Mamamia’s What My Salary Gets Me asks Australians to record a week in their financial lives. Kind of like a sex diary but with money. So not like a sex diary at all. In this series, we discover what women are really spending their hard-earned cash on, and nothing is too outrageous or too sacred. This week, a mum-of-two working part-time shares her weekly money diary.
Age: 39.
Job: Part-time worker doing night fill around 25 hours per week. My husband does warehouse work.
Salary: $35,000 per year; my husband earns $65,000.
Housing: Living in a house in midland Perth with my husband and two daughters, aged four and seven.
We have a very affordable mortgage of $1,100 per month. We bought 13 years ago in a low income suburb, and refinanced back to 30 years when we had our first child, bringing our repayments down.
My husband works days and I work nights and weekends, so we don’t need to juggle daycare, appointments and school pickups.
Our oldest child does speech and occupational therapy weekly with a diagnosis of autism level two - therapy costs are covered by the NDIS, thankfully.
We have personal debt of a car loan, personal loan and family loans, totalling around $60,000, all which we are working through.
On balance, even though I earn less, we are paying 50/50 for household costs.
