Making Ends Meet

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What I find interesting about threads like this, is that people seem to think it is wrong not to have a large family.Children are expensive in our case because we both have to work to provide food, shelter and so on. We can’t afford a babysitter for more than one. I know many women who are in the same position.
 
Wow… I don’t know what to think about what the OP thinks about Catholic families. I was 22 when I got married, had my first at 24, 2nd &3rd at 27, and 4th at 29. I did fine for quite a while… until ex went psycho and later left the home when I was 35. I get no child support and yet we did not starve. My kids went to Catholic schools and one year I made a grand total of $755 working part time while I went back to school. We struggled a bit, but oh the love… We did fine despite the hard years. One of my proudest moments was when my now (well 2 days from now)21 yo told me how thankful he was that we didn’t have the resources to give them everything like alot of their friends. His friends did not appreciate all that their parents gave them. Recently my 18 yo repeated that same sentiment. My 16 dd is very close to her brothers and all 3 surviving children are so close it is incredible to see. Two and a half years ago I remarried and inherited a now 12 yo step dd, 3 months after I got the job I have now. Things are much better now, and I am the Director of Info technology at my company, but we are still frugal with our money. It’s called life… this could have happened to anyone. The experience was well worth the struggle as you can see. My kids are awesome, they aren’t spoiled, they all love each other and they love me and dh too. Often we make presents for each other instead of buying, not just to save money, but to show how much we love…

Last year was a rough year. I miscarried at 12 weeks… DD drove me to the hospital and stayed by my side the whole time. Even after DH got to the hospital, both stayed by my side all day until I had to go for surgery. All the kids were heartbroken. At 5 weeks pregnant I broke my leg and ds1 drove me to the hospital, then at 10 weeks ds2 had ankle surgery. It was rough, but we all stuck together. I would call us a very close family. We laugh we play we cry and we love… we don’t miss “things” because we have each other. Truly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
 
  1. Children are not as expensive as you think they are. The biggest investment they require of you is time. Last time I checked, it didn’t cost you anything to give your time to someone.
  2. Things are reusable. Once you have the basics for one child, future siblings become even less expensive.
  3. If all else fails, public education (through grade 12) is free. I am sure God would rather that your children be in this world and you were open to receiving them than not receiving them because they would be too expensive to send to private school. I don’t buy into this whole “we have to send them to Catholic school.” You are obligated to instruct them in the faith and teach them how to live as Catholics. While this may or may not be difficult to do while they attend public school- it is doable none the less.
  4. Homeschooling can be very cheap.
  5. You don’t need a lot of things to be happy. Right now we have satellite TV and internet. I could easily do without those things. We have two (used) cars- I would give up mine if we had to. We have cell phones- could do without those if we had to. We could downsize our house or move to a less expensive area. There are lots of things we could do- and we aren’t even living very expensively right now. We are a one income family and budget every penny so that we can have the things we have. If things get tighter, so does our budget.
  6. If it is God’s will, finances are considered reason enough to use NFP.
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Krista, this is it: raising kids does NOT cost ‘the earth’. We have 2 girls, aged 5 and 3, we also have very little money…as in…our taxes and bills and rent/gas/electric/water/fuel are almost equal to what dh earns. So, if I have $150 spending money for food, drink, clothes, shoes a month I’m doing well. And you know what? I keep a very strict register of our spending, and having the girls has hardly put a penny extra on our bills! We’ve just started shopping in the ‘lower-end-of-the-market’ grocery stores and I’ve learned to cook with cheap ingredients such as peas, beans, lentils etc We eat well, they don’t go hungry and all that would be different if we were just the two of us, would be we’d buy from slightly ‘better shops’.I live in Britain, and where we used to buy at Sainsbury’s, we now buy at Netto or Aldi! Clothes, same thing, 'Pound-stretcher or Poundshop, sometimes Primark or Matalan and it lasts YEARS. We literally wear our clothes out!

I know if I went out to work, I could probably earn a good wage, but for now I enjoy watching my children grow up -while dh works 56 hours a week as a truck driver.

