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If you are really serious about this, you should first try living on 1 income for a year, and save the entire other salary. If you can manage that for a year, you'll know you can do it, and have a substantial emergency fund saved up.
THAT ^ is the only post you need to read in this entire thread, that is the most sound advice that has been offered.
Maybe working on time management will be a better proposition for the OP and his girlfriend. How many hours a week are you working? If you are working/commuting 40-50 hours a week and have no children, there's no reason that the house can't be clean or you can't cook meals. You need to prioritize them.
I have chronic fatigue from cancer treatment, work 50 hours a week, commute ~8 hours a week, go to the gym every day, and am in grad school part time and I still have time to cook, clean, have a social life, and have time to relax. I also sleep 8-9 hours a night. Sure, cleaning is often the last priority but that's because I live with two roommates who are slobs. Something is amiss if you are struggling to keep up a house between the two of you.
Grow in your careers (BOTH of them) and then make a decision.
You chose to convert to a vegan diet. You chose to have 2 dogs. Those both take up time. If you choose to have kids, those take up a lot more time. Those are choices.
My husband and I (who have no kids, and 2 cats, which take up very little time), both work full time, and quite often over full time. Last week and this week, we've both put in overtime at work. We still manage to find 3 hours together most evenings, because we don't have dogs to take care of or 90 minutes of food prep. Plus weekends all day.
I assume you still have weekends together. Plus you can work out together and prepare meals together. That is more than my husband and I had together for the first few years of our marriage, when I was working 60 hours a week, off hours, and we saw each other awake about 5 hours, total, per week. Even now, he is gone when I wake up in the morning 5 days a week, and some days, he is asleep by the time I get home from work.
We actually could live on 1 income, but we wouldn't be able to save anything, and would never be able to retire. That is just too much stress. Money issues are just as stressful, if not more so, than time issues. So going to one income only trades one type of stress for another.
We live in a 2 income society. If you want to live on one income, without going on welfare, you will need to make some sacrifices.
If you are really serious about this, you should first try living on 1 income for a year, and save the entire other salary. If you can manage that for a year, you'll know you can do it, and have a substantial emergency fund saved up.
I would not try this if you have less than 6 months worth of expenses saved for an emergency.
Good idea about living on the one income and saving the other for one year. There will probably be a lot of tweaking of lifestyle and finances, but the upside is you'll have a nice nest egg at the end of the year.
Not everyone has the same energy level and discipline to manage time as some of the posters here. When I was younger, I was able to work a full time and part time job and still keep the house clean, and cook from scratch. I wouldn't be able to do that these days and it's amazing how quickly out of control a house can get when the cleaning isn't done fairly constantly. And I have dogs, so I definitely feel OP's pain.
If your fiance is willing to put off her desire to stay home for a year, the advice about saving her income seems like a good way to see if you can make it on your salary alone.
I could be wrong, but I sense trouble in paradise. Stress is part of life when you are a grown up. If you feel your relationship is in trouble because you have too much stress now, than I think your relationship is in trouble. You can fantasize all you want on how much better life will be if one of you can stay home to clean the house, do the shopping and prepare the meals. You would be right. It will help to alleviate those problems. However, you may just find that you are trading one set of problems for another.
This is a numbers game. If you can't make the numbers work, the plan fails. Talking about taking on more financial responsibilities like a home with home repairs and maintenance, landscaping with all the added expenses and time associated with it and children to boot, when you can't deal with your current stress level is really putting your head in the sand I am afraid.
It is one thing to want to have these things in the future. It is another thing to be prepared and do what is necessary to make these things possible. Or you can just act impulsively and do what you want now, and face the consequences of your actions later.
My advice. Fix what's broken now. If you can do that, then move on to the next step of securing your financial security, buying a small home and later having children.
Sorry if this seems brutal but reality bites I'm afraid, and most of us know this because we have all been there.
Way, WAY easier said than done. There's simply not enough time for it. I'd be hard pressed to find people who can truly life this way without enormous amounts of stress. And sure, MAYBE it's doable, but not without the stress of it. I had an aunt and uncle who both worked full-time in careers that demanded long hours, they had three kids, and my uncle was pursuing a 2 year MBA program too. Sure they did it, but the end result was not pretty. Soft drugs and picking up smoking, near divorce, heart attacks for both of them in their forties, kids raised by teenage babysitters, and a mess of other problems. They at least kept their house clean, ONLY because they hired a house cleaner!!!!! They brought in some 400k combined annually and were the most miserable of anyone in my family. All that money, most of it being blown on things necessary to keep up that crazy lifestyle, and the rest being put towards comforts they never had a chance to enjoy. Ok, so this is just one story, but I think this side of the story is more common than people who can handle everything you mentioned with ease.
