Not enough money to be married!

Over the weekend, I was told of a person in his early 30s who is married and has two children. He is regularly borrowing money from his family and friends. In fact, he would borrow from friends to pay the installments on the mortgage of his 5 room HDB flat as well. Amount? S$800 a month.

I am not married and I wouldn't know but with an annual gross income of some S$28K, is it tough to support a family of four in Singapore? It seems that this is the case for this man.

The wife stays home and takes care of the two children who are still attending primary school. It is reasonable to assume that the two children would probably be financially dependent on him for another ten years at least.

I fear that I might sound heartless for saying this but this person really should not have gotten married in the first instance. Making the mistake of getting married, he should have applied for a smaller 3 room HDB flat instead of a 5 room HDB flat which probably cost twice as much. Then, making the mistake of applying for a bigger flat, he should have deferred the decision to have children.

All the romantic notions of a perfect marriage, a spacious home and lovely kids have to be built on rock solid finances, especially in a city like Singapore which has very high cost of living. This is the hard truth.

We have heard of marriage counselling for couples who have serious differences. However, the Catholic Church, I know, provides pre-marriage counselling for would be couples as well. This is a very good idea, I feel. However, that is probably only on an emotional and religious level.

Building on this, I believe that there should be financial advisory services for people thinking of tying the knot so that people do not find themselves in a hole after getting married. Such services should be secular in nature and be made available to all people thinking of getting married. Do such services exist?

If we do a search online for "not enough money for wedding", we will find some websites telling us not to worry and how we could go ahead with it. Where is the common sense in this?

If there is not enough money for a wedding, the two people do not have enough money to be married.

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It is official! Fiscal Cliff averted!

Mr. Market is in a good mood! The Fiscal Cliff has been averted!

As global stock markets made their 2013 debut, the House of Representatives passed a deal between the White House and Senate Republicans to raise taxes on the rich and put off automatic $109 billion budget cuts for two months.

The deal passed the Senate early on Tuesday, but its fate hung in the balance for hours as House conservatives sought to amend it to include big spending cuts, which would likely have killed it.

In the end, the House voted 257 votes to 167 to pass the original bill with minority Democrats joining a smaller number of majority Republicans to pass the legislation after a bitterly contested and unusual session on New Year's Day.

President Barack Obama planned to make brief remarks at the White House within minutes of passage of the deal, which relieved investors who feared that continued logjam could have sent global stock markets spinning.

Read full article: here.

What a fantastic start to the new year! Happy New Year!

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President Obama wins! What next?