Thinking About Going from Two Incomes to One? Consider These Things to Make It Work

If you’ve been living with two incomes and decided to switch to one as you’re planning to have a baby or you already have kids and you want one of you to have more focus on them, it may not be an easy thing to do at first, but it can be done. Many couples successfully managed to live a comfortable life depending only in one income. If this is something that you and your spouse are considering, here are some factors to keep in mind in order to make it work.

Try Living in One Income Before Making It Official

Don’t resign from your job immediately. It’s best to prepare yourselves for what’s coming and experience how it really is to live with just one income. Put your entire salary to savings and spend only the income of your partner. With this, you able to save for the future and at the same time, you get a better understanding on the situation that awaits you once you live with one income. In case you realize that it’s not yet the right time for you to make the switch, you would still have your job so you can continue working until you’re really ready to make it happen.

Save Money

Even if you’re already putting your income to savings during your trial period, you should still put even a small amount to your savings coming from your spouse’s income. This is something that you should do once you’re already living with one income so it’s best if you get used to it early on. You don’t have to save huge bucks, especially the transition would more likely be difficult. A few dollar savings is good enough and eventually, once you get used to your new life, it would be a lot easier for you to add more to your savings.

Make a Budget

This is an obvious thing to do even when you have two incomes. However, this is even more important if you’re depending in one income. The factors that must be included in your budget include the constant or fixed expenses such as utilities, credit card bills, transportation allowance and grocery items. Other things to include are variable expenses that you could limit on like entertainment, dining out and shopping. Living in one income doesn’t mean that you should only focus on your needs. It’s still important to reward yourselves or have fun as a family every now and then. This can be done with effective budgeting.

Pay Off Your Debts

Before moving to a one income, it’s best to pay your debts and avoid adding more as they would add up and you would need to pay them, which could be more challenging once you’re depending on one income. Pay as much debt as you can while you still have two incomes. Long term debts like mortgage may take time to complete so you could include them on your one income budget instead.

What do you think about living in one income? Share your thought by typing your comments below.

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Featured and 1^st image by jencu (lots of love) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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