Living Happily On One Income?
I was reading Erin's post on their experiment to see if they can live on one income and I thought it would be encouraging to her and to others if those of you who are living on one income would share what has helped you to be able to do so. There's so much I could share... hopefully later!
posted by Crystal Paine at 12:07 PM
26 Comments:
here is a topic I came across this morning.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/print.cfm?story=93369&ran=72372
The Christian coalition is teetering on insolvency. What are your thoughts on this, it's causes, and the organization as a whole. What about this organization compared to others, such as Vision Forum, whose site is linked on your blog?
It is possible to live on one income. However, the debt issue is real. My husband is very against going into debt since he has been there already. (My husband is 8+yrs older than me and was previously married for a short time. His first wife thought money grew on trees.)
When we married I was a full time nurse but we never used any of my paychecks for bills. It was all savings. I am very glad we started that habit out early. Now, since I don't work, we are totally relying on his paycheck and we are doing just fine.
-Zan
I can not emphasize the importance of saving enough. Although both my fiance and I work full time and don't plan on that stopping anytime soon, having savings has made a difference. I think far too many people live "for now" and never think for tomorrow.
Though both my fiance and I work, we do live on one income as my entire paycheck goes into savings for a house down payment. His income is enough that it does not require us to be frugal, but we are any way; why waste money, right? We have a main "skeleton" budget for each month, and then extra expenses we discuss first. We, too, do not like debt. We have to pay off his school loans (my education is paid off already), and after that, we're in the clear. I have to say that I have gleened SO many tips and ideas from you SAHMs who live frugally on one income. My freezer is full, my house is clean, and our expenses are kept way, way down. Leaves more money for my shoe fund, lol.
I am single, but have been practicing frugality since I was a grad student living off my very small teaching-assistant salary (and paying for school out of that)- somehow, I felt like I had plenty of money even then.
Since graduating and finding employment, I've been dedicated to living off no more than that same amount per year and socking the rest away. I want to be accustomed to budgeting tightly and not fall into a "the more I earn, the more I spend" consumerist mentality. Hopefully this will help if/when God blesses me with a husband & family.
Zan, I really like the idea of living off only the husband's income when preparing to return home. Though my parents both worked through much of my life, they had the same practice of saving my mom's income. My mom is also a nurse :)
My husband and I live on only his income but we don't have any children. The biggest (and I think most important) thing we did was not to buy too expensive of a home. The mortgage company will tell you that you can afford much more than is really realistic. Another of the things we have done is to only have 1 car. In the past we had 2 (but only 1 payment)and even though we only had 1 payment the insurance and maintenance/repairs alone were quite a bit. I'm not sure if you had children if it would work or not to only have one car, but it has worked great for us because my husband doesn't mind stopping at the store on the way home from work and things like that. We also do smaller things like evaluating whether or not we REALLY need that magazine subscription(you can read many for free at the library) and we don't read a daily paper because we found that most days it wasn't getting read anyway.
One of the things I've seen in our life together (we've been married for almost 14 years) is that no matter how much you make, it seems as if making more will make things easier and it doesn't always. Sometimes making more makes you fall into the trap of buying more, which can become a vicious cycle.
Just a few thoughts. ~~Mrs. B~~
Crystal,
Thanks for posting this!:o) I welcome any tips or advice, and I'm sure there are others out there who might be able to use this as well.
I have a question: Has anyone ever used "TheGroceryGame.com" and does it work? I'm trying to decide whether to try it, or just to shop weekly ads.
You guys are all so right about the problems with debt. Micah and I are committed to not taking out any more.
We're renting right now, and hope to save the money to pay cash on a house. Even if we don't make it to that, we want to have a large downpayment.
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Agree Mrs. B,
I don't think budgeting and frugalness is encouraged or taught enough, and in a society of "more" and consumerism, it's hard to receive that example from anywhere. Everyone absorbs the message that more stuff brings more happiness, instead of quality time and small treats meaning just as much.
I went to high school with the Wal-Mart Heiress and many of her friends. They went to restaurants for every meal, had five cars, and were definately NOT happier than little old me in my '87 Escort saving for my college tuition. Kids grow up with the ideal that labels and expensive things makes them important and worthwhile people instead of their education, talents and other qualities.
