Already nearly 6,500 families expecting babies early in 2011 have applied for Paid Parental Leave. Parents can lodge their claims up to three months before their baby’s due date. 

By now we are all probably pretty aware of the paid parental leave scheme. To quickly recap:

The scheme provides up to 18 weeks’ Government-funded parental leave pay at the National Minimum Wage (currently $570 per week) for eligible parents of children born or adopted on or after 1 January 2011.

To be eligible for Paid Parental Leave the primary carer must have an individual annual income of $150,000 or less and have worked prior to the birth of their baby. Applicants will meet the work test if they have worked at least 330 hours (just over one day a week) in 10 of the 13 months before the expected date of birth.

The Baby Bonus and other family payments will still be available for eligible families who do not qualify for Paid Parental Leave.

To help women stay connected to their workplace (not to mention creating an administrative nightmare for small business employers who are already overwhelmed by government compliance and paperwork), most mothers will receive parental leave pay through their employer in their usual pay cycle – just like wages and annual leave.

The scheme is estimated to cost around $260 million each year.

Expectant parents can claim Paid Parental Leave at Family Assistance Office website.

The following media release comes from the Australian Institute of Family Studies:

A new, long lens study of the financial impact of divorce on women and men has found that four years later, divorced women are still significantly worse off than both divorced men, and women who never divorced.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies has analysed data from the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics of Australians (HILDA) study, which has collected information from thousands of Australian households every year since 2001.

The Institute’s Deputy Director, Dr Matthew Gray, said the paper found that divorce had lasting impacts on women’s income levels (income adjusted for changes in household size following divorce), and the degree of hardship they experienced.

“The study shows that divorce has a substantial negative impact on the incomes of women, and almost no impact on the incomes of men after adjusting for changes in household size”, Dr Gray said.

“While this has been established in other studies, our study looks beyond income levels, and over a seven year period compares divorced women not just to men but to other women, in order to get a better picture of the long term financial impacts of divorce.

“The findings paint a bleak picture of the financial cost of divorce to women and their children.

“But what is also clear from the study is that there are several important factors that will reduce the likelihood of increased financial hardship and prosperity after divorce.

“For women, higher pre-divorce income, being in paid employment, control over financial decisions pre-divorce, and stability of income are important factors in mitigating the negative financial impact of divorce,” Dr Gray said.

Income

In the year immediately after divorce, women’s income declined while men’s stayed the same (after adjusting for changes in household size). While women’s income recovers over time, compared to the incomes of non-divorced women, they are still significantly behind.

Four years after divorce, women experienced a 2.9% increase in income from pre-divorce levels compared to an increase of 12.3% for non-divorced women. For divorced men, income increased by 12.5%.

“This finding is quite profound for divorced women, who, four years after divorce, are just managing to catch up to their pre divorce income levels.”

Hardship

The study also looked at measures of hardship, such as being unable to pay the rent or mortgage, going without meals and home heating, or seeking assistance from a charity.

“Divorce greatly increases the likelihood of such hardships for women, particularly women with children. For men, hardship increases only slightly and then declines to be substantially lower than it was pre-divorce.”

The study asks if, since the previous interview, any of the following happened because of a shortage of money:

• Could not pay electricity, gas or telephone bills on time;
• Could not pay the mortgage or rent on time;
• Pawned or sold something;
• Went without meals;
• Was unable to heat home;
• Asked for financial help from friends or family; or
• Asked for help from welfare/community organisations.

In the first year after divorce, the percentages of men and women experiencing at least one or more of these hardships was:

• 49.6% for divorced men; and
• 60.1% for divorced women.

This compares to 19.7% for women who had not divorced.

While all groups experienced fewer hardships over time, divorcing women experienced the least improvement – less than half of that for all men and non-divorcing women.

Four years after the year of divorce, 43.2% of divorced women were still experiencing one or more of these hardships, compared to 36.1% of divorced men and 18.1% of not divorced women.

Perceptions of prosperity

The study then went on to ask people how they perceived their own prosperity.

“What stood out here is that divorced men were more likely than divorced women to say they were poor or very poor. This is despite the fact that divorced men had higher incomes than divorced women and were less likely to experience financial hardships,” Dr Gray said.

Two years after divorce, of the men earning at least $4,000 per year more than they had pre-divorce, 22% said they were worse off (compared to 14.3% for women).  For men in this category, 80% had no increase in the number of hardships experienced.

Read the paper

You can download and read the 32-page conference paper : The effect of relationship breakdown on income and social exclusion (PDF 2.0 MB).

More than ever before, young Australians are living with their parents. They’re also working on a casual basis and are more likely to move across the country than any other generation. This information and more is in the latest Australian Social Trends publication from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Home and away

Young people are more likely to live with their parents than in previous decades. In 2006, almost one in four people aged 20–34 were living with their parents.

