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

Hey Ella!!

Just noticed your post..... I can definately tell you that I feel your pain :hug: and I do agree that it is much better to talk about it....
DH works full time & I have been home since the beginning of this pregnancy (and will continue to when bub is born - daycare fees hardly make it worth leaving your baby).
For us to keep up with our mortgage (these interest rate rises have put more pressure on us then we ever thought imaginable) DH is going to have to start working day AND night, which we really dont want.
I have tried to get temp work but its practically impossible when you're pregnant :( So in order to live better, we're thinking of moving interstate, as it's our only option - but a definate stressful one at this stage in pregnancy.
I really hope your situation gets a little better... I have taken to your meal plan idea & we have started this week :) so *fingers crossed* somehow we'll all get through this - it's quite daunting not knowing how much a baby is going to affect us more to!!

Just so you know... I'm here if you ever want to chat about it :hug:

Danni- sorry to hear that times are so tough for you guys. I think I vaguely remember you saying you were thinking of moving to queensland? Its pretty nice up here if you do end up having to move, theres lots of nice people too lol.
The meal planning is great, I'm loving it. It's saved us so much money this fortnight already and its wonderful not having to scrounge in the fridge and try to decide on meals.
I understand about your DH, mine is currently working every shift he can get, he's really happy this week cause his boss got pneumonia (not good) but it means he gets all of her shifts! Isn't it sad when you get to the point that you have to be happy when someone else gets sick lol.

I also tried to get work just before I got pregnant but it was so hard to work aroudn DF's work and looking after DS, then when I got pregnant again we realised it would actually be more stress than its worth. Silly really.

Cheap meals can backfire on you though. We're having a tight fortnight - $1100 of bills due within 2 weeks - so we've seriously cut down grocery spending, which basically just involves camping the meat section for the $2.50 specials, which tend to be sausages, chevapchi, patties and sometimes some non-minced meat (love it when lilydale chicken or steak is on special) but the last few days it has just been minced stuff. Nothing wrong with that, tastes good, better than rice and beans, and works out at $3-5 per meal for 4 people.

However DD#1 has decided that she hates the meat (the lamb and apricot sausages are "too sweet", the cheese and tomato sausages "look like pus", the chevapchis are "too hot" and chicken patties she just hates for no reason), won't eat pasta or potato, and hates carrots. So the amount she's been eating over the last few days has trickled down from half a sausage and a few noodles and some veggies to her best effort yet last night - about a cubic centimetre of chicken patty, one pea and one noodle. And this is while we're specifically banning her from snacks and milkshakes between school and dinner so she's having as good as no food between lunch at midday and breakfast the next morning, where she has one slice of plain buttered toast.

I'm waiting for DOCS to step out from behind the fridge and accuse me of neglect because I'm not making roasts and steaks for my poor starving child.

Rumpledelf, I'm really lucky I havea pretty non fussy little man so I'm getting away with it. Having said that, for $170 for the fortnight I have bought everything including meat and veg and we are still having a roast lamb and roast chicken. I'm really confused that I have been able to make so many yummy meals for so little, can't figure out what I was spending the money on before???

I hear you hon.....we jsut got paid and its all gone on bills ect.

A few years ago we came close to loosing everything. It was a very hard time fo rus but we knuckled down and pulled through. Ive learnt from our spending mistakes and now budget everything. I pay bills fortnightly now rather then when they come in, I ring our companies we use for utilities to see if they can always do me a better deal.
Most of all..I try and not let it get me down.
:hug:

Firstly good on you Ella for speaking up. :clap: Money is a bit like mothering people only want to talk (& often hear) the gossamer image of life. I applaud you for going deeper. :hug:

When I was first married we ended up with 2 mortgages and we lived in neither, they both became vacant (thus no rental income) & I was heavily pregnant in a new city... It was really hard. Our fridge died and we had our food in an esky... It was tough.

I am in my early forties & recently divorced (still going through a property settlement) so I am about to start all over again. I actually feel "richer" than I did when I was married. Mainly as I have control over my finances & I feel empowered. (my ex was a control freak who controlled all the finances as "he worked"... :wall:)

I live on centrelink payments & child support which comes when he's good and ready so I cannot rely on it. It's tough but doable.

