How is your money situation compared to last year?

[Kristen]

Better? Worse? the same?

This morning I was thinking about how bad things were for us last December. Our HELOC was maxed out(it's a $10K line of credit), we had no savings, and we were down to our last $50. We'd gotten there as a result of me having had Zoe(so I had to take unpaid time off of work), and also us doing our home renos. It wasn't stupid spending, but still, we weren't in a very good place. One really stupid thing I'd done that helped get us to that place is that I wasn't communicating well with Steve about our money. Thus, he thought we had more money than we really did, and would get annoyed with me if I said I thought we shouldn't buy x, y, or z. And being my non-confrontational self, I didn't really want to put myself through that, so I'd just give up.

Anyhow, last fall we finally started communicating better about money, but it took us a little while to get back on our feet, which is why we were still kind of a mess last December. Things are a lot better now...we both know exactly what's going on with our money, we're just about done spending money at Home Depot and Lowe's, our HELOC isn't maxed out any more, and we hope to have it paid off by spring, at which point we'll start building up an emergency fund.

[Christi]

We're not in as good of a place financially this year as we were last. That has some to do with Avon spending and some to do with paying for Chris' classes. But we're working on it!

[Danielle]

Better by a lot!

We sold out old house, made a good chunk of change on it, moved to a cheaper area and bought a nicer home for the same price. We used the profit from the house to pay off dh's $40,000 student loan and opened RRSPs (like 401Ks) as dh doesn't have a pension (I do). I feel 100% more financially responsible than I did last year and even though we don't have much more "disposable income" we do automatic withdrawals from our acct. for RRSP and savings every pay.

[Lori]

We're in a better place right now, because our income is higher right now, but we're a bit more uncertain, because we don't know what Sean will be doing after this coming term.

[Jejune]

We're in a much worse place, given that Daniel's contract runs out this month, he only has one freelance gig lined up, the freelance gigs we thought he was guaranteed turn out not to be guaranteed, and both of us are currently looking for work. So, yeah, not so great. :(

[gr8mommy]

Actually, it probably works out for us to about the same. We accrued more debt in our equity line because we finished off the basement/laundry room, but the extra living space increases the equity overall.

Income/expenses otherwise are about the same, so we're good here.

[ColleenC]

Every year we get better. Last year we sold our townhouse and made a good chunk which we used to buy commercial property, so we have our equity in that. Plus I started working but we also moved and our rent is quite high but we love where we live. Dh's business continues to grow and do better. We often look back to where we were financially when we met and even a year or two ago and we are so much better off now! Proof that hard work pays off.

[Mary]

Better than last year, and ten times better than the year before that!

We were able to pay all our bills and such at this time last year but we didn't have much left over -- we had to cancel our plans to come to CA for Christmas. This year all bills are paid plus we've paid cash for a two-week trip and all the Christmas stuff. Also we had no health insurance, retirement, etc. last year. Now we have primo coverage for health, vision and dental and he has retirement being put away. Also he has paid sick and vacation.

We expect things to at least remain the same this coming year, if not improve. I say that with fingers crossed and knocking on wood because if anyone knows to expect the unexpected, it is I.

[boosmama]

much better..

this time last year it was just dh's income and my pidly amount from maternity leave pay. We had lots of debts and were just making it basically. I went back to work in may which added about 2000 a month to our income, and than we bought the house in august..so we have more debt in a way but its good debt, our credit cards and veichles are no longer holding balance.

[Beka]

hmmm- it's a weird one.

Overall if we internalised and said "nuts to the people who need us" we'd not be doing all that badly this year but :sigh I've never been very good at prioritising myself when family/urban family are in need- very much a i haven't got alot but you can share it mentality here which does suck at times when I really should think how much better off we'd be if we did think well we survive on what we do so why should we help X, Y or Z.

Overall I have cleared a shed load of debt last year- truly did shift a huge ammount of it, unfortunately still a biiiig chunk left and we've hit a wall.

I did have a 31 month plan (that should now be a 19 month plan) to snow ball our debt repayments and be debt free at the very end of it and then my sister announced she was marrying in Disney (please remember here I'm a family of 6 with 1 manual workers wage allllllllllll the way over in England here and with my education childcare costs out weighs any income i'd make returning to work) and she announced if i didn't go she wouldn't get married and that i had the wedding I wanted and i was ruining hers... guilt much (you're really seeing where this "just say no!" motto would help me aren't you?) so we caved, we agreed we'd go, we're getting alot of family help to go (as flights alone would be around 3 or 4 months income!!!!) but obviously we still need to save what we can, I am also feeling guilty as my sister keeps reminding me dad paid for all my wedding but can't help as much with her wedding due to the costs of getting 8 of us there (6 of us, mom and dad) and I feel bloody awful about it.

Soooooooo all debt repaying has been switched to minimum repayments which is hurting our long term plan but is allowing us to save something rather than nothing (as the last 12 months we've been spending every spare penny on essential events and paying extra down off the debts.)

It's annoyed the hell out of me as well as David was due to start his degree with us only having less than 6 months of debt repayment to make by his start date- now we're going to have alot more left so his starting back at school full time (which we already delayed a decade) has had to be delayed another 12-24 months when we already said we couldn't go but were bullied & emotionally blackmailed into it.

All in all I have realised (and i outright told them this week) that my family are driving us under- emotionally, financially, and i can't let them do that to us any longer.

[Shana]

Better :)

[wendygrace]

You go Beka!

We are better off but mainly because I now have a plan. I have paid off bookoos amount of debt this year but still have bookoos more to go. However, we have both made a shift to improve our lot and stopped putting stuff down on the credit card. We also started accepting help from outside because we couldn't truly do what we had been doing before. We are so grateful for the help of our friends, neighbors and even perfect strangers and it is putting us into a much better financial position and giving us hope for the long-term.

[bloombaby]

better since Dh's job is bringing in more than his job from 2006...but the year away from the railroad has hurt us immensely. It will take YEARS for us to get the debt paid off and savings returned...all of 11 months worth and his panic attack. My new job is helping,but with gas and other things going up, it's not as huge of a help as it could have been.

[Kristi]

It is probably about the same. Not any better and not any worse. We have no savings because we have had to use it all up for different things so DH and i have discussed the possiblity of me finding a part time job that I can work on his days off and using the money to build a savings account.

[Amber]

So much worse. Divorce will do that to you!

[MathSpeak]

It depends on how you look at it... I make a lot more than I did before. However, my old employer used to pay my tuition upfront and this one reimburses - first half initially, last half after you show your grades. If you look at numbers on an annual basis, it looks better because of the increase in disposable income. However, having your pocketbook take a $9K hit every trimester, then reimbursed later is a little annoying. I'll just say better, because of sheer numbers, though.... even though $9K of my net worth will be perpetually tied up until 2011! :rolleyes