I just finished my first full week of work since going back to the office last Fri after taking almost 2 weeks of annual leave to spend time with my wife and the baby. I noticed myself making more of an effort now to get off work on time by 6.30pm to take the train and bus home. I usually reach home by 7.15pm, which gives me a few hours every night to be with my family.
I still try to carve out time to exercise and keep myself active but I now have to squeeze out pockets of time to do this. While in the midst of helping out with my wife and the baby. Most noticeably, I was setting up the stroller, adapters and car seat with my wife. It was a true test of patience as we tried to follow online video instructions to set something up that was apparently not supposed to be so difficult.
We also had to assemble new household items that we bought online during the 11.11 Singles Day Sales. As we try to transform our 2-bedroom apartment into a more baby and family friendly home. All of these pre, actual and post delivery expenses are causing our monthly spending to spike. However, we have also been receiving contributions from the Government, family and friends.
So our cashflow these few months is going to be all over the place. Which is expected given the major life event we just went through. We are going to give it some time to stabilise before we start to look for a pattern of spending to work on and reduce.
Anyway, the good news is that we got to Day 15 since our baby’s birth without him having to make a trip back to the hospital. Given that he is a slightly premature baby (born at the 36th week of pregnancy), there is always a concern that he is at a higher risk of developing medical problems.
While the baby is covered under MediShield Life from birth, it’s only a basic health insurance. On a separate note, he has not received his Medisave grant of $4,000 from the Government yet. It would be useful to help defray the healthcare costs of the baby.
We don’t think private medical insurance would cover the baby from Day 0 to Day 14. Although this gap might have been addressed by my corporate maternity insurance. It’s still better not to risk it. Now that we have gone past Day 15, we have added the baby as a dependent to our corporate medical insurance so that he gets coverage.
The next step would be to purchase an integrated shield plan for the baby. Either the AIA HealthShield Gold Max that my wife has or the NTUC Enhanced IncomeShield – Preferred that I have. Have to check whether one has better coverage relative to the insurance premium for the baby or it’s about the same.
Lastly, the MediSave Maternity Package drawdown of $5,750 has been deducted from my wife’s CPF MediSave account. It has helped to reduce our cash outlay on the delivery expenses. We are happy to find utilising our CPF MediSave account for medical expenses proving to be just as useful as utilising our CPF Ordinary Account for housing expenses.