I am committed to organic food & I like others go to farmers markets (it's fun & it's cheaper & much healthier most of the time!). I buy at a larger supermarket my staples like canned organic tomatoes, sauce, paste, gluten free pasta etc etc etc. I do this as it's the only way I can afford organically grown.

I cook everything from scratch. I do not buy (or at least rarely - have been known to purchase the odd pack of tim tams!) commercial bikkies, cakes etc - they're full of crap and it's so much cxheaper and more fun to cook from scratch. I plan meals ahead - I often have a cooking day where I cook 4-5 meals and freeze. (I cook double of those 4-5). This is good as I have a busy life and if I'm home late from sport/music/dancing etc I always have something prepared. I almost never have take away. I just can't see the value of feeding 5 of us on crap that costs at least $50. Once a month a group of us take the kids to the local pizzeria and that's our fun! It's more fun to share a meal, it's about the sme cost as takeaway and it feels more special to them (& me!).

I buy kids clothes in the sales always never ever at full price. I layby for the next season and pay off a bit each week. I frequent second hand shops & it's my fun. I love it. I get great bargains often & I have a sense of "woo hoo"!

I find it totally bizarre how people feel the need to be in the "best" with kids clothes when mostly they're for play and they grow out of them so fast! The same with baby equipment. IMO babies need almost zilch & nursery's whilst fun for Mama are completely unnecessary for babies!

As I've got older I like "better' clothes for me. But I am very discerning - I plan what I will buy and I have it for ever! I also shop at oppies for me all the time. I love clothes & I love dressing up so I'd rather spend more on clothing than say Austar. (just a different priority)

My splurge is chanel lippie. I am addicted!

I have a good car & I plan drives. This is important for the environment and for the wallet. I have a number of days a week where the car doesn't leave the garage and I live out of town. I share drop offs with friends etc to save this...

I do know it's hard out there - certainly I think most of us struggle with different things. I also found that it was cheaper to get an unlimited mobile plan and have no home phone. This is certainly working more cost effectively for me.
Turn off the lights, change your bulbs to more savvy ones... Plan your washes... It all helps.

I think planning is the key. Good luck my love. :hug:

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Rumpledelf, I'm really lucky I havea pretty non fussy little man so I'm getting away with it.

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Must be an age thing. I have a 2.5yo who just guzzles down everything we put in front of her - no surprise, the food really does taste good, and at that age if it tastes good and they're hungry they eat it. Its the 9.5yo tweenage drama queen who is point blank refusing to eat even after whining how starving she is for hours until someone plunks a gourmet flavoured sausage in front of her. Great dinner table company - child wearing a sour, glum face dissecting a sausage to pick out all the gristly bits or visible flavouring (FYI, there's a lot of parsely in a chicken patty to pick out), while complaining, and not eating.

And I second the fortnightly bill thing - we've just got every freakin bill known to mankind completely paid off. The electricity one was scarey. Now they're all paid we've set up fortnightly payments so this never happens again (ignoring the fact we had a $400 bill this month because the other half broke our bathroom sink and we had to replace it lol). We're not broke from lack of money per se, we're broke because we just pushed a lot of bills forward so we could buy a block of land in cash and are now trying to save up the remainder of a deposit to build on it. In hindsight, we should have got a loan to get the land.

:hug: hun, i feel your pain.
We have just moved into our own house and i'm constantly worrying if we will have enough cash, DP is a contractor and has a bit of a tax debt, his boss is unreliable when it comes to pay day and although DP constantly tells me not to waste money he is ALWAYS buying things he likes even if we don't particularly 'need' them... a hobby farm tractor (to grate and mow our property - has been used ONCE) and a quad bike for getting around the property (fun and my DD1 loves it but seriously not a necessity).

Hoping things look up for you soon, i think i might have to go back to work just to make sure we have enough to cover the little things and so i don't feel useless just sitting at home paying the bills and wondering how we do it.

