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SINGAPORE — Like her sister, Ms Namirah Awang, 26, had planned to invite 1,000 relatives and friends to her own wedding next year.  

But her sister’s wedding in February 2020 — weeks before Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic — cost about S$40,000 all-in.

To hold a wedding the same size next year would set Ms Namirah back twice that amount. Although the venue would be an upgrade from her sister’s, it would only be for four hours compared with the three days her sister rented her venue for.

“It’s been very, very anxious in terms of how we do our budgeting,” said Ms Namirah, an educator.

“I really think that things need to stabilise before we can have a kid. After the marriage, we’ve got to have a house, then we can talk about children.”

In an earlier Big Read in July, TODAY examined how young people — who are said to be particularly affected by inflation — are grappling with rising prices, from cutting down on expenses to taking on weekend side gigs.

But beyond the everyday cost of living for youths, it also has had a significant impact on big-ticket purchases linked to life’s major decisions with the prices of wedding receptions, housing and child-rearing rising over the past year.

Home loans have also gotten expensive as global interest rates rise to tame inflation.

The muddied economic outlook doesn’t help either, with latest official forecasts this week placing Singapore’s economic growth for 2022 at a narrower 3.5 per cent and an even slower growth rate in 2023 of between 0.5 and 2.5 per cent.

To combat the persistent inflation, the Monetary Authority of Singapore tightened monetary policy in October, the fifth time in 12 months.

The same day, the Government announced that it will provide up to S$500 cash to about 2.5 million individuals in Singapore as part of a new S$1.5 billion support package. This, on top of other cost-of-living support measures this year, are expected to “fully cover” the inflation-induced increases in expenses for 2022 for the bottom two-fifths of income earners, the Ministry of Finance said. 

For young couples, major life goals are often intertwined and a delay in one step of their journey can sometimes have a cascading effect on other future plans.

That’s the case for Ms Natalie Tan, a 26-year-old public relations associate hoping to get married next year to her 29-year-old partner of seven years.

Her plan was to secure a Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat early so that they could have a home to move into after marriage.

After about five failed attempts balloting for Build-to-Order (BTO) and sales of balance flats after graduating from university in 2019, she and her partner, who works in venture capital, turned to the resale market so that they could meet their goal of getting married next year, but baulked at the asking prices. 

“We haven’t even bothered looking at wedding packages yet because the first criterion is to get a house, before thinking about getting married.”

While the number of babies born between January and September had ranged between 28,534 and 28,952 from 2019 to 2021, only 26,785 were registered in the same period this year, preliminary statistics showed.

Although it is not clear how large an impact the economy had on the fall in births, the number of babies born in the full year of 2003 during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak similarly fell by about 9 per cent from the year before, and only began climbing again in 2005.

Yet, preliminary marriage data this year showed that there were significantly more marriages in the first three quarters of this year compared with the same period in 2019, which could be due to Covid-19-related restrictions on weddings in 2020.

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