Tight?

Our mortgage rate is due for review - think up $50/fortnight - and our accomodation supplement/tax credits both are not due to change for the year. (Well to be accurate, we got a $2/week increase!) Groceries costs have risen something crazy in the last few months and on one income, the 'pinch' is starting to get to me lately. Let's not even talk about rates! Anyone else, and what are you doing to make it 'all better'?

Oh yes we are. I don't even want to talk about rates .

One good thing for us is that we are renting our place out in July and we qualify for a rates rebate so that will help a little. So our mortgage will be taken care off for us.

As for the rest OMG yes. I think us living in the middle of nowhere will help a bit as I won't just be able to go to the supermarket as I want a packet of chips.

Don't forget to shop around for mortgage rates... and talk to your bank on if you can stretch your mortgage out a little longer to ease on payments.

One of ours comes off fixed middle this year not looking forward to it - even with staff rates its a huge jump. when will it go down?? I wish before then!

And yeah bloody food prices just keep going up... and don't get me started on petrol prices - here we have one of the cheapest prices in NZ and its still bloody expensive!

ETA: used bloody cause if the aussies can I can LOL

Edited by AnnC

oo correction: just got a letter today and our accom is going up $3/week. So that's a govt increase of $5/wk for this financial year!

*insert lame woohoo here* LOL!

That's better than us Teresa, our WFF is going up $0 per week *rolls eyes* Not sure about accom supp yet.

But when baby arrives, WFF will go up like $50 a week - what a pity I won't be working then so it won't be
"extra" money, it'll be making up for part of my lost income.

WFF pisses me off....DH got a payrise of buggerall at xmas, so i rung to tell them to adjust it, and it came down the same amount DH's wage had increased by! so we are no better off for the payrise.

we'd actually be better off if he refused it, because WFF isn't taxed

Really tight here too. We rent our house and have signed up for another year with only a slight increase but OMG if we had a mortgage we would need to extend it to buy a block of cheese or butter!!!!
Add to that petrol prices - ugh. It costs over $120 to fill my car now and there is no point down grading because I still owe to much on it to make it worth selling in the near future. They were saying at the beginning of the year that gas would reach $2 a litre this year and I think now that they have said that it is like a target for them to reach   Also I love that no one's pay has gone up even though groceries are up like 30%!

OK, so now that my moan is over. We have just started having a grocery free week once a month as DH is on monthly pay and we usually run out of money in the last week anyway. So apart from the absolute necessities that we might need to get (milk etc to a max of $10ish) we go through the freezer and pantry and get inventive! It is amazing what yummy things you can make

Its terrible! I am dreading our mortgage coming off fixed in October. I worked out the other day that at todays rates and with a lump sum of $30,000 added to the mortgage AND stretching it back out to 30 years it will still cost us $30 a fortnight more....WTF???? So I am really hoping that election time might lead to some funny interest lowering behaviour.

and dont get me started on the price of groceries!!! We have had to increase our budgeted amount as we were never achieving it!

We wont get WFF this year as I will be working part time. I hope we might get a little from last year as I stopped the payments when DH got a new job that took us close to the threshold.

Stacey, you are a legend with groceries. We are on $200 a WEEK.

and I took on board your post about budgets, talked to DH and he agreed we can have our own spending accounts and one for Tom. I get more as I have "higher needs". YAY!!!! I am so excited but I am not allowed to spend mine on Tom.....what am I meant to spend it on then?

OK, scrub that. I just saw what Stacey spends on groceries. Apparently there *could* be spare money!