The Pain of One Income

I don't care that we don't have money Mummy!

The pain of being on one income has reared its ugly head this Christmas.  When Little Miss was born in June of 2008, I had been on maternity leave from my crap wage lucrative job as a teaching assistant.  We eventually would learn how NOT crap that wage was when we went onto Statuatory Maternity Pay (SMP = approx. £118 per week at that time) when Little Miss was born.  And we really learned how NOT crap that wage was when I ended my maternity leave and we decided that I would stay home with Little Miss and no longer work.  My hubby makes an adequate wage as Managing Director of what used to be his family’s generator business.  He managed to get a pay rise this past summer and a new company funded and fueled car in September.  But debts on both sides of the Atlantic, an 18 month old child, a house and various and sundry other bills mean that we pretty much live paycheck to paycheck.

One of my goals for 2010 is to really and truly sort out our finances.  We need to budget properly and stick to it.  We’ve dramatically limited what we do with our money already.  We don’t go out, we don’t buy things for ourselves and we only buy limited things for Little Miss.  We don’t have Sky satellite, we don’t have gym memberships, we don’t have flashy clothes or fun toys.  And where we’ve now felt the pain of living on one income is this Christmas.  We couldn’t afford to buy anyone in our family anything really.  We saved up what money we could to be able to buy a few things for Little Miss and that was it.  My husband and I have not bought each other anything for Christmas, birthdays or anniversaries for the last two years.  This year was the first year that we couldn’t buy anything for the nieces and nephews in our family and it really hurt.  We feel lame and stupid and we know the children don’t understand.  However, in the 4 1/2 years that I have lived in England, we have never been able to send anything back to my family in the US which includes a nephew on my side of the family.  The only presents have been when my mum was here for Christmas and they were mostly of the handmade variety.  We just can’t do it.  And we feel like rubbish.

It’s no fun to be the only people in the family to not be able to “carry our weight”.  My hubby feels particularly horrible as he feels that he’s not providing enough for his family.  He works in a job that he doesn’t particularly like, that drives him to distraction and takes him away from his family for long hours every week day and some weekends as well.  We can’t afford to put Little Miss in something like “Tumble Tots” which would be the PERFECT outlet for her because it COSTS MONEY!  I feel particularly horrible because I’m not bringing in any income (other than the odd freelance writing commission and some product for testing/review) and am doing my best to keep us on track.  Obviously that BEST is not enough!  So my goal for next week is to really sort out our finances and see where we can make cuts and save and scrimp so that next year we’ll be able to afford to buy at least SOMETHING for everyone in the family and feel like we’re proper grown-ups.  We do know that we are certainly better off than some people and we are grateful that Hubby has a job PERIOD.

And now, I’m open for suggestions.  If anyone has any money saving tips, tricks or genius solutions, I’m open to your ideas.  For anyone in our family who happens to read my blog, I’m very sorry that we couldn’t afford to buy anything this Christmas.  We love you all and would love to buy you everything you deserve but we just couldn’t this year.  We’ll try to do better for next year.  In the meantime, I would love to know how YOU do it?  How do you keep your family on track?  What is the key to surviving on one income?  Thanks, in advance, for any advice you might be able to share.  I’m willing to try anything.