Good Times - Bad Timing!! How my partner and I dealt with losing our jobs and having friends from the UK come to visit at the same time...

Well... what a week! Feeling exhausted and bloated from too much fun and food with my bestie and her husband last week! They came to Australia for their honeymoon a year after their wedding and luckily they fell in love with the place so it's good to know they'll definitely be back. They spent a week travelling up the east coast from Brisbane to Cairns in a campervan before flying down to Adelaide to stay with my partner and I for 8 days. We had the BEST time but f*ck me - what terrible timing for our bank accounts!! 

So, I had already been "stood down" (in inverted commas because it looks like we won't be going back to that job ever so not really a stand down at all) from my job as an Electrical TA on a solar farm a couple of weeks before they were due to arrive and had been trying to get on another solar farm that has started closer to home but that fell through just before my friends arrived.... AND THEN.... my partner flew home as planned for what should've been just our booked 2 weeks off for this time in Adelaide with the newlyweds but also got a call the day after he got home saying that the whole of the electrical contractor was being (again-) "stood down" until mechanical got further ahead. This entire job has been a shit show so we've got no hope at all of going back anytime soon that's for sure so the hunt for new jobs is on. 

We could hardly turn our friends around and say, "sorry, it's not a good time for us for your visit so try again another time", so we carried on with our plans and tried our best not to worry too much about what we were going to do after they had left. It's easier said than done, especially when you want to make sure your friends have the best time - they did fly over from the other side of the world after all! We didn't want to feel like we couldn't do everything we had planned or that we couldn't go out to eat or basically worry about money at all so we went all in and were in full holiday mode ourselves. Don't get me wrong, we had the BEST time with them and also ticked a lot of things off the list of things we planned on doing at some point but hadn't got around to as we're not home very much due to working away for most of the year so no regrets here! 

We were very spendy and the plan (when we both had jobs) was originally to just stack up some extra spending money from the couple of weeks' pay leading up to our planned 2 weeks off rather than saving a specific fund for it as we thought 2 weeks of having a spend up wouldn't be a problem at all seeing as we thought we'd be going straight back to work, living in the camp and having free food and making back the money we spent, plus a bit of extra savings up until we come home again for Christmas. The universe had other plans...

I used my 'holiday fund' for a lot of the activities we got up to this week and A LOT of food, which I didn't mind so much as technically this was supposed to be our 2 weeks holiday and it did feel like a holiday having my bestie and her hubby here and doing fun stuff everyday and visiting new places. We also don't have any holidays planned for next year so I'm happy to start building that account back up over time when I get back to work. My partner has also still got one more fortnight pay coming up and we managed to squeeze in our very late 2021-2022 tax appointment in with our accountant so will be getting some money back hopefully in the next few weeks to tide us over. 

Oh - and to top it off, my parents are currently in-flight on their way to Australia for their yearly visit where they'll stay until February... We were supposed to be away at work for most of the time and they would just be using our house as a base until we are home for Christmas but now it looks like the 4 of us will be living together potentially until the new year depending on how the job search goes so that's going to present more money challenges as they want to do things and go out to nice places with us. We'll be having to set some boundaries when they arrive so they know we can't be doing everything and spending a truck load of money while we're not working, especially with Christmas so close. I'm sure they'll understand and hopefully feel sorry enough for us to take us our for a few free meals.... HA JOKING BUT SORT OF NOT HAHAHA... 😬

While none of this is ideal, as we would like to have kept our holiday funds untouched for our own holiday and still have been earning up to and after my friends' visit, as well as getting our tax refund back as a nice little extra bonus on top of our continuous earnings;- life doesn't always go to plan. This time has really highlighted to me how important it is that we stay ahead with our finances and not get carried away when we are working and seemingly earning that good FIFO money. 

So many people say to us "oh you must have heaps of money by now" or "how much money do you need before you don't stress about money anymore" (I've even been guilty of saying this to my partner when he's stressing at times) but the fact of the matter is that we are working in a very unpredictable industry and it's a pretty unconventional way of living; travelling to different states and living in dingey motels or crappy camps (if we're lucky enough to have accommodation and food provided on a project!) for months and months on end and working 13 days on and 1 day off but the fact that when we do, we earn enough to get us through times like these with little stress makes it worth it, in my opinion. I sometimes think it would be nice to have a permanent job where you know how much you're going to earn for the year but that's where our dedication to saving, investing and managing our money for these unforeseen circumstances comes in to play and outweighs the Monday-Friday, living at home lifestyle.

It could be so easy to spend what you earn while you're earning it and feel "rich" or at least like you are very comfortable - comfortable enough to have dinners and nights out with new outfits and countless ubers and hangover uber eats without worrying about whether you can afford it. A lot of FIFO workers could probably even throw in a few toys like cars, jet skis, boats, camper trailers, whatever it is you're into, without going in to debt, which would make the average person feel "rich". However, if we had been living like this the whole time we had been working, we would be pretty screwed when something like this happened and we lost our jobs with no emergency fund or general savings behind us. Fat lot of good a boat would do us if we couldn't afford a tank of petrol to get it down to the river for a fun weekend of skiing would it? 

As it stands, we reckon we could not work for 6 months before spending all of our savings (which of course we would NEVER do) as a very worst case scenario - and that's not even from being too frugal - just getting on with daily life probably without any major expenses thrown in. To know that we have two mortgages to pay and can still comfortably live without working for a while is a massive weight off our shoulders. Imagine, we just bought our first investment property 2 months ago and here we are unemployed in the lead up to Christmas... if we weren't financially secure from making smart decisions with That FIFO Money all year round, the stress that we would be under right now would be unbearable and both of our mental health and our relationship with each other would no doubt suffer. A massive reminder to myself and anyone reading this that taking control of your finances and striving to do better with your money is not superficial, shallow or boring - it can literally save your life. Not having huge financial stress like bad debt that you're struggling to pay down, or worrying about how you're going to be able to pay your mortgage, rent or put food on the table for your family is a true life saver. I don't want to get too deep here about an area in which I'm certainly no subject matter expert in but we are all aware of the effects money stress can have on an individual's mental health and wellbeing and that suicide is huge issue, in men in particular, in the construction industry so good financial systems are something I believe should be taken seriously <I wrote a blog post back in September for R U OK Day that talks more in depth about the link between money and mental health, you can read it here. If you, or your workmate are struggling, I would strongly recommend looking at the resources available on the Mates in Construction website or the R U OK? website>. 

I'm truly grateful that I have changed my spending habits hugely in the last few years and that I have the luxury of still having a roof above my head and not concerned about how long for, even though I unexpectedly lost my job at a very bad time! I think us FIFO workers as a whole need to appreciate the opportunities we have for ourselves and our families with the money that we are making and lifestyle that we live and truly make the most of every opportunity that comes our way. At the end of the day, we don't know how long we may be in these positions for and what may pop up in life that changes our circumstances or our plans so having a good safety net helps keeps us afloat in so many ways. 

Wish me luck on the job hunt because I'd really like to be working again before Christmas that's for sure!