Decision to leave

I am an ordinary working mum in Singapore, with 2 lovely daughters and a caring husband. Why did we decide to leave Singapore? When I was pregnant with my 2nd daughter last year, my husband and I were discussing about the future plans for our family and we realized the following:

1. We don't own anything! We are a typical middle income family with a HDB and one car. We seem to have it comfortable until we realized our HDB is on a 99 year lease which we are left with 2/3 of the lease. Our car's COE will expire in 2009 and to get a new one, it will cost another 100k or so for just 10 years! What assets do we own that we can pass down to our children? Nothing! 

2. Stressful education system. I would rather my children enjoy playing more during their childhood days instead of focusing on getter good grades from P1. However I know that I will succumb to parenting norms here of sending them to academic enrichment classes and tuitions eventually if I stay. One may not necessarily make it in life if they do well academically in Singapore but the chances of surviving is even lesser if they do not have the qualification. It doesn't help that their future depends largely on their PSLE scores at the age of 12.

3. Work life balance is not applicable here. I feel this strongly as a working mum. While I really wish to spend more time with my children, I can't do more. The fact that I have to handle work matters during my maternity leave tells you how much balance I can have.

4. High medical cost. It costs me $240 in 2 days when both of my girls fell sick together. How about that. 

5. I just want a simple family life where I can stay home and take care of my children when they are growing up instead of them growing up in infant/childcare/after school care or in the hands of helpers. I can't achieve that here due to high medical, insurance and vehicle cost. The best I could do is to take 1 or 2 year no pay leave while eating into my savings. This is not the long term solution.

Yes, I am getting disgruntled about life here. The alternative route is to leave. I do not know if life will really be better and it is definitely risky to leave what I have built here and venture into a foreign country. But if I never try, I will never know. So we decided, let's give it a shot. We are just half way there, hopefully we will complete our move by next year.