Going into the 2nd week of the Singapore "Circuit Breaker" or "CB" and lifestyle definitely has changed whether individually or as a family.
I felt this is the time to save, conserve and try to increase cash flow and savings where possible. Eating and cooking at home definitely helps and as well as cutting down on daily commute to the office. For me, I drive to office together with my wife and has a season parking as well so I saved on petrol as well as the super expensive ERP.
While I try to save on needs and necessity, I am also trying to get back whatever services I had paid for.
1) Travel/Vacation
Since early 2019, I had planned to go to Australia in the first half of 2020 and obviously, this didn't materialized.
Fortunately, I bought a family of four, annual travel insurance straight after I paid for my flights and Airbnb for my Australia trip in Jul 2019. I paid a total of $4.2k inclusive of $2.7k (flight) and $1.5k (Airbnb).
I managed to cancel my Airbnb without any charges before the free cancellation date so $1.5k credited back to my credit card.
For my flights, they were cancelled by the airline as Australia had closed their borders to foreigners before my trip started. The airline did not allow full refund of the tickets as I had bought promotional tickets and they will charged me $400 per ticket and a total of $1.6k will be the penalty fees.
My travel insurer allowed me to claim the penalty fees of $1.6k since I bought the insurance prior to the pandemic declaration and the airline will reimbursed me with the remaining of $1.1k. I understand from the insurer that they will not allow any claim on Covid-19 if you bought the air tickets before 23 Jan 2020. Phew!
Super happy that I managed to claim back the $4.2k I paid for my family vacation. Back to the joint account.
Lesson learnt: Always buy travel insurance (it is a MUST!) as early as you book your flights and accommodation to cover any unforeseen circumstances.
2) Office Season Parking
My company has started "Work From Home" or "WFH" since mid March and they told us that there's no end date to this arrangement. This means that my office season parking that I had prepaid for for every quarter ($450) will be wasted since I am not driving to the office anymore in the near future.
For many people, they probably just let the prepaid season parking lapse since typically the commercial landlord does not allow any refunds. For me, I am someone whom will try before I give up.
I emailed the admin office of the landlord and told them about my situation and ask them whether my season parking for April and May can be refunded, I am expecting them to say NO or simply refund me 50% of lesser of what I had paid.
To my surprise, they said on email that their management understand the current situation and will specially grant me with a waiver and allow full refund for April and May season parking.
Super happy again, I managed to claw back $300 for unused season parking fees for April and May.
Lesson learnt: Never try Never know, don't assume until you TRY.
So I have added back $4.2k + $300 = $4.5k back to our family joint account coffer. This amount definitely comes in handy in times of crisis.
But I have to admit that these whole administrative process (countless calls to the airline hotline and insurer office went unanswered) is painful for some but for someone like me, I will try and get back whatever possible amount within my legal means.
If it was my wife, I think she will give up after 3 calls (LOL) but not for me (even if I need 100 calls, I will do it!). Well, I am the stingy and "kia-su" Turtle.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Friday, April 10, 2020
Working From Home (WFH) for Parents: Covid-19 Impact
I have not been blogging for the past couple of months, mainly due to the disruption from the impact of Covid-19.
Since early March, I have been told by my company's BCP commander to start working from home (WFH) which means I started even before Singapore Govt announced the "circuit breaker" or "CB". Ya, my company is pretty conservative and they take this event very seriously.
They allowed us to bring our docking station (to dock our laptop), monitors and even the office chair back home and provided us with transport allowance if we needed to take a taxi or grab. (Goodwill from the company is always welcome).
Having to WFH with no end date is pretty daunting to be honest as I cannot imagine how I could use just my laptop to work efficiently due to the small and single screen. Additionally, I have to deal with my two little turtles running around seeking attention at home while I am working.
After "CB" is announced, this means my wife's office will be shut as well and she got to WFH as well with me, now we have a headache about space, IT equipment and even spare table for allow another setup in our humble 4 room HDB.
