May 6th, 2011 | Posted by acidicice

I don’t know why on earth I am so broke every month! Every month feels like mid January lately. It makes me happy that we didn’t get the house. If we are struggling now without the bond payments, levies, etc it would have been much worse if we had a bond to pay and renovations to do. Why though?!

We’ve finished paying off quite a few things recently, so you would think that would free up some funds, still broke though. The only extra expense I have is extra petrol money. The petrol price is steadily climbing, but my salary isn’t. Even when we get an increase it will probably only cover the extra petrol costs. I’ve learned to manage my budget pretty well since climbing out of the hole My Evil Mother’s debt shoved me into, but not having money every month really sucks. We get quarterly incentive bonuses once every 3 months, so I practically live for those pay days and the month before bonus pay day tends to see my credit card taking a knock. I always pay it back when I get my bonus, so I don’t get charged interest, but I’m still spending money I haven’t even earned yet. Our bonuses have also been cut, but it we get quite a bit of money so I can’t complain too much. There are also things I do at the end of every bonus month that set me back a bit, like having my hair done. I don’t think having my hair done once every 3 months is unreasonable.

I have at least a month’s salary in savings and put a chunk of my bonus into that savings account every time. I know you’re supposed to have something silly like 6 month’s salary put away, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I haven’t been able to save the small amount I do for the last two months. I just haven’t been able to afford it.

Our housekeeper has cancer of the mouth of the womb and has been booked off for 6 weeks. She has 6 different employers. I already paid her two weeks that she didn’t work because of the operation she had to have, but she has phoned asking for more money. So now I have to give her money and pay someone to replace her since we honestly cannot cope on our own. Neither Rudi nor I iron and trying to clean up with a toddler under your feet literally undoing everything you are doing proves an impossible task! As it stands I can only afford to get someone to help us this weekend still and not again this month. I feel obligated to give her money. She doesn’t have the luxury of sick leave, unemployment, etc and has been working for my family since I was 4 years old. I really can’t give her much, but I’ll scrape together something

Rudi doesn’t seem to understand these budgeting problems. We just finished paying off our TV we bought two years ago and he was NAGGING me to buy another TV that was on special last weekend. I told him I cannot afford it, but he doesn’t see why not. We do not NEED another TV. He just wants a BIGGER TV. WTF is wrong with men?! I tried to discourage him by asking him what he was trying to overcompensate for…but that didn’t seem to work. Honestly we don’t have a lot of debt, but we do have a lot of expenses. Gym, policies, insurance, car payments, petrol, groceries, etc. It all adds up. Everything is getting more expensive and our salaries just can’t keep up.

I suppose this is just a rant since I don’t expect anything to change. We don’t have much place to cut down on expenses since we don’t have a lot of luxury expenses (i.e. DSTV/Satellite TV). I doubt the petrol price will drop any time soon. I suppose we’ll just have to live with it!

On another note…On Wednesday night Rudi went out to play dart as he usually does. I wasn’t well and went to bed around 21:00. Rudi got in around 01:00 and I woke up since he wasn’t too quiet about it. Babyice woke up around 01:30 and I got up to give him a bottle. I had barely gotten back to sleep when I heard a knock on the door. I dismissed it thinking it might be one of the neighbours as we can hear someone knocking on someone else’s door easily. The knock came again. I woke Rudi to go and see what was going on. It was 02:30. I dare not open the door myself, although Rudi doesn’t understand why I wouldn’t. Who was it?! LINDOR! What did he want?! He wanted to know if we had any ‘wine’ in the house since the bottle store was closed. WHAT THE FUCK?! WHO DOES THAT?! I was livid. I just thought I would tell you all about this in case you needed more proof of what a bad influence/disruption/asshole he is. GAH.