I’ve just received the last issue of Budgetline. This magazine has been coming to me for longer than I can remember in my rather remote capacity as a Life Member of New Zealand Family Budgeting Inc.

The short articles in this issue are quite poignant as it has been given over entirely to the Head Office staff and other key people who are losing their positions in the big re-shuffle that is taking place. Again and again I read of disappointment that the organisation which they have served, both as paid staff and volunteers, is losing its identity next week.

In 1973 I wrote the first letter that went to about 25 organisations with a proposal to form a national Federation. Later we got a couple of dozen people together in Wellington for a day. And what an outcry there was! They were afraid they’d lose their autonomy, their personal involvement, their idiosyncratic workers. They didn’t want to have a national boss...

But it was all about money. Every group needed some financial assistance for expenses for its volunteers. Some wanted to pay experts to do the job. Government would only give assistance to the 30 or so groups if they presented an organised front. So, with mixed feelings, the Federation came into being.

It’s been a huge success. It has lifted standards, provided proper supervision and training and widened the work. And, to the concern of some of us who were around in the 1970s, it has absorbed millions of dollars a year of taxpayer funding to achieve this.

But there are other groups involved in this kind of work who have never affiliated or don’t qualify for affiliation. Government now invites all family budgeters to come together in some much broader organisation. So the Federation, which we brought into being under pressure from successive Governments, will next week be wound up because the Government wants to move in a new direction.

It’s touching to read the stories of those who have worked in the Federation in the last decade or two. But times have changed, politics of voluntary community services have changed and the need in the community is more vast than any of us could have conceived in 1973. So some of the Federation’s prized principles will be surrendered and unfamiliar territory will have to be traversed. At the end of this month, everyone will move on.

I salute those who transformed a modest voluntary operation into the NZ Federation for family budget advice of a very special kind. As it moves on, I hope its people will infuse the new organisation with a sense of personal service and commitment. This new venture must not become just another quasi government department.

Dave Mullan is author of—

The Family Budgeters, a personal account of the work of family budgeting from the 1960s to the establishment of the Federation.  As one of the last “steam budgeters”, Dave was asked by the Federation Office to put together some kind of record of the earliest days of this remarkable movement of voluntary community service. That he was able to achieve this in 2015 is all the more important now that the Federation itself is moving on.

A Small Qango, the story of the Home Budgeting Advisory Committee to the Minister of Social Welfare, 1977-1987.  Dave served on this Committee for its full ten years, eventually becoming its Chair. It was the first attempt to direct public funding towards voluntary family budgeting groups. In charted new paths for a Quasi Autonomous Governmental Organisation.

The Family Budgeting Story 1960-1978

About ten years ago five of us ancient family budgeters agreed to start work writing up the first decades of Family Budgeting Services in this country. But there was no money for a publication and, for various reasons, the project lapsed.
At the beginning of this year I decided to try to get it going again. On-line publication with free distribution could give the project some point.
Almost immediately I found I was the last one left standing and the experiences and memories were going to be lost. Head Office of the Federation came up with a modest collection of archives and also a remarkable thesis on the topic by Yvonne Burns, now of Melbourne.
It hasn't been the collaborative effort we had hoped for but at least there have been no editorial arguments. And yesterday the book went on line at Smashwords and is now a registered publication.
Considering the ups and downs of my prostate cancer journey during these eight months, it's been a pretty satisfying achievement. You can get it for nothing here.

Family Budgeting

With all the interesting things to do around here, the book on family budgeting is moving along only slowly.  But it is a moving experience to enter into the lives of those who half a century ago had a vision of a country in which fewer households would suffer because of their inability to manage the financial affairs.

I am writing today of a public servant who conspired to change the way his department worked to help people into getting their own homes. I have discovered that an imaginative and sweeping proposal to assist Maori people into a better quality of life was back-burnered by one Minister of the Crown because it might become an election issue. 

But, wait, there was a change of government. The new Minister not only put the report back on the heat but appointed the report chair as acting secretary of the department. And a key person in the same department caught the vision and travelled widely around the country promoting a system of voluntary family budgeting advisors that altered the household budgeting landscape.

My own involvement in the decade from 1978 gave me huge experience in the area. I knew of the two men who dreamed up a scheme that caught the imagination of the country. But I was never enlightened about those who spread this extraordinary voluntary movement throughout fifty centres in just three or fours years. It is a privilege to be trying to put together their story...

Busy days

It's been a busy time since my last post.

The Family Budgeting book is moving along reasonably well with something approaching a first draft getting towards 120 pages. It's absolutely fascinating what is turning up in the sparse records. I dare not count the number of volunteers who broke down under the sheer weight of demand through the years I am reviewing. I know of at least three personally, but in almost every town in the country there's a story of huge effort in the face of ever-increasing demand.

The huge input of government assistance has created a model that is so different from what we used to do in the 1960s and 1970s that the story really needs to be told. As the last "steam budgeter" with any knowledge of the national scene, I feel some responsibility to get it done - in spite of my commitment to myself a couple of years ago not to start any large project that I could not finish well before my "best before" date. So it's good to see it coming together.

However, the book has had to compete with quite a few other things.

We made a grand trip down to Hutt Valley, driving through some of the least-known main routes through the north island. I'd never done the Waitaanga route and we really enjoyed another run down the Forgotten Highway to Stratford where our motel provided the best view ever of Mt Taranaki.

I attended the weekend National Training Seminar for Community Patrol and then we had three or four days with the wonder Great Grand Kid, Cohen David and his parents. Saw his first dip in the local warm swimming baths. And guess who got to give him his first solid food - at four months... We had such a time with them... Another night in Upper Hutt with Bev's nephew Vaughan and Cushla and we were back up country in time for a last-minute chorus rehearsal. The ten days left us pretty whacked - but it was a terrific time of touring, family and singing.

Our Barbershop Chorus did pretty well at our own village's concert last weekend, together with a visit from the choir of Pinesong Village where we sang at their concert a couple of weeks earlier. And our men's quartet put on two pretty good numbers, our encore was musically pretty awful but it scored high on entertainment! We are having such a great time doing it.  It's back to rehearsal this afternoon for both groups.

Since then I've been heavily involved in helping the local parish address a running deficit of $2000 a month. It seems they spent $100,000 of reserves in the previous couple of years but were actually living on the same reserves for routine expenses. All reserves will be gone in December, so they are trying to do some kind of review of giving. They've had no stewardship education programme in place for at least 15 years so far as anyone can remember. Our congregation consists almost entirely of people who have been here less than four or so years and there's no "memory" of serious commitment through regular giving. Nor do most people have the slightest clue about the costs of keeping a church there in case they want to roll up now and then. The parish is in a growing area and is not declining. Indeed, a membership review last month produced an increase of nearly 30%. But we will not survive with the equivalent of a fulltime minister if the parish can't lift its giving. I've been asked to assist. But helping to raise commitment to pay for stipendiary ministry and property goes against most of my mission strategy principles. Of course, this isn't really a small parish so Local Shared Ministry is not an option. It's an unaccustomed situation in which to find myself.

Meanwhile, my fitness is pretty good. I've not had any major falls but, like a few of my age, have a bit of vertigo now and then. And my walk isn't as firm as it was. I guess the spine is probably feeling the pinch down around L4! We'll be watching that from now on, I should think. Especially if the PSA doubling time stays up around two months.

Now I am trying to put together a service for Sunday. Only my second in eighteen months here so I can't complain about having too many, I guess...