Nobody likes to talk about this part of the military life-- the family that gets shorted on their paycheck. Sometimes more than half. How do we survive? Church soup kitchen, grocery give-away from St.Vincent de Paul, on-base grocery warehouse that is specifically for those who have no funds for food. And the dreaded credit card spending. So many family's are in debt because of the low income that they receive and in turn end up using those high interest credit cards to feed and cloth themselves.
Thankfully, we did some pretty good grocery shopping last week, and so the freezer is still pretty stocked with frozen meat and veggies and things.
A large majority of military families live on one income because there are very few jobs now that actually would benefit the family. What use is it to go to work to pay to put your children in daycare? Maybe if you just want to get out of the house for a few hours. (I can understand that!) But it's still not really worth it if the money you're earning is going right into someone else's pocket.
To read a report from the RAND National Defense Research Institute about military spouse job practices go here.
I've noticed that a lot of ladies around here do Tupperware, Mary Kay, or some of those home furnishing catalog things. I'm not much of a sales person....But it's fun to look at what they have:)
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Speaking of low income...The 17th is Father's Day and as we're low on funds there won't be much around here to celebrate. However, I did some research and found this site which gives a military person up to 4 free tickets to a Anheuser-Busche theme park. How does that not rock?! So I'm taking Kevin to Sea World for Father's Day. We'll pack a lunch and the stroller and some sun-block and go see some fishies. Everybody and their brother (father, grandfather, uncle) is probably going to do the same thing...but hey, it'll be fun anyway!
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And speaking of even more free stuff....We're doing without entertainment around here. I don't know about anyone else, but cable/satellite is expensive to start...So I found these places as an alternative to cable tv-- www.dailymotion.com, www.youtube.com, and stage6.divx . Enjoy. You can find whole tv show episodes, bloopers, peoples video blogs, music videos, movies, etc. All free, all the time. And really entertaining.
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A lot of the big networks have full length shows online for free. I'm addicted to abc.com! Check it out :-)
you have me totally addicted to abc.com now....
Well, you said it all very well. I can remember the days of popping the same 5 library movies into the player over and over because cable was out of our budget. I also vividly remember being able to grocery shop once a month (on the 15th) with a $300 budget for 5 people. Thank God for breastfeeding! We got used to "icky" things like powdered milk (Kateri still doesn't like milk of any kind because of those childhood experiences) and canned meat. Wow! Do you know about WIC? It's a less icky food program. Do you live near the commissary? I know that being able to shop there and use coupons really helps stretch my dollars. Even though we now make more money, we've added a few kiddos along the way and since the public schools in our area stink and my house is so tiny (homeschooling would not work well), we are paying muchas dinero out for tuition every month. It never ends, it just all gets shifted around. Many prayers! I do have some suggestions if you want to call. I love you and know all too well where you are.
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