We're making good money but...

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
We're making good money but...
11
Sun, 01-25-2009 - 2:46pm

We're more broke than ever. DH and I were discussing this today and trying to figure out how we got here. I think there are 3 reasons:

1. We have 3 kids. They're all in diapers (and there's a fair chance that my almost 6 year old will always wear them). The cheapest place for us to buy diapers is BJ's If they all run out of diapers at the same time, we could easily spend over $100 just in diapers in a trip. My 3 1/2 year old is perfectly capable of potty training, but she's incredibly stubborn and doesn't want to do it. I've started playing hardball with her and I'm seriously considering not even letting her have a diaper for overnight, since I know she can stay dry all night. I have a feeling that it's going to have to be all or nothing and if she knows she'll get a diaper at night she'll hold it until then. She was actually peeing in the toilet consistently for a year and a few months ago she decided she wasn't going to do it and we finally gave up and put her back in diapers. This week my older DD is off school on Tuesday and Wednesday so we're going to take another stab at PT-ing her. I'm still not sure she's ready, but we won't know if we don't try. If we can get one or two out of diapers that will save us a lot of money.

2. It seems like everything is getting more expensive, especially groceries, and DH's commute is a lot farther, so we're spending more on gas.

3. We have two car payments. We went for a long time with no car payments, but we needed to replace both of our cars about a year apart and we have payments on both. One will be paid off in October. The other one will be paid off next September.

4. We have a lot of other debt. Some of it is from things like medical expenses, but some of it is just from carelessness.

I think it also seems worse because we got used to living beyond our means and now we're trying to reign it and not just live within our means, but live below our means so we can get rid of this debt. We're planning to move closer to where DH works, but I don't really see how that can happen since we have no money to do some of the work that will need to be done just to sell the house. We still have enough equity that selling our house should allow us to pay off all of our debt and have a decent down payment, but if we can't sell our house there's not much we can do, except slowly chip away at it.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-23-2007
Mon, 01-26-2009 - 5:44pm

Good work on getting help with your 6-year-old. You'll get nickeled and dimed to death if you aren't a big advocate.

Good for you!

Dee






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