Almost half of those who leave before their mid-30s return home at least once, usually within three years. Money issues were a common reason young people stayed home, but many also said they enjoyed living at home and it was convenient.

Casual employees

One in four workers are casual employees. Casuals tend to be young, with 40% of them aged 15-24, and their earnings and hours are more likely to vary from pay to pay than is the case for other employees.

In 2007, 47% of casual employees had earnings that varied from pay to pay (compared with 16% of other employees). Casuals were twice as likely as other employees to work in jobs where the hours varied from week to week (35% and 17% respectively).

More details on these topics are available in the June edition of Australian Social Trends, 2009.

The role of Australian families will be more critical than ever as the fallout from the unfolding global financial crisis continues, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Institute director Professor Alan Hayes has become an Ambassador for National Families Week, which celebrates and highlights the critical importance of families.

“Recent data from Relationships Australia shows that from 2006 to 2008 the rate of anxiety over the global financial crisis has more than doubled from 18% to 40%,” Professor Hayes said.

In the United Kingdom, where the impacts of the downturn have hit earlier, research is showing that 35% of families have sleepless nights over money worries and almost three in 10 families have rows over it.

The household costs causing the most concern are heating the home (47%), mortgage or rent payments (36%) and food costs (31%). A further 37% of British families say they can’t afford an annual holiday and 27% thought their household income would not be enough to pay the bills in six months time.

“Even though Australia seems to be faring better than the UK, this is an early-warning for Australian families and it will be important to try to do as much as possible to preserve jobs and shore up vulnerable families,” Professor Hayes said.

The central aim of National Families Week 2009 is to encourage all Australians to think about and celebrate the many different people who make families united and strong and the many different types of families across society.

Families Australia Chief Executive Officer, Brian Babington says he’s encouraging everyone to explore ways to recognise, value and support the people who make a difference to the wellbeing of their family.

“People could say thanks to a family member who has made a difference, do something with their family that helps others, take time to reflect on who makes up their family, take a walk or play a game and have some fun together,” he said.

National Families Week – from 10-16 May – highlights the critical role of families in Australian society and coincides with the UN International Day of Families on 15 May. Hundreds of community groups, businesses and government departments will be holding local events around the country.

One in three (33%) Australians aged 15 years and over (5.5 million people) were not in the labour force in September 2008, according to statistics released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The majority (61%) of these were women (3.3 million).

Almost one-third (30%) of people not in the labour force were 70 years or over; and 15% were between 15 and 24 years.

For people not in the labour force, most (85% or 4.7 million) did not want to work (see Media Note).

For the 15% (820,300 people) who wanted to work:

• 9% were actively looking for work, but were not available to start work in the previous week
• 91% were not actively looking for work, but were available to start within four weeks

People who wanted to work tended to be younger, with more than one-quarter (29%) aged 15-24 and a further 19% aged 25-34.

Close to two-thirds (63%) of people who wanted to work were women, and 66% of these preferred to work part-time.

Women who wanted to work most commonly reported their main activity when not in the labour force was ‘home duties’ (36%) and ‘caring for children’ (23%). For men, their main activity was ‘attending an educational institution’ (38%) followed by ‘retired or voluntarily inactive’ (14%).

There were 73,900 people who wanted to work who were discouraged job seekers. Of these:

• 66% of these were aged 55 years and over
• 53% were women
• 49% stated their main reason for not actively looking for work was ‘considered too old by employers’.

Note: People not wanting work are those ‘without marginal attachment’ to the labour force. This includes: people who stated that they did not want work, some people who were permanently unable to work, and people who wanted to work but were not looking and not available to start work within four weeks.

Further details can be found in Persons Not in the Labour Force, Australia, September 2008 (cat. no. 6220.0) from the ABS.

New South Wales has the highest housing costs while its economy has been growing more slowly than Australia’s, according to an annual snapshot of the state released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The ABS found that in 2005-06, first home buyers in NSW were spending 29% of their gross income on housing costs (up from 21% in 1999-00), while recent home buyers were also spending more on housing costs (26% of income) compared to the rest of the nation (22%).

The NSW economy has been growing more slowly than the Australian average for the last six years (between 0.2% and 1.9% points behind), and in 2006-07 it had the second slowest growth, at 1.8%.

Other findings include:

Population – Just under a third (33% or 6.89 million) of all Australians lived in NSW, and one in five spoke another language at home.

Income - Over the last five years, household income in NSW has increased by 17%. In 2005–06 the average was $1,378 per week.

Environment – NSW had the second lowest household water consumption in Australia (84 kilolitres per person) in 2004-05. Households accounted for 10% of all water used in NSW; agriculture used 70%.

