“I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay. Ain’t it sad?”
-Abba
Yes, Abba, it is sad. Very very sad.
I have never been driven by money. I remember having many conversations with my dad growing up about the importance of earning a good wage (or marrying someone with a good wage!) but it wasn’t something I found particularly important. I always felt happy to coast along – with little to no interest in materialistic items, I didn’t really see why I’d have to earn much. As long as I could pay the bills, buy myself some chocolate and the occasional day out, I was sorted!
Then along came my daughter. My goodness me… PANIC. MODE.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. How am I going to support her? How are we going to take her on holiday? What if she wants what her friends have and we can’t give that to her? She deserves the WORLD and I can’t even give her Blackpool!? My brain was spiralling.
I know, wholeheartedly, that the only thing she cares about right now is the love, and the presence, of myself and my husband. In all honesty, I know that love is the most important thing we can ever give her, and it will continue to be throughout the rest of her life. However, I am very aware of the fact that one day she is going to need financial support be it for school uniform, books, trips, days out with friends etc. and I want to be in the position to say “of course baby, that’s fine, tell me what you need”.
As it stands, we’re barely covering the basics. Both my husband and I are on low wages and our outgoings are considerably high, as we made a conscious decision to move to a safe, family oriented area with a great school catchment. This stretched us financially but we felt the sacrifice was worth it.
Cue me googling “how to make money fast” and spending many a’ night pondering the idea of selling feet pics or signing up to Onlyfans. That would be dandy, but the way my feet look right now, people would be paying me to keep my socks ON.
So whilst I’m still not ‘money’ driven, my mindset has definitely changed. I’m now driven by the intense want to provide for my daughter and give her a secure upbringing. But in order to do that, we need a comfortable income.
Long term it would be absolutely fantastic for my husband and I to enter into higher paying jobs (or even set up our own business). Until then, I’ll be spending much of my free time looking into different avenues to bring in additional income to pop into the savings. Vinted, Etsy, online surveys… every little helps! I will, however, be leaving the feet pics to the pro’s.
The Unseasoned Mother 