Are we the only ones struggling? Feeling very alienated and lonely here

[Freya]

Your not the only ones

Unfortunately these days not even big numbers in front of a few 000's means yours well off. We have people thinking that all the time, and yeah I'll admit we are certainly well above the poverty line its only through sheer luck and determination. We still have skint weeks where we are left with less than $100 after paying out expenditures.

I def ditto everyone else on getting rid of every luxury you can, including any bad habits if possible ie alcohol or smoking, because you have to weigh up your priorities - financial stability or non essential items. We still occasionally have luxuries ie dinner out or a bottle of alcohol; but mostly we try extremely hard to avoid it. Having enough money isnt always painless or easy. Esp where kids are involved because even with being bargain savvy they still cost a bit of $$$.
One big tip from me is NO CREDIT CARDS EVER! We have never had a credit card. Not even for a few hundred dollars. I think when you do its just so easy to use it thinking "I'll pay it back" but it never happens and then your in over your head. Banks count on that. If you cannot afford to get cash out and pay for it then you dont need it. If you are going to struggle to pay a bill; call your provider and work out a payment plan. Better to pay your provider than a credit card company with 1000% interest whacked on top.

Grocery shopping is our downfall. There always ends up being more useless stuff than useful stuff in my trolley esp if I go shopping with family in tow *sigh* Im starting to meal plan 3x main meals + 2 snacks a day and sticking to that, it definately cuts the food bill alot. Might not be gourmet but its cost effective. I dont go for brands anymore if I can avoid it; I buy in bulk if its a super bargain.

I really hope you begin to feel better about your situation soon. Its horrible worrying about money; physically exhausting infact. But it comes with being a grown up (and earning under $100,000 these days). Sucks.

[luna moth]

I really hope you begin to feel better about your situation soon. Its horrible worrying about money; physically exhausting infact. But it comes with being a grown up (and earning under $100,000 these days). Sucks.

I have a friend on 100K, and her DP is on 60K. It's a massive amount and they still struggle. It's not about the amount, it's about the way you handle it.
Defs check out the frugal living blogs, live cheap and be proud. I honestly adore the feeling when someone says "I love your dress." and I can say "Three bucks at Salvos!" It's not embarrassing at all - I find it actually makes people a little jealous that I can do so much with so little. It started when I was a student, working part-time, and DH was on a piddly PhD stipend - $200 a week in the first year, then $400 a week for the next two years. So we really had no choice. When I started working full time and on a higher wage we decided not to change anything - we were so used to it anyway. Then when he took his first grad job, we just kept going that way.

We commented last night (when we burned a chair that had broken ) about how I get more attached to free/cheap furniture than I do to stuff we have paid for. It's because brand new stuff can be easily replaced - you just go back to the shop and buy it again. But stuff off the side of the road, well, you can't just go back to the roadside and find it again! I get a big thrill from the opportunity. Cheap thrills

[Freya]

Oh yeah great suggestion Audax! You can most definately find some awesome clothing and furniture at op shops! I got most of Ds1's baby bits and peices from op shops and garage sales. I just the other week went and spent $30 at the Salvo's and got 3 skirts, a cardigan, a peasant top, a sleepsack for Ds3, 8 pairs of socks for the kids, a novel and a cool 60's vintage dress. I love going every few weeks and seeing what I can find! Some of my most prized clothing or books or shoes are op shop peices.

Im terrified of how much the cost of living is going to keep increasing in the next decade. Its ridiculous and I think in some ways avoidable on the Governments behalf. Dh always says "the rich are getting richer but the poor are getting poorer; and the middle class is disappearing, soon we'll all be poor unless we're born into money".