(sorry for the delete, I found a grammatical error)
We live on one income that is not enough and then my husband and I both make up with odd jobs to take up the slack. My husband is disabled so is on a small amount of disability. He has been mowing lawns, cutting wood etc. I have been selling items, working odd jobs etc so I can be home with the boys also.
My mom and dad have 11 children and mom never worked outside the home. She has done many home busineses and is now a midwife!
I so agree, Mrs. B and Jessica. My parents were both very frugal with all of us and quite overindulgent with their youngest daughters-- me and my sister. I have so much to say on this that I should really blog on it; I know first hand how detrimental overindulging one's children is. It took me a looong time to learn frugality, I'm still learning, and that's just one more reason I LOVE all the tips everyone gives.
This is something my husband and I have been doing. He is attending law school full-time, and we are living off my income. (We do not have any children yet.) We used Larry Burkett's book to help get a budget set up, and we are beginning to work off of that. We just started it this week, but it looks as though it will work well. :-) These are some things I have come up with, that have helped us:
--We have one car, that is paid off. (My husband drops me off at work before going to school in the morning, and picks me up at night.)
--Work off of a budget.
--Buy off-brands/store brands, which are normally much cheaper.
--Only go grocery shopping after eating a full meal. :-) (Otherwise, everthing looks delicious, and your grocery bill doubles or triples)
--Shop at thrift stores and garage sales when you can.
--We figured out that having two cell phones was cheaper for us, then having a land-line. (I realize this might not always be the case.)
--We have found that the Family Dollar Store (or Dollar General), and Save-A-Lot are the cheapest places to buy most of our groceries. (Save-A-Lot for the groceries, and the $ Store for general things like shampoo.)
--We are considering getting a very small chest freezer to keep in our apartment, for times when ground beef or cheese, etc. go on sale. It is cheaper to stock up...
--I have begun "competing" with myself to see if I can cut the grocery bill down from what it was the week before, and still make good meals.
--I found some good tips in The Tightwad Gazette. Sometimes I thought it went just a bit over-board on things, and I don't always agree with the author's opinions. However, it does have many good ideas.
--We carpool to work, and bike and walk when the weather is decent. We don't own large gas guzzlers or anything that compromises our environmental ethics.
--We always pack our lunches for work in reusable containers.
--All books and entertainment are bought second hand.
--Two cell phones instead of a land line. We are able to get a hold of eachother at a moment's notice, and our spent minutes to eachother are FREE.
--We buy most of our grocery items on sale, or "buy one get one half off or free," and still manage to maintain our organic lifestyle.
--We buy our natural shampoo in bulk from the local health coop.
--Our clothes are thrift or clearance and are fixed if they suffer wear.
--we have replaced our gas mower with push.
--We use our attic fan or more layers of clothing before employing our heater or air conditioner.
Yes you can. I quit work one week before our first child was born 12 years ago. At the time I earned 50% of our income. It required a lot of change in attitudes and spending behaviors for us both, but we have survived and become happier and better people for choosing this lifestyle.
PS: I couldn't agree more about not choosing a home the bank says you can afford. We said we didn't want to pay more than a certain amount while the banks were encouraging us to pay double that amount!
My husband and I have been living very frugally since we were wed 8 months ago, and, if the Lord wills, we will be able to pay off my student loan within a week from today and in doing so, become completely debt-free! We wanted to get out of debt as quickly as possible, so we have been living in a very small apartment, and we haven't had a car the entire time we've been married. We bike almost everywhere and occasionally take a bus. Also, I try to plan meals in advance so we're not tempted to go out for dinner or grab fast-food. One other thing is that we check out videos from the library instead of renting.
We're living on my husband's income and doing fine. We live in a fair sized city, on about 22K/year, and we're doing fine.
When we bought a house, we bought a small one, and went looking for urban renewal grants, so that as long as we keep our part of the deal (paying on time, not selling for 9 years, keeping the house nice) the city pays half for the house.
We shop at stores that sell off brands and I keep an eye out for really good coupons. The other part of this for me has been learning how to plan menues and shopping lists to avoid wasting time and money.
We buy almost everything used, or better yet, get it from freecycle.