Hey. Just wanted to give you big :hug:
I haven't read through all your posts, but you can add me to the list!
We have no credit cards or loans & have never gone for finance on anything at all & all I can do is be greatful for that. Everything we own we bought outright with either tax refunds, or the little centrelink bonus's we've recieved here & there.
My car was bought with DS's baby bonus.
At the moment we are just catching up. But at a cost. DH is working 2 jobs just to keep us fed. Both an hour away, so he only gets about 3 hours sleep in the afternoons & another 3ish hours overnight, if he doesn't sleep in the car.
One job has just gone down from 4 - 5 nights a week to 3 most weeks & again the pressure is on. We are a week behind in our rent, but are close to getting it paid, doing it a bit at a time, & ave missed out on school photo's this year for the girls. The school did offer for it to be paid later, but I haven't been able to get up there to talk to them about it with no car, so not sure if the offer still stands. Sucks since this is DD2's first year at school.
On top of that I owe the school $45 from swimming back in March & still have to pay school fee's, as well as our water bill (I think we are due for another one soon) & a massive, massive power bill we are paying off.
We are almost there though...& then we need to buy a new car. We've already discussed the loan with the bank for this to find out what we need to do, & at the start of August we will be able to get a decent car. Ours runs out of rego 2 weeks before that though, so not sure what to do there. To rego ours again would cost about $4000 coz of all the things it needs done, & we can't afford that. Especially when we are trading it in. & we need a second car coz I only have a car for those 3 or so hours in the arvo's.
Its hard & other than the car stress, we are finally feeling a bit of relief. Feeling like there is an end to this & we'll get there.

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...)

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

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.

It is a nice feeling but I'm about to lose our home. We have to sell it for the financial settlement. Unfortunately.. That's what happens in divorce everything gets carved up! Your heart, your home, your bank accounts! However, it also brings back home what is important at the end. That is the peoole that make your heart sing. So, try to remember even when things are sucky that this too shall pass - & you will still have your friends, kids and family. Always :hug:

struggling here too, not so bad since in left XP as he was spending half his paycheque on pot (before paying rent food bills etc) and i used to have to borrow off my mum every week. now i only have to borrow when a big bill comes in im lucky my folks are well of and can afford to help me.

but having said that im moving home as its cheaper rent, and once i start tafe i get almost-free daycare. i also owe my dad 7000 so moving back means my rent goes towards my loan and im technically getting free rent, food etc. but im very fortunate and greatful for that. XP and his new gf get close to $1000 a week from centrelink (she is still on single mum payment with 3 kids and he is on disability pension for his BPD) and the6y reckon theyre struggling lol!!!

Hi Ella (and everyone else)
Just thought that I'd subscribe to this thread, as we are struggling too. I think you're being very brave to open up and talk about it now, as I "stuck my head in the sand" right up until the cards were all maxed out. Then a couple of expensive things happened (e.g. car needed major repairs to get rego, etc), and now we're really skint. I actually posted about it about a month ago (in the Platinum section), so you are definitely not alone. I think the ladies here give really good advice.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one whose DH just refuses to face things though...

Question - has anyone struggled with setting up payment plans for things? I have found recently that I talk to providers asking for plans to pay our bills and they demand unreasonable amounts that I can't ever hope to pay. Wouldn't it be more worth their while to work with people reaslistically??

Starfish- Yep I struggled majorly with setting up payment plans and had companies telling me I would need to pay like $500 as an upfront payment. I got really scared and for so long used to cower and agree to things that I just couldn't do, which only got me in more trouble. Thigns changed when I got really fed up with being pushed around by them. Basically with most things like phone electricity etc they have an obligation to provide for people in financial hardship. I started pushing them back and it worked. Got to the point one day when a woman was telling I needed to pay $500 upfront and $120 a week till the bill was gone- I said to her, "I have told you three times that I don't have $500 just sitting in my bank so I can't give it to you and there is no way I can afford to eat if I give you $120 a week. I will happily give you $50 a week starting this Thursday till the bill is payed off, or you can cut off the phone and we'll deal with it from there." You know what happened, she said "$50 a week would be great, we'll expect the first payment this week."
Sadly most collection departments in big companies encourage their staff to use bullying as a first stance with women as its proven to be the most effective way of getting money.
I had a company ring this week to chase up a debt and after I told them I would be going bankrupt in a few weeks, the guy said "well we will force you into bankruptcty immediately if you don't agree to make a payment." I turned around and said "Well sir unfortunately I know how this works, for you to force me into bankruptcy you need to take me to court and to do that you have to give me a written notice and then wait 28 days, by which time I will have filed for bankruptcy myself. So you would be much better off saving yourself the hassle and jsut waiting for me to do it myself..." the reply I got was something like "thank you have a nice day." lol

