Ok, perhaps I am a bit late to the party, since this has been widely covered in the mainstream press, as well as various other bloggers and sites. As many of our readers would know from our monthly updates, one part of the fixed expense would be our insurance premiums. This also include the partial cost of the shield plans of my parents. We had recently renewed the shield plan for them, and because of their age (hitting the new age band) and my mum’s history of making a claim about 10 months back,  the premiums has also (exponentially) increased. I am splitting the cost of the premiums with my sibling, but collectively for this year, it seems like we will need to pay about $8314, which means $4317 on my part. And as I was lamenting over the atrocious increment of the premiums, we were slapped with another appalling ......