Will The Hill Ever Be Enough?

Finally my best friend wedded last Saturday. I am so glad because he has been in love with the same lady for a longer duration than I have with my wife and to finally watch them enter into a commitment for life is something I have longed for. I can tell you there are silent prayers than go out not too long ago that this knot be finally tied and praise be to the Lord that it did!...:)

Unlike my own wedding, I didn't quite participate much in his. I did help out here and there but I feel kind of bad because I was never heavily involved from the beginning till the end (then again, I know I am a control freak so it is best I don't ruin his...:P). My only consolation is when I saw the montage, he specially thanked both my wife and I for making the montage possible (btw, we took the easy route, we hired a professional to take the photos and make it into a montage).

One thing I noticed about the montage is that the pictures of their childhood days till the day they grew up and met have been inserted there for all to see. I realised I never saw their childhood photos. Come to think of it, I have lost touch with all my childhood friends. Those were the simpler days where RM5 can buy you good plastic toys in pasar malam on Friday nights and certainly pay meals for more than 1 person. Can the same be said of that value of RM5 today?

Got this from an e-mail forwarded by Seaqueen. Apparently, this is what her piggy bank looked like after the petrol price hike...:P

I am not sure about you but I have been taught the virtue of savings from young. Being frugal and worked the extra hours were what my grandpa did to save enough to buy his coffee shop. But I wonder, is this a virtue which we should teach our children today in light of this era of high inflation?

Think of it this way, how will the old adage, "Sedikit demi sedikit, lama lama menjadi bukit" apply when the money you save today would very well be worth less in a year's time?

Also, by teaching our young ones to save in the tabung where it earns next to nothing, how will he/she afford to buy what he/she wants? He/she may look at the price of the teddy today which probably worth RM200 and start saving RM1 a day, by the time he/she saves enough, the teddy might cost more than RM200. It is a moving goalpost which ultimately places him/her worse off than before.

Similarly, if we tell him/her to save to buy a house, he/she must be really frugal and save a lot just so as he/she can afford to pay for the downpayment. The next thing you know, the dream house prices would shoot up in today's economy and he/she will never be able to buy it.

With 12 month maturity fixed depost rate going at 3.7% while CPI for 2008 expected to rise to 5-6%, isn't it better to buy the things we want today rather than save for tomorrow?

So what sort of virtue will we impart to our children? Afterall, circumstances change requiring us to either adapt or perish. Similarly, shouldn't we teach them usefully soft skills early so as they will not have just one fixated idea on how to get what they wanted?