I finally finished my virtual training course, which involved several half days of logging on in the morning over the past few weeks. I’m done with training for the year and will start to discuss my training plan for next year with my manager in the next few months. While I enjoy learning new information and skills, it was a challenge finding the time and focus to do the training. I had to balance it often with my work, household chores and childcare duties. Just going to take a break from training for now.

Work has started picking up for me recently as we are in the last quarter and there’s a push to get things done by end of the year. I am in the process of going through my performance review with my manager. The feedback is that I have done a good job given how the year went with Covid-19 and work from home arrangement. It was a tough adjustment at the beginning (especially during circuit breaker) but got better after that. Regardless of my performance, it seems like there is likely to be minimal or no salary increase and bonus when the remuneration outcome is announced next year. Looking at how badly the Singapore economy is doing, I’m fortunate enough to keep my job so I’m already going in with very low expectations.

It’s a nervous wait for my wife as discussions among her senior managers will take place from next week onwards on placing the staff into roles they have applied for. And there will be staff that don’t get any roles that should be offered redundancy payouts. Not a good position to be in as the major restructuring drags on at her bank. There’s still plenty of work to be done at her job so it serves as a distraction while waiting for the outcome. When there’s so much uncertainty, it can be difficult to make plans for the future but we have to try. Just got to make estimates and assumptions about how things can turn out. Then adjust accordingly.

We are in the process of enrolling our kid for childcare in 6 months’ time. He’s turning 1 year old and growing up so quickly. Considered a little boy now rather than a baby. Didn’t realise we had to do this so early until we found out enrolment spaces at the popular preschools for next year’s intake are already being taken up. We went for a tour at one that is near to the area we would like to live in eventually. The premises are nice and we walked to the teacher and principal. Curriculum is play-based and seems more fun for the kids. We will probably go ahead to enrol our boy there.

In the meantime, we have also been searching for bigger apartments to rent in the same area as the preschool too. We have delayed our property purchase decision until we can get more clarity on a few things. Whether my wife would still have a job at the end of the major restructuring at her bank. How long it takes to sell our current smaller apartment. Whether our boy likes the preschool and us living in that area. Whether we want to have another kid. Until we get more certainty on these matters, we can’t commit yet to putting money down to buy a bigger property. So many considerations to think about and we just need more time before we decide.

I have just been informed that my full-time work from home arrangement is about to change. It will be an alternate 1 week work from office and 1 week work from home arrangement instead. The start date for this has yet to be confirmed though I’m hoping for it to be later in the month. My wife is still on full-time work from home arrangement but she goes into the office 1 day a week on her own (optional). During the 1 week when I’m working in the office, I doubt she has time to manage the baby even though the helper is there. We may have to get her parents to come over more often to assist. Because they live closer to us and want to spend more time with the baby anyway.

This is a decent 50%-50% work from home and office arrangement for me. I get to spend half of my work time at home with my family and the other half of my work time in the office with my colleagues. It’s what I was looking for as my permanent work arrangement going forward so I’m hoping it stays this way for a long time. I imagine my wife is likely to come to a similar permanent blended work from home and office arrangement eventually. This works well to improve the work-life balance of our corporate jobs and makes our careers & family more sustainable in the long-term.

My wife has submitted her preferences for the available roles as the major restructuring at her bank rolls on. She will find out about the results 2 months later in Dec whether she still has a job at the end of this. It’s a nervous wait for everyone. Her bank is still one of the better places to work at in Singapore and her colleagues (both locals and expats) definitely want to stay on if they can. Moving out to other banks in the current negative employment market means they are more likely to get stuck with an expanded job scope for the same pay or lower pay and bad managers.

Given the uncertainty with my wife’s job and Singapore’s economy for what could be a prolonged period of time, we have been rethinking our decision to buy a bigger property in the next 1 to 2 years. As the baby gets older and moves around a lot more now, the lack of space in our small apartment is becoming an issue. It was never meant to house a family and we have done well to make it work for this year. But we are running out of space and the need for a bigger property has become more immediate. We have started to consider renting the bigger property instead to house our family for the next 1 to 2 years.

Our view is that the rental market is likely to weaken over time and we can get better deals there in the short term. Owners are more likely to cut their asking rental prices and less likely to cut their asking sale prices. The former reduces the monthly property investment return but the latter takes a permanent loss to the property investment capital. Owners will exhaust all possible means to avoid selling their property at a loss. That’s what we expect to happen and any downward price adjustment in the property market will take some time. And it’s more likely to be a dip than a fall if the Singapore economy holds and recovers.

