Do you live paycheck to paycheck?
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Anonymous
I would love to hear how you manage to pay for childcare for 2 under 2 as a single mom with a gross income of $67k, if only so that I can learn to do as you do. My gross is probably around the same as yours, but my DD's childcare is totally covered by her dad. I admit that it's probably more expensive to live where I live than where you live, though. |
Anonymous
| I'd have to sell investments if we went beyond a month or so - does that count? |
Anonymous
Agreed, I'm a single mom of 2 as well and make 20k more than that -- 4/5 of my paycheck goes to daycare and keeping a roof over our heads. No child support. |
Anonymous
| We do. $140k HHI. Childcare, mortgage, paying down debt accumulated in our footloose and fancy-free 20s. We would be in trouble if we missed a paycheck. |
Anonymous
| Yes. I feel terrible for those affected by shutdown because as I understand it there's no guarantee of back pay and no way to know how long this would last. We would be fine for a couple weeks but if we missed next months paycheck next months bills wouldn't get fully paid. |
Anonymous
| No, learned the hard way. |
Anonymous
| I need to show this to my husband who is always banging on at me that if I don't go back to work we'll run out of savings in 15 years! |
Anonymous
No child support. No family in the area. Dad passed when I was young and mom lives several thousands of miles away and grosses about $20K per year working a customer service job. Rent on my 2BR condo is $1400. Older car that is paid off. Luckily both of my children are the same gender and since they are so close together in age I've been able to pass most everything from DC1 down to DC2. I also buy most of my children's things on Craigslist, garage sales or consignment sales. I use a cheaper in home day care where I get a discount for 2 kids as opposed to the more expensive commerical day care centers near my job at Farragut North. I cook most food from scratch, repurpose things where I can, combine grocery trips errands to save on gas, fill up on gas late night/early morning when the fuel temp is cooler and it has not had a chance to expand sot that I can pay cheaper gas prices. Avoid impulse buys. Everything is researched and planned out. If something new is needed it seriously takes me several months to figure out what is the best product for my needs and where I can buy it the cheapest. Keep my windows open as much as possible to avoid AC costs. I guess it's a bunch of small things that add up and contribute to the larger picture of living simplistically and saving money. |
Anonymous
Op back. Forgot to add that I was able to pay down all of my debt before the kids so I'm debt free. No cc debt, no car payment. I do have have student loans that are about $120 per month, very manageable. Also, I am not contributing to my retirement plan at work which means that my take home is a little bigger. I would love to start contributing to retirement but its not in the works right now. |
Anonymous
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yes and barely
gs15 |
Anonymous
| No. I have 4-6 months of savings. I don't have kids and make 45K a year. |
Anonymous
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No.
But we are both feds and I didn't really consider both of us being unemployed at the same time. We have 6 months of household expenses saved, but if we have to cover the employer portion of healthcare if this drags on, I have no idea what that would cost and didn't really take that into consideration when we created our emergency fund. When this is over I will be reevaluating our emergency fund and bulking it up further to account for healthcare costs if this happens again. |
Anonymous
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I'm not trying to be rude, but do these children HAVE a father(s)? Or did you become a single mom by choice?
Good on you for being able to afford 2 kids with no assistance. What are you paying daycare? |
Anonymous
How do you pay for daycare , live in Alexandra and have money leftover?  I wanna know, I am a single mom of 1 and after daycare, mortgage, expenses ect, I barely have anything left Please do tell  ( i dont get child support)
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Anonymous
| Right now we don't have a paycheck. There was a clerical error with DH's security clearance resulting in it needing to be redone. Then Snowden happened and they started all over again. He was finally told it would be about two weeks before it was resolved and a week later the Navy Yard shootings occurred. Now this. We have been living off savings since June. Dh is still employed so he can't apply for unemployment. Thankfully his employer has kept him on and they keep us in health insurance. DH is going to have to move on and find a non-clearance job and forget all the great things his current employer has done for him. |