My husband and I are what you would class as the 2.4 family. Obviously we have two kids and are reasonably happy.
My husband works very hard and long hours to earn his pittance!! Myself well I got ill several years ago and can no longer work.
Financially we are what people call broke!!!! I mean we struggle terribly as many other people do. After paying all our bills we are left with the grand total of forty pounds to feed ourselves and our kids. Just to confirm that is forty pounds a month not a week. Every penny counts, we don't go out as a couple as that would cut into our left over money, so the best option we don't go out.
I recently thought that it must only be us, but after talking to other people that fall into our age and earning bracket it seems we are not alone.
I have asked myself why in a supposedly first world country in 2007 are people barely surviving.
One reason i recently discovered was that my husbands company are introducing fuel cards!!!! Fabulous I thought no more panicking about trying to find the money to get the kids to school or my husband to work. How wrong could I be? Well the company will take his personal miles from his monthly salary, ok that seems fair i said. That was until I read further along and discovered that if you earned more than £57,000 per year the company also payed for your personal miles!!! Well my husband earns in the region of £20,000 a year so I guess that means we continue to pay our personal usuage miles.
The class system is still strong the more money somebody earns the more perks they get. Fine but how about the hard working people that fall into the working class category.
My husband will not be able to retire, we do not own our own home we privately rent so I suppose it would be better that he dies before he retires. As a family we try and forget about our money worries as it seems that many people live like us, we are not alone.
All I can add is I am glad I have a fantastic mother in law, a sentence not many people can say. She is a great help and support to my family, and we owe her a lot. So thank you, you know who you are. xxx