How Did I Get Here
The easy answer is purchase by purchase. But with most things in life, the back story is the real why and how, so in a nutshell, here it is.
By the time I was 24, I had buried both my parents and grandparents who were instrumental in raising me. I had also buried two brothers and my sister. So I was alone on the planet with some money left from my father and grandfather’s estate. I had been seeing my boyfriend, who later became my husband, through all of those years and I didn’t realise until much later how much he had played and abused me.
So all of the inheritance went into ‘our dream home’. I had much different taste to my husband and wanted to purchase a small flat outright and live happily ever after. However I was soon convinced to build what became to be known by myself as the monument to my stupidity. A two storey glacial house on half an acre in an isolated small town. It overlooked a hill and could be seen from the highway, hence its monumental status.
We were debt free after building it and a strange thing happened to me. I wanted children – NOW. I had always decided not to have them because of my losses in life but the sudden biological urge was overwhelming and I soon became pregnant. The deal I had struck in the beginning, which was soon forgotten by asshole, was that if I used the money to build a house then if we ever had children then I would be able to stay at home with them and not have to work. I thought that was fair. It was not to be. He decided that now I was pregnant we were to be married. I was happy with a registry office ceremony and a barbecue in the backyard. Turns out that costs $10,000 with all the trimmings my husband wanted including a surprise helicopter ride. So this was our first debt.
I nearly died having my first baby with a significant bleed out so I was in hospital for about 10 days. My husband had been arguing with me at every chance to not pay for the private health insurance convinced that we didn’t need it. I said that if I only work to pay that I will do it. The bill for the hospital came in at over $25,000 and we didn’t have to pay anything and he suddenly agreed that health insurance was a great idea.
My husband was always in and out of work. Each time he started a new job I would say to myself I will give it two days before something goes wrong, or he has an asshole for a boss. And this was always the case. Sometimes it only took a day. Anyway, straight after I gave birth he was unemployed so I was working from home typing and doing administration work for doctors the day after I got out of hospital. It continued this way for about 3 months, only with $60.00 or so to spend on groceries and other costs of living.
He then went to work on his own and started getting electrical jobs. He had achieved his contractors licence and thought life was going to be better working for himself. Um, no. Turns out he needed all the shiny things, tools, equipment and he was hopeless at pricing jobs so a few months later he had creditors to pay with no income to do so. We got our second debt. $35,000 was the total.
Then the block of land next to us came up for sale, which would mean we could have an acre property on 2 titles. It seemed a good investment. It was also very cheap so we borrowed another $35,000 plus costs to finalise the purchase. Our total now was $79,000.
We had always bought second hand cars, my upper limit was, and still is to this day, $5,000 with under 100,000km on the odometer. So when my husband said he needed a new ute as the one I had bought him originally was now too small, I thought he was buying a second hand one as before. Nope. He came home with a signed contract for a brand new Holden at a cost of $33,000 and told me to ring the bank to organise the money. Now we were at $112,000. I was still driving my beat up old Subaru and by now had 3 little babies. Do not trust contraception when you’re breastfeeding #justsaying. I mentioned that it might be time for me to get a bigger car. All hell broke loose.
Eventually through some coincidental peer pressure my husband agreed that a new car was in order and I could spend no more than $8,000 and I eventually found a great car and went back to the bank. We had hit $125,000 because while I was there, of course he needed a new bench drill….
Then we decided to move interstate and I was actually able to save the money to do so. We eventually sold our dream home and purchased another dream home of my husband’s choosing for over $400,000 and we were now over $200,000 in debt.
This pattern kept going for a number of years until eventually I decided to leave and my husband committed suicide. He left me with all the debt, some insurance and a big mess to clean up.
I sold the house and bought another and paid off the debts and I was again debt free. Here’s the thing. You cannot raise 3 babies on no wage as a single parent. Also just prior to leaving my husband I had become quite ill with glandular fever and developed chronic fatigue. After his death my health deteriorated significantly and I was not able to get back to work for over 4 years, partly because I wanted to stay with the babies and make sure they would be OK and partly because I had to spend most of my days in bed while they were at school, only getting up to pick them up, make dinner do homework and do it all over again the next day.
To get through I made a conscious decision to go into debt, believing that once I was well and back at work I could manage the debt.
This plan actually worked. I was $250,000 in debt by the time I got back to the workforce and with employment I was able to consolidate it all to make a single payment so I thought eventually I would be able to knock it all off once the kids were older. I was also undertaking my Masters degree which I thought would lead to a higher income.
I was absolutely 100% totally wrong about all of it.
Something happened to one of my children and she became very ill and I had to leave my job to become her full time carer. The government does give you an allowance for this of $400.00 a week, so I was screwed financially, but at least I could feed my other babies, take care of her and the finances would just have to wait for later on. This was my daughter. She needed me. I cared for her for 2 years and now am happy to say she is well and on her own path. But I found myself in serious debt, up to $270,000 and getting rejected from job applications at the rate of 10 per month. I was able to negotiate with my mortgage provider for special circumstances until I could get employment and they were very, very good to me. At the 18 month mark it was clear I was in serious trouble. Debts were mounting and I could not get a job ANYWHERE. Not even McDonalds.
The only option was to get a business, and basically buy myself a job. This idea was kind of great to me as I had always done my own thing on and off over my ‘career’ and being my own boss made it possible to control my income, apply everything I knew to my own business instead of someone else’s, and not be the subject of a downsizing in my later 50’s if I did happen to get a job.
The only way to achieve this was to sell my house, release the equity and buy the business, and rent a cheap house.
That is where I am today. I am finalising the purchase of the cafe on 3 April 2018. I have a very cheap house at $365.00 per week in the inner city. I can catch public transport to work, I have no debt and no real personal expenses. I sew and this is my downfall in terms of spontaneous purchases, but I am proud to say I have not purchased any fabric for a number of months. I have given myself a weekly budget of $300 for food and utilities and recreation and I give this to myself in cash and keep a very close eye on it through my handy little wallet app on my iphone and ipad and I reconcile each week, the surplus going into an emergency cash jar.
The business is just breaking even at this point and I got it very, very cheap. It cost my $25,000. The business 3 doors up the street sold for over $300K a few months before. I plan to be aggressive in my marketing, offer specialised food in the vegan and gluten free arenas, and hopefully after a few months, I should be able to bank about $2,000 a week to put towards my retirement, but that is another post entirely.
I will be blogging about the cafe weekly figures so you can read along with what it takes to build a cafe business and watch the budget with me. Any input gratefully received.
It’s been a tough road for me, no doubt. But through it all I read, and read, and read. You will read about a few of my other adventures along the way, but the most important thing for me has been the ability to continually learn, refine my own innate financial ability, and to never, ever give up.
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