My job as a husband is to resolve any problems in my household, I will not let such issue disrupt our life.
How did I resolve the space and IT equipment problem?
My main idea is to make sure we have the setups as close as possible to what we have in office so we will be as efficient as what we used to me and try to be flexible as well.
I count myself luck that I got 3 rooms in my 90 sqm HDB, Masterbed room, Children room and Helper (used to be study room) room.
I cannot bear to ask my helper to give up her personal room as she is a great help to us, she cook, she take care of kids, she clean up our house and simply to say, we cannot do without her. So her room is out of question.
Masterbed room got a king size bed and a fixed cupboard so it is impossible to put in 2 computer tables for me and my wife to work. So this is out as well.
So the only solution is to convert the children's room into our temporary "home office". The kids will squeeze in with us in our MBR.
Our Singapore Govt is very nice, they gave us 1 weekend to find solutions and this is the beauty of our Govt, they do not announce today and give you 3 hours to react. I appreciate it alot.
I told my wife to borrow 1 monitor, a set of keyboard and mouse from her office and together with my home monitor, she will have 2 monitors (same as what she has in office) and use my CPU (as they don't have laptop) as the processor. Very luckily, I got a CPU which was just upgraded 2 months back. So just nice, we got her setup ready.
Now the headache is computer table. As I already used the only study table at home for my own setup, either I buy a new table or I got and borrow. I saw the horrendous queue at IKEA during the weekend before the "CB" took place, I won't go there to create another Covid-19 cluster. Fortunately, I managed to borrow a table from a friend (phew!) and this solve my final issue.
Our home office is ready on Monday with 2 setups (similar to what we had in office) before "CB" kicks on Tuesday. Phew, I managed to pull it off, I thank my lucky stars and kind friends that helped us out.
How to work efficiently if we have 2 little monsters running around at home?
Preschool will be closed as well during "CB" period so the kids will be at home full time, you could imagine this as a "nightmare" although I truly enjoyed the extra family times with them.
Fortunately, we have a reliable and trusted helper so we left our children with her when we are in our "home office" during the business hours and she will cook our lunch and dinner. Without her help, we probably will have a bigger headache as we do not have grandparents to help out.
Home office will not be as quiet as compared to our comfortable office and pantry so we have to be flexible and make do with whatever resources we have at home. Kids will occasionally run into our room so we just let it be and tell them to go out (sometimes works and not everytime) and when we have calls, we simply lock the door. No choice!
Did we enjoy WFH so far?
In short, the answer is YES despite the slight inconvenience of having kids running around, shouting and fighting for toys and attention. Personally I felt that we managed to "chase" back some family time to watch the kids grow up as previously, we only will spend time with them during weekends and on vacation.
Most importantly, the kids are happy that they are able to see us everyday although I know my K2 son does missed his classmates.
Let's make sure we make full use of this "crisis" to chase back some family time before we get busy again.
Summary
I kept telling my wife that we are very lucky that our industry is not directly impacted and our job functions allowed us to WFH as compared to the retail and aviation employees whom lost their job and/or took no pay leave to be at home.
Losing an income at this period can be very stressful especially you have bills and housing loans to pay and children and elderly to feed.
We will continue to lead our life normally and frugally but it will probably be a "new normal" with all the controls put in place by the Govt as well as our employers.
Don't keep complaining (I know Singaporean like to complain, including me, LOL) but try to be flexible and innovative to make full use of whatever resources you have on hand during this period and you might be surprised how much you could achieved at the end.
Enjoy while it last by counting our luck stars.
Take care and Stay safe, my friends
Old Turtle
#SGUNITED
Since early March, I have been told by my company's BCP commander to start working from home (WFH) which means I started even before Singapore Govt announced the "circuit breaker" or "CB". Ya, my company is pretty conservative and they take this event very seriously.
They allowed us to bring our docking station (to dock our laptop), monitors and even the office chair back home and provided us with transport allowance if we needed to take a taxi or grab. (Goodwill from the company is always welcome).
