Podcast: Navigating Finances and CF

Transcript

Voiceover: Welcome to the CF Strong Podcast. CF Strong covers the successes and challenges faced by those living with cystic fibrosis. You’ll hear first person stories, conversations with health professionals, friends and partners. Just a heads up, guests may share their personal views about treatments and health management, but please remember, this is not medical advice and you should always follow the advice of your clinic team regarding your health.

Brad: G’day everyone and welcome to this incredibly exciting new season of the CF Strong Podcast. I’m your host and fellow CF patient Bradley Dryburgh. And as a 20-something-year-old living with cystic fibrosis, I know that this decade of our life is not only challenging, but rather it comes with some big questions we ask of ourselves. I’ve taken the time to sit down with six guests who like me, are all in their twenties living with cystic fibrosis as they share their honest and unique perspectives on 10 big questions across 10 separate episodes. I’ll ask one question of all six of our guests in this particular order. You can expect to hear answers from Adam, Blake, Caitlin, Ellie, Sam, and Taylor. In this seventh episode of our series, we’ll hear from each of our six guests as they answer. Having CF can cause financial stress. How are you planning financially for your future? And are there any benefit schemes that have helped you along the way?

Adam: Yeah, so I honestly haven’t really planned for the future financially. Um, I never really, I just never developed that side of life because I’ve never really had the money to do it, you know, um, I suppose I’m on mobility allowance at the moment also, which helps a lot, uh, in terms of medication, you know, it just, honestly, it just covers me with my meds. Um, and that’s, that’s honestly really helpful. Um, but now I’m on Trikafta as well. I have been thinking about the future financially. I haven’t really figured that out yet, but it is something I am currently going through.

Blake: Yeah, well, it’s, uh, you know, on the finance end, for me, again, I’m very lucky to do what I do. This year has been the, you know, the year that the career in standup has really kicked off. Um, but there were, especially first moving to Melbourne from the country, you know, trying to pay rent, especially during the pandemic and stuff like that. Um, it got very, very rough at times. I remember there, you know, being some nights where, you know, I had less than 10 in the account. Um, so now that I do have a sort of, you know, a, a more, um, stable sort of income, you know, from, you know, doing shows here or there and just touring and stuff like that, it, it has allowed me to, you know, actually make a budget, you know, plan for the future. Obviously, being with my girlfriend, that’s another income and we’re just gonna save for a house, do all the stuff. I, I think, you know, I’m not really thinking in terms of CF at the moment, which I probably should, but I think at the moment I’m sort of just more focused on how can I do this as, as normally as possible. Um, ’cause you know, cfs a thing where, you know, anything could happen at any time. So, you know, I think the best way to deal with that is just, you know, plan for, you know, plan for whatever, you know, plan for the worst, um, but, you know, hope for the best. So we’re just planning as normally as we possibly can at the moment.

Caitlin: So finances are a tough one. That’s, um, actually a bit of a, um, uh, like a personal question at the moment because me and my partner wanna buy a house and I definitely feel like I can’t lift my weight from a financial perspective at the moment because he works full time and I don’t. Um, so it is definitely difficult. As I said, I’m so lucky that he understands and that isn’t an issue for us, even though I think it’s my personal, um, feelings when it comes to that, that it is, um, like, yeah, like you just feel a little bit like you can’t give as much as you want. Mm-Hmm. Um, I’m very lucky that Centrelink has helped me in the past when there’s periods that I can’t work and when I am in hospital, I, I’m not earning an income. So I do get a little bit of money from the government. Um, but yeah, definitely finances are a bit of a struggle, especially when we can’t work as much or lose time from work. Being in hospital and working full-time isn’t an option due to just the amount of meds I have energy levels, so the income is always gonna be a little bit lower than I guess someone else my age who is able to work full-time.

Ellie: Um, I definitely think that it does cause some stress. I think obviously everything is crazy expensive at the moment, but then also having to, to deal with that on top of, you know, prescriptions and, and appointments that you can’t miss. Um, sometimes you do, you know, prioritize and, and potentially, you know, sometimes as as bad as it as it is, like my health loses out, um, a lot of the time. Um, like I was saying, kind of similar to the time it takes to kind of go and get track after it, it’s also, um, you know, the addition that, you know, there’s an, there is somewhat of an out-of-pocket cost every time you have to go and get something. So, um, that is almost, you would think that it’s a non-negotiable, but you know, when you don’t wanna like not have a roof over your head, sometimes the roof comes first. Um, so that’s, that’s definitely been a struggle. But I do think that there, there are a lot of things that have helped me along the way, like, um, being in Canberra, like, um, C-F-A-C-T have their, um, child and adult assistance requests, um, amounts. So 500 for children and a thousand for adults. Um, subject to change, I think it might be a thousand for both soon. I’m not too sure. Um, but that’s really helped and especially kind of being in like heavily involved in, in health and fitness, a lot of the things that I do for that are not cheap. , you know, gym membership. Pilates is definitely quite an expensive activity to, um, to have picked up. Running’s probably the cheapest, to be honest in terms of fascination with shoes, that is, yeah. Yeah, well that’s true. Um, but kind of being able to claim that back through that means that the weight of, you know, paying for those things is kind of lifted.

