How We Survive on One Income

 

image and graphics source: Canva

When I found out I was pregnant I had only been working at my new job for two months. I wanted to return to the workplace part time, but a couple of months before my maternity leave would have begun, HR informed me that part time employment wasn't an option. I had to choose between trusting a stranger - or my mother - with my 6 week old baby, or to stay at home like my mom had done. 

2020's economy was tough, but in hindsight it hardly compares to today's. We could buy a week's worth of groceries, meats and snacks and fresh produce included, for roughly $40. Now we buy maybe one type of meat for the week, ingredients to make snacks like granola bars, and a small selection of fresh produce, for twice that much. 

So how do we make it work? How are we even staying afloat?

A few things that work for us:

• We live outside of the city where a one-bedroom apartment ranges from $900 to $1,300 on average, depending on the location. We were lucky enough to snag a one-bed for $800, but our rent is increasing by $55 in a few months so we'll have to revisit our budget.
• We buy in bulk. We don't have a Costco or Sam's Club membership, but some things like rice and flour, toilet paper and diapers are available in bulk at Kroger. I buy a 20 pound bag of rice every few months. We get the biggest package of store brand toilet paper, and it lasts over two months. I spent an entire day crunching numbers and finding what products were worth buying in bulk, and what ones weren't. 
• We paid off smaller debts. Unfortunately, this did require us to pull money from savings, but we've been slowly but surely replenishing it. By paying off just two of our debts, we now have roughly $200 to budget elsewhere, that was being spent paying down those debts each month.
• We don't eat out very often. I pack my husband's lunch (because I want to, not because internalized misogyny says I have to). I make almost all dinners at home. The weekends are where we tend to slip up, but we've gotten much better at finding joy in cooking and putting our eating-out money towards groceries.
• I make everything I can from scratch. Breads, pastries, snacks, pizza dough, sauces and dips, vegetable stock, cleaning products, laundry detergent, etc. etc. the list goes on. I've been trying to be more sustainable and less wasteful, while recognizing the things that I can go without (like beeswax wraps and handmade soap bars). 
• We buy mostly secondhand. Ironically, I'm writing this post just after my husband spent a frick ton of money on me for my birthday... but I digress. Once Upon a Child is my top choice for clothes and gently used shoes. Almost all of my daughter's clothes are hand me downs, or bought from a consignment store. Really the only exceptions are diapers and socks, and anything specific I simply cannot find secondhand. 
• We canceled all our subscriptions. Don't tell Netflix, but we share a password with our family members on almost every streaming service. I suffer through cringey Spotify ads while mid-set at the gym. We used the HBO free trial to binge The Sopranos (then ended up paying $10 for a month because we could not pull enough all-nighters). It's true what they say: $10 here and $5 there adds up remarkably fast.
• We still aren't paying for student loans. Even before all student loans were placed under forebearance, I had sent in a request to freeze mine while we paid down my husband's. At the start of my pregnancy, I didn't have health insurance yet, and our combined net income was about $50,000 a year. My lender approved my request, and my loans were put in forebearance until everyone else's were too.
• We use Mint Mobile. This isn't sponsored, but switching to Mint is seriously one of the best choices we could have made. We pay a premium up front, but it breaks down to cost us $45 a month for two lines. With Verizon, we paid $180 a month for two lines. If you're on the fence about it, take my word for it. Seriously. We're never going back.

And now, a few things that set us back:

• My husband communtes to work every day, 30 minutes each way. Gas is currently $5.09/gal, and he gets about 20 miles to the gallon. The only reason we have a second vehicle at our disposal, is because my mother in law was kind enough to let us have hers when she moved to Florida.
• We can't pay off our car. The vehicle given to us by my mother in law is paid off, but the vehicle we purchased in 2020 still costs us $200 a month. We don't quite have enough in savings to pay it off, but even if we did, I'm not sure I would be comfortable pulling every penny from savings, given the fact that it's there for emergencies only.
• We recently had to get our cer serviced, and as it would turn out, the brakes were deteriorating and could have failed at any moment. It cost over $1,000 to have repairs done - as necessary as it was, it still set us back significantly.
• We don't qualify for Medicaid.We are in a really unfortunate place where we make too much (even on just one income!) to qualify for government aid, but we don't make enough where we can comfortably pay $400+ a month for our daughter's insurance alone. The cheapest plan we could find, while also being from a somewhat reliable company, costs us just over $200 a month. I truly despise the U.S. and their garbage healthcare system.
• Prices are rising steadily while, of course, pay is not. My husband makes commission which is fantastic, but his job relies heavily on the weather. There have been some weeks where his paycheck is $500 because he missed a couple of days due to adverse weather conditions. That doesn't happen too often, but the insecurity of it can be scary.

All in all, we are very fortunate to be in a position where we can - and do - survive comfortably on one income alone. By making small sacrifices for a bigger goal, we find that we don't need as much as we maybe thought we did when we were making more money. Adopting less of a consumerist mindset and living more frugally has given us a greater sense of peace and financial security, despite the odds.