One after another, consumer being burden by the escalating price of goods and services.

It is beyond doubt that these price increases affected every level of societies in the country. With back-to-school season just started, the children get excited to start a fresh year of school, their parents felt a pinch on their wallets. Ultimately, the pain severely felt by the lower income group with big family members. Therefore, there are several impacts of high cost of living among married people which are increase in basic necessity, massive education fee and higher maintenance for children. Firstly, one of the impacts of high cost living for married people is increase in expenditure on basic necessities. At the market and office, almost all conversations revolve about the rising prices. According to National Statistic of Malaysia (2013), Consumer Price Index (CPI) for rice, bread and cereal rose 2.0 percent from 103.1 percent in November 2012 to 105.2 percent in November 2013. It is also recorded at the same period that CPI for goods grouped under sugar, jam, honey, chocolate and confectionery saw a massive increase of 8.6 percent. Plus, in the same period, it shows the increase value in CPI of 2.4 percent for housing, water, electricity and gas. Again, National Statistic of Malaysia (2013) stated that average monthly household expenditure soared by 88.6 percent to RM 2,190 in year 2009/10 compared from RM 1,161 in year 1993/94. Thus, these generally known as inflation. Man obviously feels the rising cost of expenditure when the prices of the basic necessities meteoric rise. Next, massive education fees also contribute to the effect of high cost of living. Malaysia is implementing exam-oriented system in education. Then the students will experience a new study environment at tertiary level education. In order to further the study, students need to apply loan to finance their study since their family cannot afford to finance it. During primary and secondary level of education, parents had to spend lots of expenditure on books, stationeries and tuition fees. In modern days, internet is one of study tools, so parents had to provide this too along with laptop and smartphones. NST (Aug 18, 2013) mentioned that to raise a child born on 2007 and providing education in local university would cost about RM 470 000.00. This is very costly. In other topic, NST (Aug 18, 2013) stated, private and international schools had a higher quality of education compared to local education. This is due to the technology they used during class and high maintenance building. The assumptions lead to rising cost of living is an everyday theme.

Last but not least, married people have to pay high maintenance for their children such as medical & transport scheduled repairing cost. Rumaya (2013) states that higher cost of living also manifested by the increasing cost of raising children as it starts form pregnancy to childbirth and other related cost. From the price of the pregnancy kit to the cost of transport maintenance once they start to study in higher learning institutions or once they joint the working class to develop the nation. According to Siti (2013), for the last 10 years, children fees had been increased between 5 to 10 percent for children between 3 months and 5 years old. Burden of this increase in fees could be soften down should the government award incentives to the employer who take the initiative to set up child day care centre in their office premise. According to National Statistic of Malaysia (2013), Consumer Price Index (CPI) for transport group registered high percent of increase rate which was at 4.8 percent for period from November 2012 to the same month of 2013. In a nut shell, these price increases could be controlled by the government since it has the power and means. Even though consumers have the absolute power to make the decision either to purchase or not the good or services, but for basic and necessity needs, consumers do not have any option but just to purchase and feel the pinch. Enforcement must be carried out in a bigger scale and in regular so that the trader will not simply charge the high price to the consumers just like to fish in murky waters. If this upward trend not being looked into immediately, believe that other impact such as socio economic problem will be emerged and a lot harder to solve.

References

Department of Statistics Malaysia (2013, Jan). Customer Price Index Peninsular Malaysia. Retrieved March 1, 2014, from http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/download_Prices/files/CPI/2014/JAN/BI/03PeninsularM alaysia.pdf

NST (2013, August 18). Set maximum fee for childcare. Retrieved March 1, 2014, from The Star Publication.

NST (2013, August 18). Too expensive to have children. Retrieved March 1, 2014, from The Star Publication.