“My husband is an Iraqi War veteran, now safely home still in the reserves, and a Police Officer for our city. We are SO thankful for a great job that is secure. I am a stay-at-home mama to our sweet 11-month-old baby boy. Living off of one income can be tough, especially trying to build your savings and dealing with things like holiday shopping (we have large families). I was hoping you could post some tips, budgeting strategies, for families living on one income. We have a monthly budget thanks to Dave Ramsey, but it’s hard to stick to sometimes, feeling restricted from more fun things. All advice is appreciated. -Kirstin”
Thanks for asking such a great question, Kirstin! There are so many different things I want to say in response, but I narrowed my thoughts down to six points:
1. Adopt a Can-Do, Creative, Committed Attitude
Your attitude makes a HUGE difference in your success. If you are committed to make the most of what you have, instead of spending your time wishing you were in a different situation, you’re well on your way to thriving.
You’re not stuck unless you choose to be. View hardships and setbacks as challenges to be conquered, not impossibilities that will tank you.
2. Find Freedom With Boundaries
A budget can be viewed as restrictive ball and chains on your life or it can be viewed as a freeing asset to aid you in financial success. It’s all in how you view it.
We’ve chosen to see a budget as one of our greatest assets — and we find freedom in the boundaries it provides. Why? Because we don’t have to stress over how we’re going to afford to pay our electric bill or whether we’ll have enough for groceries. Sticking with a budget removes a lot of anxiety and stress from our plates.
3. Budget for Everything
It takes at least three to six months to really get a handle on living on a budget, but it’s well worth the effort. However, one of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to stick with a budget is that they fail to budget for everything.
If you’re on a tight budget, you have to plan ahead for future expenses. Don’t wait until November to try to figure out how to afford Christmas, start putting money away every month at the beginning of the year to pay for Christmas at the end of the year. Even if you can only squeeze $10 to $15 per month out of your budget to put toward Christmas gifts, do it. You won’t regret it when November rolls around next year!
Plus, the more you start planning ahead for future expenses, the less you’ll have to worry about unexpected expenses. This, in turn, will help you to slowly inch your way to a better financial place with more wiggle room in your budget.
4. Focus on the Long-Term Benefits
Don’t just pinch pennies for pinching pennies’ sake. That gets old really, really quickly. Instead, constantly remind yourself of the why behind your what.
What are your long-term goals? Do you want to have an emergency fund? Do you want to be able to pay cash for your next vehicle? Or maybe pay off a credit card?
Whatever your why is, make it a clear goal and remind yourself of it over and over again. This will fuel your motivation and drive to stick with those hard, short-term sacrifices.
5. Create a Blow Category
If you want to live a long-term frugal lifestyle, you have to give yourself a little budget breathing room. This doesn’t have to be hundreds of dollars every month, but you need to carve out a little extra from your budget to make a blow category — money that you can spend on whatever you’d like.
If you’re married, I highly recommend a His and Hers Blow Category. Even if you can only afford to put $3 in each envelope per month, do it! That little bit of fun money can go a long way in helping preserve your sanity.
6. Find Some Frugal Friends
Don’t go it alone! Surround yourself with folks who “get” your weirdness and inspire you to continue to learn and improve in the area of saving money. It’s so much easier to stay the course when you have partners who are running alongside you.
What advice and suggestions do the rest of you have for Kirstin? I’d love to hear!
Try to stop spending money and time shopping for bday and xmas gifts for adults. Make bread, homemade vanilla, dipped pretzels etc or better yet just stop adult gift giving whatsoever.
Keep a gift closet for kid gifts. Buy nice things second hand or on clearance and keep them at the ready. Keep one roll of brown craft paper and one color of bright ribbon for wrapping. Minimize excesses.
Menu plan. And eat what you have. Plan for leftovers. Try not to waste good.
Finding frugal minded friends is the best ! We never spent much money GOING OUT with friends. We would rummage sale together. Hike. Bike. Fish. Or play board games or cribbage or euchre at one another’s houses WITH KIDS IN TOW. frugal but fun!
