Amanda, James, Sam and Chloe
We can only see things getting better and better
Where we were...
I know they say there is a recession but I can only see things getting better and better for our family.
I knew our relationship was for real when we bought the house. It was such a commitment! In some ways more of a commitment than getting married! It made me feel great though, like at last we had a real home together.
We'd both been saving flat out for two years to scrape a deposit together. Thank goodness banks accepted 90% in those days! Our house was a bit of a doer upper and although there was no way we could afford to renovate the kitchen and the bathroom, we did go through the place painting it our own wild colours. That made it feel much more like our place.
James said I must have got too much into nesting because eighteen months after we'd moved in I became pregnant. I felt very pleased but it was a tad scary because I realised that if I stopped working, the mortgage would cost exactly half of James's income.
I worked up until the last month of my pregnancy to get a bit of money together so that I could be at home with our baby for a while. Fortunately James got a bit of overtime and I got a job ironing linen for a couple of local restaurants.
How Equitus helped us...
Now Chloe is three and a half and Sam is twenty three months, and we feel the worst is over. That's because a friend of mine put me onto the Equitus service. She said it was working for them and they were a blended family with four kids between them.
Equitus helped us see how our income and expenditure really works, and how we can offset the interest in our mortgage and turn this into savings. We now have a financial plan that enables us to have money we wouldn't otherwise have had and gives us much more control over our cash flow.
Where we are now...
In the months when we have unplanned expenditure, we use some of the savings in our account, knowing that these will build again when the power is less or the car doesn't need maintenance.
Another good thing, when James goes to kindy I've been offered some part-time work by my old boss. I know they say there is a recession but I can only see things getting better and better for our family.
To protect sensitive financial data, the names and images of the case study participants have been changed.