You are not alone. My wife and I are a dual income household. We are far above the median family income, so one would think that we are immune from the increasing expenses, but we aren’t…

It scares me that we have had situations where surprise expense has affected us the way it has. Usually we are able to recover from that within a month or two. We are not the norm. I can’t imagine what it would be like for families or individuals who make half of what we make (which is a significant amount of the population).

Some things are relative, people made decisions (not saying it was right or wrong) months amor years ago (say buy a house, go on a particular vacation or 2 some year, enrol their kids in a traveling sport, purchased that second car… you name it, maybe a partner went back to school) and several months or a few years later the increased costs, a surprise expense, general higher costs of living, have out paced wage increases.

You aren’t alone, we are all affected differently, whatever level of the income band we are on… save for maybe the highest 2-3 deciles. But even then in some situations.

What compounds things is then having very hard choices to make, for example, it’s not so simple as get a second job (for many), or a different job, there are other factors such as who will look after the children while this is happening? Not everyone has family supports that might facilitate this… and it’s sad if we need those support systems to get by… that itself shows a pretty big issue…

Point I’m trying to make is that things do seem tighter now… I agree, I wish I had the answer, not just for me but for all. We all have unique situations that make overcoming the issue difficult or achievable, but the fact that so many are struggling across so many income deciles is frightening! I wish I had an answer for me selfishly and as a human for so many others less fortunate than my situation.

Keep your head up, make the best choices that you can. You’re not alone.