Other What's ruining your life right now?

Back to my roots.

Just getting by, we pay our bills on a monthly basis, we never miss them thankfully, and maybe I should be thankful for the roof above my head. I say I eat at work to save using from the fridge, Why waste it on me when that would make a perfectly good meal in the evening. I sit at work with people talking about holidays, extensions and cars when in reality I'm avoiding eating to stretch our food shop half a day longer. My pay is healthy... its good but times have been tough and we're still paying for that. Health issues have done a real number on us and at times I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above the water, Its only when my partner is at work and my son is in bed I feel like I can take the mask off and let reality sink in, prior to that I'm sat with this porcelain smile hoping she doesn't see through. Looking at the bills and regrouping every... single... night.

We should be thriving when we're surviving, I really want to get out from this spiral now, I'm floundering, I'm tired of being hungry, I'm just tired in general... I need a good nights sleep and I just can't get it...

I tell myself its just temporary but its trying, somedays are easier than the rest. Today has been an absolute arse

I just need a vent...

 

I hear you on this so clearly. Between my wife and I we make a decent wage (around £57k a year total), but due to her being out of work for a year (health stuff meant that the company paid her off to resign rather than fire her), we are still struggling HARD to manage paycheck to paycheck as things were set in place before all that happened (and during it) that we are still committed to.

My wife still has health problems (fibromyalgia, thyroid, other pain stuff, and so on) so me being down about stuff is not what she needs to deal with on top of that, I need to be looking after her so yeah, the whole porcelain smile thing sounds only too familiar.

I got a cheque through the other day for some over-payment on my student loan that was all going to getting my PC back up and working (need a new board, CPU, and memory), but that's not gonna happen now as the funds need to go on a loan payment. So I guess no working PC for another few months, I'll have to stick to an IPad and my phone for a while yet.

 

I've been where you are. And chances are I'll be there again sometime (career change in the future and such).
I'll say it gets better (it did, for me at least, with iron discipline for almost 5 years), but that doesn't make it any easier. You have my empathy in this.

 

Free milk? I'm sure where I am they would charge you for air if they could.

 

The biggest problem that we are having is the continuing commitments such as the car payments, credit cards, and loan payments that were either set up before my wife was out of work for a year or are high as a result of that period. We manage with the bills and stuff but it leaves very very little afterwards. We will get things sorted out, it's just going to take some time.

In the mean time, we have very little in case of things like my PC dying or should we have other problems that will cost to fix.

I have a load of bits and pieces of things like my model collection plus the possibility of some of my knife collection (both built up well before all of this, I hasten to add...) that I can look into selling. I REALLY don't want to, but I may have to.

 

@MLyons , I don't know what @Almightyrastus situation is, but it's quite possible to have a good income and still be struggling to make ends meet if you are saddled with historical debt to service. If you've accrued a hefty debt (for whatever reasons) then you can be paying out a lot of money a month just covering the interest, let alone reducing the amount you owe. Income on its own is relatively meaningless.

 

Credit cards are fine as long as you have the self control to go along with them

As Gareth said, they have multiple benefits and no real downside as long as you're sensible.

 

Spot on. Before all that happened we managed very well and we would have sufficient to eat out a couple of times a week of we wanted, I spent a little over £1200 on my last big PC rebuild, we managed a 2 week holiday to Japan, bought a house, sorted out a decent car, then my wife fell down some stairs and tore a tendon in her foot. That put her out of work for well over a month and a half which coupled with her other short periods of sickness, meant that the company she worked for paid her off.

We have managed to reduce outgoings quite a bit since she got back into work, the time she was out taught us a lot about that, but the measures that we had to take during that time have made things very difficult now, even though we are back up to the same income as before.

 

I can empathise with @Almightyrastus - My wife has essentially only worked part-time since finishing her last job in January (partly due to a horrible 1st trimester, partly due to not being able to find a suitable full time role), so for pretty much the whole year so far I have been covering the entirety of the rent, house bills and general expenses (including putting fuel in her car as and when needed, doing the food shopping etc). My salary doesn't cover that kind of monthly expenditure, so I have been relying on credit cards for "emergency spending", usually just in the last week of the month when i'm running low.

But as Gareth and George say, be smart with credit cards and they can be a lifesaver without crippling you for years to come. Because I always pay above the minimum (even if I did put more on there during the month than that), the 2 card providers I have regularly send me 0% balance transfer offers (literally every couple of months), so I have been able to keep 90% of my CC debt in control and not fall into the trap of "pay £50 off, get charged £35 interest".

It's not been the easiest year, especially knowing a baby is due in December, but it's a situation that has taught us to be better with money - And one we know will get better once we're both earning again.

 

I feel dirty. Having always been, and always likely to be, an AMD/ATi user - I just applied for a job at nVidia.

 

Keep your friends close....

Hope they don't do a background search on your username, not sure 'dirty' fits with their PR

 

Different usernames all over the place! The email address I applied with is one of my other usernames.

Tbh, there's not much chance of me getting it, so I'm not overly guarded about it all.