Government Assistance Isn’t Fun For Me

In the last post I gave a little bit of my personal background growing up, now I would like to give an idea of how our financial situation has changed over the course of the last 3 years. Our children are 1 & 2. We are 28 & 29.

It isn’t fun to apply for heating assistance. It isn’t fun to pay for food at Dave’s supermarket with WIC checks (especially since we live in a very affluent town in Southern Rhode Island and as the cashiers have told me…”No one uses these around here”). I am grateful these resources exist…and since I am a very resourceful person (thanks, mom and dad), I take advantage of every opportunity that I can. Sometimes it is an exercise in humility.

I’ll tell you though, I do not want to take this help. Or rather, I do not want to need it. I want it to go to people who need it more than me, and even then, I don’t want those people to need it, either. It all seems pretty unfair.

I actually used to think money was the enemy. In high school I was that idealistic, want-to-save-the-world “hippie-chick” and I blamed all the problems on the evil corporations and their evil money. Thankfully, I’m not that ignorant anymore. I see money as a tool.

The only problem is, most of the time it seems like there isn’t enough of this tool to go around, and even if I had it I wouldn’t exactly know how to use it.

Back to the saving and the budgeting. The first year of Ana’s life we really strugged. We realized we needed a budget, so we made one. We read books by people like Dave Ramsey and talked and argued and cried over it all. Over time, we really started to stick to it. Right now it looks like this on a fluxuating income of about $800 a week after taxes:

Per week (approximate):

$200 food

$400 bills (car, phones, internet, Netflix, trash, YMCA membership, car insurance, electric bill)

$150 savings

$30 gas

$78 health insurance

$50 401k

$908 TOTAL

Obviously, with some simple math you can see here that we actually don’t make enough to pay all of the expenses. I recently started working again (very part-time) and make barely enough (because I *cough* undercharge *cough*) to cover the childcare that I need to have to be able to work. I’m also leaving out debt payments, clothing and personal expenses, the occasional date night, car repairs (we have one car), and you know, those things that just generally happen that end up costing you a bunch of money.

BUT. Things are looking up. We are almost finished with our car payments ($300/month for a good used 2006 Toyota Matrix that cost us $8000…a family loan with no interest). The electric bill is insanity in the winter – last year it was $700 a month – and so with spring coming, things are easier. Our health insurance went up (as soon as I started working, the kids lost their’s) but our car insurance went down.We’ve paid off a lot of our debt, now we only owe around $10,000 and most of it is student loans.

We have a goal to buy a house in the next few years with a hefty down payment. This year, we want to keep saving and pay off our debt. We want to start college funds for the kids and save for retirement. Things could change in a second, such as our living arrangements, job situations..and we don’t want to be  subject to the whim of circumstance.

We all live in uncertainty, I know that. I know I have little control. But what control I do have, I’d like to exert.

Reader Question:

What are your financial goals? Where do you see yourself in 6 months? 1 year? Are you in a better place than you were a few years ago?