You will be able to set out your household's demands from children, parents and your own future.
Saturday morning for a couple in their late thirties can look like this. Drop one child at enrichment class, take the other to a birthday party, then drive across the island to bring a father to his polyclinic appointment and sort out his medicines for the week. In the car, someone checks the banking app: the parents' allowance went out on the 1st, the infant care bill on the 5th, and the CPF statement from last month is still unopened. Somewhere in the background is the question nobody has time for: are we saving enough for ourselves?
This is what people mean by the sandwich years: the stretch of life when one household supports the generation above and the generation below at the same time, while trying to build its own future. In Singapore, with people living longer and families often having children later, many couples find themselves in exactly this position. This module is about doing it without sinking your own plans.
In the sandwich years your money is pulled three ways.
Children need daily spending, childcare or school costs, and savings for later. Parents may need a regular allowance, help with medical bills, and later perhaps a helper or care. And you need to keep building your own retirement, your CPF and your savings, because no one else will build them for you.
Each of the three feels urgent in its own way. Children's needs are visible every day. Parents' needs carry duty and often guilt. Your own future is quiet and far away, which is exactly why it tends to lose.
It is tempting to put your own retirement last, telling yourself that you will catch up when the children are older or that the children will help you, as you are helping your parents.
The trouble with that second thought is that it passes the problem down a generation. If your parents had saved enough for their retirement, you might not be supporting them now. If you do not save enough for yours, your children will face the same squeeze twenty or thirty years from now, at the point when they have their own children and their own parents to think about. Building your own retirement is one of the most useful things you can do for your children.
That does not mean neglecting your parents or your children. It means your retirement saving stays in the budget as a line that does not get raided, like a bill, rather than whatever is left at the end.
Parent support usually comes in two shapes, and it helps to keep them apart.
The first is a regular allowance: a fixed amount each month, paid on a fixed day. Many Singaporean children give their parents something like this from their first job onwards. It is predictable and easy to budget for, and parents can plan around it.
The second is one-off costs: a hospital bill, a new pair of spectacles, a fall that needs home modifications, a few weeks of home care after an operation, or the deposit for a helper. These are irregular, sometimes large, and often arrive with little warning.
Mixing the two causes trouble. If the allowance quietly creeps up every time a one-off cost arrives, the budget loses track of it. If one-off costs are paid from whatever is in the account that month, they eat into savings or land on whichever sibling answers the phone first. Lesson 5.4 sets up a separate care fund for one-off costs, so the allowance can stay stable.
You cannot plan support without knowing what your parents have and what they might need. Many adult children do not know. It can feel awkward to ask, and some parents prefer not to say.
For each parent, try to find out five things. Their income: a pension, CPF payouts, rental income, work or support from your siblings. Their CPF: roughly what is left and whether they are receiving monthly payouts. Their insurance: whether they have MediShield Life only or an Integrated Shield Plan on top, and any other policies. Their health: any long-term conditions, medicines and how often they see a doctor. And their housing: whether they own their flat, whether a loan is still outstanding, and whether it suits them as they age.
Hui Min and Daniel know much less than they thought. Hui Min's father drove a taxi for most of his working life, and she has no idea what is in his CPF. Daniel's mother turns sixty this year, and he knows she has a hospital plan but not which one.
Start a short note on each of your parents. Write what you know for each of the five areas and, just as usefully, what you do not know yet, because those gaps show you the questions to ask on your next visit.
Write a one-paragraph summary of each parent's money situation, noting what you do not know yet.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).