For much of my twenties I had a very different life. I traveled the world plenty, worked very hard and weekends for me meant waking up late in the mornings and partying hard late at night.
All that changed on the 12th of August 2013 when Fighter was born. I for the first time became a father. People always told me that life would change when you became a father and had your own family but I never really broke down why. When I reflect on it, it’s not just a change in my lifestyle but the change in my opinions or views on things. Even a change in the way I spend my time.
So for this blog entry I’m going to tell you the changes that I experienced and that you’ll most likely experience when you become a Dad.
1) You have a lot less money to spend
The good news is that we have kids later in our lives these days so we’ve had time to build on our career. The bad news is that even with that career head start, it’s not enough. The sudden expenditure of having kids starting from your first baby hits you like a professional Filipino boxing champion. I use that metaphor because it’s not just one hit, it’s multiple hits one after the other.
It starts with the consultation costs throughout the pregnancy. The ultrasounds, the doctors telling you all is okay, and then if necessary the medication. Then just a few months before the due date you realize there are a lot of baby things you haven’t bought yet. So you go out and buy all the little things like milk bottles, clothes, towels and diapers. But all that is nothing compared to the big ticket items: The stroller, the breast pump, the crib and more.
When you reach the due date you would have spent what must’ve seem to you like a Rockerfeller’s Trust Fund only to be hit by one more big bill. The delivery charges and cod blood storage.
Of course as man of the family your responsibility is to provide for the family. So to the outside world, you look confident like this.
But on the inside you really look like this.
2) You spend a lot less time with friends and a lot more with family
You know how when you first get together with a girlfriend and you really want to spend all your time with her? Well having a kid is like that, only 100% more intense. You’ll end up wanting to spend as much time as you can with your baby and naturally since the number of hours in a day doesn’t increase once you have kids, you end up sacrificing time from somewhere. Most of the time it’s your friends.
You do however still spend a good amount of time with your family and your in-laws because they want to see your kids as much as you want to see them.
This doesn’t mean you completely lose contact with friends though. I still make it a point to catch up and meet up with a number of them regularly but perhaps because we don’t have much time left, we meet up with a lot less of them.
3) You don’t enjoy traveling as much as you used to
When your kid or kids are really young, you don’t find it appropriate to bring them on long trips for holidays. So if you were going to go on a holiday, you’d very often go on your own: Just you and your wife.
You however find it hard to enjoy them because you’d spend every hour talking about your kids and how much you miss them. It’s like you literally left a part of you behind. You eventually secretly start hoping for your holiday to end quick so you can go home and see your baby. But that totally ruins the purpose of a holiday doesn’t it?
4) You start looking at different kind of cars
Most men in the twenties love cars. We don’t love just any cars. We love the cars that are fast and sexy that just so happen to be expensive as well. When we look at the Toyota Camry or the minivan we’d be like eww. Why would anyone buy that?
We crave the Ferraris, the Lambos, the Porsches. Heck for some of us even the GTRs or the M3s or GTIs.
Then when you get married your mind automatically succumb to the fact that those cars aren’t practical for you anymore. They can’t fit baby chairs or even if they can they’re not spacious enough for you to fit a stroller and some groceries in the back. Minivans start looking a lot more attractive too especially if you have 2 kids or more and a babysitter that you want to bring along for your weekend trips to the mall.
My craving for sports cars have taken an abrupt halt for the moment. In fact I do have some sort of a sports car and while it was a car I used to drive every day, I now drive it only once a week at most. Suddenly the Camry starts looking like a rather interesting and practical car to me. Confirmation that I’ve just been “uncled”.
5) You start looking at buying a different type of insurance.
In your twenties, buying insurance isn’t a foreign idea. We all are insured one way or another. If you’ve read my previous articles on my blog I have really mixed feelings about health insurance even though I do buy some for my wife.
However today as a family man I hear conversations among friends now about another type of insurance: Life insurance. That is a foreign idea to me. As a bachelor in my twenties I never thought of life insurance because hey… why would I need one? We all mostly felt invincible in our twenties and we had nobody to provide for if anything happened to us.
Today though we ask ourselves this: If anything happened to us, who would help pay off the housing loan or pay for the kids education especially if your wife isn’t working?
Just last week my friends were comparing different life insurance policies.
I debated with myself if I needed life insurance and the answer is maybe. I do have some assets that I would leave behind for my family but the other thing is cash. Assets take time to convert to cash but very often what you need is cash.
So life insurance is something I’ve been considering for now. According to this study, most Malaysians seem to be under-insured.
Life insurance sponsor:
One place you can start looking at for life insurance is U For Life. It’s an online site that allows you to skip through the paperwork and the long process of applying for insurance. On the contrary you can be insured for RM500,000 without a medical check-up in 10 minutes.
All premiums are paid to Tokio Marine Life who is the main insurer of your policy. No tedious paperwork, no medical check-ups or anything like that. It’s really done in a few simple steps:
First ask a few simple questions like your gender, age and whether you smoke or not.
Secondly, just choose the coverage amount you want and it’ll give you an idea of the premium you have to pay to get that.
At my age to get a RM100,000 coverage, it’ll cost me RM17.70 a month. That’s like RM0.59 a day.
And then just click proceed.
And you’re done. I thought that this was a really simple way and quick way to buy life insurance. So if you’re looking at something like that register now at uforlife.com.my . Check out www.facebook.com/uforlifemalaysia for more info.
To end my blog entry, I think my life has really changed since I’ve become a Dad. The truth is though is that I believe that my life has changed for the better. I love being a Dad a lot more than I was a bachelor with all my freedom. There’s nothing like spending a Sunday morning doing nothing but hanging out with your little toddler.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space