new MY car that the whole family now enjoy. New car with no COE and no 10 year usage nonsense! And I still have my bike for daily commuting to work....which works for us...for now.
As for sacrifices, my family, not just me, all made sacrifices. My kids had to give up regular trips to the libraries (which they still miss a lot), give up their dance and gymnastics classes in Singapore, the neighbours' kids etc. But these initial trade-offs have been well compensated over time, I hope. Now they have more running space (including running up the stairs), more pets (which also means more sai-kang aka shit job), wife have a small patch of grass to experiment with planting etc. So overall I am quite pleased and feel blessed with the new circumstances, though the anxiety over finances continually hangs over me. But life has to go on lor...I just hope things brighten up within the next three years, about the time the JB condo is completed and monthly mortgage on it begins. I suppose that's the most I can get out of the little I have, at my present circumstances. Wealth would probably elude me the rest of my life...but I hope I can still remain relatively healthy enough to enjoy my remaining "useful" life.:p