What do YOU spend your money on?

What is your financial priority? Living in a fancy house? Eating organic produce? Traveling?  Sending your kids to a private school? How do you prioritise what you earn and what you spend your money on?  Mamamia reader Kelly* writes:

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“My partner and I are 30 and 24 respectively. We drive nice cars. We live in comfortable surrounds and own a mixture of second hand and new furniture. We wear nice enough clothes and we go away for the weekend on occasion. We work hard.

So why is it that I find myself sitting on the floor of our study on a Monday night counting out silver coins into little piles so that I can go food shopping the next day? In my head I’m repeating the words “its character building, it’s character building” because if I can’t think of some reason why I’m doing this I might just cry. We’re not poor. Are we?!

I don’t think we’re poor, but if we’re not poor, what’s with the coin business?! Are we the nouveau poor? Professionals who work hard, aren’t particularly frivolous, but due to circumstance find themselves literally only having some silver coins to rub together? Driving nice cars and eating beans on toast?

And then the thought occurred to me, surely there are others in the same boat as us. Other people who from the outside look like they are cruising along nicely, but underneath are paddling like ducks swimming upstream. In our case, the lack of funds is because my partner is one half of a company that is waiting to be paid a large sum at the end of the month. I work 2 days a week for them too so neither of us have been paid, him his whole wage for several weeks.

As I said, I’m sure others are in the same boat, or have been in the past, but you know what? That boat feels awfully lonely. When you’re in it you feel like pirates are about to attack from all sides and those spunky boys from Sea Patrol are nowhere to be seen. Your spirits sink faster than Titanic and you feel a pressing on your chest like you’re about to drown any moment. Ok, enough with the boat analogies, I’m feeling sea sick, can I get off yet?!

It’s something that you often feel that you can’t talk to your closest girlfriends about because, let’s face it, it’s embarrassing. You certainly don’t want your family to know, and it’s not exactly going to be your next status update. You feel that if you tell someone they might give you money management tips or judge you for having a plasma TV but no money (despite buying the plasma 2 years ago when you had plenty of moola). You know it’s a temporary state of being, you don’t need sympathy and your situation will be good again soon but at that point in time it sucks.

I mean no disrespect to those who are actually doing it really tough, believe me, you have my utmost respect for getting by on very little all the time, I don’t know how you do it. This is purely meant to try and explain the odd position we have found ourselves in and to reach out to others who are experiencing it too.

It doesn’t have to be lonely. Pull up a stool, grab a cuppa and tell me your story – what was the situation, what did you do to get by? Trust me; getting it off your chest is rather cathartic!”