Financially worried about the future, how do other families manage?

meer53

I don't think you're living on the edge either. Most people struggle on when their children are small, you're fantastically lucky to have the savings you do, surely you could use these towards childcare when needed ? Is it necessary to have five figure savings ? I'd be happy with a months salary in savings !
I am a single parent, my youngest is nearly 19 now but she was only 2 when my ex left us, it was incredibly hard, I received no maintenance and had to work full time from when she was 8 months old and my son was 13. I had no savings whatsoever, only one grandparent close by who had dementia but luckily I had secure employment with subsidised childcare onsite. Whatever happens, as long as your children are healthy and you have a home and food to eat, you are lucky, cut down on the saving and use the money you have available now. If your wife doesn't want to go back to work you will have to make changes but you definitely aren't living on the edge !

Ms_Chocaholic

I wonder if you could use some of those savings to pay down on your mortgage and thus reduce the stress you feel, you said your mortgage was small, would your savings pay it off?

Savvy_Sue

I think the biggest issue here is not the money, or lack of it, or even 'what if x happened?' but basic communication.



The OP is worried. He feels his wife doesn't 'get' why he's worried, and puts barriers in the way of the solutions he can see. At the same time, she's offering moneysaving as a solution, and he doesn't 'get' this as a solution.



You need to talk: calmly and listening to each other.



BTW, I can really sympathise with her feelings of never wanting to do care work again!

hazyjo

How many years left on the mortgage? Could you increase the term to keep the payments smaller? Even if just for a while when your missus isn't working?

As above - you are way off struggling LOL. Not even close.

You don't need a brand new car if one car dies. You can get a perfectly decent small family car second hand for a few grand.

Agree with Pollycat about not accepting handouts when you have savings. I remember friends years ago saying they couldn't afford things, then it turned out they were saving loads of money each month. Never quite understood that logic.

You're lucky to have any savings. I certainly don't.

You will have pay rises. You won't be earning that amount forever. Re-train by all means, but I wouldn't want to be taking on more responsibility or stress in your shoes (especially as you seem the type to crumble with too much weight on your shoulders - my BF is the same and now doesn't work at all). Some people just can't deal with pressure to provide. Not a criticism, just something you may need to admit to yourself and find a way forward with your missus. Whether that means her working, or you both working part time or her being a stay at home mum (or even you being a stay at home dad if she can earn more). Just consider all options.

Did you grow up worrying about money as a family? Were things always tight at home with your parents?

Fire_Fox

MrBrindle wrote: »

A venting post coming up. Does anyone else just wonder how other families can afford it all?

I'm the only earner in the household, on 24k a year, while my partner claims child tax credits + child benefits. She says she will go back to work when the youngest starts school, but she's already putting barriers in the way as to what jobs she can do when she does the school runs / who will look after the kids during half terms and holidays etc.

I'm constantly worried about the future financially. Both of our cars are 8+ years old, we have a dodgy leak in the living room window that's left a few builders baffled, we have old laptops, old phones etc. My parents and my mother in law have helped with things like paying for school dinners and swimming lessons, but I hate relying on handouts when I'm in my 30's. We do have a 5 figure saving between us, but that could easily be wiped if we need a new car etc!

I just hate living on edge like this, and I've been suffering from depression and anxiety because of it, which in turn has affected my work and home life.

I worry about money daily, and don't know what to do about our situation. I'm thinking of re-training as something else because I've pretty much reached the ceiling in terms of wage for what I do in this area.

Does anyone else feel like this about life? I'm guessing a lot do worry about money, but my partner thinks that I'm an extreme case!

Many households live on credit and have little to no savings.

Are you getting medical help to address your depression and anxiety? Are you as a family doing what you can to manage your depression and anxiety? By this I mean targeted healthy eating, daily physical activity, wind-down time built into your routine etc.

Do you and your partner know where all of your current income goes each month? Do you and your partner take equal responsibility for budgeting and money management?

How many cars/ laptops/ telephones/ televisions does your household actually need? 'Living on the edge' means being unable to pay mortgage or rent, not being able to eat a balanced diet, not being able to heat your home. Essentials not electronics. Your skewed perception may be down to your mental health issues and/ or to pressure from others to provide a luxurious standard of living.

Can the school run be done on public transport or by bicycle, if not on foot? Alternatively can you travel to work on public transport, by bicycle or a combination?

Depending what media gadgets are being used for, you can likely scale back in number and/ or scale back to a cheaper type. One laptop or desktop may be necessary for homework or work e-mails.

For social media and other casual internet activities, one decent tablet can be shared. A basic mobile phone each may be warranted for emergency contact but, if your household has one laptop and one tablet, smartphones are superfluous. Too many media gadgets are arguably detrimental to family life.

