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The amount of spending on entertainment (as a percentage of income) by the middle class has tripled since 1960, the square footage of a home has increased by over 250% since 1950 and the number of cars owned by a middle class family has increased by 80% over the last 60 years.
A family could easily live on one income if they kept the same lifestyle that people lived 60 years ago. Lower middle class today is what would have been upper middle 60 years ago.
i think this is a critical point. its definitely doable if people are willing to sacrifice many of the luxuries they enjoy.
i think this is a critical point. its definitely doable if people are willing to sacrifice many of the luxuries they enjoy.
The problem is the definition of sacrifice is so skewed by today's standards...
Today, when people say they are going to 'sacrifice', that usually means cutting off the DVR service or cutting out the cleaning lady....
Compare that to what sacrifice meant say during the depression...(when many kids went w/o shoes)
Also, Govco today provides so much in federal assistance (ie disabiility/food stamps/UE/etc.) that there really is no incentive to work hard (ie breeds a sense of laziness)....
If you talk about this 'out loud', you're accused by the MSM as being 'heartless' or 'cold'...
I agree hivoltage..I could write a book on this..Life is full of ups and downs,good times and bad.Its always been a challange to me to learn how to make do.
I have worked outside of the home on and off quite a bit through the years when I could depending on always being home for my kids.
Afew brief times I worked around their school hours.Our home altho Not a castle was ran neat orderly along with alot of love and fun just being together.
Our sons liked me being at home always homecooked meals,ready to take them to any school function or apointments that came up.Haveing time to help them with school projects ect.
The times I tried to work just didnt work for us as a family unit.
Everything would end up amiss.Being a Homemaker and really being there for your own family IS a Job if done correctly.It is the most rewarding job a mom could have especially in the end.
Money cant buy this !!!
4 + kids on a single income in 2013?? Not happening.. If you want to live that close to the edge and have to feel guilty if you dare want to buy anything nice and current such as the latest IPAD, Smartphone, go out for dinner a few times a week then that is fine, but the reality is most DO NOT. Why is it always suggested that someone cancel high speed internet which is almost as essential as electricity or go without a smartphone which IMHO you absolutely need now.
It does happen Nick, it just depends on how hard your family wants it....
Yeah we would. We're soon going to find out that we're going to be taxed to the hilt to pay for state sponsored medicine. Take a look at the Europena countries....they all pay double digit sales taxes (often on services, not just goods) to pay for their health care. And you can be sure their income taxes aren't any lower than ours, either. I have serious doubts about whether it will be cheaper or better than the current mess we have.
Yes,take a look at European countries. They manage to provide are for allow their citizens. Even Iceland when it went bankrupt still provided for it's elderly and sick. Why can't America, the rich have already stolen half of the countries wealth, how much is enough?
What I'm seeing here is people saying 'yeah it can be done--cut on luxuries like cable, cell phone, the annual vacation', etc. I think that is by and large an unfair response. The median salary of a US worker is $27k per year. So sure, yeah you can survive on one income (in an increasingly few parts of the US). But is that the goal? I call that the working poor. In the meantime, you will not have adequate health care coverage, life insurance, long term care insurance. You will not be able to put enough away for an emergency fund if you lose your job. You will not be able to save enough for a comfortable retirement. You will not be able to give your kids a chance at starting out their lives debt free because they will have to take out loans for college, the cost of which is rising 8% a year. So for most Americans, this is a really bad idea. Times have changed. Of course for the lucky few earning big money, it's a vastly different reality.
Actually it DOES happen and it not all that rare in my area. But then, I am in a low cost-of-living area.
We raised 5 kids plus an occasional exchange student on a single income most of the time. My wife took a few part time jobs here and there, especially when all of the kids were past kindergarten. Until her current job she always arranged it so she was there when they left and there when they got home from school. Until last year, when she worked part time, she usually made about $5000 from her job, sometimes as much as $10,000. There were long periods when she did not work outside the home at all.
When we first went to one income, we forgot about health insurance which was provided by her employer for her and the babies. We had only catastrophic insurance until we could afford full insurance for them. It was a year or two at most. At first, we ate a lot of pasta, went to parks or the beach for entertainment, used internet at the library or at work, only went to second run movies or rented movies, donated very little to charity. . . . Over time we adjusted, my income increased and we got things back to normal. There are a lot of ways to cut a lot of money from your budget. We just carefully tracked all spending, looked at the largest variable bills and found ways to cut them. Friends and family helped a lot. Our first babies, I do not think we spent much of anything on them until about Jr. High school. People just gave us stuff. Diaper service subscription (great grandma), cases of formula samples (pediatrician), loads of clothing. videos, games and toys (family and church friends), bassinette, receiving blankets, and other baby junk (shower), cribs (grandma and grandpa), medicine samples (pediatrician). . . when they got big enough for solid food, they basically ate the left over we used to throw away. Dining out, they just ate off of our plates. When a later daughter needed heart surgery as an infant, people from work, church, friends and family, showered us with money, food, time, even blood. I really do not think we bought anything for them except maybe some garage sale things and some baby food. It helped that my wife is the nicest person you would ever meet and everyone seems to love her and also that we had twins first up so people thought we needed help, then we had a large family (twins plus 2 back to back - the fifth came quite a bit later), so people thought we needed help. I think some of the people just felt sorry for my wife being married to me and wanted to make things easier for her. One way or another we had so much stuff given to us, we had to ask people to stop.
The real killer for us is when she quit working we still had about $70,000 in student loan and related debt. Interest rates were very very high when we got our student loans (most were over 20%), so it was hard to make any progress on them. Savings, and retirement was out of the question for a time. We did borrow the twins college fund set up by Great Grandma and other relatives. We also used the money from the insurance company when my fancy bicycle was stolen to pay bills. (I did not know it was fancy, but when it was stolen the insurance company paid $3300). We also got a surprise check from the IRS who discovered a big error on our tax return from when we had two incomes ($8,000). Those kinds of things happened at just the right time to slide us through some hard times.
Things that we found easy to cut and big dollar savings:
Cable TV
Internet.
Air conditioning.
Rent.
Car insurance (shop around).
Dining out.
Movies.
Bar nights.
High end alcohol and wine (drink the cheap stuff)
Hosting fancy parties (with high end alcohol and wine).
Dry cleaning (shop around, wear suits at least twice, launder shirts at home).
We did not become hermits, but we stopped living high on the hog. We went to other peoples parties instead of hosting, or we had barbeques with beer instead of formal dinner with mixed drinks and wine. We ate out at Dennys instead of claim jumper or better and we ate out less often. Drove older cars. Dropped comprehensive insurance coverage. Dropped life insurance. Shopped at Salvation Army and St. Vincent De Paul stores for clothing. Found cheaper hobbies (hiking, biking, body surfing - all free).
It was an adjustment and required taking some added risks, but I would not call it difficult. After factoring out the cost of child care, my wife's dry cleaning and lunches and gasoline, the income to expense amounts were not all that different. Of course it helped that my career exploded after about six years and we became 1%ers, or very near, thus we did not have to have milk crates for furniture for all that long.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 04-08-2013 at 01:59 PM..
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