Sam: Yeah, that’s another good one. Uh, financially, geez, my financials have always been in shambles. Um, and I don’t think I’d be where I am if I didn’t have my parents’ support when I was younger. Going through uni, especially trying to live as a uni student, I also have to pay for medications and stuff like that. So yeah, I’ve been very lucky to have my parents’ support for that. And now that I’m out outta uni in the real world, the cost of living is getting worse and worse and worse. Um, unfortunately I have to get two jobs to, um, ensure I can, you know, save money, still live in Melbourne and build savings and that’s just the way it is. Unfortunately, I have to work two jobs. Um, and again, the career I’m in right now, it is, it is not very money focused, so there’s not much money there. Uh, but I am learning the hard way how to do financial planning, financial savings, and I guess working out a way to continue saving money, live a good, good and happy, fun life, but also have money saved up and there for medical expenses. It’s just an extra step. It’s just an extra step that people with CF have to take. And that’s just the way it is.

Tayla: Finances and CF, I feel like, uh, I’m one of those people that don’t like spending money, but then if I do spend money, I spend way more than I wanna do. So like, I don’t know, I’ve, I’m kind of like a bit of a stickler for following my own rules where I’m like, I wanna save five grand in three months or something like that. Um, I’m very lucky where I live at home, um, pay for my car stuff that I’ve stuff for my dog. ’cause I didn’t tell my mom I was getting a dog in 2021, I just did it. So I, um, yeah, I think, I don’t know, it just depends how you look at it. When I was younger, I didn’t ever see myself living past 25. So, I mean, it’s a hard question because CF is not always like straightforward. There could be a whole up and down thing where you can’t work or, um, maybe you can work a lot, but like health, how’s that gonna take to working a lot? And how much money are you gonna have to put into buying extra treatments, stuff like that. Um, paying for it because maybe sometimes it’s not covered by healthcare card or maybe you don’t have the healthcare card ’cause you work too much, you don’t work enough. Um, I think, yeah, for me, it’s always do my best, like, um, save as much as I can. If there’s something that I want, well get it, you know, life short, um, make a goal. I make a lot of goals for myself. Um, and I wrote for CFStrong not too long ago, um, which is an article I think I just sent them, which is about like finances and CF. And I think I always make goals where, uh, I wanted to buy new phone outright ’cause my job’s in media and comms, so I was like, well, I need a new phone that does everything I need it to do with extra space. So I saved in three months for a brand new, like iPhone 14 Pro Max at the time. Um, and I absolutely hammered that goal out. I really wanted it. So like I just make myself little goals. Maybe I’ll have separate accounts for different stuff where I’ll have like dog stuff, car stuff, um, random stuff that you wanna get. Um, and I’ll just make like monthly goals of, okay, I wanna save up 500 bucks in that account, or maybe I wanna save a thousand here. Maybe a hundred, 150 in that one. And it’s kind of just all about making little goals, um, while keeping in mind like, you know, your bigger financial stuff. Like maybe you have a service for your car coming up, rent due, maybe you have a power bill due, phone bill due, something like that. Um, where you just have to keep that in mind and go, okay, well let’s make it fun and make a little goal. I’m also kind of a nerd where I like to do this. So , I like being organised.

Brad: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of our series. We thank you for taking the time to sit down and hear the value that each of our six guests provide. And we wanna thank them for taking the time to be a part of the series too. We hope that this has not only been informative, um, but refreshing to hear that there are many different perspectives to each of these questions and challenges we face as CF patients. Once again, I’m your host Bradley Dryburgh. Thank you so much for tuning into the CF Strong podcast.

Voiceover: Thanks for listening to this episode of the CF Strong Podcast. Make sure you subscribe on your favourite podcast listening platform so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d really appreciate if you could leave us a review. It helps other people find safe, strong, or share us with your friends. Also, a quick reminder that the views expressed in the CF Strong Podcast may not be reflective of Cystic Fibrosis Community Care’s viewpoints. The podcasts are designed to share information and provide insight into the lives of those living with cystic fibrosis around Australia. This podcast was made possible thanks to support provided by the Australian government. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you next time.