[Asparagus and Lemons]

Audax.. are you talking about hard garbage? things on the side of the road? We do that often, but we go really late at night so people dont see us. Although it does depends on the area we go to. In the 'upperclass areas' when people are outside their houses, we have had people actually yell things at us! They'll say "Scabs!" or "Stop looking through our rubbish!" it makes me really upset but it doesnt stop dh doing it. We have found items on hard garbage, and then sold them for hundreds! It is worth it, and we have not paid full price for any of our furniture.. the stuff we did pay for was from ebay or the deseased estate auctions.
An also dh's brother never has money and often asks us for money or when dh buys him something he can never pay it back straight away. I dont get that as he and his wife BOTH work full time and they both have decent jobs. We are living on one wage of 50 grand a year and we dont get any benifits! We get $974 a week, we pay $560 for our mortgage a week, $175 for the car loan a week.. and so SOMEHOW with $239 we have to pay 2 mobiles, the phone line, gas, electricity, internet, food, petrol and possibly pay off the $8000 we owe on the credit card. It never adds up in the plus's

[Arimeh]

Its super hard on one wage, definitely hard. I have to re-work our budget again because of interest rates going up so our mortgage repayment is more - so that means something has to go!! I'd love to have a cheaper plan on my mobile (at the moment its $80 a month) but its up in November, and if I cancel it now, I have to pay it all out - and we just can't afford it. So thats the plan from November.

I don't buy clothes unless they are in the bargain bin at Kmart (great huh - got a great singlet the other day for $5 - reduced from $20!!) and I buy most of the kids clothes secondhand from other people on the net, or ebay. They hardly ever get any new clothes, and if they do - they're on the reduced racks too from Kmart. If they come shopping with me, I buy them a $2 toy or something - but its rare that they come with me these days, just too expensive - even those $2 toys add up!!!

I do our meal plans, and some of the meals are enough for 3 meals, so that means that I can get 6 weeks worth of one meal (cos my plan is for a fortnight). Also have a few vegetarian meals on there too, a can of chick peas is MUCH cheaper that meat!! Plus meals like toasted cheese sangas, or baked beans, every meal like that just saves a bit more money from having to be spent on meat.

I don't know about the difficulty of finding a rental once declaring bankruptcy, but I do know that down here in tassie they ask for a credit rating report when applying for properties - so maybe that is something they take into account?

- its so very hard out there these days xxx

[Astrid]

Unfortunately these days not even big numbers in front of a few 000's means yours well off. We have people thinking that all the time, and yeah I'll admit we are certainly well above the poverty line its only through sheer luck and determination. We still have skint weeks where we are left with less than $100 after paying out expenditures.

Same here. MIL cannot understand why we are often broke, but back when she was raising kids the cost of living was much cheaper. It was easy to have a mate service the car, you could scrounge for change to get petrol. The basic cost of living costs so much more these days, even the food they could not sell 30 years ago, is now expensive. Yes we can do some things better, but it sucks when people think you should be doing very well.

Grocery shopping is our downfall. There always ends up being more useless stuff than useful stuff in my trolley esp if I go shopping with family in tow *sigh*

Hear you on that one. Had one great grocery shop, that I then realised should have been much better. DH had put $26 of crap in the trolley $5 I was fine with, but not $26!

We commented last night (when we burned a chair that had broken ) about how I get more attached to free/cheap furniture than I do to stuff we have paid for. It's because brand new stuff can be easily replaced - you just go back to the shop and buy it again. But stuff off the side of the road, well, you can't just go back to the roadside and find it again! I get a big thrill from the opportunity. Cheap thrills

I worry more about the things that cost almost nothing. The designer skirt that was $9 etc, as I know if I was able to find something similar, it would cost me more than 10 times that amount.

[widdly]

DH got into money trouble when he was about 19 years old and he declared bankruptcy. It never ever effected him or us finding rentals (and we have had more than our fair share of rentals). After the 7 years or whatever it is of bankruptcy we applied for a home loan and it took a lot of effort from our home loans guy to find us someone who would lend us the money due to the bankruptcy. We ended up having to pay quite a large interest rate on our home loan due to the bankruptcy. DH is now 34 and his past bankruptcy never ever comes up for any reason, he has car loans and personal loans aplenty (whole nother thread...) with no trouble getting them at all. We sold our house a few years ago to move away, and I assume that because we have had one house loan now since the bankruptcy that he wont have any trouble getting another house loan one day.

Just htought I'd share, amy help you out x

[Caramello]

I can relate very much to the way that you are feeling Ella. Some of the anxiety and insomnia that has come from this pregnancy is due to my worry about our financial situation. About half of our debt has come from 'normal' debts that most people have such as car loans etc, however the other half has come from how much we have had to spend for IVF. I calculated just on FS specialists alone we have spent at least $23,000 over the last 10 years (and thats not including medical tests related to these procedures).