Those are some really great tips! Thank you so much for sharing them! -Jordan, MSM Team
We talked to our families (also large on both sides) and asked if they would like to do a secret Santa instead of buying everyone presents every year. What we found is that everyone is feeling it! It’s expensive to buy everyone in a large family a present and normally you really only need one or two of the gifts and the rest end up being junk (or re-gifted which is another way to stay frugal). We were just the first to say we couldn’t afford to do it anymore but everyone was relieved!
We also told our friends we would rather share an experience with them around Christmas than do gifts! So we went on sleigh rides or winter walks.
It’s better for the pocket book, the economy and your heart/spirit to cut out gift giving!
I successfully stayed home and homes schooled my kids who are now 21 and 17. I still made money at home though. I sold on ebay for 10 years, had a virtual office doing typing jobs and accounting for friends, sold plants from my yard and started a pet sitting, dog walking business for the last 8 years. I also recommend getting in a good MLM company. I shopped at resale stores and rarely purchased brand new items. It worked for us.
We always pick up an extra job here and there. That gives us extra spending money. For instance, I will tutor students and my husband will do some umpiring. This money helps us to go on vacation or buy a new outfit at the thrift store. We buy most of our clothes at the thrift stores which saves a lot. Also, we use the envelope system and try to buy everything with cash. Once the cast runs out, we are done for the month and then try to find things to do that cost nothing. The money normally last all month though.
Several thoughts.
Track your actual spending for a month or so for “leaks”. They may not be major items but something as simple as a candy bar at the checkout during your weekly grocery shopping. Consider if $410 a year is worth it. Others mentioned budgeting “blow money” this is especially nice if you and your husband have different spending styles. It’s a safety valve for feeling deprived.
Purchase with cash. It leads to more conscious spending.
Someone else mentioned the change jar. We use ours as a giving jar. You’re never poor as long as you can share with others.
Who said Christmas shopping has to start with Black Friday? When we lived some distance from family, all gifts had to be mailed, I started shopping right after Christmas for the following year. It freed from the crazy Christmas crunch, and allowed me to find amazing bargains. Summer yard sales and new things at thrift stores were some options. Loss leaders or door busters. Even decorative cookie tins for homemade gifts could be gotten for much less “used”. In front of the “gift” budget sheet in our budget book, I have a list of family members. Gift ideas are penciled in next to each name. Working on a unifying theme makes gift buying easier too. The year we lived in Wisconsin it was cheese. The year my husband did the shopping when it was a heavy medical year for me,. it was books. They can be scouted out at leisure.
A couple years ago, I used a mess of postage stamps to send a package to a family friend. It felt a bit odd standing at the post office check out line until I noticed an elderly couple in front of me had done the same. Unused discounted postage can be purchased from stamp dealers as collectors prefer unusual or cancelled stamps. Look up “discounted postage” online for dealers. Now it’s standard practice for our Christmas packages.
Other people mentioned “The Tightwad Gazette”. Great reference tool. See if you can borrow it through your library or through interlibrary loan if you have that.
Hopes some of these ideas help.
Crystal’s spot on by recommending a his and hers blow category! My husband and I have done this for years and it works great. We can spend our blow money however we’d like with no questions asked from the other spouse!
I also agree with budgeting for everything. Even if it’s small items, they add up over the course of a year. Plan for car tags, baby/wedding gifts, etc.
Kirstin, please thank your husband for his service for our country!
Make sure you look at the “big rocks” in your budget–could you downscale to a smaller house. Move to a duplex and rent the other half? Are you getting the best possible deal on your insurance? To do have the right level of coverage, or are you paying for more than you need? These can make huge differences in the overall budget too.
When my husband and I were young and in this same situation an article in the Tightwad Gazette help us get a better perspective on things. Amy suggested that instead of just spending money on things without thinking that you look for the lowest cost acceptable solution. If your low cost choice doesn’t work well then instead of going straight for the expensive solution just go one notch up until you find what works for you. This really helps on things that you use up often like coffee or paper products but on durable goods like appliances or tools research and buy the lowest cost good quality item so you don’t have to replace things as often. I used to say to my family that having a tight budget didn’t mean we couldn’t do the things we wanted to but that we had to be creative about how we did them.
