How I Raise 2 Kids While $28K in Debt

We were not financially prepared when my husband and I started trying to have kids. The reason is because our parents often told me that you will never have kids if you wait till you have enough money as savings can disappear easily if some bad things like natural disaster happened. We will become childless if we wait till we have very good financial condition.
Of course, we won’t have children if we have no money at all, that would be ridiculous. Instead, we waited until our financial standings were good enough. We gave birth to our first daughter in 2014. And we dug deep in our $5000 and spend it all during the first 12 weeks as new parents.
At that time, my grandmother got ill, I asked if she could hire me as here full-time caregiver, then I can earn a few hundred dollars a week. In the summer of 2016,we find that I was pregnant with our second daughter.
 
How we fell into debt
 
My grandmother passed away after our second kid was born. So I have no income. And at the same time, many damaging things happened such as a pipe below the kitchen fall crack, the electrical wiring in our bathroom need fixing which cost us nearly $2,750. And the kids need expense too, we use our credit card sometimes, so we owe $2,8000 in 2 months. Raising 2 kids can cost $168,000 a year. It was terrifying. After the kids went to sleep at night, my husband and I often muttered about what we should do. He considered to get a second job.
 
How we started getting out of debt
 
I get a writing job which pays me $1,600 a month. My husband get a raise of $2.5 per an hour. We stopped using our credit cards. In order to begin paying our debts, my husband worked nearly 60 hours a week. We started shopping stuff with discounts and often discover the cheapest on everything.
 
How debt affects our parenting
Like any other parents in the world, I wish I could give my kids everything they want, but that’s not realistic. We can’t afford family trips. Our girls often hear the word”no” when they wish for something. We told them that we’re saving up for something else, like buying a bigger house than the one we currently rent, which we are paying $1,254 a month for).At least once in a week, they ask for a dog.
 
Our money troubles make our girls start saving money for a more financially stable future. We give them piggy banks. Mommed has many stylish piggy banks for kids.
https://mommed.com/baby-toys-c0392
 
They save their birthday money and occasionally crisp dollar bill from a relative. Recently, our oldest lost her first tooth, we give here Tooth Fairy money, she put it directly in to her piggy bank for having a dog in the future.
 
Even with our status, we still let them go to swimming lessons. Our neighbors have a swimming pool in the backyard. Then our parents suggest that we can let the girls take less swimming lessons.
 
However, even the debt weighs me down, our children are very grateful. They feel that they are love, cared for. They feel lucky that they have parents, as there are orphans in the world. The understanding and love from them are something that money can’t buy.
 
We hope that we will finally get out of the debts someday to get our daughters a dog. But they will have new wishes then, so we will always buy them the piggy banks firstly to let them contribute a little for their own wishes rather depend on us totally. As parents need to save as much as possible in case bad things may happen in the future, we don’t need to borrow and end up in debt situation again.