Honeysucklelou2

When my older children were 3, 2 & 4 months old, I went out to work in the evenings as a cook/waitress. It was pre tax credit days so we needed the money. I had given up my main job because funding 3 in nursery would have wiped out my salary! I had the benefit of days at home with my little ones and enjoyed the adult conversation at work in the evenings. The other benefit was that I felt I was contributing to the household income and my then DH understood that being at home caring for the children was a job in itself. There are ways to earn money around family commitments.

From another angle, I'm now a single parent and my youngest has been in nursery since I returned to work when he was 7 months old. Many a time I have wished I could be at home with him but circumstances are such, that I can't. The cost of putting my youngest in nursery runs to around £5k a year. Working when your children are small does have cost implications unless you have family who are willing and available to help.

Having 5 figure savings is something many families can only dream of. I appreciate it's easier said than done but try not to worry. Enjoy your children when they are young, they grow up so quickly.

Rosieandjim

I think you are doing brilliantly but I agree that your wife should be working to halve the load.


As she appears so good with children why cant she look after them by providing after school care or child minding. The pounds soon mount up when doing this type of work and you don't have to worry about school holidays etc. Plus at the end of the day you still have time for each other

getmore4less

MrBrindle wrote: »

A venting post coming up. Does anyone else just wonder how other families can afford it all?
....

Many don't and end up in debt.

Your current status seems OK but your worries are about things that have not happened and may never happen.

Worrying is often just not knowing and there are things that can be done to help that.

As someone earlier pointed out you have some friction over what needs to be done to prepare for these "what if's" but you don't have common goals or know what is needed so just guess work.

ie. Get a job is too vague

It needs to be more like we need £x extra a year how do we do this together, savings work etc.

One option is to step back and audit your life as it is now and think about what might come up and where you want to go from here.

No discussions on how to achieve these things, be it cutbacks earn more etc. that comes later just a list of needs and wants going forward.


A key worry is how do you afford it so a financial budget is essential.

A great place for developing one of those is the Debt free wanabee board.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=76


The best way to deal with debt is a strategy that avoids it.

I would do a review of the last 12 months to see where all your money goes now.

Then review the next few years and make a plan based on current incomes only

With young kids there will be milestone dates that effect the finances.

Start with the SOA format to get an idea.
http://www.stoozing.com/calculator/soa.php

it will take time but if you can do this together you get a better picture of how you spend your money and what you will need going forward.

Often many when trying to review a year find there is loads of money they cannot account for, to avoid that going forward start a spending diary.

when analysing the where it goes it is a factual exercise
no "you bought that we did not need it"

You can't really plan forward without knowing in detail where it all goes now.

once you have all the needs covered you can add in the discretionary spending and jointly decide what gets priority with the cash available or how you make changes to make things happen.

.............................................................

There also seems to be some friction with time management again one approach is an audit of where all the time goes and a budget/plan on how you can use it better.

It might be as simple as how do we make 1 day a week family day.
what do we need to change to make that happen so we are not busy doing other stuff.

Then if you want to do activities that cost you can feed that back into the financial budget.

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To pick up on your wifes focus on cutbacks, unless you have a very good handle on where you spend you won't be able to identify the best place to save.

The reality is you want best value from your money so doing the analysis and budget/plan you identifying where you could reallocate resources to better value.

Quite a few resources on here to help with that as pointed out earlier like the old style board
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=33

She is coming up with ideas, but more to do with saving money - like getting solar panels, buying an electric car etc - all of which we can't really afford anyway!! We are not seeing eye to eye on the issues at the moment, because the real issue is bringing money in rather than making savings when we're already trying hard at that.

This caught my eye, these are not saving money but spending money and need a cost analysis first, who will be doing that cost analysis?

Often when the SOA is done there are easy hitters, mobiles,TV,internet, groceries.

A good example is audit how much food gets thrown out, instant savings by reducing that to zero.

once you spend the time to do the analysis you soon run out of places to save so the only way to tackle the money for more discretionary spending or to cover a cap in essentials is earn more.

In the short term I think you will benefit from the SOA and analysis of where you spend to exhaust the saving opportunities, that closes that door and opens the how do WE bring in more.

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one issue many have with doing the life audit is the risk of saying we have no time for that we are already too busy.

Make time.

jwil

We both work full time. We don't have family to help out so have to manage.

We use after school club (I can do drop off). We take it in turns to take time off if the kids are ill. We take separate weeks annual leave to cover holidays and pay for childcare for the weeks we can't cover.

It's expensive, but we are better off working than not.

pinkshoes

Could your wife start some sort of training now to become perhaps a teaching assistant? Cleaning in a school (so term time only)?

Most schools have excellent breakfast and after school clubs, then there are holiday clubs. I pay £14 from 7.30am until 5.30pm including breakfast and an after school snack.