Budget 2024: 5 Key Benefits For Families In Singapore

Budget 2024 was full of cash vouchers and goodies for every Singaporean, with more support measures for families and those caring for elderly parents being announced.

Beyond throwing mad money, - I mean, short-term vouchers - at Singaporeans, the Budget speech by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong brought up several longer-term measures that are definitely a step in the right direction, and demonstrates that our government has indeed been listening to feedback from the ground.

Here are the five key outcomes for families.

1. Preschool education will become more affordable for many families

One of the biggest pain points for working parents is the steep infant care and preschool fees. The amount becomes even more challenging for households with multiple children between the ages zero to six.

So when I heard DPM Wong announce his commitment to make preschools more affordable, it was music to my ears. 

Government-supported preschools will now have lower fee caps of $640 for Anchor Operators and $680 for Partner Operators. In my case, we’re paying about $740 per child to MyFirstSkool before subsidies, so a $100 reduction will now save us $1,200 a year.

Another fantastic news was the decision to enhance existing preschool subsidies so that it will now be extended to children of non-working mothers from lower-income families. Prior to this, non-working mothers could only get $150 from ECDA (versus $300 for working mothers) and were not eligible for additional subsidies. There are many mothers in Singapore who give up their careers to look after their children (whether by choice or not), and are equally deserving of this aid.

2. Young families can get a roof over their heads sooner

For young families with urgent housing needs who are still waiting for their BTO flats to be ready, the government will now provide a one-year Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme (PPHS) voucher to rent a HDB flat in the open market.

The dollar amount of the voucher was not announced, but this will help families whose monthly household income is $7,000 or below and have not been able to afford the rising rental costs in the open market while they wait. 

3. Parents raising children with special needs will receive more support

Parents raising children with special needs or disabilities currently face a double whammy - not only are fees higher at special education schools and care services, but more time is also required to bring their child for Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children (EIPIC) programs or help their child adapt.

This makes it harder for them to work a normal office job. Three of my friends currently face this challenge, resulting in one spouse having to give up their corporate job in order to give their child the attention and care needed.

Although special needs students already receive more subsidies than those in mainstream schools, the fees are still higher due to the underlying costs. 

The government will now lower school fee caps from $150 to $90, and a similar initiative will be rolled out for all special student care centres (although the caps were not announced).

4. Children from lower-income families get a better shot at breaking the poverty cycle

The ComLink scheme currently helps children from lower-income families residing in public rental flats to make progress towards stability, self-reliance and social mobility. This includes CDA top-ups for every quarter of regular preschool attendance and donor-funded debt clearance packages, among others.

These families will now benefit further under the enhanced ComLink+ Progress Packages, with more resources and funds allocated towards providing greater customised support and family coaches to develop action plans to improve these families’ life circumstances and help them break out of the poverty cycle.

5. More tax reliefs for the sandwich generation

For those who have to raise young children while supporting retired parents, you can now claim more dependant-related tax reliefs where you previously couldn’t.

For many years, you could only claim this if your dependant earned $4,000 or less annually. This worked out to be $333 a month, which was no longer realistic in light of rising costs of living and wages.

This has since been doubled to $8,000, so if your elderly parents earn under $670 a month or have several months of unemployment while being between jobs, you will now be able to claim tax reliefs for supporting them financially.

Budget 2024 is not perfect, but it's headed in the right direction for families

While Budget 2023 saw more cash grants and a doubling of government-paid paternity leave, this year’s Budget showed that the government now understands dangling short-term carrots will simply not be enough to encourage more Singaporean couples to have more children. 

Instead, the latest changes are a clear sign that they’ve been listening, and are working on the problems raised by Singaporeans on the difficulties of raising children in Singapore, as well as the reasons holding us back from having more.

Increasing preschool affordability will help greatly towards easing the financial burden on families, and the move to include non-working mothers from lower-income families for subsidies from now ought to be applauded. These changes are more important than simply boosting the Baby Bonus year after year, since the additional cash runs out quickly given the cost of raising a child here.

So I wasn’t surprised that no further enhancements were announced to the Baby Bonus scheme, given that last year’s Budget already increased the benefits by a $3,000 cash gift, $2,000 CDA First Step Grant and $1,000 more on government co-matching for voluntary top-ups.

I was hoping that the government would reverse the changes made to the Working Mother Child Relief (WMCR) last year after working mothers gave their feedback, but sadly, that did not happen.

Will that be rolled out in next year’s Budget 2025?

One can continue hoping.

Dawn Cher is a mother of two boys who has been raising many of the challenges faced by working mothers in Singapore to DPM Lawrence Wong since 2022. As the founder of financial blog SG Budget Babe, she shares various money hacks and tips on how parents can do more while spending less.