chapter 2: the great escape

Chapter 2: 'The Great Escape'.

Reaching the depths of economic despair, Joe and I pulled ourselves together and stopped thinking depressing thoughts like 'we'll never afford to live in our own home let alone rent anywhere vaguely gentrified ever again'. No damn it, we would rise above these bleak and socially elitist thoughts and finally learn how to budget even on one income. After a few unsuccessful budgeting attempts we came to the realisation that we had to budget day by day.

Our basic formual was this: Our total monthly pay - rent - $150 grocery/week - bills - $200 safety net - other regular expenses = $ left over for the month - $1000 savings divided by the number of days til next pay day = our daily allowance.

The daily allowance usually came to something like $25/ day, we spent this on things such as petrol, dvds, beers, extra groceries, and so on. Each day we would write on our weekly budget sheet how much we had spent to keep track of our expenses. It wasn't easy but once we got the hang of it we were saving $1000 a month.

Along with this budgeting there were some other major changes we made to our habits that helped us to save, or more importantly, to not spend. We started shopping at Aldis, which we had not fully embraced until this stage for fear that our child would not sleep well at night in an aldi's brand nappy, or that because we were such coffee loving gurus we couldn't possibly diverge from buying our weekly $18 Lavazza coffee fix.

If Aldis had a fanclub we would be the first to join. Aldis brought our family closer together, our weekly Aldis adventures are a far cry from our virgin voyage into a bagless Aldis experience. For those of you who have never experienced Aldis, take a deep breath, be brave and try to look beyond the quasi-communist, pack-your-own-trolley-or-die, gladiatorial, incongruent post-modernist weekly specials and just try one of the myriad of brands that you have never heard of before (but sound alot like those that you know and trust). If you are a first timer try their chocolate, corn chips or milk and for the more adventurous shoppers don't go past the haloumi cheese, kalamata olives or a loaf of the sliced light rye bread. Once you are a seasoned shopper you won't think twice about buying practically any product sold at Aldis and save yourself hundreds in the process. Our top Aldis buys include nappies for $15 (all sizes work perfectly well), ground 'Brazilian' coffee for $8 and pasta for 59c. Just get to your nearest Aldis and have a go, you will easily fill your weekly shopping trolley for under $200.

Starting a veggie garden
Back at home, one day Joe decided he was going to grow a vegetable garden. He had grand notions of self-sustainability within 3 sqm. We built 2 vege boxes about 2 m long by 70cm wide by 50cm deep, we even built them on concrete. First we layed newspaper, followed by a thick layer of sugar-cane mulch, a sprinkling of fertiliser and a top layer of soil. Our first crop included, shallots, lettuce, garlic, spinach, carrots and onions. Surprisingly they all did quite well which prompted us to grow some tomatoes, peas, potatoes and chillis. Despite a few initial setbacks involving possums (which was overcome with bird netting) our little vege garden provided us with enough lettuce and shallots to make it worth its while. Shallots in particular are fantastic and will last years as they keep growing back again and again.

One day we noticed our 86 year old, next door neighbour peeking over the fence at our vege garden. I asked David "Do you like our vege garden?" catching him by surprise. "I like it so much I'm going to make one myself", and the very next day David embarked on the Taj Mahal of vege gardens, that put our humble boxes to vegetable shame. He boastfully wofted giant Bak Choys over the fence and gifted us with 1 and half foot cucumbers, bragging about his endless glut of tomatoes and the size of his lettuce. David had done his research, he wasn't one to do things by halves. Up until this point David and Nancy, the elderly couple next door had been highly suspicious of us, which is not uncommon amoungst neighbours in Umina. Using a potion of horse manure and comfrey 'tea' his vegetables left ours for dead. Despite the rivalry, the vege gardens opened the doors to a fruitful friendship and many shared green thumb tips from both David and his lovely wife Nancy.

Starting a vegetable garden was one of the best and most satisfying things we have ever done. David's enthusiasm for gardening was infectious, he generously gave us a 'Diggers' gardening club membership and book which is one of the largest retailers of heirloom fruit and vegetables in Australia. Like David, we caught the gardening bug! It has now become an essential component to the way we live.

