Celebration

When it comes to special events like concerts, graduations, weddings, festivities like Christmas and Chinese New Year and even birthdays. Every seller wants a piece of the celebration pie. Unknowingly, some parents' spending for children tend to go overboard, and we didn't realize it until we do a tally of our spending.

Especially for the school holidays, I find it getting harder and harder to hold our budget together. It is easier during the usual school days when the activities are fixed and we stay at home most of the time. Little princess spend a good 6 hours at school with at least 30 minutes on the road travelling back and from home.  Little prince spend about 5 hours at school or slightly more if he goes early. But with more free hours during the holiday, we're finding it easier to succumb to our wants. It does take a lot of willpower to hold back from spending more. Suddenly there is a need to have breakfast at McDonalds' or KFC. Dinner or lunch out seem more delicious than what we cook. If we go for short trip, everything's about convenience, and that comes at a price. No wonder the King didn't want to travel so much with the family. In fact, eating out is really expensive, one adder is the service tax that had been increased from 5% to 6% effective 1 January 2011. All these fancy places you see are all charging for the nice furnishings and comfortable ambient. Even going grocery shopping to hypermarkets like Tesco and Giant, we tend to spend more liberally to enjoy some special foods during school holidays.

Something I can still be insistant on, is not spending on things I don't deem as important. Such as for children's concert, we were requested to look for dresses, shoes, hair accessories. I don't mind paying a little for the occasion but do not ask me to go scouting all over the place for something that might not even be used in the occasion.