Do you live check to check?

yes I live week to week and juggle bills. I am a single mom and have not had a raise in 10 years. We get by but barely. I'm good with what money we do have. If we were to have an emergency....we would be in big trouble. my car is our life line and it is a junker....i just have to pray it gets us through as i can't replace it.

Well... ditto I did live most of my life check to check... no matter how much money I made. That is what we call "living day to day"... or "one day at a time" or "living for the day". The more money you make... the more you spend and the bigger are your bills. It does not matter if you spend it partying or investing it in a property or something else... the result is the same... or worse. If you lose your job... you can stop partying... but you cannot stop repaying your mortgage... otherwise you lose your house. They can take your house away... but they can never take away the good times you had "partying". People who manage to retire with their own house and a nice lump sum pension... still have to budget everyday to make that money last. It does not matter how much money you did manage to save... you only did succeed saving it by having a tight budget... and now that you are retired... you still have to maintain a tight budget to make that money last as long as possible. Being rich is an illusion. Some people live a more comfortable life than some other. But very few people are so rich that they can go out everyday and buy anything their little heart desire. It is all about living within your means and not wanting things which you cannot afford. It is about learning to be happy with what you got. If you can achieve that state of mind... you can be as happy as a millionaire on his yacht. Money does not buy happiness. The guy who needs a yacht to be happy is only kidding himself. He'll soon get tired of the yacht... and will need to buy a new toy to be happy. Happiness is a state of mind... not how much money you have in the bank.

I use to be able to save at least a little bit, but the economy right now is just beating our budget up.My partner and I both work in what could be considered luxury services. He's a tattoo artist, I'm a hypno-therapist. We're both self-employed. When people are trying to keep their homes from foreclosure, they're not thinking about getting new ink or about giving up their bad habits. We've both seen about a 50% drop in how many clients we see in a month. Good-bye last year's saving, hello new debt.

I receive SSI disability and about $724 a month and by the time I pay my bills I have about $20 cash money left to buy things like toilet paper, toothpaste things like that...if I didn't get food stamps as well I'd be starving here. I'm longing to get a really successful on-line photo business going so I can tell SSI to kiss my grits And not have to worry anymore about money..kind of fed up with it!

Like you Katherine I also live this way, my whole life. Although now, I am proud to say I was able to save up for a vaction. I have done it 2 years now. However like everyone else I am feeling the pinch more and more. So I am not sure if I will be able to do it this year or not. I wish I could save so much more. Idealy it would be great if I had at least a 3 month cusion for all my bills. Enough to carry me through unforseen illnesses or something. But because I missed a few days of work because I was sick, I did end up taking time off. I am now worried I will have to go into the little savings I do have to cover the rent. *sigh* 2 stepps forward 3 back it seems sometimes.

I sure do and I will not even say how small my social security check is but there is little left at the end of the month so I have taken on four surveys to sort of make some pin money so to speak and it has helped as will mylot to a little degree but I am not on here just for the money only.so I have to budget just to get buy I did have some money from retirement but I cannot believe how fast that went as my son was having trouble paying the rent and I could not do anything other than help him to pay it as I live here too. anyway it is check to check as it probablyis for a lot of us mylotters.

It seems that most working people are now living paycheck to paycheck. Many of the good paying jobs have disappeared and you are now working for a smaller wage. My husband was a construction electrician for over 30 years. After 9-11, many of the large construction projects were canceled or put on hold. For five years, he didn't have much work which drained our savings and put us in debt. Any time you are over 55, it is difficult to get a job. He did take early retirement and is now working at a job for half his former wages. We are working our way back, but with the increase of all the utilities, food, gasoline, health care, etc. it is very difficult. If you do get a small raise in pay, it is quickly eaten up by the bills. I try to make a little extra money on the internet (our only luxury) and that helps out a little with our budget. We want to get all of our debt paid off so we can move to a warmer climate for our retirement years. Our biggest goal, however, is to try and get some money back in savings. It is very scary to not have any cushion.

Yes, you are right. Now the things have become so expensive, it is hard to maintain all the expenses. then there are emergencies that you never know when it will happen.Its like i do not live cheque by cheque but eagerly wait for payday.Its just i am waiting now as its 26th and will be paid only on 31st.

