Living on One Income

Many years ago, I read in a book that when you get married, whether you plan on having kids right away or not, you should live on one income to prepare for the time that you do have children if you want to be able to stay at home.  That's the only thing I remember from that book, and I'm very thankful for that advice. 

When we got married, Gus quit his job at Starbucks because he was taking 19 hours at school and would be taking 21 hours the following semester.  We lived on one income during that time because we had to.  He did have a summer job, and we used every penny he made to pay off my student loans.  We knew we wanted a baby, so we began immediately preparing to make ourselves financially ready to add another person to our family. 

Things don't always go according to plan, though, and because we had committed to living on one income, it wasn't that difficult to adjust to those unexpected events.  Following a terrible job loss situation, we did live on two (much smaller) incomes for a time, but the situation was not as devastating financially as it could have been had we been used to living on two incomes.  It also helped the transition into full-time motherhood on a very meager income a lot easier.

When you make the choice to live on one income to stay at home, you do have to live with some consequences.  You probably can't afford that really nice apartment, and you might be saving for a down payment for a house a lot longer.  You might have to share a car with your husband or drive a van that has two broken doors, two other doors that don't open and shut exactly right, and a drivers-side window that won't roll down.  You won't get to go out to eat whenever you just don't feel like cooking, and you might have to make a few more vegetarian meals than you'd like.  You'll probably need to take that 20-year-old furniture passed down from your grandparents instead of decorating with the latest and greatest from Pier 1, too.

Though downgrading your lifestyle can be painful at first, I don't feel like I'm missing a thing any more.  For some people, living in a one room house or dealing with a car with mostly malfunctioning doors may not be worth staying at home with your baby.  But that's a choice you have to make.