I just don’t get this ‘kids are soooooo expensive’ mentality. I was an only child and always paid my own way, my mom was a widow with very little money and growing up in Holland I got $800 a year ‘Orphans pension’, which from the age of 12 I put towards school-books, clothes, shoes, a season-ticket to the open-air pool and I budgetted all my little ‘luxuries’ (including a haircut or a bag of sweets!) from that allowance. When I went to university I paid all tuition costs myself, I had several ‘little jobs’ in my spare-time and I left university with no ‘loans’ to pay off…

I expect our kids to pay their own way through life, just like I did and my dh feels the same: his parents never paid for college, he started work at 15! What is wrong with that? I think we can do too much for our children, and I think if they get used to ‘receiving everything in their lap’ with no effort, they’ll grow up thinking the world owes them a living!

So, no I just don’t get it…friends of ours have just had their 6th child, and they are in a similar situation financially, and still everybody has clothes to wear and food to eat. You become inventive, and…those kids appreciate a chocolate bar, because they get it so rarely! Which I don’t think is a bad thing…

Anna x
 
My great-grandparents had 14 children between the ages of 1 and 17 when they died together in an accident. My grandfather was 2 years old at the time. This was during a time in America that we did not have social services nor welfare. His oldest brother, age 17, and his wife, age 16, raised all except 1 of those children (she was in very fragile health, nuns took her in to care for her, long story short, they never wanted to give her back and she lived her whole life in the convent until she passed away at the age of 89, she became a nun). So they raised his 12 siblings. He was a farmer, him and his wife raised all of his siblings and their 6 children. For many years they didn’t have a vehicle (well a motorized one). The whole family maintained their Catholic faith and went on to have large families themselves (I can’t even begin to tell you how many relatives I have). They never went without, they were all very happy and well adjusted people. They loved each other and always remained close. Many of them also became (or married) farmers.
If my grandfather was still alive today he would be close to 100 years old. If his brother was able to do it 98 years ago, I am sure it is more than possible in today’s society.
I hope that you are keeping up with this thread and have come to realize it is possible! 😃
 
maria29 said:
What I find interesting about threads like this, is that people seem to think it is wrong not to have a large family.Children are expensive in our case because we both have to work to provide food, shelter and so on. We can’t afford a babysitter for more than one. I know many women who are in the same position.
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I do not think it is wrong to not have a large family. Having a large family is rarely actually up to the couple. I know many people married young as I did and were never given the chance to have any or only have a few. It really is not a question about being open to a large family as much as a question of being open to life in general.
I also don’t have any issues with people who make lots more money and thus have the option of buying lots more materials goods. I do think it is wrong to desire any worldly object more than a life, but owning things justly earned in and of itself is certainly not wrong if one can afford it.
**I simply refuse to believe money is the genuine reason MOST people do not have children or more children. 2/3 of the world is far worse off than the worst off of americans/europeans. Yet 3rd world countries not only want children, they are willing to have them even under terrible odds and situations. Children are hope. The worse off a person is, the more hope they need.😉 **
 
Rob_s_Wife said:
I do not think it is wrong to not have a large family. Having a large family is rarely actually up to the couple. I know many people married young as I did and were never given the chance to have any or only have a few. It really is not a question about being open to a large family as much as a question of being open to life in general.
I also don’t have any issues with people who make lots more money and thus have the option of buying lots more materials goods. I do think it is wrong to desire any worldly object more than a life, but owning things justly earned in and of itself is certainly not wrong if one can afford it.
**I simply refuse to believe money is the genuine reason MOST people do not have children or more children. 2/3 of the world is far worse off than the worst off of americans/europeans. Yet 3rd world countries not only want children, they are willing to have them even under terrible odds and situations. Children are hope. The worse off a person is, the more hope they need.😉 **
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Does this mean that a couple should create a new life if knowing that that new life would cause them to be homeless? I belong to a a mom’s playgroup made up of many women who are low income and most if not all of these women would be homeless if they had another child. Many are on welfare and that barely will cover food for 2 weeks. Section 8 housing has 2-5 year waiting lists.

I cannot imagine as a parent subjecting my child to abject poverty Don’t we as a parent have a moral obiligation to provide the basics (food, shelter and clothing) for our children? I don’t mean superb food, expensive housing or brand name clothing. I can’t imagine moving into a gun and drug ridden neighborhood just so I could “afford” to have another child.
 
maria29 said:
Does this mean that a couple should create a new life if knowing that that new life would cause them to be homeless?

Children do not make people homeless. Adults make people homeless.
Couples are CO-creators.
Every time a couples has sex, they risk letting God create life. Simple as that. Some may have a higher risk, but every one of them risk it unless they have removed their sex organs.