In Chapter three we will chat about the lessons we learnt on buying a house and raising our two children.

chapter 1: first time parents and suburban survival

Chapter 1:
Jo and I live in Springwood, in the Blue Mountains, N.S.W. We have two kids, three chooks, a vege garden and a two bedroom home which we think is beautiful, sometimes we have to pinch ourselves just to realise that this really is our life. This is our story of how we got here, as just 12 months ago we never thought that owning a home and making ends meet on a single teachers income was possible and even totally comfortable. If you are just starting out in the search for a home, or have a young family, or you just want to learn how to grow your own veges and keep chooks (all without turning into hippies) then you might enjoy reading this blog.

When Jo and I got married 6 years ago, we were cool. We were into cafes, theatre, playing pool at the pub with our friends and hosting the occasional dinner parties...we had reached our socio-cultural apex, at the tender age of 26, when suddenly our first child Noah arrived. After 4 days of labour and an emergency caesar, Noah arrived and our world stopped and so did our sleep. Three days later, whilst Jo was still in recovery I ducked out of the hospital for a coffee and a cigarette, I was so tired I fell asleep on my cigarette and burnt a hole in my forehead, everyone sitting around me got up and left suddenly. It dawned on me there and then that things were going to change, but I had no idea how much so.

Apart from the sleep deprivation we had absolutely no idea how the birth of a child and the loss of an income could change our 'change' bowl! Our Blog is for normal ppl, with no agenda who like meat, drink fashionably cheap wine and want to read about how we evolved from double income, play station obsessed, take-away-eating, laisez-faire, latte swilling late risers couple into a family of four who have their own chooks (Henrietta, Billy Holiday and Charlie), a vege garden, their own home, and a brewery on one teacher's income. P.S We are pretty normal.

Having spent 10 months in my Dad's garage, with our 1 and 1/2 year old, where, if you showered for more than a minute and a half the sewerage would back up and come out the shower drain hole and flood the entire bathroom. but it was o.k. because the glugging sound would give you at least a 30 sec warning before your feet were covered in poo...we were sad about the idea of leaving...no really.

We had managed to save enough for a rental bond and so in 2007 we moved to the Central Coast, Umina Beach which was an hour and 20 mins drive to Sydney along the freeway to Joe's work. When we first moved in, we couldn't understand why the beach was so beautiful but the rent was so cheap. We made this move (away from our beloved inner-western Sydney suburb of Summerhill) with our nearly 2 year old son because we couldn't afford to live in Sydney anymore. I had stopped working as a highschool teacher when Noah was born so as I could stay at home to care for him and on Joe's income and our living habits we found it impossible to meet the rent for our apartment.

To describe Umina Beach, one could simply stop at 'Beach, Beer and Bogans' (especially frightening on Australia Day)...but that is not entirely fair, whilst the bogans were uneducated they were nice...enough. This said, Umina was where Joe and I learned two invaluable skills: Budgeting and veggie gardening.

We lived in a fibro beach-house with our Italian Femme Fatale 68 year old landlord, Maria, who also lived in  a condo in our backyard. Maria was a grumpy, old Italian woman who shamelessly walked around our yard in a black bathing suit saying "you mow lawn...dis child boy orrr gel?" whilest hanging her size 26 knickers on the clothes line that we were paying rent for. Maria became our impetus to escape the rental market once and for all.

The idea of budgeting was initially as foreign to us as a 'transnuchal ultra sound' is to a first-time mother. It was in Umina Beach, where we were so far away from any of our usual indulgences - good cafes, cinemas, friends, babysitters, take-away etc - that we realised our 'usual indulgences' were quickly becoming unusual.
"Babe, where has all the money gone? The car is out of fuel and I cant afford to get to work" "Ive got 3 dollars worth of coins in my bag, you'll have to use neutral on the downhills!" It was time to start budgeting.

We began to work out all of our monthly expenses. Groceries, fuel, bills, rent and so forth, then subrtacted it from our monthly income. We aimed to save a grand a month. We limited our daily spending to $25 dollars per day, and kept a record of every penny we spent each day. It started working!

Joe became addicted to the idea of saving money and started researching other possible money saving schemes, when one day my husband had a 'brilliant' idea. We sould become self sustainable! Not to save the world or trees or whales, or cut carbon emissions, we would become self-sustainable and save money! (in order to escape the evil size 26, black bathing suit, knicker wearing, Italian landlord that was Maria) and to finally one day own our own home and never have to rent again (up until this point we had collectively rented 9 places).






Chapter 2 - Joe goes crazy and starts a vege garden to cut grocery costs, consequently this blossoms into a beautiful friendship with our 86 year old neighbour David and his wife Nancy who had the most competitive nature, so that vegetable growing took on a whole new level.