Yes, we live check to check and I hate it... I'd like to be able to buy stuff we need when we need it instead of waiting until some money comes in.

I, personally live paycheck to paycheck. Social Security does not pay the disabled all that much. I give Bruce part of my money for my share of the bils. I also buy the groceries for the month. I buy all of the 'household needs'. That leaves a little for getting what I want or need. Since I have given up smoking the number is up a lot more.

I certainly know what it is to live from bank loan to bank loan. You overdraw your account by the same amount as your salary. When you get paid the loan is paid off. The next day you start on a new loan. It took us years to get out of that cycle. You don't buy luxuries often if at all, and you know the insides of the "cheap" shops better than you do your own home. I have been fortunate to make a little money, which I am spending by not working at all for a while. I draw nothing from the State. I am paid up on my Old Age Pension so I owe nothing there (but they'll take it just the same) and I shall have a good occupational pension kick in when I am 60. My wife works and earns a fair wage and when I do go back I shall only go to earn enough to pay what is left on the mortgage. But well off or poor; I have never not been happy with my life (had a few close moments though). That's what it is all about in my book. Making others happy if I can, and being happy myself.

We live paycheck to paycheck as well. Even when I was working part time at walmart it seemed like we never had enough money to stay ahead of the bills. Especially with gas costs as high as they are. We were spending $80 a week on gas for the van alone driving back and forth to work. Now we have a smaller car that only runs about $40 a week but it came with car payments and full coverage insurance.

I live a very average life (but not a mediocre life, I mean financially). When I was still working, I was also part of the rat race. Long before payday you know where the money is going and you don't have anything left for savings. And it happened every 15 days. But anyway, I'm constantly trying to do something about it by nonstop research. I have a strong feeling it will be solved in a very near future.

I used to beabled to keep maybe $30 dollars in the bank, but how with the prices of everything going up, it is simply struggling from check to check, can't do much with 649 a month from disability...

Thankfully no.I was able to save quite an amount for the future.Savings is an absolute necessity.

Yes I do and always have done Even when I was working and when I was Married But I would not be in this Situation if the X would have been more sensible and led a Family Life instead of a Social Life But yes I am still there now

We have always lived from payday to payday, often ending up in our bank overdraft because there never seemed to be enough money to live on. Never any money to put away for a rainy day, yet we always had rainy days. Being totally fed up of it, I decided to take stock at the beginning of this year and look at what was coming in and what was coming out and where I could make cuts. To save any money we need to live on an extremely tight budget, and so thats what I did I budgeted for every penny coming in, and would only spend what I needed to, whatever is left now goes into a high interest savings account. Ok it means that I can never impulse buy and if it is not on my list it does not get bought, but it does mean that I can save more. I get extra bits and pieces from what I do on the computer, ok it is never going to make me a millionaire but it is money that is extra and not needed for anything and so that goes into the savings too.

Yes, it's very frusterating. It's the reason why I decided to take the free time that I have, and try to earn some extra cash online. I don't make much money at my job, and neither does my boyfriend. We had to move in with my parents in order to get back on our feet again, and it turned into us being here for over a year. It's driving me mad, we just want to get these bills out of the way and get our own home, get married, and start a family, but it's seeming like that will never happen.

For the first few years after college, I lived with my parents and was able to save some of the money from my first job. A few years after that, I got married and we moved into an apartment. For the first year or two of marriage, we had a difficult time saving money after all the expenses we had. We did save a little bit of money but not very much. We continued to do well in our respective jobs and we now are able to save a more significant amount each and every month. We both know how important it is to save for retirement as well as save for a "rainy day" but given how the economy is and the various rising costs (especially housing and gas), it is sometimes difficult to have money to save at the end of the month.

Yes. I live paycheck to paycheck. After I pay my basics such as rent, groceries, utilities, etc. There is nothing left over. People say to cut down on luxuries and entertainment, but doing that won't help because I don't have any luxuries. I have no cable tv, no car, no take out dinners. All I have is my internet connection, a 3 year old dvd player and a old Nintendo game system from 1985. People who have never been limited income just don't seem to understand.