I think everyone here pretty much has great ideas. I’d also like to add that since you mentioned that you have a large family if you can’t buy everyone gifts you could always try a holiday potluck instead. To save money the ones I’ve been to were usually around lunch and had light snacks and finger foods like mini cut up sandwiches a fruit and cheese bar and light sweets like chocolate dipped pretzels, homemade cookies and juice etc. One year I even went to one where someone had a crockpot made of homemade meatballs which were really popular.
Also, not sure where you shop but at some grocery stores here have parenting magazines at the entrance or exit of a store with activity calendars that parents can take their kids to for free or cheap. Since its the holiday season some cheap activities might be at local or state parks. In my area there is usually a holiday light and train display at the local parks and/or a balloon glow. Some parks have a set price and some are by donation.
I know its a bit early but since you mentioned you have an 11 month old baby, if family asks what you’d like for the baby’s 1st birthday you could hint at a zoo membership or an aquarium membership if you don’t have one yet. In my area the zoos and the aquariums memberships come with free admission to holiday programs for Halloween and Christmas one zoo membership package also lets you bring a non member guest for free.
Those are great tips. I would add that with one child, it’s very easy to figure out some ways to earn extra income. She could consider baby-sitting (and her baby would have a playmate sometimes which would be fun), some part-time housecleaning gigs, starting a blog, photography, pet sitting, selling on eBay or other things.
I say this because sometimes we just can’t squeeze out any more pennies from the budget without feeling totally deprived, and having just a bit of extra wiggle room makes a huge difference.
We are a family of 6, and if I worked we would have 2 kids in daycare and need after school care for the other 2. Unless I had a amazingly well-paid career (which I don’t, my degree is in social work), childcare would eat up most of my salary. So instead of trying to kill ourselves pinching every penny and never having fun, I babysit for another child in our home. It is super convenient, gives our kids another playmate, and gives us $800-$900 a month of extra income. Since you only have one child, you could easily watch 2 other kids and make even more. Just a thought !
It really helps me to schedule in rewards when my husband and I reach certain milestones. My husband is the saver and I’m the free spirit, and it’s really hard for us to get on the same page about money sometimes. He doesn’t care about rewards, but they motivate me, so sometimes we work them in. I wish we’d work them in more often. But anyway, if rewards motivate you, that might help too.
We had $5 a month for a long time to spend on whatever we wanted. I was so surprised at how far it went!! I was rolling mine over for a few months, or sometimes got a bogo blizzard from Dairy Queen. It was more important than I thought to have that in the budget.
My husband and I were just talking about this the other day! Yes–freedom in boundaries! It is amazing how much attitude and mindset affects your life. We have a very tight budget and rarely spend money, but the plus side of that is that we rarely worry about money. We have our budget, and a small amount in savings. Not enough for something catastrophic, but enough to be able to see our bills paid each month.
We see so many couples around us who make double what we do and are worried about money constantly because they are living above their means. It really is so nice, and so freeing to operate within the boundaries of our budget.
Another mindset thing is to remove “We can’t afford it.” from your vocabulary. It creates a victim mindset. Instead, remind yourself that you are making good choices for your family and own that 🙂
I’ve changed that way of speaking too. Our kids are getting old enough to understand choices and I now make sure to explain what choices our family makes and why. We talk about how hard we must work for our money and about being good stewards with it. But I love them seeing us being empowered to make choices with what we have not feel deprived because of what we aren’t doing!
Just wanted to say that I love your point about not saying “we can’t afford it”. There’s a big difference between being broke and telling your money where to go.
I would also add meal-planning, at least a month ahead, to these great suggestions. Meal-planning reduces or eliminates last-minute trips to the store for ingredients and I know for me, it has helped reduce our dependence on take-out, which can be tempting since both my husband and I work full-time and often have pretty long days.
I never thought I’d be able to meal plan 30 days in advance until I tried it, and then I fell in love with it. This year I’ve been trying to plan 60 days out, to give myself a little cushion, just because the months go by so fast.
