HST kissed by Ex-Taxi Driver
-
The situation is no more in seventies or early early eighties.Originally posted by oxford mushroom:It is not cheap to raise children but I think your figures are inflated. I grew up in a poor family and we could get by with much less. My father brought home $500 a month (1980 figures) and we had three siblings:
Breakfast: last night's left-overs
Lunch and dinner: Go to wholesale market and get vegetables that are already turning yellow. They used to give us a huge basketful for very little. Stew as mixed vegetables or make curry. We get meat once a week.
Daily transport: Walked to school and then took bus when secondary school was further away. Since when has student bus fare gone up to 1.50 per trip? And btw, school is only from Monday to Friday, you must not multiply by 30 per month. Occasional ECA, although we hardly participated in anything...use the time to study instead.
School fees: never had to pay. Scholarships and busaries paid for all fees and provided pocket money in addition. Some of them like the Pre-U MOE scholarship comes with remission of school fees.
Text books and stationary: Never had to buy books. Second hand from seniors,neighbours and siblings... As for some books that were not available, borrow from library and zapped the whole lot
Collected ten-year series and past exam papers from seniors (In fact, made money when I worked out the answers and sold them as model answers to classmates for 20cents a copy )
Stationary: used to work part-time delivering papers and later as student correspondent for the now-defunct Nanyang Siang Pau...the uncles and aunties there let me take the office pens and pencils...I took home two a week
School uniform: never had to buy them....second hand from seniors who have left the school...bit big but ok. Passed on to siblings.
Miscellaneous expenses: never joined school outings so no need to pay. Other expenses covered by scholarships and bursaries. Didn't have to pay for A level exam fees 'cos principal paid for me
If you come from a poor family, you can make do and get by with much less. Since I took my first bursary/scholarship in Pri 2, hardly had to spend a cent of my parent's money for school and I am nowhere near President scholarship material. Children can get by with less...it makes them stronger..
This twenty-first century leow!!! Now these day...children fall sick very easily. I'm sure you have not supporting a modern family yet..if you do..I can beg with you. A sole breadwinner with 2 thousand dollars take home pay would hardly be ehough to support a family with two kids schooling....the rest is for you to guess what's more other expenses...even monthly haircut needed to pay too. -
Figures quoted by Atobe was not necessarily inflated; they are reasonable and relatively budget-based. One can definitely get by on much less, say if one merely ate canned food for breakfast lunch and dinner.Originally posted by oxford mushroom:It is not cheap to raise children but I think your figures are inflated. I grew up in a poor family and we could get by with much less. My father brought home $500 a month (1980 figures) and we had three siblings:
Breakfast: last night's left-overs
Lunch and dinner: Go to wholesale market and get vegetables that are already turning yellow. They used to give us a huge basketful for very little. Stew as mixed vegetables or make curry. We get meat once a week.
Daily transport: Walked to school and then took bus when secondary school was further away. Since when has student bus fare gone up to 1.50 per trip? And btw, school is only from Monday to Friday, you must not multiply by 30 per month. Occasional ECA, although we hardly participated in anything...use the time to study instead.
School fees: never had to pay. Scholarships and busaries paid for all fees and provided pocket money in addition. Some of them like the Pre-U MOE scholarship comes with remission of school fees.
Text books and stationary: Never had to buy books. Second hand from seniors,neighbours and siblings... As for some books that were not available, borrow from library and zapped the whole lot Collected ten-year series and past exam papers from seniors (In fact, made money when I worked out the answers and sold them as model answers to classmates for 20cents a copy )
Stationary: used to work part-time delivering papers and later as student correspondent for the now-defunct Nanyang Siang Pau...the uncles and aunties there let me take the office pens and pencils...I took home two a week
School uniform: never had to buy them....second hand from seniors who have left the school...bit big but ok. Passed on to siblings.
Miscellaneous expenses: never joined school outings so no need to pay. Other expenses covered by scholarships and bursaries. Didn't have to pay for A level exam fees 'cos principal paid for me
If you come from a poor family, you can make do and get by with much less. Since I took my first bursary/scholarship in Pri 2, hardly had to spend a cent of my parent's money for school and I am nowhere near President scholarship material. Children can get by with less...it makes them stronger..
Imagine the savoury pork cubes, luncheon meat and chao san shi.
It's really all a question of quality and trade-off.
Your examples on the other hand are rather extreme: yellow vegetables? frequent leftovers for breakfast? I think we're encroaching on personal health, don't you? I used to get by for dinner with steamed rice, a raw egg and soya sauce and looking back now, i don't particularly fancy it. But eating it now, man does it taste good....
$3/- per transport daily was probably what it cost to pay the school bus, not public bus. Don't forget, in early primary school, kids are not yet mature or independent enough to take a bus by themselves. Unless the parents fetch them, they're essentially dependent on the bus 'uncle'.
In your case, you were lucky to obtain scholarships and bursaries to help you along the way; the same cannot be said for the majority, for we cannot expect everyone to be born scholar-material? And now, it is getting increasingly harder to qualify for bursaries and student grants. You need a ton of paperwork just to prove your family income is below the benchmark requirement to qualify. The options are there, prepared by govt agencies, but feverishly difficult to apply for. That puts most people off.
I think the main issue here is the increasing pay disparity between top civil servants and the people. If that issue was to be bridged, more people will feel less aggrieved, nvm the 74-year-old taxi driver. -
I find it somewhat unbecoming and ridiculous, for a people of a DEVELOPED country to have to resort to eating a daily diet of canned foods just to get by.Originally posted by BillyBong:Figures quoted by Atobe was not necessarily inflated; they are reasonable and relatively budget-based. One can definitely get by on much less, say if one merely ate canned food for breakfast lunch and dinner.
Imagine the savoury pork cubes, luncheon meat and chao san shi.
It's really all a question of quality and trade-off.
Your examples on the other hand are rather extreme: yellow vegetables? frequent leftovers for breakfast? I think we're encroaching on personal health, don't you? I used to get by for dinner with steamed rice, a raw egg and soya sauce and looking back now, i don't particularly fancy it. But eating it now, man does it taste good....
$3/- per transport daily was probably what it cost to pay the school bus, not public bus. Don't forget, in early primary school, kids are not yet mature or independent enough to take a bus by themselves. Unless the parents fetch them, they're essentially dependent on the bus 'uncle'.
In your case, you were lucky to obtain scholarships and bursaries to help you along the way; the same cannot be said for the majority, for we cannot expect everyone to be born scholar-material? And now, it is getting increasingly harder to qualify for bursaries and student grants. You need a ton of paperwork just to prove your family income is below the benchmark requirement to qualify. The options are there, prepared by govt agencies, but feverishly difficult to apply for. That puts most people off.
I think the main issue here is the increasing pay disparity between top civil servants and the people. If that issue was to be bridged, more people will feel less aggrieved, nvm the 74-year-old taxi driver.
I mean, if even the middle income people are barely getting by, I feel that something is wrong in Singapore's economic super-structure - or simply that basic necessities are over-priced, or that certain basic requirements be reduced in costs which our dear LHL said he will look into.... (said only) -
LHL will look into his arse holeOriginally posted by ShutterBug:I find it somewhat unbecoming and ridiculous, for a people of a DEVELOPED country to have to resort to eating a daily diet of canned foods just to get by.
I mean, if even the middle income people are barely getting by, I feel that something is wrong in Singapore's economic super-structure - or simply that basic necessities are over-priced, or that certain basic requirements be reduced in costs which our dear LHL said he will look into.... (said only)