Having to WFH with no end date is pretty daunting to be honest as I cannot imagine how I could use just my laptop to work efficiently due to the small and single screen. Additionally, I have to deal with my two little turtles running around seeking attention at home while I am working.
After "CB" is announced, this means my wife's office will be shut as well and she got to WFH as well with me, now we have a headache about space, IT equipment and even spare table for allow another setup in our humble 4 room HDB.
My job as a husband is to resolve any problems in my household, I will not let such issue disrupt our life.
How did I resolve the space and IT equipment problem?
My main idea is to make sure we have the setups as close as possible to what we have in office so we will be as efficient as what we used to me and try to be flexible as well.
I count myself luck that I got 3 rooms in my 90 sqm HDB, Masterbed room, Children room and Helper (used to be study room) room.
I cannot bear to ask my helper to give up her personal room as she is a great help to us, she cook, she take care of kids, she clean up our house and simply to say, we cannot do without her. So her room is out of question.
Masterbed room got a king size bed and a fixed cupboard so it is impossible to put in 2 computer tables for me and my wife to work. So this is out as well.
So the only solution is to convert the children's room into our temporary "home office". The kids will squeeze in with us in our MBR.
Our Singapore Govt is very nice, they gave us 1 weekend to find solutions and this is the beauty of our Govt, they do not announce today and give you 3 hours to react. I appreciate it alot.
I told my wife to borrow 1 monitor, a set of keyboard and mouse from her office and together with my home monitor, she will have 2 monitors (same as what she has in office) and use my CPU (as they don't have laptop) as the processor. Very luckily, I got a CPU which was just upgraded 2 months back. So just nice, we got her setup ready.
Now the headache is computer table. As I already used the only study table at home for my own setup, either I buy a new table or I got and borrow. I saw the horrendous queue at IKEA during the weekend before the "CB" took place, I won't go there to create another Covid-19 cluster. Fortunately, I managed to borrow a table from a friend (phew!) and this solve my final issue.
Our home office is ready on Monday with 2 setups (similar to what we had in office) before "CB" kicks on Tuesday. Phew, I managed to pull it off, I thank my lucky stars and kind friends that helped us out.
How to work efficiently if we have 2 little monsters running around at home?
Preschool will be closed as well during "CB" period so the kids will be at home full time, you could imagine this as a "nightmare" although I truly enjoyed the extra family times with them.
Fortunately, we have a reliable and trusted helper so we left our children with her when we are in our "home office" during the business hours and she will cook our lunch and dinner. Without her help, we probably will have a bigger headache as we do not have grandparents to help out.
Home office will not be as quiet as compared to our comfortable office and pantry so we have to be flexible and make do with whatever resources we have at home. Kids will occasionally run into our room so we just let it be and tell them to go out (sometimes works and not everytime) and when we have calls, we simply lock the door. No choice!
Did we enjoy WFH so far?
In short, the answer is YES despite the slight inconvenience of having kids running around, shouting and fighting for toys and attention. Personally I felt that we managed to "chase" back some family time to watch the kids grow up as previously, we only will spend time with them during weekends and on vacation.
Most importantly, the kids are happy that they are able to see us everyday although I know my K2 son does missed his classmates.
Let's make sure we make full use of this "crisis" to chase back some family time before we get busy again.
Summary
I kept telling my wife that we are very lucky that our industry is not directly impacted and our job functions allowed us to WFH as compared to the retail and aviation employees whom lost their job and/or took no pay leave to be at home.
Losing an income at this period can be very stressful especially you have bills and housing loans to pay and children and elderly to feed.
We will continue to lead our life normally and frugally but it will probably be a "new normal" with all the controls put in place by the Govt as well as our employers.
Don't keep complaining (I know Singaporean like to complain, including me, LOL) but try to be flexible and innovative to make full use of whatever resources you have on hand during this period and you might be surprised how much you could achieved at the end.
Enjoy while it last by counting our luck stars.
Take care and Stay safe, my friends
Old Turtle
#SGUNITED
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