Cash Confessions: What two Perth musicians with one child earning $87,000pa combined spend their salary on

PerthNow’s Cash Confessions asks a wide variety of West Australians what their income is and what they spend their money on in a week.

This week, a married couple, both musicians with one child, share what they spend their salaries on in a week.

Age: I am 37 and my husband is 39. We have a three year old son.

Live: Parkwood, WA

Jobs: We both have casual contract jobs teaching in schools. We are both paid by the hour but only for around 32 weeks of the year, so we have to save money and work hard over the school term to make ends meet during the holidays, especially the lengthy summer holidays!

We both are performers with fairly regular gigs which keeps the money trickling in but being freelancers it is never stable.

Some months are good, but some months the gigs are dry and we have just our school teaching money to live off.

Hubby works a lot less at the moment as he is studying part-time and also caring for our child one day a week.

Salaries: We aim for between $87,000 and $90,000 per year by combining our all of our earnings together.

Our salaries are a bit unpredictable as we are musicians and one of us is also studying. I work five days a week in my school teaching position but with all of the holidays and unpaid breaks it adds up to about $61,000 a year.

Hubby works two days a week in teaching at the moment which will rake in about $22,000 over the next year.

While our hourly rate is fixed, our income can fluctuate based on how many students we have and if there are any absences.

We also don’t get paid if we have to take a day off due to illness or other reasons, so we need a bit of a margin.

We get paid varied amounts depending on what type of gig we do, how long it goes for and where it is, so we just count our gig income as a bonus and use that for the extras (such as going out for dinner, buying non-essential items, Christmas/birthday presents/personal treats and savings towards travel/home improvements).

MONTHLY EXPENSES:

Mortgage: $1,820 per month plus we pay an additional $330 per month in strata fees and rates.

Food/groceries: Between $600 and $750 per month

Utilities: $342 per month

Insurance: $173 per month

Phone/internet: $360 per month (includes paying off one iPhone/iPad and a 15GB prepaid phone package)

Medical: $250 per month (two regular appointments a month, plus some extra put to the side for any GP appointments, etc)

Petrol/parking/Smartrider: $520 per month

Vehicle maintenance/registration: $413 per month

Dining out/takeaway: $400-$500 a month

Alcohol: $30 per month. Hubby doesn’t drink but I do drink a little, although I usually get free drinks at gigs anyway. At home, I only drink what we already have from gifts and things like that.

Car loan (private arrangement): $186 per month

Clothes/presents/personal maintenance etc): $300 per month all up

Streaming services: $35 per month

Internet: $110 per month

Gym membership: $110 per month for two people

Childcare: $675 per month (this is for four days a week after the rebate)

Solar panels: $165 per month

Money we put into savings: Whatever we have leftover

Finance for overseas asset: $230 per month (This is for an affordable block of land overseas that I bought when I was living abroad, before I became pregnant. In the end, we decided to raise our child in Australia surrounded by family but I’ve held onto the land.

ASSETS/SAVINGS/EQUITY:

Equity: Roughly $90,000 from our home that we bought in 2022.

After one-and-a-half years of intense savings (incomes combined) and a $10,000 early inheritance from a treasured grandfather figure in my life who died plus $25,000 from the sale of a previous asset (a separate piece of land I jointly owned overseas with my ex-husband), we were able to secure a loan for a $403,000 home. It’s a three bedroom, one bathroom strata home which was built in the late 70’s on a good size block with a decent backyard. We purchased it in late 2022 in Parkwood. We put down an $83,000 deposit and are paying off the rest over 30 years.

Other assets (combined): $26,000.

We own a cheap runabout car outright which is worth about $3000, and we are paying a family member off for a newer car that we were sold for $14,500.

We are also paying off the block of land overseas which now holds some equity, but probably only about $10,000 so far.

We also have an old 1986 caravan which we got cheaply (bought outright) but have since done up a bit. It’s probably worth about $5,000 now.

Savings: $5,000

This will probably be eaten into over the school holidays though.

ABOUT US:

We had both lived very dynamic and carefree lives as performing artists prior to the birth of our son.

We spent most of the last 20 years travelling, studying and gigging overseas, rather than being greatly focused on creating a strong financial base for ourselves.

I had a block of land with an ex-partner which was split in half when we separated, and I was able to use my half towards our home deposit. It had been sitting in the bank for about four years waiting to be put toward my future home.

Then we got unexpectedly pregnant in 2020, in the peak of the pandemic, and we were living overseas at that time with very little to live off.

We made the decision to move to Perth (my birth town, although I had lived away from Perth for about 15 years) to be able to start afresh and rely on family support while we tried to build a new life together.

We were hoping to be able to build a more stable life for our son.

We spent almost two years living in my sister’s home as boarders with a newborn. We had seven people under one roof! This helped us while we adapted to parenthood, searched for jobs and saved for a home deposit. Without doing this, I highly doubt that we’d have been able to save for a home. At that time, I was working about four days a week and hubby had started working six to seven days a week juggling several different jobs (not to mention rehearsal and gigs!).

All of this allowed us to get a loan from the bank for our humble three-bedroom, one-bathroom home.

It was challenging at times for us, and most certainly for my sister, but we were so grateful because the housing crisis was very stressful and we would have had a really difficult time trying to get a rental.