We don't do debt. Payments eat up so much income. We've noticed how much just the basics of electricity, gas, and phone gobble up, there's no way we want to tie up more of our money in even more payments.
Living on one income isn't a problem if you are married to an accountant LOL. I know EXACTLY what I can and cannot spend each month and therefore can operate effectively in my parameters.
I shop once a week for milk, oj, and produce. I also purchase staples that we need if on sale. We only have one grocery store in town so our choices are limited. I make a list and I usually stick to it LOL.
My husband eats his lunch at Taco bell or Wendy's at they have .99 menus. The boys and I eat almost every lunch at home. If we eat out as a family, it's at the foodcourt in the mall across from my husband's work. It's cheaper, noisier and more casual. We eat almost every dinner at home, however we are lucky to have DH's parents in town so they often take us to pizza or Chinese with our boys.
I do not work outside the home so my clothing needs are few. I can purchase almost everything I 'need' at the thrift store and things I want 'new' (underwear, pantyhose, socks) I can get from the Hanes catalog for low prices.
For occasional child care, I swap with two other moms who have children my sons' ages.
Once a week, we take part in our church's fellowship supper which is donation only. For a small donation, we get a huge dinner and lots of fun. The boys have story time at church prior to dinner and afterwards we can stay for prayer or a class if we want.
We do not go to movies but we do occasionally go to live theatre. When we do, we go to matinees where the tickets are lower. We are lucky to have the Ohio LIght Opera about 10 miles away and that is wonderfully entertaining.
More later...
Though I'm in a different situation than most of you (single and in med school), it's so encouraging to hear all your frugal tips--you guys have some great ideas. :) I'm so thankful, like many of you, to have been raised living frugally; my mom has always encouraged me to see thrift as a creative challenge rather than a deprivation. ("The Tightwad Gazette" books are great along those lines, too.)
I think my next $-saving project is going to be using coupons for groceries ... I know that's super simple, but I've never really thought it would be worth my while to do before. However, after standing in line behind a lady at the grocery store last week & watching her save $10 with a pile of coupons, I think it would definitely be worthwhile to check out the Sunday paper (which I have access to free in the dorm).
-Claire
We have been married for almost 5 years, have only had one income the entire time, were able to pay off a student loan, buy a car and do so many other things. We paid for our car in cash, so it is completely paid for. Not as nice as buying a new car, but it has served it's purpose and met our needs very well! With three kids, money can be tight at times. However, by shopping at places like Aldi for milk, butter, shredded cheese and produce, "trading in" brand name food for store brands, buying meat, sliced cheese and anything else we use a lot of in bulk and freezing it, and buying clothes for the kids when they're on sale really helps keep costs down. Having all boys helps a lot! Their clothes are almost all hand-me-downs. Requesting things like clothes as Christmas or birthday presents for all of us also helps.
You can also "preserve" some produce - like peppers and onions - by chopping them up and then packing them into serving size portions in small sandwich bags and freezing them. That way buying more than one when they're on sale won't end up being more costly than just buying what you're planning on using that week.
One thing that really saves money for us is that we very rarely go out to eat. If we feel like having a pizza night, then we make our own. My recipe makes 3 pizzas, I assemble and freeze what we aren't going to need. I also try and freeze larger leftover portions to use for a leftovers night. And I bake and cook everything from scratch.
A planned menu for the week or for two weeks keeps shopping trips to what we need, not what we think we'll need.
Here are a few tips that I have found to be helpful for us over the years.
One book that I have found very helpful is The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Daczyzn (not sure on the spelling of author's surname). She can be a bit extreme in some things, but there are tons of great tips!
I think someone mentioned the Save-A-Lot stores (we have those too!) Another store than beats even the SAL stores is Aldi's. Also, if it's possible don't limit yourself to just one store. I am very blessed as Save-A-Lot, Aldi's and Super Wal-Mart are within 1 mile of each other, so I can very easily shop all 3 stores.
Do away with cable TV, satellite, etc. Our luxury item is the internet. This is where we receive most of our news and weather updates.
Cook from scratch as much as possible! I don't buy biscuits, boxed cereals, spaghetti sauce, cookies, etc. I make my own. I'll admit I don't make everything from scratch, but I do try to make a lot of what we use.