Basically the point is that I spent too long crying every time they called and bullied me. Save yourself the anxiety, tell them what you can afford and if they refuse to accept it, ask to speak to a manager. Gets things sorted alot quicker!

Thanks for that Ella. I am on the verge of saying exactly what you wrote next time I get one of those calls. We too have agreed to things that we had no hope at all in paying, simply because the people we spoke to seemed to demand it. Won't be doing that anymore as, like you said, it just leads to more trouble down the line...

Good luck with everything. Hope things improve for you (and me and everyone else posting here ;p) soon.

Hi Ella,
You are so not alone. We are not "struggling" right now, but in saying that we certainly so not have much spare cash, and the only reason we're getting by is because both me and DH are working fulltime. There is absolutely NO way we could ever afford for me to be a SAHM, as our mortgage takes up 70% of DH's wage alone let alone all our other living expenses so we'd lose everything quick smart if we only had one income. We only have one car, we have a modest 3 bedroom duplex that we're paying off and I am very upset at the fact that I'm gonna have to go back to work (at least part time) by the time our new bub is only 3 months old. Quite frankly, it sucks . . .

Thanks for being so honest about money. It seems to be the such a taboo subject but seems to be one that a lot of us struggle through in silence. DH and I are in a similar boat and I have no idea how to sort out our budget to try and start getting ourselves in the black again.

Liviam- have you thought about going and seing a Lifeline financial counselor? We did and they were great. They are a free service and can help you sort out your finances, do up a great budget and also can advocate on your behalf if there are any companies pushing you around over money. I know it can seem a bit embarrassing to go through it, but the way I look at it now is "isn't it more embarrassing to stick your head in the sand when you know there is someone who can help, than it is to say hey we're strugglign but at least we're smart enough to knwo that and do something about it." It's taken me so long to get to this point- I grew up in a poor family and swore I would never get into a "poor" situation, guess now I have just realised 90% of people are "poor" at some point in their life!

That is a great suggesstion Ella. I'll put some thought into it. I've been trying to sort out how to work out what to pay in each pay and how to slowly chip away at our pointless doubt. I hate money!!!

If anyone is interrested I have a great little budget spreadsheet that DH's boss gave him. You put in your weekly income and all your weekly living expenses and it has been a great help for us in working out what we can and can't afford. It's also been a big eye opener as you just don't realise how much you have to dish out each week until it's all listed down. If anyone is interrested PM me and I can email a copy of it to you.

Mamaspice, i would love to see that spreadsheet.

i am so fed up with my child's father NOT co-operating about budgetting, that i see no way around it, except to for me to leave him. Our r'ship has been "dead" for years, but i have stayed due to no $$$$ to actually leave. THe fobbing off, the lying, the saying yes but no action to follow up the yes, all of that, has completely eroded my trust and respect in him (amongst other things too).

So, not being on the same page about money, i would say, has been a major contributor to our r;ship breakdown. He is an ostrich too, telling me "we don't earn enough to need a budget, that's for well off people who have money spare" - whereas i believe the less you earn, the MORE you need a budget, to make the little you have, go as far, and as effectively, as it can.

i am puzzled about people mentioning "moving interstate to save money" - does that mean some parts of Australia are cheaper (than others) to live in?

