Money money money

Many years ago I found out that Mum had a credit card on which she had overspent. I can't remember whether it was a bank credit card or her Farmers store card, which I still look at as a credit card. Dad had found out what was on the bill and had paid it off, with a promise from Mum that she would never overspend like that. I had been surprised by Mum's spending, because she had always seem to me to be a careful person.

I should never have felt that way, because really she was never different. Her overspending told of her situation where too much happened in that short time – every six months, between September and February, she bought for 5 birthdays, celebrations, funerals, christmas for around 17 people, just whatever she would buy at Farmers for a rather large family. Probably her debt was her Farmers card.

With my first husband, and much later my second husband, I became very conscious about how much was being spent. After my young family came to Expo88 in Brisbane in 1988, I paid for it because my first husband had excuses which I inevitably allowed. After we separated not too long after that, I was declared bankrupt. Not at all my choice, but I had taken on the responsible for our family debt. During my 11 years as a single parent I never overspent.

With my second husband, overspending became a habit and I didn't become aware of it for too long. He spent so much on the equipment he embraced with his contractor work – tipper, trucks, other stuff. I worked, but most of what I earned was spent on what we were doing to decorate our home. We built the front gardens up into tiers with timber walls and stones in the garden, built a large carport on the backyard, put in an electric door on the car garage, concreted our driveway, stripped and rebuilt the kitchen, tiled the floors, rebuilt the ground level guest room, redecorated the bathroom and painted, painted and painted. Three years later we lost that home due to my husband losing his principle contract. I suspect that started my depression.

My credit card was never as high as his, but it did get to $25k. We didn't make any real money from the house sale, but 5 years later, after paying as much as I could, I ended up in hospital in 2014 for my brain aneurysm surgery and my stroke with aphasia. I felt very grateful that CBA agreed to cancel my credit card and my debt – probably because I'd ended up on DSP, a very low income with which I couldn't have paid that debt.

Too many people in this country – in the 'western' world – live either on very low incomes or in poverty. Most of those on Centrelink benefits are in poverty, and most of them are not there by their own choice. My DSP is about a third of what I used to earn. I so often wished I'd never been in hospital, never had a stroke, but right now I thank Centrelink and NZ for DSP. I can't even work like I used to.

In March 2016 the RMIT ABC's Fact Check website reported on Bill Shorten's speech which said that 2.5 million Australians were living in poverty, and one quarter of those were children. Fact Check found that to be correct. ACOSS said, in October 2016, that the number had gone up to 2.9 million.

Who's in the ACOSS inequality factsheet? Older people. Solo parents. Single people. People without paid work. People from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Unbelievable? Check out their link!

I found a blog called The BorgenProject, which according to the Huffington Post "...is an incredible nonprofit organization that is addressing poverty and hunger and working towards ending them." Their blog is stuff I would usually talk about myself, but their link is here. Go read.

There's an Anti-Poverty week later this year – 15-21 October 2017. The anti-poverty website says: “Anti-Poverty Week was founded by the Social Justice Project in the Law Faculty of the University of New South Wales and the National Office has been based there since 2004. The Law Faculty generously provides a work space and use of office equipment.” The website has a lot of information which every person should read. It might seem early to see this information, but if you can help, time will help you. Look through their lists of organisations which will help. They're in every state – different organisations, different people, same goal.

Newspoll's 'State of Play' written on 15 May 2017 said that if an election was held today, Labor would win. This reflects how I feel about this government. Our election should be now, not in the future. We can suffer far too much in that time.

Poverty must be fixed up. No-one asks to live there. Unfortunately I'm damned sure that no politician would ever understand what it really feels like to live there.