I’ve been looking forwards in life quite a lot recently, in terms of career, starting a family, our home… I haven’t come up with any answers, but have found lots of questions and choices!
I currently earn a bit less than my husband, for a few less hours a week (although those hours are more random hours than his. We live in a lovely little two bedroom flat, which I love, and is ideal for the two of us, but when (God willing) we start a family and we need to find room a third lil person we might find it more of a squeeze. Now a baby is very small, but all the stuff associated with having one takes up a lot of room! Will that work in our lil flat or do we need to move first?! If we need to move that throws up many more questions: where do we move to, what can we afford, will we need to move out of the city or to an area of the city we’re less keen on.
At the moment we’re ticking along quite nicely on two wages, with a mortgage worth much less than our property, but with one wage that would be harder, and if we had a bigger mortgage we might struggle. It makes me wonder how people do it. We’re not on high paid jobs, but we’re not on the minimum wage either.
I’m not the sort of person whose “organised” with money, I’m just careful. If I don’t have it I can’t spend it, if I’m getting short of money I become very careful about what I spend money on. I’m not generally an expensive consumer, I prefer charity shops to high street shops, I buy things on offer or on sale and try to go for the most cost-effective. I’m happy to buy own named brands on many things. I’ve learnt through my job, how to buy a weeks worth of meals with VERY little!
Anyway, back to my reason for starting this post… I started thinking the other day about whether I should consider further my career or not. It was actually after visiting my friends in Kent, as one of them is a social worker, and a comment was passed about how their finances were doing, and it made me realise that I’d earn more as a social worker. I’d never really thought about being a social worker before, even though I’m a social care worker. In the past the only thing that I had really looked into was a degree about working with people with learning disabilities, and there was one random place that did it – I wasn’t THAT interested!
Well today I’ve done a bit of research, and found out that there are undergraduate degrees about that I could do in Plymouth or Bristol, that I could get into thanks to my NVQ3 and experience, BUT it’s 3 years, and I’m not sure I want to study for 3 years!
My jobs are pretty secure, and I could get more or less hours as I wish – if one job packed in I could do the other full time (although I’m not sure I want to). Andy’s plodding along in his job, he’s seeking something a bit more forfilling really, but there doesn’t seem to be much about that is right. When we start a family I’ll need to rely on Andys wage, and I’ll only get maternity pay on my contracted job – so that won’t be much! Andy’s even pondered the idea of a shared work/parenting role (when practical), but I’m not sure how successful that would be – maybe I should ask other parents about it.
Wow head spin. All these ponderings make me feel happier just being a married couple with any children in a lil flat with an affordable mortgage! I blame age, and that silly ticking clock – I may not look 29, but I am. I worry about starting a family too late, and the implications that could have, but I’m so torn as to when is the right time!
Hi Anne,
Hope you don’t mind me crashing your blog– clicked the link from facebook. Here’s my 2 cents (as Americans say):
You may never feel ready to have a baby. But if you’re emotionally ready to handle it, I’d say go for it. A 2 bedroom flat would be fine for a baby. They’re not that big! We lived in a TINY rented one bedroom flat when I got pregnant with Isabella (not planned), but it worked out fine. And we even had all three kids while we were living in a 2 bedroom flat (one of the bedrooms was converted into 2 rooms but they were both really small). And we managed! It was tight financially for a while, because I stopped working for 2 years after Isabella was born. But you know about a million people with babies and I’m sure you’d be flooded with baby stuff if said you needed some!
But this is just my small advice. The right time is obviously when you both feel it is! It is a big change! x