It’s my last week of work before transferring to my new job role to a subsidiary within the same banking group that I work in. Things got significantly better since May 2019 after returning from my holiday to Greece and informing my bosses about the decision.
I even had more help and resources then but it was a matter of too little too late. Trust, once lost, takes a long time to be regained and I’m not giving them the opportunity to do it this time round. I have one guiding principle to working at a job and that is I refuse to let people treat me badly. Whether they meant it or not.
Anyway, I have been tidying up issues that I have been dealing with and handing over the rest of the matters to my team. All the best to them and I hope they do a better job than me. I’m looking forward to moving on to something new and different. More importantly, to work under a direct manager that I get along with and respect.
In any case, I’m starting to clear my leave so I actually have some time to blog about my life. Regular monthly investing is working in my favour as I get to stop monitoring and worrying about the markets. Returns in terms of capital gain and dividend income have been decent and it justifies this approach for now.
This gives me more time to adjust for the upcoming major change in my life of starting a family. We have sorted out the confinement nanny and will have her for 2 months from Dec 2019 to Jan 2020. We will most likely get a helper to come in from Jan 2020 onwards to learn from the confinement nanny and assist us.
My wife might take about 6 months off work – 4 months of paid maternity leave and 2 months of paid annual leave. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. It gives her more time to spend with the baby without having to worry financially. As expected, her career is likely to plateau from this point for a while since she cannot commit as much to work as before.
Which is why it was essential to push my wife upward to a manager level where she is comfortable enough to cruise for a period of time. While still meeting expectations at work and not under-performing. Her higher salary should offset the additional costs of having a child while I find a way to push my own salary upward.
We are planning to move back into my parents-in-law’s house for that 6 months. And we will probably have to change the layout of the attic and study room to accommodate the increase in number of people staying at the house. We are also looking to buy a bigger 3 bedroom apartment in the same area to move into after that as we would need more space.
It has been nice staying in a 2 bedroom apartment (easier to maintain) close to my parents-in-law and we would like to continue having that support. But it’s going to be too small to fit the both of us, baby and helper when the time comes to move out of the house. While we are not in any rush, it would be difficult timing the sale and purchase decisions to avoid the ABSD. This takes time and effort to work out and I have to focus on it.