Budgety Seriousness

We were spending as we normally would have for the first trimester and started putting money aside in the 2nd trimester and went eeeeeek in the 3rd lol

We wished we had put away more earlier. And wished we had "practised" living on one income earlier as it would have meant we would have had so much more money put away for all those nasty bills that come in when you are on one income and are like "now where the hell do I get the money from for that?!".

Living on my budget now. I wish I had done that waaay earlier. We spent money on so much crap. We could have done waaaaaay more things on our house etc if we hadn't been so spend happy lol.

DH still finds the money thing hard as he has never had to live "cheap". Whereas I don't find it all that hard as I lived pretty cheaply all my life.

I think we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best...I wish we'd put away more sooner though.

Paws wrote: I think we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best...I wish we'd put away more sooner though.

yeah same as us really..

Although what we do is transfer a certain amount of money into my nana's account each week and when our monthly bills come in they go straight to her hosue and she writes out a chq and pays them for us out of our money, that way we wont spend the money thats meant for our bills(like our new table, couches etc) and we also took them over 6 months interest free so that they are paid off quickly cos we want to start saving for our wedding which is next March!

Edited by Sheza

When we got pregnant we started pretty much living off DH's salary and I put some of my salary and bonus' away as savings. I am still living quite comfortably off my salary that I saved, I contribute to our mortgage etc as I normally would have, I just put in alot less than I used to! I am a very independant person and feel I should contribute in some way to our living costs and my savings has helped me do this!

I now work one day per week for our business from home, so I just use my pay week to week and my savings has now become "savings" again.

Thinking about this early in pergnancy has helped me get my way and I can be a SAHM alot longer had I not planned ahead like I did!

Paws wrote: I think we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best...I wish we'd put away more sooner though.

that was us....or maybe we were the bury your head in the sand and hope something changes (like a lotto win).

Hindisght is great and if we could we would have been in a better situation financially. We had just refinanced the mortgage and gone on a European holiday so we came back pregnant, with credit card debt and no savings. Spent most of my pregnancy trying to get back in black and therefore essentially wasted my f*ckn awesome salary!

We lived on DH's income and "saved" mine from the time we found out. We had $100 a week spending money each but cut that back to $50 a week once bubs was here.

Living on one wage was great practice and we budgeted $1500 for all the baby stuff - as soon as we saved that it was transferred to my account for me to shop for everything we would need. This was great as made me feel like I was spending money and shopping lots but wasn't really.

It worked well for us. We are still ticking along nicely at this stage but expect things to get slightly tighter around august/sept but would be happy to pick up a day or two of work then.

We paid off all our debts (except my student loan - mission impossible) and then practiced living on DH's income. So I still had some discretionary spending while I was pregnant for mat clothes and baby stuff but we were able to accurately gauge how we would do.

As soon as I went on mat leave we put all my payments from IRD into savings and we're still managing to put a small amount of DH's pay into savings too (for how long I don't know though)

While I was pregnant with Alex we lived off DH's income, and mine was used to buy all our baby stuff. I wish we had saved more, but we have managed ok. I went back to work when Alex was 9 weeks old, so I still had 'spending' money for myself. This time round I have found it hard not having my own money. If I knew what I know now, I would of put money aside for myself, so I could go out for lunch/coffee, have my hair done etc etc without feeling guilty.

The car thing happened for us too. We took it in for a WOF but it needed so much stuff that my partner just bit the bullet and got a loan to upgrade us to a Station Wagon (got to fit the dog in there somewhere!) and it was well worth it. We're saving like mad and my parents have been awesome (living in a house they own and not paying rent means we can save quite a bit!) but given that we both work at least 25 mins away from home a major chunk of income goes to petrol costs. When I finish work (7 weeks before baby's due) all that petrol money can go straight into savings. We've also been fortunate enough to have kept our family's old bassinette and have been given a cot so the biggest thing we have to buy is the pram!! And the car too, I guess... We're not really big planners, we live in the moment but it all seems to be working itself out - touch wood!

See if you qualify for WFF or Accom Supplement.