I also use a clothesline to dry our clothes, but do have a drier (and I do use).
We have two vehicles, but have no car payment. We are slowly working our way out of debt. DH and I didn't know about debt and always thought that there was no way around it, but have since learned otherwise.
I do think by "eliminating" the 2nd paycheck this will help you to live better on one, but one must be very careful not to dip into the 2nd income. This can be a hard thing to do for some people.
And of course the most important thing is to always pray before making any purchases. :-)
In Christ,
Barbara
My boyfriend is in college. I'm going to back to college fall of next year. He is studying graphic design. I will be majoring in creative writing and minoring in english. This will help me to work at home as I'm a writer and author. If I need to work outside of home while I have no children I could teach creative writing at a college.
My boyfriend is planning to buy land and have a castle built on it. He found he can have one built for around $700,000. That is the same price as some 3 bedroom houses in Sarasota FL.
I'll be growing as many vegetables and herbs as possible. I'm also going to learn how to preserve them. This way I won't have to buy them at the store. I also like to shop at meat markets for all my meat as I can get it for sometimes half the price as at the store and usually they have further discounts if you buy in bulk.
Why a castle? We are very much into the medieval faires. It's been talked about that we would try and open our faire using our house as a backdrop. This would help craftsmen who go to faires to sell their goods. It would help bring money into the community that we live in. Hopefully it would be a good learning experience for those who don't know a lot about the medieval time period of Europe.
Our other pasttime is paintball. It's been talked about having our own paintball park on the property as well. It's a very good money maker and yes I play.
We don't plan on having cable but we enjoy movies and video games so we will have a tv. I love cooking and find almost everything I enjoy eating I could probably make at home. I'm planning to use my income as pure savings and will try not to spend it.
Of course none of this is set in stone and of course we don't know if any of it will work but it's a somewhat tenative plan.
A castle? Wow. You guys are ambitious. :)
I did want to mention one thing about homes. I do think it is important to invest money in homes. We want our children raised in a safe community. My husband was a wise investor and purchased this house 6 yrs ago right before the housing boom. Since then this house has tripled in value. We always have just used his paycheck for the mortgage payment and he is able to pay most of the bills. I guess we are pretty blessed. Most of my friends can't even afford a starter home. A small two b edroom ranch on a postage stamp lot starts at about 160,000 around here and there is no sign of the prices falling.
One other thing we do is all of our own home repairs. My husband has taught himself to do electrical, plumbing, and carpentry. Fortunately since we live in NH this is OK. However, if you live in Mass the state will not inspect it unless it was professionally done.
Anyway, fixing up an old house, we have saved a fortune doing all the work ourselves. My father also helps. He built his own home when we lived in VT so he has a lot of experience.
We also have econmical cars. I just don't understand the logic in having an SUV if you don't need one. My husband commutes an hour to work and he works with guys who have two kids and live in town and drive big Suburbans. If you are a carpenter or a farmer, fine.
I guess it is the New Englander in me but I hate waste.
-Zan
Erin (hopefully you'll see this!),
I do the Grocery Game, and I have seen quite a bit of savings (and I was quite a frugal shopper before!). It saves me LOTS of time. Before I would compare the unit price for everything. Now I go in and grab it because I already know that it's the best deal, since it's on the GG's list.
They track what is really a rock-bottom price versus "it's less expensive than normal but not a rock-bottom price" (what they call a phantom sale). They also track coupons and tell you when you use them.
My main problem has been with storage. Our space is quite limited, so I haven't been able to stockpile as much as I probably should in order to see significant savings.
But it is well worth the $10 every 8 weeks, IMO!
razorback mama,
thanks for the response to my question! I have heard that this might be a good thing to try, but wanted to hear from someone who has actually been doing it:o)
I have the problem with storage too...no pantry in this house! But I might see if I can use part of a closet or something for canned goods.
Yes, we've had to get very creative with our storage LOL! Shelves in other parts of the house can come in handy. They are a bit out of the way, but they still will allow you to "shop your shelves." And if you have a garage, you can potentially use that as well. I highly recommend a freezer if you don't have one already! Feel free to e-mail me (addy is in my profile) if you have any questions!
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