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i just did some budgeting
for my sister.....wow.....
they are short $700 every month with her being a sahm 
but if she were to work and get 40 hours a week at minimum wage (even slightly above it) she would only be paying the extra, plus gas and daycare for the kids and they would STILL be short........
ETA: and this is with no groceries
This discussion has been closed.
Re: i just did some budgeting
Was the baby a suprise or are they just living above their means? Because it sounds like they would be behind even without daycare costs.
Can they work opposite shifts?
It sounds like they need to do something drastic like sell a car and downsize their house/apartment. Sucks, but that is life. Do they have luxuries they can cut like cable, cell phones, internet, etc?
sadly, i think this is all too common. A lot of people in thier twenties and thirties rely too much on credit. DH and I don't have a lot of money by any means, but we are very proud that our only debt is our mortgage and his work truck.
Check into WIC, it helps us about $40/month with groceries in a family of three. (it is way more milk than we would normally buy, so i find other things to make with the milk.) The other thing we do that has made a big impact is careful couponing. I belong to a local website that matches available coupons to sales, and I can get groceries at an average of 30% off every trip. I stockpile the sale items that are staples, and then only buy them when i have a coupon and there is a good sale to use in conjunction.
we are having to cut a lot of things out for me to SAH.
We've never had cable.
But we are ditching both regular cells and getting a pay as you go one from verizon (which is $.99 a day on the days that you use it that still has verizon to verizon, which most of our families are on)
We are getting a home phone and bundling it with the internet which we will need to have because I'll be teaching online classes to help with the income.
We've contemplated selling a car but have decided that is one of the last things we will do since both are paid off.
We know DH's income will be increasing next year and we have a pretty sizeable nest egg from what we've been saving.
the LO will be going on private health insurance when he/she arrives and I will be switching myself to private come next fall (because for me+dh it is $450 a month adding the LO would be $600 a month)
If DH has insurance alone through his work it is $0 , I've researched private and we can get a much cheaper rate even figuring in a higher deductible.
Just some things to look at for her!
It's amazing how things pile up.
That said, we were doing about the same probably on a regular basis. So we hunkered down and began withdrawing the cash at the beginning of the month for the budget line items that are trouble (fun money for me, household-general and baby are separate, and dining out). We're doing REALLY well this month so far. It's hard to cut from $500 a month for houshold down to $150, but totally worth it. Dining out was worse even. We tried for $100 this month and while it would have been doable, we upped it to $150 just so we could celebrate DH's work accomplishments at Outback. Not something we'll do every time of course.
Anyway, it sounds like they need to look very carefully atwhat they're spending their money on. Then figure out what is truly necessary and cut back. GL!
their son was a surprise (he's 2)...her daughter is 9. I am talking to her but she says that something isn't right because she had $200 extra this past paycheck...she thinks she may have told me something wrong
They have internet and cell phones. And they have wic and foodstamps. and with alternating shifts, bil works m-f 8-5 (usually, he's an electrition). and he has never watched the kids so my sister doesn't think he can(don't get me started on that). And my sister owns her house and the mortgage is less than $600 a month! But they have really racked up the cc debt. They own one car free and clear. they have a truck that they make payments on (the traded in their other car for the truck...so the payments are tons lower)
Hopefully she's right and she misspoke. That CC debt can really get you. I'd see if they will do credit counseling and get it consolidated. There are free programs for that and it'd be worth it if they are paying a ton towards it and not getting anywhere.
Sounds like maybe they need to get rid of the truck and just have one car for awhile until they get the CC debt paid off. Smae with the cells and internet- time to go. Unfortunately most people are very resistant to major sacrifices like that because it does suck a lot. But IMO CC debt sucks worse.
Does she pay the CC's every month or is she in default? If she is in good standing she should call and try to negotiate a lower interest rate.
You probably don't have the magical ability to smack them int the 21st century but it would really help if she got a night/weekend job during the holiday season to at the very least pay their xmas expenses, if not pay down debt.
Does the state she lives in provide free health insurance for children, I know here in PA they do if families cannot cover the costs. I don't know all the details but if they have something like that she should look into it.
I know one thing that really help DH and I save money was planning our meals and shopping around that plan. Before we would go almost every 2nd day to get something we needed for dinner and come home with lots more food especially if DH went shopping. He has gotten better to just get what we need and know for sure we are going to use. This wasn't something we really needed to do but I hated how much food we were wasting and know how much money we could save if we planned better.