Babies born~ September 2007 #65

[AnyDream]

After me being back at work for 9 months, we are still appallingly in debt courtesy of the extra time I was out of work (which was approx 18 months longer than the 18 months I'd planned and budgeted for mat leave). In fact we have just refinanced the house in a pathetic attempt to get on top of the bills. In our case we use childcare more than we would have if I had been a SAHM by choice, so that has added to the fin pressure too. We've had a few disasters like needing to get my tooth removed and just not being able to pay for it, DH's car was off the road for a few months last year after he didn't get the radiator done when he should have and it cooked a bit of the engine and cost us ten times as much to fix. In fact I was reading this statistical article and they gave 5 measures of financial hardship (including my favorite new concept: "has taken a dis-saving action in the last 12 months") and we ticked off 4 of them, which is just crazy because DH earns the average wage and surely that should be enough to get by on without scraping? I know how to live frugally (and we did 5 years on one wage when DD1 was little) but this time round there just seemed to be so many extra demands on our income than we had back then.

Having said all that, we have a lot more resources behind us now than we ever did when I was SAHMing with DD1 (ie house is much more comfortably furnished, I have matching sheets and towels none of which are threadbare, we have a nicer telly and stereo than we did before, etc) so even though we had severe cashflow issues, I recognise that's very different to when you have a limited income and you don't have any of those resources. So I wasn't prepared to complain about our circumstances too much (I hope LOL).

ETA - re your 3rd child, never say never. I know it seems too hard now but you might feel differently in a few years time. I'm not saying you should have a 9 year gap, but yannow, if you do, it's not all bad...

ETA - Adiminaby is a couple of hours drive outside of canberra, kind of in the snowies I think. Famous for some kind of fishing (trout?). It's a pretty small little town, it was quite cold up there when we stopped for a cuppa - we were on our way through to Kosciusko. That's the extent of my knowledge.