Today I’ll tell you some ways we approached the money issue in marriage. Mick and I always worked out our finances together. There were no secrets, except for the ones around Christmas, anniversary or birthdays.
The main thing is to work out a budget and stick to it. But each person should have a little mad money they didn’t have to explain. This can be spent on clothes, saved for gifts, or used for whatever.
Shop less regularly for groceries. We grocery shop once a month. Unfortunately fruit and vegetables have to be more often but stick to only that. Don’t go near the groceries.
Keep stock of what’s in the pantry and check out use by dates.
Buy meat in bulk. We have had a freezer for 39 years (yes, the same one all that time) and it is the best investment we ever made.
Know your limits with loans and don’t over commit, especially when it comes to a mortgage. Don’t expect to buy the brand new house with all the new furniture first up. Our first house was a little timber house hardly bigger than a doll house. Later, we traded up to something bigger, but it still wasn’t a new house. The one we have now was 7 years old when we bought it. That was the newest house we’ve ever had.
We looked at some new exhibition houses the other day, just for something to do on the weekend and to pick up decorating ideas. Mick and I agreed we wouldn’t want to trade our home for any of them.
Be content. You don’t have to have everything new. When setting up house and for much of our married life, we had second hand furniture or furniture and items bought at auction or hand me downs which we did up together. When starting out the only thing we bought new was a bed.
There’s a lot of fun and satisfaction buying second hand and doing it up. Check out garage sales and street cleanups. More than one person in our family has scored a lounge and chairs at a street clean up.
This week I saw a dining suite sitting on the sidewalk with a sign saying, ‘free.’ We’ve picked up some thing like that ourselves. Do I feel like we have missed out on having nice furniture? No, though we do get a thrill these days if we buy a piece of new furniture.
At one stage we were strapped for cash we delivered junk mail. It ended up a family activity done on weekends or after work. At the same time it was exercise and we got a little bit of extra money. The carrier of the pram or stroller was ideal for holding the catalogues. And most importantly, we were together.
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