How much is "enough" for my kids?

My elder one came home last month asking about an extra enrichment class. Her friend in the same class was attending it. "Pa, can?"

I said yes without thinking. Then later that evening, I opened the school year budget I'd quietly been keeping, and added the new line item. The number had crept up again.

This is the quiet pressure of being a parent in Singapore. It isn't that we want to give our kids everything. It's that we don't want them to be the only ones without. And so the budget grows, one yes at a time.

I had to ask myself an honest question. What is "enough" actually?

If I'm being real, I think I was confusing two things. One is what my kids need to thrive. The other is what would make me feel like I'm doing enough as a parent. They're not the same.

So I sat down and worked it out properly. Not the perfect plan. Just a starting point.

For us, "enough" looks like this:

A. A baseline education fund that covers a local university. That's the floor.
B. A buffer for overseas if they choose that path, but not assumed.
C. Enrichment within reason. Not every class. Not none.

The maths is less scary once it's on paper. A local university for one child, four years, comes to a known range. Start early enough and the monthly number is manageable. Push it to overseas and the number can double or more, depending on country and course.

What helped me most was realising that "enough" isn't about matching the family next door. It's about being honest with my kids, early, about what we can and can't do. They handle that conversation better than we think.

The harder part is being honest with ourselves. The enrichment class isn't always for them. Sometimes it's for the parent who doesn't want to feel like they're falling behind. That one took me a while to admit.