I belong to a a mom’s playgroup made up of many women who are low income and most if not all of these women would be homeless if they had another child. Many are on welfare and that barely will cover food for 2 weeks. Section 8 housing has 2-5 year waiting lists.

My income is low enough to qualify for those benefits. We do without it, although in times past, we had to use WIC or foodstamps. Welfare is not intended to cover all food expenses. It’s intended to offset a portion of the expense. There’s a wait for housing because there’s no money in making such housing available - so that’s no surprise.

I cannot imagine as a parent subjecting my child to abject poverty Don’t we as a parent have a moral obiligation to provide the basics (food, shelter and clothing) for our children? I don’t mean superb food, expensive housing or brand name clothing. I can’t imagine moving into a gun and drug ridden neighborhood just so I could “afford” to have another child.

Then don’t purposely have another. No one here is saying you have to purposely have more. The church doesn’t say you have to have more. (Simply that you have to use NFP if want to purposely avoid or space having more for serious reasons and should you still get pregnant, you must not terminate the pregnancy.)
We have a moral obligation to raise our children in the faith and to provide their material needs as best we can for them. There’s far worst damaging things to a child’s soul than abject poverty, which I find hard to believe is the case for anyone in your playgroup. Simply because “abject poverty” usually doesn’t include internet/computer and mom’s playdate groups. Again, 2/3s of the world would feel like they are wealthy to live as you and I do.
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I don’t think anyone “has” to have more kids.
I just don’t buy that money is the real reason that MOST don’t. Some? Sure. But most just use money as an easy excuse.
so, if despite your best efforts to avoid it, you got pregnant anyways. what would you do? don’t really want to know, but think it should be something one thinks about, kwim?
**It’s amazing the strength one can find and the options one can see when it seems there’s nothing else to be done. At least, that was the case for us.🤷 **
 
Rob_s_Wife said:
I don’t think anyone “has” to have more kids.
I just don’t buy that money is the real reason that MOST don’t. Some? Sure. But most just use money as an easy excuse.
so, if despite your best efforts to avoid it, you got pregnant anyways. what would you do? don’t really want to know, but think it should be something one thinks about, kwim?
**It’s amazing the strength one can find and the options one can see when it seems there’s nothing else to be done. At least, that was the case for us.🤷 **
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If I got pregnant now even though using NFP, I’d accept it. Would I be happy about it? No, and the stress alone of trying to figure out where the money would come from for rent etc, would be even worse knowing that I am bringing a newborn into such a unstable situation.

As for the moms in my playgroup I never said they were in abject poverty, although I do know several moms who will go to bed hungry to make sure their children get enough to eat, get their electric turned off at least every couple of months. I’ll also qualify too that it’s not really a playgroup more of a support group for women who don’t have enough money to make ends meet, or are just barely. It does turn into a playgroup sometimes because we all bring our children.

What I said was I personally couldn’t imagine putting my child into abject poverty (which would occur because again we wouldn’t be able to pay bills without 2 people working) Perhaps where you live the cost of living is better than where we are. Here you can’t rent a apartment/house under $900 a month.
 
LeahInancsi said:
The basic question is: How does a Catholic family get married at age 18 or 20, have one child two years apart for 20+ years, feed them, clothe them, educate them to grade 12 (at least) and then after all that is done, retire without dumpster diving?

I just can’t reconcile Catholic theology together with today’s economy.
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My parents married at 19 and 22 so that must be the solution. 😃

And a couple of the kids were 1 year apart, one set was 3 years apart…

Now, we’ve all had our indulgences from our parents growing up, such as vacations, a car as a teen, nice clothes and sports, but my parents refuse to give one red cent to education above 12th grade.

Maybe that is the solution, too. 😃
 
Teakafrog said:
It’s easy. You don’t buy a huge new house in the burbs, you don’t drive new SUVs, you don’t wear designer clothes, you don’t have a big-screen in every room, you don’t vacation in Europe or at Disney world twice a year.
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Now, you might scare someone away by making that statement.

My parents have 11 living children and have always had a suburban (purchased new) because they dislike minivans. We live in the burbs and go on way too many shopping adventures at the mall.

Okay, so truthfully, we have one rec-room television and one living room television. But, they are big ole flat-screens.