Health – Life expectancy in NSW is improving - in 2006 men could expect to live 78.6 years (from 76.4 in 2000) and women 83.4 years (from 81.9).

Labour Force – Unemployment has dropped; from 7.5% in February 1998 to 4.7% in February 2008. There are 8.6 million hours of work potentially being sought by unemployed and underemployed people in NSW.

More details are available in New South Wales In Focus, June 2008 (cat. no. 1338.1) available from the ABS Website.

According to an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publication released last week, we’re more likely to be overweight, less likely to marry, and consuming more goods and services. A few titbits include:

• The latest figures show that around 7.4 million Australian adults (54%) were overweight or obese. This was an increase of more than 2 million adults from 1995.

• The probability of marrying has declined. If current rates were to continue, 31% of men and 26% of women would never marry.

• The Australian labour force participation rate for women of child-bearing age (15–44 years) rose from 59% to 71% between 1980 and 2005.

• While many goods and services have become more affordable others, such as education and hospital and medical services, have become less affordable because price rises for these services have outpaced increases in income and wealth.

• As our household income has increased so has household spending. The largest increases have been on communication services and goods for recreation and culture.

• The 2006 Census showed that the most common family type in Australia was a couple with children. Just over 45% of all families, or 2.4 million families, fell into this group. The Australian Capital Territory and Victoria had the highest proportions of families in this group.
• Of all couple families with children, most were young families with children under 15 years (69%, or 1.6 million couple families). These families might also have included dependent students (aged 15–24 years) and non-dependent children still living with their parents.
• Couples families with children under 15 were the most common family type in every state and territory. The Northern Territory had the highest proportion, with 80% of all couple families with children falling into this group.
• The average number of children living in couple families with children under 15 was 2.16 children. Of the almost 4 million children living in Australia at the time of the 2006 Census, three-quarters (almost 3 million) were living in a couple family and almost all of these (2.7 million) were with both their natural or adoptive parents.
• Nine out of 10 couple families with young children lived in a separate house with an average of 4 bedrooms. Most of these families were paying off a mortgage – almost two-thirds across Australia. The exception was in the Northern Territory where 43% of young families were renting their home.
• The median monthly mortgage repayment for young families in a separate house was $1400. The lowest monthly repayments for young families were in Tasmania ($975 per month) and the highest in New South Wales ($1665 per month). The highest level of outright home ownership by young families in separate houses was in Victoria (18%).
• The 2006 Census also showed that couple families with young children have 2 cars on average.
• Exactly 83% of couple families with young children have some type of Internet connection at home. The lowest rates of connection were in the Northern Territory (66%) and the highest in the Australian Capital Territory (90%). In all states, broadband is the most common connection type. The highest use of broadband was in the Australian Capital Territory (69% of young families).

SOURCE: ABS Media Release, 27 June 2007

It is astounding to me how many mothers complain about having to make lunches each morning while running late or forking out for lunch orders because they had nothing in the cupboards.

Anyone who knows me knows that I prefer the “a little organisation now saves a lot of stress later” approach to life. School lunches is no exception.

Sandwiches freeze well and stay fresh on a hot day to be nicely thawed by lunch. This was one area we were able to significantly cut back on food costs by planning ahead and making a single trip to collect everything on the one shopping day.

Why keep dashing out the store for bread at 7am at around $3.50 a loaf? Now I buy 6 loaves at Aldi for 99c each, a tub of Aldi margaring at 98c and go to the deli counter at Coles for the cold meat (devon, ham, chicken loaf, etc). You know, I used to buy little premium packs of ham and chicken loaf in the dairy section in cute 100 or 200g packs until I did the math – it works out almost triple the price of getting the same thing directly from the deli!

In a couple of hours, you can make up an entire fortnight’s worth of school lunches. No more morning stress… no more overpriced canteen orders… no more complaints from the kids because you only have a choice that morning of vegemite or more vegemite. Simply good time and financial management.

Once you get into the habit, you’ll wonder how you ever managed beforehand…. and you’ll be surprised just how much of a cost-saver this can be.

I’m a bit of a statistics geek and today’s release from the ABS made for some interesting reading. For fact collectors like myself, here’s the latest from the Bureau:

Australia’s low income households received more cash benefits from the government than higher income households, while indirect benefits (provided in kind) were more evenly distributed, according to an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) study released today.

During 2003-04, more than a quarter (27%) of government benefits went to people in the 20% of households in the low income group. These people received over a third (36%) of government benefits in cash, and 22% of benefits in kind through government services.

In comparison, the 20% of households in the highest income group only received 4% of cash benefits and 16% of the benefits in kind.

People in the low income group paid 5% of all personal income taxes, and 17% of taxes on production such as the GST. People in the high income group paid 54% of personal income taxes and 26% of taxes on production.

