Sunshine Coast woman Brooke Saxby said she needs $1,270 per week to cover her weekly expenses and is finding it hard to get ahead. ·Source: Supplied/TikTok
An Aussie woman has tearfully opened up about her struggle to get ahead in the current cost-of-living crisis. Rising housing, electricity, fuel and grocery prices, coupled with lagging wages, means more and more Aussies feel like they are just treading water.
Brooke Saxby has been living pay-to-pay for the last two years and said she feels like she is just “chasing her tail”. The 40-year-old Sunshine Coast woman told Yahoo Finance she was just making enough from her cleaning business to cover her $1,270 per week living expenses and had little wiggle room to save.
“One week I only saved $8 and last week and the week before, I couldn't save any and was in the negative,” Saxby said.
“It’s like I’m going backwards. I’m working so hard and am up until 11 o’clock at night and still can’t get ahead.”
Saxby has been running her cleaning business for the last two years and currently employs two casual staff. She is also a powerlifter and runs her own t-shirt company, Bestee Brand.
She said she was earning about $2,000 per week from her cleaning business, with about $580 per week going towards wages and the rest eaten up by everyday living expenses. Her clothing brand is yet to turn a profit.
Rent is her biggest expense at $300 per week, followed by a business car loan at $150 per week which she took out to get to and from work.
“Then I have insurance for that, then I have health insurance which is huge. It’s so much and it’s consistently going up, but my wages aren’t going up as consistently,” she said.
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Electricity bills are another big expense, along with fuel at about $100 per week, plus grocery costs. Then there are business costs, including staff wages, accounting software and website fees.
“The thing that’s hard for me is I’ve got a roof over my head, I’ve got a vehicle, I’ve got all these things that would be deemed as not in poverty,” Saxby told Yahoo Finance.
“But why am I living pay-to-pay? It’s invoice-to-invoice for me because I’m self-employed.”
Saxby shared a video about her struggle online and was blown away by the amount of Aussies sharing they were in the same boat. ·Source: Supplied
Saxby said she was able to reduce her weekly living expenses from over $1,500 to $1,270 per week by cutting out visits to the chiropractor, something she had been doing to help with her powerlifting training and alignment.
She is working about 55 hours a week, with 45 hours dedicated to her cleaning business and 10 hours spent on her t-shirt business. She recently had to increase her cleaning prices to $55 an hour to help cover GST costs.
With little left to cut out of her budget, Saxby said food is sometimes the only place where she was able to “cut corners”.
“Last week, when I paid the girls all their wages, I only had $30 left for my food so I do have two-minute noodles in the cupboard and do have to have them sometimes,” she said.
“This cycle has been going on for two years now. This is two years of my pushing and pushing and pushing and trying to make this work.”
‘So hard’: Aussies share struggles to get ahead
Saxby shared a video online about the pressure she was facing and was inundated with messages from other Aussies in the same boat.
“I feel this on a deep level. It’s so hard at the moment,” one person wrote.
“You are doing amazing. The cost of living is ridiculous. That is not your fault. You got this,” another said.
“It’s life. I’m a cleaner [and] have slept on [the] floor for [the] last 14 years so kids have the bedrooms. It’s exhausting. I’m negative in [my] bank account, live day to day,” a third said.
Finder research found half of Aussies were running out of money before their next payday. The survey of 1,049 people found 36 per cent ran out “occasionally”, while 16 per cent ran out every month.
More than two-thirds (69 per cent) said they were struggling to make it payday because the cost of living was too high. Others said it was due to unexpected expenses cropping up (40 per cent).
On average, Aussies said they were short about $249 each month, with women nearly twice as likely to run out of cash than men.
Finder head of consumer research Graham Cooke said was putting people in a “stressful situation” every month.
“When it happens, people turn to extreme measures like skipping meals to prolong their cash reserves,” he said.
“Many Australians have no choice but to turn to plastic when they run short of savings which only compounds the problem.”
According to Finder, the average household spends $2,546 per week, with rent and housing the biggest expense by far.
'Try again': Aussie positive for the future
Despite the cost-of-living pressures she is facing, Saxby said she was positive about the future and was comforted knowing she wasn't the only one going through it.
“You can feel really overwhelmed because you feel like it’s only you that it’s happening to,” she said.
“After I started reading some of the comments, I was like ‘Oh my god, I’m not alone’. Even that was a feeling of ease and that came from people I don’t even know.”
Saxby said she had received a lot of helpful suggestions from other Aussies on how she could manage her budget and where she could cut back.
She also received advice on how she could boost her cleaning business income from other business owners, including getting into window cleaning and bond cleaning.
Eventually, she hopes to get her t-shirt brand off the ground and use the profits to help clean up communities.
“Every week is just another week where I can try again,” Saxby said.
“I truly am a harder worker and I’m going to work even harder now.”
