Will Anything Ever Go Our Way?

15 years this August.
That's how long we've been married and still going strong. Good going these days I think!
The last 10 years have been a bit rough financially though. Ian's job market collapsed back in 2000 dropping our income by half and creating havoc with our mortgage, credit cards and loans. We ended up having to sell our house and going into rented accomodation where we have been ever since.
With the help of the CAB we fought for 7 years to get everything else under control until in April 2007 we finally threw in the towel and went bankrupt. It was the only way we could ever get our finances and our life back on track.

For the last year we have finally got things under control. Bills are paid when the pay cheques come in. Money is split into pots so that 6 monthly or annual bills are catered for when they arrive and Xmas is saved for.
I finally got back out to work in July last year but even with my wages we still have an income less than we had when we first got together 15 years ago! Sickening.

We had finally stopped worrying and we were just getting on with our lives and trying to make plans for the future.
Then along comes 2008 and a new recession.
Ian's company has fully outsourced his job and as of Friday the 13th this week (and Ian's birthday!!) he is redundant.
Because of the state of the job market at the moment there is little chance he will virtually walk into another job like he usually does.
To top it off....... our washing machine is on it's last legs. It sounds like it's going to have a catastrophic failure every time it goes into a spin so we now owe my Mum for the new washing machine she just bought us.
GIVE US A BREAK!!!!! It just isn't fair. Every time something begins to go right for us it just gets slammed away.

I refuse to give in though. We are just going to have to tighten our belts a little bit more until Ian gets another job.
Looking on the bright side....... If Ian gets a job fairly quickly then the redundancy money he got from (spit, spit) Unisys will pay for Xmas and our holiday in York this year with hopefully a little left over. The key word being 'IF'

So the next few weeks are going to be interesting.
I am now going to spend some time having a long hard look at our shopping bill to see where we can save a little more money.