Staying Home on One Income

This is a repost from November 5, 2007

Most days I have two or three emails asking about how to live on one income without any debt. People want to know how you can do that in this day and age. Our average income during the 1990's was around $27,000. We had 4 children at home. It takes a commitment. It takes learning to weigh each and every purchase and something that made it easier is that we didn't do things like go out to eat except to some place like Cici's pizza and that was certainly no more than 2 times a month. We opted to purchase a house we could pay for easily. It was a fixer upper, but it was ours. We never owned new cars, insurance, taxes etc are more on new cars and thankfully, Emery is handy at working on just about anything. We built on to our house when we could afford to. Meaning, when we had the cash in the bank ! We didn't have a television to give us ideas of things the media told us we could not live without ! I didn't buy glossy magazines that made me want things I didn't have.A big factor to living on one income is not going to town to shop more than once a week. Going in the stores creates this WANT mentality, for the parents as well as for the children. I noticed today that I am heading off to town to shop more than once a week and I am spending more than ever before. You can after all justify many purchases if its in your heart to do so.Our cooking is simple, always has been. Breakfast was hot cereal, oatmeal and cream of wheat are cheap to fix. We always had plenty of eggs too, so there was french toast, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, pancakes and waffles. We had our own milk too. The garden gave us lots of good vegetables and someone in the community was always getting a truckload of apples for a good price. A pound of hamburger in a casserole fed the entire family. Bulk orders helped a great deal. I did lots of once a month cooking, it saved time and I was always prepared for unexpected company, which happened LOTS ! One day I had 15 people arrive unexpectedly for a meal. It didn't worry me one bit, we were prepared. By the time Melissa was 12 years old, she was an accomplished baker, so desserts were often her job. Sewing our clothes saved a great deal too. We never spent more than $4 a yard on fabric. We were blessed so many times with good fabric sales at Wal-Mart or from mail order.Making my own soap saved money too...we made our laundry soap too. Pine Sol was my only cleaner, it works on floors, walls and the bathroom. We did buy furniture polish. We always had spray starch for the boys and Emery's shirts, and shoe polish for our shoes.Our feed bill for all our animals was paid for by selling milk and eggs and for selling the baby animals. Which meant we got our milk and eggs free !Even now our meals are not fancy or expensive. Our food bill is $400 a month for all our needs, cleaning, paper goods etc. We still try to keep our expenses as low as we can but have more spending money with the children all grown. So even with a bigger income we live much the same except for having money to eat out once a week. We do not use credit cards. We tore them up years ago. Too easy to use. If we don't have the cash, we don't buy it. The best way to hold on to your money for the important things is to stay out of the stores unless you have to shop for NEEDs and keep your mind focused on needs, not wants. We all think we deserve this or that. We feel bad for ourselves when we have a bad day and want to reward ourselves by purchasing something, only in the end its really not a reward, its often times a big regret when we tally up the expenses. We have made our mistakes, but hopefully we have learned from them.