Financially - Are you doing better than before?

[Lexie71]

Wow, thanks for sharing. Your post gave me a lot of encouragement.

[RAINA]

Happy to find this thread...now it has been more than 2years since this thread started and I am wondering how everyone is don't now.

We are doing worse now than in 2008...we both have stable jobs however we have had no raises in a few years and everything is going up so it is hard to save now. :( I could cry with worry sometimes.

We have huge medical expenses and gas is going up, and now food and clothing. I am more scared now than I was in 2008. Anyone else or am I alone in feeling this way?

[meggers]

Welcome to HCW, RAINA! There are lots of folks who are in the same situation as you are. You will learn to save loads of money on this site. Just take your time & read, read, read.

If you would like, you can sign up to be a trader .here & learn the ropes of trading in our Trader in Training forum & trade with lots of folks all over the U.S.. You will find that coupons vary by region. What someone gets in NY, I would never see in KS. And it's fun to trade.

[skimo]

Originally Posted by RAINA Happy to find this thread...now it has been more than 2years since this thread started and I am wondering how everyone is don't now. We are doing worse now than in 2008...we both have stable jobs however we have had no raises in a few years and everything is going up so it is hard to save now. :( I could cry with worry sometimes. We have huge medical expenses and gas is going up, and now food and clothing. I am more scared now than I was in 2008. Anyone else or am I alone in feeling this way?

Well, I can share that the deals are still there & yes, things are overall a bit 'tighter.' I've tightened up and continue to do so. Lots of good information on this board worth reading to help you trim your budget. Spend some time reading, and it will be a good investment of your time.

[KmmCo]

2010 was a tuff year for us, but I hope 2011 is better!! I did get a 2% raise in Dec but it doesn't seem to really keep up with the prices of everything.

Gas is going up again and that pinches us a lot as we both have long commutes to work. I try to do the bus as much as possible - but my spouse has to drive because of the hours that he works. I think I am still carrying a lot of the credit card bills for gas that we bought when it got to $4.00 a couple of years ago. I paid down some on my bills before the holidays, but I really have to start working on them some more this year.

I have always managed to eat "cheap" but it is the transportation issues that seem to do us in. I have my truck in the shop right now and I am sure it will cost a small fortune!!! We drive older vehicles and the cost of keeping them running isn't factored into the regular budget. I think I really need to rethink that oversight and make sure that I have an emergency fund for the vehicles. Running up the credit cards and paying them latter is not working for us anymore - especially with the high interest rates.

I really don't think I have an excuse in blaming the bad economy at all. I have a good job. A lot of my problem is that I need to be a better money manager. Hopefully, some of the ideas that I get here will help us in the next year or two!

[MamaBird06]

I feel like we are doing better, but we are not paying off our debt as fast as we'd like. And that is mostly our fault as we have not been focusing on it, especially in 2010. But Dh's pay has gotten better for 2009/2010, of course I finally got health insurance through his work, so that negates a lot of the extra income. Perhaps if we buckled down one more year we would see all our CC debt gone. But we have had our ups and downs in the past 2 1/2 years, not really economy related. We went overseas to visit relatives which was a big financial strain, dh got in an accident and had to miss 1 month of work, we finally became car loan free, we decided to try for #2 and everything else in between, oh and I can't forget the lovely toyota recall and the cash for clunkers, which affected our income greatly seeing how dh is a car salesman for toyota. We are still making mistakes financially, but the economy is not really holding us down, it is more our bad decisions and impatience and high health insurance costs and less so lack of income or the bad economy.