After the birth of the first child, mothers could start thinking how unbalanced their lives are. The opinion on quitting her job to focus more on the family could slowly become the forefront of daily conversations. Eventually, this idea could transform into brainstorming and simulation meetings. Within months, we could start to have a plan on what to do if we need to transition to a single-income lifestyle. In this case, husbands will need to sustain the single-income household and it is actually a necessity in many new families. In the face of looming recessing and increasing inflation, many families could dismiss the idea of transitioning to a single-income family as an impossible setup.
We should know about the true impacts of day-care expenses on our overall budget. All the consequences associated with transitioning to single-income lifestyle should be documented and organized. There are many budgeting software that allows us to properly manage our finances. An easy way should be to create a solid budget tracking system on Microsoft Excel. This should allow us to track all spending categories, including medical, entertainment, groceries, gas and bills. We should be really detailed, because we need to evaluate the consequences of having a single income.
After we have documented our income, it should be much easier to find out what we should do to survive on a single income. There could be sacrifices that we would need to make. If we need to save less each month to cover for expenses, then that’s probably what we need to do. If the prospect doesn’t look good, we shouldn’t be panic, because it may look worse than the reality. Now, it should be the right time to create our single income spending simulation. The purposes are to get a more accurate picture of things that we would need to do. This should allow us to see whether living on a single income is financially possible. We may need to adjust some areas to make sure that everything will work well.
There are things that we may need to do, such as identifying wants and needs. The terms want and need could blend together when we have much more money than we need. But we could be on a tight budget when we have transitioned to single-income lifestyle. However, the journey towards single-income living could be a worthwhile and exciting journey. We could have different requirements, but in the end, it is all about reducing our expenses. We should identify areas associated with regular expenses, such as cleaning services, cable, electricity, gas and water. We should find out whether it is possible to reduce these costs or eliminate some of them.
It is also a good idea to set retirement and savings goals, so we still a financial purpose, despite the much reduced income. No matter how small our income is, it is generally important to set aside some of our money for savings and investment.