Out of the Woods Family Finances

Think of all the worst financial decisions you could make.  Got them?  Chances are my husband and I have done them all!  Lived without a budget? Check.  Got credit cards we couldn’t afford and maxed them out? Check.  Ignored bills and collection agencies? Check.  Spent money on things like fast food when we had overdue bills? Super check.  Got married and had kids with no financial planning? Check.  Have only one person deal with the money? Check.  And it goes on and on and on and on……

We were the perfect example of how not to manage your family finances.

My husband and I have been together since we were wee little teenagers.  We came from totally different upbringings.  My parents were always extremely frugal with money.  We never got takeout or went to restaurants, we knew my parents’ budgets for birthday and Christmas presents early in life, and we never got things ‘just because’.  My parents divorced when I was 11 and I watched the financial struggle continue with bankruptcy and all that jazz.  My parent’s financial struggles were never a secret to me.

Hubs, on the other hand, got pretty much whatever he wanted and when he wanted it.  His parents rented or bought him video games on a weekly basis, would get him whatever he wanted for Christmas even if it wasn’t sold in this country (and this is pre-online shopping we’re talking about), ate take out food all the time and gave him lunch money every single day for lunch.  He got to go on annual lavish vacations whereas I didn’t even leave the province until 10th grade.  Looking back we now know that his parents couldn’t afford that life – and we wound up doing the same things (minus lavish vacations – we’re always too broke for those).

You’d think either of these upbringings would have paved the way for us to have a stable financial life when we aged but that wasn’t the case.  With Hubs, he was used to getting all these things so when moving in with me he expected it to continue.  In my case, I had never enjoyed financial freedom or being able to choose things.  I went a little crazy with my financial ‘freedom’.  I had been deprived of take out foods, going to the movies, shopping and so on for my whole life and I felt it was finally my turn.  So we were each others’ enablers.

Then we had our kids.  And a whole new level of stupid spending kicked in.  We wanted them to have everything.  In Hubs eyes – he always had these things – he wanted our kids to too.  In my eyes – I didn’t have much growing up so I wanted to give my kids everything.  The problem was our incomes didn’t reflect that and we were already drowning in debt.  We are millennials after all – hellooooo student debt, zero financial education, and big dreams!

We don’t have stellar jobs.  We’re pretty close to low income.  Which is another one of our big mistakes.  Hubs didn’t go anywhere after high school and I went to University but dropped out half way through because I didn’t love my program – leaving myself with a mountain of student debt but nothing to show for it.  So I work for my mom (she doesn’t follow the whole “You’re my daughter so I’ll pay you more than a stranger would” thought process) and Hubs is currently doing online schooling.

So there we were.  Living well above our means and drowning in debt with 1-800 #’s calling incessantly to collect money.  We are no longer living in ignorance but it’s an uphill battle.  Am I embarrassed about our financial situation? For sure.  But that embarrassment and hiding is what got us into that mess.  We were always trying to accumulate things to hide our financial status.  Getting car loans we couldn’t afford, living in nicer places than we could afford (but only renting since our debtload is way too humongous and our credit rating way too minuscule to ever get a mortgage).  When I heard my mother in law was coming to stay with us I would go and spend $200 on stuff from Walmart to make our house look nicer – all this stuff to hide how badly we live paycheque to paycheque.

I used to think we were the only ones living like that.  Studies show though that half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque – and it’s even worse for millennials.  Over two-thirds of us are living paycheque to paycheque.