GEORGE TOWN: The rising cost of living for the middle class makes raising a family expensive.
This has led to many in the M40 group in the city declaring they are deferring plans to start families or are making financial sacrifices for the sake of their kids.
They hope Budget 2024 will have some “real solutions” to their financial challenges.
“I have an 11-year-old kid and am also taking care of my sister’s two children as she is a single mother,” said manager Wigneswaran Jayamohan, 47, who works in a multinational company in Bayan Lepas.
“My wife is also working, and we find it tough to get by as the cost of essential goods has skyrocketed while our salaries have increased only slightly.
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“The cost of educating three kids while balancing the budget to handle the cost of essential products is tough,” he said.
Wigneswaran said the government should provide more incentives for children’s education, including tax deductions for those who send their children for tuition and other extra-curricular learning because such efforts take off a big “slice” of family incomes.
He said if the cost of raising children was too high, married couples might forego such an aspiration, inevitably leading to a shrinking population.
Pet shop owner Wong Wern Pei, 40, finds that the adage of cooking at home being cheaper does not apply anymore because fresh produce and cooking ingredients have become more expensive, to the point that it is more reasonable cost-wise to eat out.
“I am single, and marketing takes a big chunk of my income now, compared with last year.
“The Budget should focus on essential goods and how to bring down prices as people need disposable income to save and can’t be running on a deficit budget every month.”
Noraini Abdul Halim, 35, a mall executive, has only one wish from Budget 2024, and that is for the government to look into a minimum salary scale for different categories of workers.
“It just doesn’t make sense as I earn a salary of RM3,000 as an executive while my sister earns only RM2,500 working in a firm, even though our qualifications are the same and we both have bachelor’s degrees.
“The pay disparity in the private sector differs vastly, and it is unfair as the high cost of living affects everyone, and the M40 group is the worst off due to this.
“We can’t be talking about bringing down the cost of goods and increasing the salary of workers, while workers doing the same jobs get different salaries.”
