[quote flippertyop]@NamechangeApril21 good list of excuses not to take responsibility for your financial position. It costs everyone money to put kids in nursery - it's a choice how many we have. It's a choice where you live. It's a choice to help on a farm instead of earning the extra 20 percent elsewhere (would your DH have given up work to help if he hasn't been furloughed? Why is this any different if you are struggling for money. If there's no where to work because there's no work around then move -it's of kids go to new schools all the time
Some people list all the reasons why they can't do things - some try to find a way to maximise opportunities. I'm not at all bitter - just get a little fed up with people moaning about their circumstances when by have choices [/quote]
He helps on his father's farm (his ill father who has no other source of income) around his job, not instead of - its something he did before, during and after being furloughed. He didn't give up work, he was furloughed. My financial situation is fine, thank you - it just got tighter with covid, as did many peoples. DH was furloughed for 3 months, and those 3 months were tight.
Childcare costs us more than a wage, so we're in negative money if we pay for childcare and a car. Im aware many people do hand out a good chunk, if not all of their wage on childcare, but if its completely wiping out an entire wage and then eating into the second, it's not remotely financially viable, is it.
We live where we live because of caring responsibilities for ill elderly parents and my brother with down syndrome - thank you for your heartless advice of just moving and leaving them to it but I think I'm going to pass on that!
We don't qualify for any benefit other than child benefit which we'd get regardless of both of us working or not, so it's really no skin off the "tax payers" nose with one of us at home.
We did maximise our opportunities, by splitting our time as the SAHP, so each career suffered as little as possible and didn't disproportionately limit our future earning potential in the long wrong. We've savings to bridge the gap and I'll be back to work in a year - I can hear your sigh of relief from here!
I do have responsibility for my financial situation, having emergency savings before we had children to get through the pinch of the younger years.
Also to point out the hypocrisy, if you really want to be a SAHM (as seemed heavily implied by you saying you don't get the choice and are forced to work) might I suggest you maximise your opportunities to do that, and stop making excuses of a list of reasons why you can't! Why not move to somewhere with cheaper living costs, buy/rent a cheaper, smaller house in a terrible area where you know nobody and have no support network, cut back on all luxuries and don't enjoy anything, sell your car and all your assets! Elderly parents or other dependants - fuck them! There you go, you can raise your DC full time yourself with out putting them into nursery!
*I'm not serious and don't actually think this but I have enough self awareness to know that it's incredibly rude to tell people how to live their lives and make wild assumptions about their circumstances, and I'm not self righteous enough to assume that the way I live is the best way to live.
My point is clearly going over your head though - your argument was that people couldn't possibly be struggling at 80% of their wages because they weren't paying childcare costs, or for their commute and weren't eating out. My point, which you seem to be missing, is that many people don't have these costs because they have free childcare in forms of a SAHP or family help, the have no cost to work through company cars, lifts or walking and maybe just don't actually eat out the much!! Some people deliberately structure their lives to not have these costs, so that working is financially viable. So obviously a drastic change (caused by something completely unprecedented and unplanned for) is going to leave some people in hardship and varying levels. (We had to tighten our belts, other people lost their homes and livelihoods).
Also to add, furlough was capped at 2.5k a month, so someone earning over that was losing more than just 20% - and giving that people live within their means, that's left a hell of a lot of higher earners also feeling the pinch and no longer being able to afford bills they previously could.
Much easier to relentlessly judge someone for doing the best the possibly can under the circumstances they are in (which you don't understand fully).