Ramblings-n-Writings

This post is in response to A Life At Home’s question about living off of one income. I found my response was a little too long to include in her comments so I thought I would share our experience here. (Update 12/08 – I wrote a series containing practical steps for survival on one (low) income. If you are struggling with surviving on one income, please read this post.)

Living off one income and a low one at that is very possible and actually far less stressful than two incomes and the frivolous spending that goes with it. Plus there is the benefit of staying at home and caring for the home. My DH was injured at work 4 years ago and for the first two years he received compensation, then we went to one income. At the time, I was making about $1100 before taxes. Due to various circumstances and health concerns, I left my job about a year ago to work from home and averaged about $700 / month before taxes. Because of the rural area we live in, prior to working at home, my job was 25 miles away one way so we were paying in excess of $300 in gas keeping two vehicles on the road for one month. Now that I am at home, we consolidate our trips to town and use the better gas mileage vehicle most driving. Even with rising gas costs, we’ve had significant gas savings not driving to work each day.

Some comments on A Life At Home’s article were to eliminate cable, cell phones, etc. My opinion is that you can have these things if you regulate your budget and have all areas under control. We do have satellite TV simply because we have no tV channels at all otherwise. We also have the excess expense of satellite internet for my work, but again that was our only option for high speed internet. However, we don’t have cell phones – don’t find them necessary and unlimited long distance through the local phone company including all of the features (call ID, voicemail etc) is the equivalent or cheaper than cell phone service.

We buy name brand products at the grocery store and very rarely buy store brand or generic – we do this by using coupons and buying what is on sale only. We also shop at CVS for all toiletries and household products, again all brand name products. I clean with bleach and vinegar unless I can buy cleaning products for free at CVS.

We shop at thrift stores as well as clearance sales – large department stores like JCPenney, Sears, Macy’s, all of have end of season sales where you can purchase new clothes for less than or equivalent to thrift store prices. My personal favorite is the JCPenney $1.75 racks.

One way that we have saved tons of money is by planting a garden. So many people talk about buying organic vegetables, but you are paying more for what may not necessarily be organic like you think organic should be. If you have some yard space, plant a garden – it will save a lot of money in your grocery budget. You don’t have to start out complicated or use a lot of yard space. A small 10×5 or 5×5 area will allow you plenty of room to plant a couple of plants of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. Plus the excess harvest can be canned or frozen for use during winter or sold to neighbors and friends. Selling excess produce will allow you to recoup the initial cost of the plants – essentially you would have free organic vegetables! We plant all of our vegetables – tomatoes, peppers, corn, broccoli, onions, cucumbers, leeks, garlic, lettuce, squash, watermelon, pumpkin etc. but we have the room living on a farm.

If you eat meat, talk to local farmers about purchasing your beef and pork directly from the farm. Two costs will be involved – the actual price for the animal and the butchering costs. However, many times these arrangements are more profitable to the farmer compared to auctioning his animals making it more likely that you will get a good deal. (When a farmer auctions his animals, he has hauling fees, auction commission costs etc. It’s better for him to sell you a cow at $1.25/lb than to auction for the same price.) The taste of the meat is noticeably better than store-bought meat as well.

Staying at home doesn’t mean that one can’t have an income. If you enjoy writing and blogging, there are numerous paid writing sites out there (I’ve talked about a few here, here and here). If you are knowledgeable in areas like history, math or English, consider tutoring online. Other possibilities are medical record transcribing and virtual assistants.

Living on one income can be done and can be very beneficial to the whole family.

New series posts on surviving on one income: Introduction, Step One: Evaluation, Step Two: Creative Adding, Step Three: Creative Stretching, Step Four: Shopping Strategies

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