This Friday the prime minister will present the Budget 2016; the first budget in the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP). There are many wish lists to this budget but to most Malaysians, the solution to making ends meet amidst the rising cost of living is the number one in our list.

A fresh graduate with barely three years’ working experience, I would categorise myself as one of the statistics under the lower middle income class. Well, depending on which survey, I would either fall within the mean salary or below.

The recent rising cost of almost everything in our daily lives has left a huge dent in most of our pockets, including yours truly. This year, we have been hit by the Goods and Services Tax (GST), petrol hike and recently the toll hike.

Coming soon would be the cost of taking the public transport. When it rains, it certainly pours. Or perhaps should I say, the haze that is currently blurring the country.

Only yesterday, Bank Negara governor has urged to make ‘a lifestyle switch to weather the cloudy economic climate ahead’ - in other words, we have to tighten our belts and cut spending.

To most of us, cutting expenses does not equal to making ends meet. Those working in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur can vouch for this.

For the past decades, salaries of Malaysians have moved like a snail while cost of living has sped ahead like the rabbit. Essentially, this translate to the meagre rise in income is wiped out by the increase in expenses, leaving most Malaysians with either no or little savings.

One of the main objectives of the nation’s budget is to improve the quality of life for us, the rakyat.

GST saw us spending more when eating out and buying stuff. Before GST, a visit to a mamak restaurant would cost be around RM6, and now it is RM6.60. This additional 60 sen would translate to additional RM3 per week or RM20 per month.

And to top this, the weakening ringgit also saw increase in consumer goods and services.

The recent toll hike saw me spending additional RM4 to and from work, forking out additional RM80 per month.

I had only recently resorted to driving to work as the public transport had been unreliable. The past three months taking the LRT to work had left me stranded five times due to technical glitches. And this does not include the ‘not-on-time’ Komuter (plus all the time packed) and unreliable connecting buses.

This is the state of Malaysia’s public transport. It does not convenient its users, not to mention the ‘third world condition’ of its buses and taxis.

With the increase in toll, do I then go back to taking the unreliable public transport? It is a Catch-22 situation for us.

It is only a matter of time before the cost of public transport will go up.

2015 a year of hikes and increases

For Malaysians, 2015 is a year of hikes, increases, whatever the synonyms for upward rise of expenses. Even the Air Pollutant Index (API) has been on the rise lately.

The government’s solution thus far is to provide Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) and not surprisingly, it has been said that the Budget 2016 will see an increase of RM100 in BRIM.

Is this THE solution for us? BR1M is not a sustainable solution but rather a short-term measure to ease our burden. How do we move forward when the cost living keeps rising yet our salary though increasing but on a slower track?

The 11MP had mentioned that government is targeting average household income of over RM5,000 per month for the ‘B40’ group by 2020, the year Malaysia reach a high income nation.

Will the snail i.e. our salary be able to outpace the rabbit i.e. rising cost of living by then?

Given the current economic condition where every day you read employees being laid off or offered Mutual Separation Scheme/Voluntary Separation Scheme (MSS/VSS), can we expect a salary rise? Will working two jobs help to make ends meet, or for that matter to earn over RM5,000 as mentioned in the 11MP?

How do Malaysians climb out from this middle income trap that has been a longtime problem for the nation? As more graduates join the job market, this middle income class will snowball.

It has been mentioned that Budget 2016 will be a people’s budget, but let’s just wait and see what the government has in store to release the middle income trapdoor.