Just looking at our schedules, it's near impossible to fit time in for accomplishing the things you mentioned, at least while maintaining sanity.
6:30AM - wake up
6:30 - 8AM - eat breakfast, take care of dogs, shower/shave/hair, dress, make ourselves presentable (we both work in jobs that require nice clothes, makeup, cleaning up, etc)
8AM - 5PM - work. (Sometimes we have to work later which REALLY screws up this schedule...)
5-5:30 PM- get undressed, get situated, take dogs out
5:30 - 6:15PM - work out/exercise (really we should be getting a little more too..)
6:15 - 6:30 - shower, change clothes
6:30 - 8:00 - cook dinner and eat. (We cook from scratch, no frozen meals here... This is pretty standard for prepping/cooking a large meal from scratch and actually sitting down to eat)
8:00 - 8:30 - dogs dinner and take them out for night time potty
8:30 - 9:30 - school work
9:30 - 10:30 - Tidy up. Prepare lunches, clean dishes from dinner, take care of any important emails, bills, paperwork, random household tasks
10:30 - bed time
so there you have it. No time for our relationship. No time to play or walk our dogs. No personal time. No time for friends or hobbies. No time to do chores/cleaning properly. This is bigger than a time management issue. Honestly, I think we manage our time pretty damn good.
What about weekends? My husband and I spend a few hours every Saturday morning cleaning the house and doing some yard work. then we have the rest of the weekend to do what we want.
I have the same schedule as you, but my husband works longer hours. We still have 4 dogs, and have time for hobbies.
Way, WAY easier said than done. There's simply not enough time for it. I'd be hard pressed to find people who can truly life this way without enormous amounts of stress. And sure, MAYBE it's doable, but not without the stress of it. I had an aunt and uncle who both worked full-time in careers that demanded long hours, they had three kids, and my uncle was pursuing a 2 year MBA program too. Sure they did it, but the end result was not pretty. Soft drugs and picking up smoking, near divorce, heart attacks for both of them in their forties, kids raised by teenage babysitters, and a mess of other problems. They at least kept their house clean, ONLY because they hired a house cleaner!!!!! They brought in some 400k combined annually and were the most miserable of anyone in my family. All that money, most of it being blown on things necessary to keep up that crazy lifestyle, and the rest being put towards comforts they never had a chance to enjoy. Ok, so this is just one story, but I think this side of the story is more common than people who can handle everything you mentioned with ease.
Just looking at our schedules, it's near impossible to fit time in for accomplishing the things you mentioned, at least while maintaining sanity.
6:30AM - wake up
6:30 - 8AM - eat breakfast, take care of dogs, shower/shave/hair, dress, make ourselves presentable (we both work in jobs that require nice clothes, makeup, cleaning up, etc)
8AM - 5PM - work. (Sometimes we have to work later which REALLY screws up this schedule...)
5-5:30 PM- get undressed, get situated, take dogs out
5:30 - 6:15PM - work out/exercise (really we should be getting a little more too..)
6:15 - 6:30 - shower, change clothes
6:30 - 8:00 - cook dinner and eat. (We cook from scratch, no frozen meals here... This is pretty standard for prepping/cooking a large meal from scratch and actually sitting down to eat)
8:00 - 8:30 - dogs dinner and take them out for night time potty
8:30 - 9:30 - school work
9:30 - 10:30 - Tidy up. Prepare lunches, clean dishes from dinner, take care of any important emails, bills, paperwork, random household tasks
10:30 - bed time
so there you have it. No time for our relationship. No time to play or walk our dogs. No personal time. No time for friends or hobbies. No time to do chores/cleaning properly. This is bigger than a time management issue. Honestly, I think we manage our time pretty damn good.
You can hire help with the dogs and food. Yes it is expensive, but compared to giving up AN ENTIRE INCOME, it is the financially wise move.
Hire someone to come and take care of the dogs, do light house cleaning and cooking. It's very possible to have QOL on your two incomes with someone helping you in those areas.
You can hire help with the dogs and food. Yes it is expensive, but compared to giving up AN ENTIRE INCOME, it is the financially wise move.
