Financial security - coping with one income

galwaydude

First of all this is a great forum as its provides a mountain of useful information.

I work full time and ever since we had our baby 6 months ago my wife has worked part time. When i say part time i mean on average 10 hours a week. Her employer reneged on the promise of more hours, she now has a new job with more hours. My question is how people cope with relatively one income. This has strapped us so much that we used up all our savings as my wife got only 4 weeks maternity leave when she had the baby. The last several months have been a real struggle and at times we have had to depend on family for support. We live abroad but are looking to move back. We budget and have cut back on most things. Still its never enough and we always find ourselves back to square one. God knows the last time we went out to dinner. Any budgeting tips?

Khannie

We only have one income (mine). Before my wife left work (a well paid IT job) before our 2nd child we sat down and did the sums. Between paying for childcare (the biggy), some increase in my income through reduced income tax, saving money on food v's buying convenience food, etc. we figured that we wouldn't get too badly screwed.

So....the reality is tough. I'll admit that. With two decent incomes, when we wanted a new <insert whatever here> or a meal out or whatever we were mostly just able to treat ourselves to it. That's not the case now and let me tell you I found that tough as **** to adjust to.

It took us about 9-12 months to properly adjust tbh. We were overspending for some time. One thing that we did was make sure we wiped out any debt (car loans, etc.) before she finished up. This way you're not paying your credit card company money for nothing. Over time we have racked up some debts, but nothing massive, and of course my wages have improved too.

Budgeting tips: Weekly shops help. Working with cash helps (i.e. take out your "money for the week" from the ATM). Make sure you're not wasting food (this is a big hidden cost in the average home). Get money back from the tax man every way you can (claim for bin charges, etc. etc.). It all adds up.

For what it's worth: There's no way either of us would choose to go back to a two income comfortable lifestyle and put the kids in childcare.

Hope this helps.

littlebug

Budgeting tips: write it all down.. every single cent that comes in and goes out. We did this and were amazed at how much was being wasted on things like sandwiches from the garage. There are big savings to be made by buying some of your food in aldi or lidl. We just lived on one salary for a year and I have to say it was bloody difficult. The only clothes I bought myself that year were bought with the Dunnes clubcard points! Nights out were few and far between and many invitations were turned down. I'm lucky in that I've been able to pick up work from home and on saturdays and have gradually increased the hours since the youngest child turned one. I do have a childminder now for the youngest but it's been just for 2-3 mornings a week. This year he starts montessori for 4 mornings so I won't need childcare at all

Oh yes... another saving... childrens' clothes. Jump at any offers of second hand clothes. I got two boxes of clothes from someone when my son was about 6 months old... some lovely stuff from next etc some of which had never been worn, other stuff worn once or twice. I swear I didn't have to buy him a stitch til for the next year and a half. Between friends and neighbours our kids clothes are constantly being passed on (or passed back) once they're grown out of. We have also shared things like entertainment centre, cot, toddler bed, one of those toilet step thingies, all things that cost a lot but kiddies will grow out of eventually.

snellers

we realised that would need to make reductions in budget prior to arrival of twins ....

we found one of our largest expenses was food -

1: where possible make your own meals (no pre-made/pre-packaged stuff) - and when you do, make double - freeze the rest for another day....no ready made sauces!

2: We got rid of our microwave to eliminate the 'easy meal approach' - we can't even go and buy a microwave dinner now! (as for heating baby milk we bought a cheap bottle warmer that heats to correct temp)

3: Buy most of your food stuffs from either Lidl or Aldi......we are saving approximately 45% a week! - the food selection in these places is much less than, say, Tesco so you are far less inclined to buy things you don't want. It did take us a few weeks to get used to some of the different brands and we had to adjust some of our regular meals as they simply didn;t do the ingredients but overall it has been brilliant for us!

4: If like us where we have a fairly large family it became a nightmare having to spend money we didn't necessarily have every month buying birthday presents (on average 2 a month) - we decided to reduce the amount spent and set a limit for everyone....expense can now be planned for without concern one of us will spend more than we should.

could go on but getting tired! :-)

hope some of the info helps!