Shopping on a 90’s budget  

Shane is a brave, hardworking and generous person. He and his fiancé worked hard to ensure they have everything they needed for their family. 

Always a ‘doer’ and wanting to ensure his family’s financial security, Shane and his fiancé decided to start their own business together. They meticulously wrote their business plan, raised their capital and invested all their savings, some of which was to eventually pay for their much-anticipated wedding. 

A part of the business plan included that Shane’s fiancé would continue to work full-time, while he worked part-time and set-up their company. 

They were both so excited for what the future held for them, until the second day of trading that is. That’s when Shane’s fiancé lost her job, and they felt their lives begin to unravel. 

They had invested everything they had into their company, and the nature of their business meant it would take months and months for them to get invoices paid once clients were signed up. As a result, they, by their own admission ended up in in a hole pretty quickly. That’s when his mother suggested they reach out to Foodbank. 

Shane said that he was very resistant to asking for help in the beginning, saying his pride got in the way and he didn’t want to admit that they needed help. “We’ve always done fairly well, you know, at least average, financially, and we have never been in this kind of position. We give to a lot of charities as well. We never thought that we’d have to be on the receiving end of it. That was quite difficult.” 

Speaking of Foodbank, Shane said, “The beautiful thing about this place, it’s all great quality stuff at the prices that I remember things being in the 90s, when you could support a household with two or three kids on one, nine to five income, you know. It’s just a different world now.” 

A cost-of-living crisis which is ravaging our country means that nobody is immune to finding themselves in a tricky financial situation. It’s impacting most people to varying degrees. For Shane and his family coming to Foodbank was the difference between having to sell one or even both of their cars and meant they and their child had access to healthy nutritious food and didn’t feel the full impact of the severity of the family’s financial situation. It meant they had a safety net of sorts, with budget friendly prices at Foodbank meaning they could free up more of their very limited budget to pay for other essentials such house and car repayments, utility and power bills and things for their growing child, fearing she would be teased if she was seen to be different at school. 

Asked what advice he would give to anyone in a similar position Shane said that you need to swallow your pride and use the help before you get past the point of no return financially. 

I never thought that I’d be in the position where I needed this. It’s not just for homeless people. It’s not just for people below the poverty line. If you’ve worked really hard to get to where you are in life, and because of situations that can often be out of your control, if everything is going to come crashing down, everything that you’ve worked for – this place is here to provide that kind of stepping stone or, just that bit of support, while you’re trying to sort everything out and bring everything back to homeostasis.”

A big believer in giving back, Shane said that even though finances go up and down he and his fiancé had always made a point of maintaining their giving to charity even when things got quite tough.  

For Shane’s family, Foodbank was the difference between falling deeper and deeper into financial hardship and finding the will to keep fighting. 

Shane and his family aren’t entirely out of the woods yet by any stretch of the means, but they are definitely on the up and up. They are finally receiving the invoiced fees from their business which they have been working on for months, which means there’s definitely a light at the end of the tunnel for them. 

Shane says that coming to Foodbank kept their spirits high, because even though there was a time when they were only a day away from defaulting on their mortgage repayments, they were able to make ends meet and avoid any bad credit rating due to the support they received. “You know, I don’t think I would have been able to maintain the motivation had things gotten much worse, and so, this Foodbank helped us to keep our keep our heads above water and keep our chins high while we worked through the tough times.”