And just because you have a meal plan doesn’t mean you’re stuck following it to a T. If friends invite you out or you get a great deal on a piece of fish, you can revise it that day, no biggie.
I’ve been learning to simplify it as we go so I’m getting quicker at creating them. For example, Friday night is always pizza night. Sundays always involve a crock-pot meal so I’m not slaving over a stove.
There is always a way to do things on the cheap. We get a lot of entertainment from our library like DVDs, games, & of course books. Every community has free events like a family fun day or holiday lights displays. Have super basic cable or Netflix. Sell your old DVDs & books online. Holiday shopping in our home starts in January. We purchase 2 presents per month till christmas. Then we get just a handful of gifts around the holidays during a good sale. We even save back a few toys the kids got for christmas and give then again the next year because my husband’s family goes over board with the toys or they were not age appropriate. The kids don’t even remember opening the presents the previous year 😉
Haha… the re-gifting presents for your kids… I do that, too. Although since our oldest kids are 9 and almost 7, I doubt I will be able to do it much longer!
Thank you for all the great advice!
Another thing we do to help budget during the holidays is talk openly with extended family about expectations – we simply can’t afford to buy everyone super nice gifts. What we’ve done instead is either drawn names or made gifts. It helps us keep to our budget and lets the extended family know that we love and appreciate them without fancy gifts.
It’s truly a time of thanksgiving and being with family – two things that can’t be bought.
Like-minded friends are really important. I also consider my work to be finding the most affordable options for the things we need. By working hard at cutting our costs, I make our $$ go a lot further than it would if I waited until the last minute and bought stuff retail. That is my ‘job’ in our family. 🙂
I stayed at home for all of the years our 5 children were growing up and actually 4 1/2 years after the graduation of our youngest child and I am still at home. Our children did not have all the latest gadgets and neither did we but now that they are all grown and through college I can see that it would have just been ‘stuff’. We have always driven old and paid for cars and we still do even though we could by newer if we wanted to spend our money on that. We rarely ate out but now in retrospect the times we were able to go out for a nice meal are actually memories instead of just eating out. We always had others in our home and those memories are priceless. Our kids still talk about the good times we had with friends in our home for everything from meals to actual whole family sleep overs. (Having an entire family over for a slumber party is so much fun.) I will not tell you that we were not tight and sometimes just poor but I would not trade having more money for all those years of being there and homeschooling my children. It is hard to be different sometimes but I agree that you need friends who are living the same lifestyle or you will constantly feel deprived. My husband and I kept a change jar that we threw all of our change into. When we had saved up enough we could use it for a movie at the cheapie theater or even breakfast at McDonald’s which is a treat if you rarely go there. We may have felt deprived at times but it is the long term that is important and I would not go back and exchange less time with my children for more money. Even though my children are all grown now we still find it best for me to be home to take care of everything here than have extra money. For us life is much simpler and enjoyable with me at home.
Lana, thank you for this reply. I have stayed home with my kids all their lives. They are now 19 and 16. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. It is very hard at times and I do get discouraged when things are extra tight, but your reply reminded me of all the benefits to being home, even when you are broke. We have great memories and relationships with our kids. That is worth more than the newest phone or gadget.
For the holidays with large families, give 1 gift to the family. This will save $. For example, a good game or DVD. There were a couple of years that we did not give gifts to our extended family, and very small gfits for our parents. One thing that only you can give to your parents is a picture of your family or the baby. And we did not give gifts to each other, but spent money to visit our family and other family experiences.
Be encouraged that the lean days will not last forever! There will be a time when you have enough money to buy more things, but don’t go into debt to do it now.
The most helpful tool we know is contentment. There is always more you could have, but when you are thankful for what you do have and practice contentment, you’ll find one income can go farther than two incomes.
My husbands family thankfully decided to cut back on christmas and we just exchange gifts between couples and mostly focus our gifts on the 6 nieces and nephews which has helped tremendously. It tried to convince my family we shpuld just do gifts for our kids (they are the only gtand children) but everyone is against it as they still want to receive gifts which is.hard on us because we already have so many people to buy for.