But we have a lot more options in the rental market now that expats are vacating their apartments to go home to their families. With remote working in place, they could do their jobs back in their home countries. As travel becomes more troublesome and less convenient, the allure of physically being in Singapore to take advantage of the ease of travel to various countries is no longer there. Among my wife’s expat colleagues (higher expat proportion to locals because it is a foreign bank), they are seriously thinking about relocating home. Even though it’s a small sample size, the struggles they face (missing their families, dealing with more hostile anti-foreigner sentiments among locals, etc) can be extrapolated.

And so we wait to see which option (buy or rent) in the property market is better for us. At this time, it’s looking like we may rent a bigger property in an area that we have been looking to buy but haven’t done so because of the high asking sale prices. We can experience what living there is like and whether it’s something we will be happy with for the next several years. It’s easier to relocate when we are renting than having bought a place if the location doesn’t work out for us. After all, there’s so many possible future considerations like maybe having a 2nd kid, proximity to schools, etc. We will also have more time to offload our current property in this slow and weakening market. To avoid being caught in a timing problem on the buy-sell transactions and getting hit with ABSD.

It’s the last working day this week on Thurs as Fri is the Labour Day public holiday. We almost forgot about it until our colleagues reminded us. It’s amazing what happens when you start working from home full-time. Weekdays, weekends and public holidays start to blur together. Not easy to draw the line clearly between work life and non-work life anymore. With this, we have come to the end of the 3rd week of us working from home together.

We have settled into a routine and everyone pitches in to make it work. Our helper, wife and I take turns caring for and playing with the baby whenever he’s awake. This depends on how busy all of us get with our respective work for the day. Which could be chores for the helper such as cooking & cleaning, project work & calls for my wife and advisory work & calls for me. But we manage our tasks and take time out to contribute to the household in any way we can.

We try to be disciplined with our breakfast, lunch and dinner timings. As long as the baby allows for it and we try not to let work interfere with them. We even take morning and afternoon tea breaks when our schedules are not busy. It’s a different way of working and this took a while to get used to. But it’s nice that we can spend more time together as a family especially in our 1st year with the baby.

Just a few things we have observed after finishing week 3 of working from home together. We haven’t been ordering much food delivery or even takeaway food for pickup. We prefer home-cooked meals and my helper has been working together with my wife to cook new dishes. Nothing fancy and time-consuming. Just variations and additions to keep the menu interesting. Sometimes it’s the same dishes but we are still happy to have hot food prepared for us for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Our working hours each day has dropped and the level of productivity has fallen but to a smaller extent. It’s difficult to coordinate and discuss matters with colleagues over conference calls without face-to-face meetings. Even tougher to focus on work when the baby fusses to get our attention while the helper is busy with her chores. But we are still progressing with our work and that’s good enough for now.

In any case, our expectations have been managed internally such that we can forget about promotions, salary increases and bonuses for this year. Which means that our next round of remuneration outcomes will be bad no matter how we perform at work. So we are not planning to go above and beyond. Not the year for it. Might as well use it to adjust to being working parents both at home and eventually back in the office.

Who knows when we can return to the office. Maybe in the 2nd half of this year. And we look forward to it. We still think there’s value in going to the office to work. It’s a more conducive environment for cooperation, meetings and social interaction. Just not 5 days a week. Ideally, we work from home about 1 to 2 days a week. A nice balance of having time for both work and family relationships.

Based on the conversations we are having with our managers and senior managers, it does look like work from home arrangements might become a more permanent feature of banking corporate life. Especially when the bank has already made the investment into setting up remote working arrangements such as laptops requisition and systems & applications access. There’s a bigger and more urgent push towards digitalisation now. And it could transform the way we work as bank corporate employees in a positive way. About time we catch up.

Anyway, we look forward to taking a break from work on a public holiday. Would be nice to spend more time with the baby. Think he’s start to pick up on the times when his parents are busy with work and can’t spend time with him. Because that’s when he fusses the most. We try not to count the days or weeks to the end of the circuit breaker measures. Helps the time to pass more quickly when we focus on making the most out of each day and enjoy what we can.

Oh, and we need a bigger place to live in. A 2 bedroom apartment is just nice but it’s already starting to be a squeeze with all 4 of us at home every day. It was never meant to house a family for an extended period of time. We are likely to buy a bigger apartment by next year and hope property prices will be kind to us when the time comes. We have reallocated some of our cash for the bigger property downpayment and renovation so we have less cash for investing. If we can hold our jobs for as long as possible, we can rebuild our cash for investing. Looks like a lot is going to happen these few years and we have to be ready.