Money & marriage
I saw an interesting article by fellow blogger AK71 on the topic of money and marriage. In his article, he illustrated a married person in his early 30s who keep borrowing money to support his family of four and pay monthly housing loans. The person’s gross income is $28k and he is the sole breadwinner and has two kids. AK71 wrote that the person “should not have gotten married” and that he should not have bought a 5 room flat, given his dire financial situation. I have different views from AK71.
Married for the wrong reason?
Firstly, I can understand what the person is going through. After all, I live in a 5 room flat, is a sole breadwinner, my wife is a full time housewife, have a baby girl, support my parents, support my in-law and own a car. So the burden on my shoulder is no less than the person in question, albeit I drew a much higher salary.
But in my opinion, his current financial plight is not caused by his decision to set up a family. In fact, it is a misconception among many Singaporeans that “if you don’t have money, you should not get married in the first place as marriage requires financial commitments”.
Marriage itself is not the root cause for a person’s financial downfall. Rather, it is the person’s poor personal finance mastery that led to his current financial situation. If he, like many of my readers, have been following my blog over the years, he would not have landed in this state. In fact, he could be lending money to others and not borrowing!
How to get out of the pit hole?
So you must asking me how to help the fellow? Well if you have been following my blog for the past three years, the solutions were all written in my previous blogs. Actually for the person to pay off his debts and to achieve financial stability, there are three solutions to address his money woes
First, he can rent out the other 2 rooms and share the master bedroom with his two kids. That will generate monthly $2000 rental income. Second, he can choose to downgrade to three room flat and live with parents or in-laws. Thirdly, switch job and become a property agent.
Incidentally, there is an article on a study commissioned by the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) which found that marriage and parenthood aspirations remained strong among Singaporeans. Some 83% of single respondents indicated that they desired to get married. This is close to the 85% result in the 2007 survey, and higher than the 74% result in 2004. The study also found that 80% of singles who indicated a desired number of children wanted to have 2 or more children, similar to 84% in 2007.
There is nothing inherently wrong for wanting to get married despite lacking money. But your financial altitude and perception will dictate your destiny. In life, don’t follow the wrong person. Start following my blog and spread the words around.
Magically yours,
SG Wealth Builder
1) Not everyone is comfortable living with strangers.
2) By suggesting he downgrade to 3-room flat, aren’t you already agreeing with AK71 that the chap should never have gotten a 5-room flat?
3) Do you know how many property agents who barely make enough to feed themselves, not to mention their families? Not everyone can be an agent, just like not everyone can be into sales.
4) Marriage itself may not be the root cause for a person’s financial downfall, but with marriage comes kid(s). Maybe a house (not everyone can stay with in-laws with a world war breaking out. If u could, you’re lucky but lets not assume everyone is like you).
With kid, comes medical fees, educational fees (unless you only feel obligated to fund them to study till primary school and you want them to work part time to fund the rest of their education).
So yes, without enough money, don’t think about getting married. Coz u are dragging your wife, your kids into the mud you’re already sinking into.
Living with strangers may pose health hazards to the family. Who knows what diseases your tenants may be carrying?
Having a family comes with responsibility to your kids that they can survive and compete well when they become adult.
Your third reason of becoming a property agent floored me..
Seriously.. When you have a family to feed and an installment to pay and your salary does not allow you more savings than necessary, how are you going to survive on a COMMISSION based job with no regular salary.
It’s a serious Leap of Faith.. and maybe you could enlightened us on how much the typical agent earns. Let’s just take the 50% percentile for a start.
Thank you all for your kind comments. I will address your queries in my next article.