Wherein I owe mother money, big time

Mother always told me as a child not to borrow money. I have faithfully followed her advice into adulthood and kept myself as debt-free as possible.

I checked my CPF statement today.

I owe Mother about S$21,000 for my BSc in Computational Science (Specializing in Physics).

In case you are wondering what this all means, allow me to explain:

The Singaporean government understands that not all Singaporeans are fortunate enough to have wealthy parents who can afford to send them off to university. However, the need for a large base of skilled workers (as opposed to educated loafers) requires that our many of our young have to be packed off to local meat-grinder schools-of-higher-learning. To overcome the hurdle of financial burden, our government has kindly allowed parents to utilize the funds from their Central Providence Fund, an otherwise-untouchable fund we have to contribute to monthly (ostensibly for our financial security during our dotage), to temporarily pay for their children's university education. The children are of course required (BY LAW) to credit money back to the account when they finally become financially active, plus interest.

I am one of these aforementioned lucky children.

Out of curiousity, I dug up the contract I signed years ago to find out the penalties for defaulting on payment (not that I'm entertaining any ideas about defaulting myself) and it turns out that it's merely a legal contract not covered in any laws (I'm surprised that something concerning CPF isn't covered in any of our Acts - this is Singapore after all) and the worst that can happen to you is to become bankrupt. Which, if you consider the many loans you're likely to have picked up along the way as a student that you're going to need to pay, the expensive continuing education you're likely going to need in order to land any kind of decent job and the low pay in the employment market these days, suddenly seems like not much difference from being bankrupt at all.

And if you're bankrupt, the Government doesn't require you to make a monthly minimum contribution to your elderly parents through the Maintenance of Parents Act (although you'd better be warned that there is no corresponding Maintenance of Useless Children Act).

Sigh. As a Chinese, of course I know that I owe my parents everything. It just didn't hit me until now that even a tiny amount of everything amounts to a lot of pain.

Mother had me know that she could have paid for my education in cash but was saving the money for my brother (who might need to go overseas). Also, she could conceivably waive my requirement for repayment but she needs the funds in her CPF account to pay for sister's education (whose wedding I'll probably get to pay for, hopefully after I finish paying off this education loan). Since I was the eldest and the most dong3 shi4 of the children, I would of course understand that we were a poor household and that she could only afford to send so many of her children off to university for free.

It's great to be the eldest child! And of course I don't mind giving pears away to my lovely siblings (ancient chinese saying).

Turns out financial independance is a large and heavy plate with only a very small serving of pride.