We have done the budget. Over. and over. and over.
DH just doesn't make as much as we need to survive. He never has. We both do every odd job or babysitting gig that we can, but it's just not enough. So, when DD1 was born we got a credit card to help us get groceries and gas. Now the credit card is maxed, we are dealing with student loans, DD2 has had two surgeries, hospital bills, and tons of doctor bills, and we are just buried.
I have been desperately searching for jobs for almost a year now and still found nothing. DH has applied for a few 'after hours' jobs and not had any luck. So, we are pretty screwed. Yes, it sucks, but through it all we are still pretty happy and content with our beautiful family. However, now that the credit card is maxed and we don't have anything left after paying rent and utilities and such, we just can't afford ANYTHING that isn't vital to living. We can't go drive 40 miles to visit people for the fun of it because we would have to give up $10 worth of groceries to do so, and that's more than an entire day's food for us.
We have just had to accept this as it is coming to us and try to get by as best as we can. But it seems like a lot of people don't really understand what we mean when we say we CAN'T do anything extra. It's not that we don't want to, it's not that we aren't working our butts off trying to find a way out of this hole, it's that we have to feed our kids.
I'm getting comments like, "well why don't we just go over your budget together, I'm sure we can find stuff to cut out" from my family. My answer is always something like, "So do you want me to cut off the electric or the water... or should we just not eat every other day?"
I am finally finding ways to make things work: I found a child to babysit three days a week so that's $90 a week. And we have decided to make the difficult transition to moving into a 1 bedroom apartment with all bills paid, which will make up for the rest of our "negative-income" each month. And we have considered letting our car go so we wouldn't have the car payment, we can't sell it because we are $12,000 upside-down on it. We just haven't quite felt desperate enough to let our credit go so easily yet.
However, we still won't really have "extra". So how do I get people to understand? POVERTY EXISTS. We are truly struggling financially and we didn't just decide to be completely broke.
DH just doesn't make as much as we need to survive. He never has. We both do every odd job or babysitting gig that we can, but it's just not enough. So, when DD1 was born we got a credit card to help us get groceries and gas. Now the credit card is maxed, we are dealing with student loans, DD2 has had two surgeries, hospital bills, and tons of doctor bills, and we are just buried.
I have been desperately searching for jobs for almost a year now and still found nothing. DH has applied for a few 'after hours' jobs and not had any luck. So, we are pretty screwed. Yes, it sucks, but through it all we are still pretty happy and content with our beautiful family. However, now that the credit card is maxed and we don't have anything left after paying rent and utilities and such, we just can't afford ANYTHING that isn't vital to living. We can't go drive 40 miles to visit people for the fun of it because we would have to give up $10 worth of groceries to do so, and that's more than an entire day's food for us.
We have just had to accept this as it is coming to us and try to get by as best as we can. But it seems like a lot of people don't really understand what we mean when we say we CAN'T do anything extra. It's not that we don't want to, it's not that we aren't working our butts off trying to find a way out of this hole, it's that we have to feed our kids.
I'm getting comments like, "well why don't we just go over your budget together, I'm sure we can find stuff to cut out" from my family. My answer is always something like, "So do you want me to cut off the electric or the water... or should we just not eat every other day?"
I am finally finding ways to make things work: I found a child to babysit three days a week so that's $90 a week. And we have decided to make the difficult transition to moving into a 1 bedroom apartment with all bills paid, which will make up for the rest of our "negative-income" each month. And we have considered letting our car go so we wouldn't have the car payment, we can't sell it because we are $12,000 upside-down on it. We just haven't quite felt desperate enough to let our credit go so easily yet.
However, we still won't really have "extra". So how do I get people to understand? POVERTY EXISTS. We are truly struggling financially and we didn't just decide to be completely broke.
we just moved into a 1bd to help pay off debt. it isn't too bad at all and it is saving us a lot so we can hopefully get caught up and start saving.
But it's like she doesn't understand when I say, "no I can't drive all the way out there because I literally have NO gas, and no, I can't go to the re-sale shop because we can't buy clothes, not even used at this point."
It's okay - just mentioning it. I do it, too, when trying to multi-quote sometimes.
Brand-new cars are suuuuch a money-sink for the most part. But, what's done is done. As the pp said, maybe a straight-out acknowledgment of the facts would help your family "get it."
