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April 2011 Moms
shaindelr
member
Mac and cheese lover!
Anyone else not making it financially?
shaindelr
member
While we're being open about sex, etc., I thought I'd ask...
Today was pay day (we get paid the last working day of the month), and it's almost all gone already. I paid bills online and sent away nearly $3,000 (mortgage, student loan, gas bill, electric bill, payment toward Liam's hospital bill, payment for dental surgery I had--that sort of stuff) with just a click of the mouse. Jared teaches guitar part-time in the evenings, and if I hadn't deposited his paycheck that he got yesterday, it probably would literally all be gone today.
I don't know how to even figure out if we could afford daycare for him to get a full-time job during the day. He's thinking about looking at 2nd or 3rd shift factory work, maybe, so we wouldn't need daycare.
I think there are only two daycare centers in town that I would need to research, and I don't even know if there are openings. I hate to sound stupid, but do I just call and ask if they have openings and then ask about costs, or what?
Ugh. So stressful. Thanks for any "plan of action" you can help with.
Mac and cheese lover!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Anyone else not making it financially?
I too am amazed at how just a few clicks of the mouse makes all the money go away. I don't work right now and that is hurting us. However when I looked into daycare's we found out that when you take everything into consideration (gas, paying daycare, extra diapers - they change more often, etc.) I might take home $1000 a year! So for now I'm staying home, when Chloe is older daycare will be more affordable so hopefully I will be able to get a job. Right now my job is finding deals on things we need.
As for daycare's, just call them up and see if there's an opening. Most will not give you the prices until you actually go look around. However, I found that once I had the price from one place if I specifically said on the phone "Daycare X is this much a day, are you competitive with that price" I would get straight answers. In home daycare's tend to be cheaper (I'm on the waiting list for 2).
The other band Jared was with had really steady gigs, so he was bringing in about $800-$1,000 each month if they played a gig every weekend, but, alas, Lark Drive went the way of most bands. (Male lead singer's ego split up the band.) He's with a new band now that should have paying gigs, but it's hard depending on guitar-teaching and other musician work. Thanks, though.
Mac and cheese lover!
We are kind of in the same situation. It really does suck to see money fly out the window as fast as it does.
My husband and I work opposite shifts so that one of us is always home with Charlotte and we can avoid paying for daycare. If you go that route, just know that it comes with its own difficulties - we see each other in passing in between me getting home from work and him leaving for work. It is very rare for us to have a day off together - this weekend will actually be the first weekend in 4 months that we will get to spend together as a family with no work obligations. It gets difficult to keep going at times - but it's what we have to do right now. And Charlotte makes all the difficulty more than worth it!
growing a foosa
And I know it's obviously more drastic, but it your mortgage more than rent would be? Would it be cheaper to downsize or rent?
Also, are you eligible for a forbearance on your student loans to get yourself a little bit more ahead?
Thanks so much for all of the ideas, Guys. It's not so drastic that we need to move or anything like that, it's just that I wish I could put more money into paying things off faster--instead of paying the minimum amounts on everything. Like, our dishwasher died, so we got a new one on a Sears credit card for no interest for 6 months, and that kind of thing, and I pay $100 a month for Liam's overnight hospital stay he had over the summer.
The Etsy shop really is a good idea. Jared's been wanting to sell paintings and stuff like that. I guess I feel like everything we do (except for my salaried professorship) is for bits of money here and there. Like, I have a massive textbook manuscript sitting on my desk to review for $150. Stuff like that. So, I do all of this extra work on top of an already crazy job, and we still barely get by.
I think maybe even talking Jared into going back to school might work. The GI Bill pays for his tuition plus living expenses, and he took this quarter off except for taking choir. If he could take most of his classes online (except for his music classes--which the professor schedules around us), maybe that would be enough money that things wouldn't be so tight. (And then he'd eventually have a degree and go into the super-profitable world of being a music teacher :-)
ETA: The student loan payment plan I'm on, I'm paying until I'm 55. I don't think there's any way to make that payment less per month. And I'm already on the budget plan with the gas company. These are all great ideas, though! Thanks again!
Mac and cheese lover!
It's definitely stressful. I just switched jobs for where I was paid bimonthly to now biweekly and getting paid on the 2nd instead of today has totally screwed up my budget!!
If you're looking into daycare, maybe think about part time? I know they have different rates for 3 days and then there are rates for half days too. Just see if there's anything they can do for you. We ended up getting A 10% discount. So that right there saves us almost $150 a month!
DH works overtime every single day by going in early so that we can pay our bills and still have a little going into savings. If it's a bad month with extra expenses, he'll take on a couple car jobs (fixing cars is a hobby of his). You gotta do what you gotta do, and we look at it as every little bit counts. I totally get the frustration though, money is a big stressor. We'd love to buy a house next year, but we're also committed to my staying at home with Evie, so it's hard to say whether we can really make that work.
Hang in there and take the little stuff when you can get it.
I know what you mean! I try to do high protein/low carb and work out as much as possible, and eating healthy is SO expensive. Just doing things like buying the lunch meat without the preservatives is crazy expensive compared to the lunch meat with all the nitrates, etc. :-(
Mac and cheese lover!
Yeah, DH quit his job to be a SAHD, and it has been quite an adjustment. We were frankly spoiled before, eating out quite a bit, buying electronics, etc. Right now I am keeping my fingers crossed that I get a big enough bonus to pay off one of our debts this December. If my bonus doesn't come through (I should find out in 2 weeks) we will be in really rough shape. And it is horrible financial practice to have to count on a bonus - ugh!
It is hard for me because I grew up very poor and my parents were just horrid with any money they did have. I racked up a crazy amount of credit card debt during college because I just didn't have a clue and spent years paying it off. I feel like we are starting to fall back into credit card debt again and it is stressing me out. Once our standard expenses are paid monthly, I think we have like $300 for gas/groceries/anything that isn't rent/electricity/car payment. Not a lot of wiggle room.
I want to be a better financial role model for DD than my parents were (& I will be!), but it sometimes feels like the economy is out to get us!
I completely understand you on the counts that I "bolded." Jared and I grew up really poor, too, and I feel like we're trying hard, but it's tough. When I went to grad school, the advice was to go to the best school you got into, and then you'd get paid enough to make up for the costs. Not. Even. Close. I started out $120,000 in student loan debt to make $34,000 a year at my first professorship.
I make more now, but I'm still living paycheck to paycheck and have about the same amount of wiggle room you do. The way we go out, is Jared plays music at restaurants, and they pay us in gift certificates. Which, it's nice that we get to go out, but you can't pay bills with gift certificates.
Mac and cheese lover!
Things are tight here as well. We had to buy a new car before the twins arrived and that added a car payment which we hadn't had in 5-6 years. Add in the medical bills (things that were covered last time around with my old insurance, an item that my OB's office was told was covered but wasn't, husband getting shingles, etc.) and just when I think we'll have some breathing room in January since the medical debts will be paid off this month another debt popped up from car repairs this summer. Oh, and our rent is going up 10% on the first of the year.
We're doing some creative adjustments with when things are being paid so that we can actually do a little bit of Christmas shopping. We have two gifts for our oldest (one was free from Disney Movie Rewards) and nothing for the babies. I know that the kids won't really care but I have the mom guilt for not being able to provide the type of Christmas for them that I'd really like to. We have nothing for each other and I'm doing a lot of homemade gifts for our friends and family.
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