New Baby? New Property.

One of my old friend said that having a baby means extra expenses. I totally agree. Then he asked me how am I planning for the baby since the education fees are getting more and more expensive especially when the baby is ready for university. While I do think university fees are going to get more expensive, I told her that I will only be setting aside RM100,000 for this purpose. She gave me a puzzled look. I told her that if my baby is great in her studies, most probably she can get a scholarship and go to a top-notch university. Minimum 1% top ranked in the world. I do not need Cambridge or MIT. Top 1% is more than enough. For this top 1%, it already includes many of the universities near us including Nottingham University, Monash University, University of Reading and many more. This is, if she’s great in her studies.
If she is average in her studies, I do not wish to overburden her. Any recognised universities would do just fine. For this, there are so many of the UK programmes which can be completed locally. I also have high regards for Sedaya University, Help University, Petronas university, MMU and many more. To me, these are way better than the bottom half of the UK, Australia or even the US universities. Imagine a university which allows the student to only borrow 5 books, having one tutor to nearly 100 students for their HONOURS project or even allowing the students to transfer to the university even when they fail, simply if you are willing to pay additional tuition fees to retake the subjects there. I even have a course-mate who did not do too well in Malaysia and yet after she transferred to the overseas university, she could take more subjects and gets high scores! Hmm….  One bottom 20% student in my class even scored higher marks than me in his overseas university! Ok, ok, maybe it was because I suddenly got far worse…..   😛
Back to my baby. I am however doing one more thing. I bought a property for my baby. I calculated that if I buy the property at RM500,000 today, by the time she really needs the money, it should have been fully paid for and the value by then should have doubled. Perhaps RM1 million then may not be as valuable today but RM1 million would definitely be sufficient for my baby to do a lot of things that she may want, perhaps as a seeding for a business if she has an entrepreneur mind? I think this is a good plan for her and it also forces me to save for her in the mortgages that I have to pay.
I encouraged my friend to do the same. He just smiled. I think he does not agree yet. It is ok. Everyone should have their own way of planning. As long as there is planning, it should be okay. How are you planning for your baby?
written on 30 Jan 2014
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