And, yes, I’ll admit that we’ve never been to Disney world or Europe. Only because of preference! We all went to Cozumel for a vacation and scuba dived. Much more exciting, IMO.

The stereotype that obviously big, Catholic, homeschooling families are living plainly, with thrift clothes and no electronics really needs to get tossed.

Having kids does not equal wearing paper bags and hiding in a tiny house in the ghetto. Although, I will admit I know plenty of people who want to ruin it for other large families… 🤷
 
Feanaro_s_Wife said:
Plus, I would think it would be easier to retire and live comfortably if I had a dozen kids to help me out in my golden years.
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See to it they all marry or become professionals and then ask them to direct deposit 5% of their paycheck into your account…

You could be sittin pretty there!😃
 
ASimpleSinner said:
See to it they all marry or become professionals and then ask them to direct deposit 5% of their paycheck into your account…

You could be sittin pretty there!😃
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Great idea… but then if everybody had as many kids we COULD depend on Social Security now couldn’t we?
 
Frist of all, few people get married until they are done with school and have a decent job nowadays. However, in regards to family situations, my opinion is it probably is all about sacrifice and what you want to get out of this life in preparation for Heaven.

My family is wealthy since my dad is an executive and works countless hours a week to make his money. I know I’ve been very spoiled and my brother and sister equally so especially after my parents divorced and they had to compete over us. We all had our own computers, televisions, you name it, and we would complain over who got what and who got more for Christmas or birthdays and basically all quite selfish. We still fight over who gets more money and my dad always gets phone calls about how come you gave so and so this and not me… But hey, my dad’s ciblings still do the same thing with my grandpa even in their 50s.

The point: Hypothetically, let’s just say my dad only made a moderate income. If my mom cared to discipline or if my dad had more time besides working, we would be punished for fighting over things instead of rewarded by getting our own. We would probably all have to help out with chores instead of relying on the maid to do it and once again be punished if we didn’t do it. Then I assume we would just share everything. I’ve met other families like that and they all get by fine and since sacrifice is very beneficial they seem to be happier. However, that being said, that does not mean that one can not be wealthy. If my family was together and let’s just hypothetically say there were 6 or 7kids in the family, a similar amount of sharing and sacrifice would be necessary and my dad’s high paying job would support it. It just needs to be a family that is together which was a big problem in my situation. The reality is there is no right answer as there are problems with any kind of lifestlye but I’m just saying that while I can’t imagine living without my luxurious lifestlyle given to me from my dad for a long period of time, that does not mean I couldnt have been just fine without it. People don’t need all the things that so many of us think are essentials for familes and children nowadays.
 
wjp984 said:
Frist of all, few people get married until they are done with school and have a decent job nowadays. However, in regards to family situations, my opinion is it probably is all about sacrifice and what you want to get out of this life in preparation for Heaven.

.
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Good post. I was thinking of posting about how living a more modest lifestyle helps produce virtue and gratitude, but you stole the words from my mouth.

We’ve never had very much, but I would also say that we’ve had help from our parents when we needed it. I’m not sure if we’d be okay without those helping hands. Our income has grown with our family though. So, don’t think you will always have the same income. We couldn’t have six kids in our current (though modest) lifestyle with the income we had when we first married.

Although, we aren’t very smart with money. I wish we’d had started our marriage with Dave Ramsey principles. :o
 
That’s the other reason why it is not bad to be wealthy if used propperly and likewise why familes living modestly can do well. For example, my dad and grandpa, while of course being overly generous more than we deserve with us, also have been generous with family friends who are not as wealthy, and helped them pay for the vacation that they otherwise would never be able to take. Sharing is part of what makes life meaningful.

Likewise, for those living modestly or having larger families where sacrifice and sturgggling is part of life in an overall part of living a Godly life and bringing up good Catholic children, then they should not be embarrassed about receiving help from others or gifts. I wouldn’t recommend depending on it but since people do like to share, especially when they see how wonderful and faithful these people are, good things happen.
 
BlestOne said:
Great idea… but then if everybody had as many kids we COULD depend on Social Security now couldn’t we?
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Why do you think I am rooting the Mormons on! Utah has one of the few populaces with replacement+ levels of fertility not counting immigration! 🙂
 
You know, ironically enough, with one exception, the largest families I know are also some of the wealthiest families I know. So certainly having many children doesn’t guarantee that you’ll struggle financially.
 
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