The biggest concern was when we tried to consolidate the loans and found that the amount was going to be very similar to what we are currently paying, as well as the rental price hike that we have experienced in the last few years (in the 3 years we've been here its gone up by $70 a week). However we didn't realise that the credit union needed to know that I was going on maternity leave, nor that we had some savings in unlikely places such as super and life assurance. Once we talked to them about our situation, they were quite happy to renegotiate - and this has brought a lot of relief.

The only reason we are hanging on to the credit card atm is just in case we need the money for something expensive such as a caesarian (etc). However once that bubs is born, if we don't need it, the plan is to get rid of it.

I have told DH that after the tax is done we are sitting down and working out a budget. We spent our money to pursue our dream - now its time to stop gambling and start saving. Unfortunately this will also probably mean that Squishy is our one and only - but I am becoming happier with this idea. I just can't see myself going through all this again just to gamble on whether I will have another child.

DH and I have always thought of moving intra or interstate, however I am stuck in the dilemma that I really love my job, where I work and the people I work with atm so I would be very reluctant to give that up. DH is also planning to finish a diploma so that hopefully he can change jobs. This will take about 2 years.

So yes we are definitely feeling the pinch. I hope everything works out for you (and I hope I didn't hijack too much - sorry its something that has been on my mind recently...)

[*TripleJ*]

we are doing it tough too but i hate complaining about it coz we would have enough to live and even have money left over if DH didnt have a smoking habit and we werent so far behind on bills we really should have visited this isssue a year ago but we still havent and im getting so sick of it and hating living in the country coz theres no work and whenever i get a job i get preg and lose my job it really sucks and puts us way behind so we have finally decided to sell our house and try and find somewhere else to live closer to work for both of us so i can get a job after this baby comes along our house phone is disconnected so were lucky we dont get any more harrasing phone calls i need about 10K to just cover my credit card debt and the outstanding bills and i just dont see it happening any time soon and im paying out $240 a f/n on car payments coz DH thought it would be fun to go to motor finance wizard and now i find out that DH's parents would have got us a car and let me pay them off wish i had of known that then its getting depressing and i just want to stay in bed and never get up lets just hope we sort something out by the time this baby decides to join us otherwise i dont know how im going to deal with it sorry just me ranting and raving were already saving on food and we do have austar but im getting rid of it coz im sick of them ripping me off now we just have a mobile and mobile internet and its working out ok so far

lets hope we get the right amount for our house

[Ella]

Wow so many replies.

JwithJ- I know what you're talking about hun, I was the same when I was preg with DS, it just all felt like it was falling in on top of me and I thought DF was blind to it all, turns out that ignoring is his way of dealing lol. Thats good that you have decided to move if its going to be better for work and also sanity, I know living in the country can be pretty darn tough. We did the same with the car, the car loan we got was for a car worth around $7000, the day we signed for it I had 4 wisdom teeth and was soooo chocked up on painkillers and anaesthetic that it wasn't till a week later I realised the total loan amount was $16,000. That was the final straw for us and what led us to decide to do the bankruptcy, we had a nice car that sat in the garage because the repayments were so high we couldn't put petrol in it. It really is hard to stay up and happy about it all, but I think I am finally starting to realise that me stressing everyday about the bills isn't getting us any more money it just makes my days longer and miserable and makes DS sad to see me sad.

Seachange- wow what a big lot on your plate, must be really hard knowing that it was the only way to get your amazing litte miracle. Even if you can only have this one at least you can be confident that they are sooo long awaited and loved. The budget is a good idea, we didn't have one when DF and I first got together and I think that if we had stuck to a budget and had long term goals planned out we might not have ended up here.

Clover- Thats tough hun, have you thought about just ringing the school instead of trying to get up there? I'm sure if they have been so nice to offer for you to pay it later they won't take that back jsut because you can't get in there in person. Would be sad to miss out on little ones photos.

Inanna- that really was a huge lot on your plate, isn't it amazing, I sit here and think how can things get worse, but reading your story I realise that things aren't so bad and if you have been able to make it as far as you have, there must be a way for us too. Can't wait for the day I am sitting in my own house and knowing how far we have come. Must be an amazingly liberating feeling for you.