The study also found that, on average:

• Households comprising couples under 35 without children paid $534 per week in taxes and received $109 per week in benefits.
• Couple households with dependent children paid $519 per week in taxes, and received $501 per week in benefits.
• Couples with one person aged 65 or over paid $148 per week in taxes and received $586 per week in benefits.
• Households in the ACT received the lowest benefits ($318 per week) and paid the highest taxes ($478).
• Households in Tasmania received the highest benefits ($398) and paid the lowest taxes ($278).

Source: Australian Bureau of Stataistics. Media Release 12/06/07

The Age lifestyle blogger, Alex May, recently wrote:

According to the latest Housing Industry Association affordability report, the average monthly mortgage repayment has hit $2,986 a month in Sydney.

To most Australians, it does matter… but at what cost?

Roll-ups, muesli bars, multi-pak chips, le snacks, fruit jelly cups and overpriced cheese sticks. No, no, no! As appealing as they may be to your kids and as convenient for you, these prepackaged snacks are going to quickly run up the grocery bill.

In a perfect world a fresh supply of fruit would always be on hand and your children would love nothing more than a healthy crisp apple for recess. The reality is we are busy and the kids want to eat rubbish and use the fruit you pack as a cricket ball.

Buy Bulk, Package Yourself
A significant cost-saver I have found is buying or making the foods the kids want and packing them myself.

An example of this was sultanas. All three of our kids loved those little boxes of sultanas and would consume at least 2 x 6 packs a week.

Before: Buying Coles Farmland brand I could purchase a 6 x 40g sultana packs for $2.03.

Now: Buying a 1kg bag of sultanas at Aldi for around $3.70, I can make 25 x 40g packs. To get 25 prepacked boxes would come at a cost of $8.46!

Result: We saved almost $5 just on sultana boxes by buying bulk and putting them ourselves into small re-usable plastic containers. It takes barely any effort.

I like to package my own recess snacks on Sunday night for the week so they are just as convenient to grab and pack in the mornings.

This also works well for items such as:

• dried fruits
• tiny teddies (again, go for the box and make your own ‘packs’ using cheap zip-lock bags)
• BBQ shapes and like products
• Popcorn (make it yourself for next to nothing)
• Pretzels (big bag for around $2.50 makes around 15 small zip-bags)
• Jelly cups (as opposed to $1.00 each, you can make these for under 10c in your own container)
• Cheese sticks (buy bulk and cut them yourself)

… and the list goes on and on.

When you need the convenience without the cost, consider packaging your own play lunch foods.

Financial straight-talker Dave Ramsey tells people to “live like nobody else (now) so that you can live like nobody else (later).”

The truth is that life is filled with wealthy individuals on meagre income aswell as those households struggling despite bringing in impressive amounts of cash. In most cases, it really isn’t a matter of what you have so much as what you do with it.

In a future series, I’ll be dealing with creating and managing a household budget – that balance between how much you earn and how much you actually need. For now, I’ve decided to start with the simple and practical things you can do today to cut back living expenses.

Baby steps can make a difference. A little effort and planning has helped our family cut almost $100 each week off the grocery bill alone. That’s a whopping $5,200 saving each year just at the supermarket! I’ll be using the frugal Family series to share the everyday hints, tips, recipes and ideas we used to accomplish that goal and others.

If you’re a mother who feels like she is constantly picking up after everyone else, you probably are!

According to a recent facts sheet released by the Australian Institute of Family Studies to support National Families Week 2007, mothers with a child under 5 spend an average of 23 hours a week doing housework. And it doesn’t end when the kids go to school. The figures indicate that mums with a youngest child 5-14 years old are still putting in 20 hours a week on household chores.

Dads aren’t getting off the hook either with most contributing an additional 6 hours each week to the housework.

You’d think we all lived in spotless homes! Still, I can attest to the fact that one can clean all day and still have it look the same as it did when you first started just 10 short minutes after the kids walk in the door.

Considering that,
38% of mothers with an infant are employed
54% of mothers with a 4-5 year old are employed, and
the employment rates of fathers with an infant and those with a 4-5 year old are both over 90%.

it is no surprise we are also feeling rushed and pressured for time; a significant source of stress for families.

Shop-A-Dockets have been in Australia since 1986, and savvy shoppers have been using them since then.

The great news is that you no longer need to spend a single cent at the supermarket to take advantage of the savings. Did you know you can download the vouchers and print them off at home?

Hotdockets.com.au is the Shop-A-Docket online voucher site. Simply enter your postcode to search for savings in your area.

We tend to do this for pizza occassionally and the price difference is well worth the minimal effort to print out a voucher before heading off to Domino’s.