Leah, we were in the same situation and struggled for several years buying gifts for everyone. What usually happened was that they all got cheap gifts that they didn’t really want anyway. We finally told everyone that we could not afford gifts for everyone. The younger kids get gifts, the older kids get gift cards, the adults do not get gifts. They are welcome to give gifts to whomever they want to, but our financial stability is worth more than other adults getting upset because they didn’t get a gift!
My father’s family was large. They decided that the grandmother would not buy gifts. Adults over 16 drew names and gave gifts to all kids under 16. Grandmother would get gifts from her kids but would not give them. Maybe something small or handmade for each family?
We have a $250 miscellaneous category. It really helps me stick to the other categories. I want pizza ordered after a terrible day, comes out of there. I found a great sale on extra diapers, comes out of there. Our Christmas gifts and bday gifts come out of there too. My husband has a terrible habit of using his debit card for little things. He forgot his lunch and needs to grab something, he just wanted a little coffee and treat, etc.. He is allowed a specific cash budget and ALL his extra spending comes from that. I don’t care what happens to it, but he’s never allowed to use the debit card. It has made a huge impact on our budget.
My last suggestion is you both have to be on the same page. If you aren’t, it will never work. I made a great budget and my husband wasn’t on board and we never stuck to it. Now I’ve listened to his concerns and worked them in the budget.
Awesome advice. I love the last line! “I’ve listened to his concerns, and worked them in the budget.” What a great wife! He must feel very genuinely respected.
I commented over on Facebook too, but I wanted to add, gift giving among extended family can be overwhelming and unnecessarily stress your budget. If your families aren’t willing to just exchange names, you may ask to opt-out of both giving and receiving. Or give edible gifts like caramel corn or fudge you make yourself for a few dollars. We’ve even cut back on gifts for our own kids. Kids don’t need a blowout birthday party every year when cake and ice cream with their grandparents will do. Perhaps a big party every 5 years or so, like at ages 1, 5, 10, 16.
We became a one-income family not by choice, but because of a military move overseas. My only employment options here would be minimum wage. Where after working expenses, I would be lucky if I was taking home $20/day. I make it a “game” for myself to save more than I would be taking home from a minimum wage job. It also helped that when we were making two-incomes, we only lived on one. The “extra” income was going towards debt and then savings. The transition was nearly effortless because we had already been living on one income for a year. I encourage those who have a heads up about their future one-income to live on a single income before you “take the plunge” if it all possible!
We have stopped shopping around a menu plan and started planning around what we have on hand. So many times we sit with cans/pkgs of food in our pantries/freezers that stay there forever because we didn’t have one meal or another and it just started backing up. I read about this on the “Frugally Sustainable” website and decided to try it.
Also, consider making what you can like laundry soap and baby wipes. Turn old clothes into rags (no more paper towels), rugs (warm on the feet) or quilts (great gifts). If you don’t watch a lot of “special programming” like HBO etc, try tvonline.com or an antennae for a lot of network programming for free and ditch your cable bill. 🙂 We are trying to do the same with my recent downsizing as we are raising our two granddaughters and would like for me to be a stay at home mom. Good Luck
This week is “officially” centered around thankfulness, but truly realizing what we do have and being grateful this week and everyday really helps me not feel like I “need” to have something. I’m not always great at this, but when I have the right outlook, it definitely helps us live within our means, happily.
I totally agree Anna. I think gratitude really is key. Spending more time being grateful and less time keeping up with the Jonses will help you be happy no matter what your income or situation is.
I think the best piece of advice in this post is find frugal friends. When the hubby and I decided to start living a debt free life we went one step further: we told everyone, friends and family included. We only lost one couple as friends-good riddance. The rest either envied our decision or decided to do the same themselves! They realized that we would no longer be eating out every weekend instead we we totally on board for potluck dinners. Family members realized I pared down the Christmas list to just small children, but I hand wrote everyone a letter. Which I feel people are truly excited to get in this day and age. I think being open with the people you surround yourself with will really amaze you.