Each time i've thought about this, i come to the conclusion - look in the country for cheaper rents (but some country towns charge the same for rent, as what we're paying in a city) - so that isn't cut and dried for me (getting cheaper rent in country)
but the downside is more reliance on a working car, more petrol for basic services.
So i'm not entirely convinced moving to the country would make my dollars go further.

How do you find out even, where you COULD live that would be cheaper?

i get the feeling, you only find out by trying, and that could mean some costly time to find out. Not to mention, it would be so much harder to do with a child/ren (as opposed to doing that sort of thing when you were on your own, before children).

According to the "cities with the lowest cost of living" that i have seen published in newspapers in last decade, i already live in the cheapest city. i don't have a credit card, no cable tv, don't drink or smoke, don't go to the movies, don't go out to restaurants, shop opshop and sales for me and DD, no loans, my major expense is having a 2nd hand car and keeping it on the road/working.

i'm terrified about renting on my own (no rental refs) and coming up with the money to set up a new household for me and DD.

But it will be nice to be in control of my own destiny, after all the non-communication with child's father, his complete refusal to do a budget for the family. i went to charity places to get budgetting help. They all said to me, we can't help you do a family budget, if we only have half of the info, until you get info from child's father, the budget is not complete or workable.

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How do you find out even, where you COULD live that would be cheaper?

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In my own situation, rent in tassie is cheaper than it was on the sunny coast. Also, houses are still VERY cheap in tassie compared to anywhere else (sunny coast, brisbane, sydney, melbourne) so we actually purchased a house down here and our mortgage is $150 per week LESS than what we were paying on our house in Qld.

Yeah definately in the same boat. I have a budget, and stick to it, but sometimes there's an expense thats not on the list. Even when the budget says there's $x left over... where the heck is it?? It all goes to one bill or another. I just had to re-do the budget as daycare fees went up :(

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i am puzzled about people mentioning "moving interstate to save money" - does that mean some parts of Australia are cheaper (than others) to live in?

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I have a house for sale for $75,000 - nothing wrong with it, its quite a nice house (I lived there for 7 years), but impossible to sell it because it is at least 10-15 mins drive from anywhere. Its just cheap because of its location. Here, 15 mins down the road from that house, you're lucky to get anything for under $200k to buy or rent for under $300 a week. I've had my house for sale for ages, some people are interested, they go out and look at it and ask me endless questions online/by phone (its listed on Gumtree) but noone has bought it yet.

So there's definitely cheap spots, and some of them are actually quite close to not-so-cheap spots. But sensibly, most of the cheap spots are reasonably remote and you'd have to work from home.

I think most people have walked this road before. It is not easy at all. We were there only a few years ago. Back then we had to accept what was crippling us financially (the car loan) and either knuckle down and clear it up ASAP, or drop it. We took the former and the day we made that last payment was very liberating. I mean we owed a fair amount of money to other people still, but it didn't seem as difficult without $300+ a fornight to pay on one bill. I still cannot comprehend how we actually managed to do it so I am afraid I cannot put it into words. It just took some sheer determination.

Prior to that we tried so much. Budgets are like diets - one self indulgent splurge and you are back at square one. It is even more infuriating when that self indulgent splurge is made by he who could not be bothered to get a clue! Lets not even get into that egocentric "well I earnt it, I should be able to spend it on what I want" BS. I earnt that baby bonus mate, I did more manual labour in those few hours than some men do in a whole year - and I spent it on bills and baby stuff. Man Up! You are not a bachelor with free maid service and trophy kids. Those kinds of words from a husband - while he may not realise it at the time - is economic abuse. I am certainly not saying that any of your DHs are evil men or anything like that. They may not even realise they are doing it, but it is a form of psychological abuse and you need to call them on it because it hurts, its unfair and it is no basis at all for a stable loving relationship!

Plus you really need him to be on the same page as you or the struggle will never end.

I also refuse to have credit cards. Evil things. Not your friend! Cut em up, pay em off. Learn to loathe the very sight of them. Instead, Hug your nearest layby counter! LOL.

There is light at the end of this tunnel, I promise. Remove the bills one at a time. Trying to pay them all at the same time nearly never works.