And she can continue contributing to build her Medicare account and contribute into a retirement account, with change to spare for additional savings.
You can hire someone to come in once a week or every other week to do cleaning and the laundry. Hire a dog walker or a neighborhood kid to walk the dogs, and still be ahead. Spend 1/2 of Saturday pre-making dinners and lunch items for the week and freeze. Buy a stack of those heavy weight paper plates at Costco and go on Amazon to stock up on freezer containers. Make at least one large pot of soup, chili or meatless stew for the week on that Saturday while preparing other meals. Pre-plan a menu for the whole week. Make one night a week a vegan sub sandwich night.
Saying you must spend in excess of 1 1/2 hours per night making supper suggests cooking is more of a fun hobby as opposed to a necessity (vegan or not) Perhaps you should look into some new recopies. There is little that can not be frozen successfully. If you don't have one, buy a bread maker and prepare a fresh loaf of bread each morning before going to work.
Invest in some Earthboxes and start growing your own vegetables. Much less work then in ground, good yields, and a fun hobby that a vegan should love.
Last edited by modhatter; 06-30-2015 at 04:54 PM..
I've read anecdotal stories of many families (pets and kids too) being successful living on only 35-40k per year, but I feel we live modestly now and our $72k combined income does not seem to go very far! Here's just some quick numbers off the top of my head
Rent & Utilities = $1100 (This is the low end for our area!! We rent a very outdated old home ($850/month)
Food = $500
Phone = $140 (Hoping to reduce this to $50 and get those prepaid phones)
Internet = $60
Dog Food = $55
Car Gas = $100
Total = $1855!
So just those alone leave me with only $345 left of my $2200 I net each month. I didn't even include insurance costs, repair and maintenance costs, any household expenses, and by no means any personal/entertainment expenses of any kind. Really nothing to save or invest either!! I think we can definitely cut our costs A LITTLE, but I worry the financial strain will still be too great. Would single income family living be setting us up for a disaster? How do people live off $35-40k with kids/pets/homes?
That's pretty much what my family's bills look like, for a family of four and a bunch of pets. Our mortgage is $1000, utilities about $200 to $250, phone $100, $65 car insurance, $150 health insurance, internet $60, and food/toiletries/pet food about $600/month, prescriptions about $50/month. My husband makes about 40k when you include OT and bonus. There's not a lot of money for entertainment, clothes, vacation, new cars, or really anything luxurious. Sometimes it can take a few months to pay off a car repair or an unexpected bill (for example, this month the car needed $950 of repairs and one of our dogs got hemorrhagic gastroenteritis and the vet bill was $850, we'll be paying that off $200/month on our credit card for almost a year).
We live that way because it's important to us that I'm home with the kids. My kids go to online public school, which rules out my being able to find a job during school hours. My husband works a rotating shift which means his schedule changes every three months, so it would be difficult for us to work opposites. But it would be nice to have some more money, I won't lie about that. I buy our clothes at thrift stores and the way that I cook saves money...I've learned how to cook whatever's on sale, to cook well enough that we don't eat at restaurants anymore, even to decorate cakes to save money on the kids' birthdays. I also cut everyone's hair and groom the dogs myself to save money. I can alter clothes and sew curtains and Halloween costumes and things like that. I can make most small home repairs...I've fixed the stove, fridge, washer, and air conditioner instead of calling a repairman. I can replace or repair a toilet or a sink or faucet. I do basic car repairs too...brakes, starter (although I hate putting in a starter), alternator, belts, water pump, etc.
Anyhow, the only way it really works to survive on one income that isn't very large is to work hard to develop the skills to do the things you need, so you don't have to pay someone else to do them.
It would make more sense to start living on a single income right now, and put the other income in savings. Work for about 5 years while living on the single income, and buy a house with the money you save up. Start your family once you've bought the house. Then instead of having almost half your income go to housing, you'll be paying for property taxes and mortgage insurance, but not having a monthly house payment. That would give you a lot of wiggle room for unexpected expenses.
The biggest problem when living on one income, especially a moderate one, is that you lose income safety. Any hickup - job loss, unexpected illness, accident - and you risk losing that one income without having anything to fall back on. And when you have small kids, it's very scary because your expenses are much harder to control.
And I also would be questioning if her being a stay at home mom is going to be any less stressful. It's not exactly a vacation and many women go stir crazy after a year or so.
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