How much income is needed to support a family on one income?

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$70k where we live…the taxes are $6k per year now…but with foreclosures, one could buy a great home (2000+ sq footage) for the low $200’s. It also depends on the car you drive…we have one car payment as we bought a car last year, but have an older car, with no car payment. Insurance is higher in Florida, for both home and car…etc. It also depends on if your kids play sports, etc…and attend private schools. Mine attend public, but I feel nickled and dimed all the time. I work fulltime and so does my hubby…but I stayed home when the kids were pre school ages. We lived on $50k, my husband’s income back then, but things seemed less expensive, and we had no debt. We don’t have a lot of debt now, but we still have to pay it off.

Now, together, we make in excess of what we would need to live on one income, (but we are saving for a downpayment to a home next year) but I make a good income, and with our kids being older now, I don’t think it would make sense to quit for really no ‘valid’ reason…now if we had another baby…😉
 
I was one of the ones who put $110,000 + is required. This is just because DH and I make over this amount combined and haven’t had our child yet, and … well … our mortgage payments are huge and the cost of living in my city is insane. Of course everything depends on how many kids you have, how old they are, where you live, what your lifestyle is like, how much help you have, etc…

I plan on returning to work a year after my baby is born. When there are two or more kids, I will rethink this as daycare in my area is about $1000 per month.

Cost benefift analysis 🙂
 
I voted in the 90-100K range. I live in Northeastern PA, close to Philly and New York. I must make a note on this however. My wife and I, along with our 5 year old daughter, are expecting a new addition to the family this fall. 🙂 I whole heartily believe we could live on less than this, HOWEVER, there is no way we would be able to pay for future things. What I mean by this is primarily education. By the time our kids are at the college age, I don’t even want to know what it’s going to cost. Being in that income range, I can’t imagine not having to dip into our retirement accounts to help pay for it.

My wife will cease to work at all once our second child is born, and I can only pray that the good Lord allow me to provide for all that we will need to raise our children and give them a proper education in the future.

As a final education related note, I would absolutely love to be able to send our kids to Catholic schools. This, unfortunately is just not possible, considering all that needs to be saved for in the future. I’m hoping that public schools, along with evening catechism classes, and home education all mixed together is enough to provide what is needed.
 
PaulinVA said:
Originally Posted by gardenswithkids
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You’re a popular guy! The world must need more people like you. 😃

Interesting comment about “work themselves to death”. My husband shares some of your same sentiments, while simultaneously desiring to climb that “ol’ corporate ladder”. One spouse takes care of the children while the other works late or early or has other community commitments away from the family. My husband observes that there are plenty of women in his office who want his job, but none of them seem to want my job.😉

Paul, your a Catholic man; you should know that we make sacrifices for our families, otherwise our families get sacrificed. I sacrificed my career–and that did feel like a sacrifice at the time. Ultimately, God calls us to sacrifice ourselves, uniting ourselves at Mass to One Perfect Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
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Where I live, suburbs in Texas, I said $30-40K. That’s assuming the kids are in Catholic grade school. I would go one notch higher if they were in Catholic High School and one notch lower if living in a rural area or homeschooling the kiddos.
 
gardenswithkids said:
My husband observes that there are plenty of women in his office who want his job, but none of them seem to want my job.😉
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Secretly, I’m sure a lot of them want your job. They just don’t know how to get there.
Paul, your a Catholic man; you should know that we make sacrifices for our families, otherwise our families get sacrificed. I sacrificed my career–and that did feel like a sacrifice at the time. Ultimately, God calls us to sacrifice ourselves, uniting ourselves at Mass to One Perfect Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
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Yes, but it’s frustrating that sometimes the goal of having my wife stay home means that I spend less time at home. We depend on my career, so I have to do what it takes to not be mediocre at work but do the best job I can so that we can reap the rewards.

It’s a balancing act, and sometimes no one is happy.
 
Well, I live in SoCal and am a single mom of four. I make $40k a year since I am just back to work after having been a SAHM for 12 years. My income is enough to pay the rent and have $200 left after that. So, definitely not enough to live on. Fortunately, take home pay wise I get more in child support than I do from working.

It is interesting though since the divorce, my grocery bill is half of what it had been, just taking my ex out of the equation. Not to mention I don’t have to budget for all of his lavish spending. So, even though my total income is way less than when we were married, it’s not so bad as I thought it would have been. I point this out because I think it is possible to live on a lot less if you are disciplined in what you buy. One person with lavish taste can really throw a budget out of whack.
 
I had to go back and use an inflation calculator to see what our income in 1994 (my first year home)–23,000-- would be now–$34,000. So, my answer is based on that.

But…that was with two adults, a toddler and a baby. Now, we have six kids including two perpetually hungry teenagers. Our rent back then on a 2 bedroom house was a wonderful $350–adj now to approx. 500. It would be very hard to find an 2 bedroom apartment now at $500.

So, for a young couple starting out in suburban Indianapolis, I think 30,000-35,000 is comfortable, but for a family with multiple older children–it’d probably be 15,000 or 20,000 more. We easily spent less than a hundred a week on groceries and household items back then, but now, we spend over $200 a week.

housing prices in Indiana are very reasonable compared to a lot of places. That’s a huge plus.
 
GregoryPalamas said:
Out in Chicago burbs,

I commend your frugality. I guess we weren’t as frugal. I really do commend you. I’m not being sarcastic. I thought we were pretty frugal.

CDL
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I wish I could claim it. It’s not me.

It’s two other families. 😊
 
leonie said:
housing prices in Indiana are very reasonable compared to a lot of places. That’s a huge plus.
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The house I rent… 1800 sq ft, 3 br’s / 2 1/2 baths on a tiny (as in 4500 sq ft) lot would go for $650k. You’d have to make a lot to afford that on one income. California is so backwards though. Rent is less than a monthly mortage payment would be if I were to buy a house now. Of course the landlord has owned it since 1976, so I am sure his house payment is teeny tiny.

The couple next door have 4 kids and bought their house, which is only 1100 sq ft. I know that they are living on one income, a Navy income. Her husband is a CPO. Their house payment is over $3k a month, and in the past she has been a surrogate mom just to make ends meet. Although she says she will definitely not be doing that a third time.
 
In my hometown, probably 60 thousand would be more than enough. Actually I’d even assume that 50 would be ok as long as you’re not in any great amount of debt.
 
You should come to Argentina where most families live on less than u$s 10.000.
 
Don’t figure skate! We paid around $12,000 per year for our kids to figure skate.

But we have no regrets–we loved every minute of it, and the girls still skate and still coach (and make money coaching–$34.00/hour!), and so does my husband. I would highly recommend the sport, but go to a rink that does a good ISI (recreational) program, and get your kids into synchronized skating rather than the terribly expensive and discouraging singles skating. Or do ice dancing, although it’s almost impossible to find a partner. But the sport itself is still enjoyable even if you don’t compete.

Also, depends on the state of the public schools. In our city, a deseg lawsuit, along with a monster teacher union, has caused a brain drain and a religious drain on every public school. Most of the decent families in the city are homeschooling or in private schools. The few who are sticking it out have full-time job protecting their kids from the thought police and the union goons.

To pay for the lawsuit, our taxes are now the highest in the nation (percentage wise). It sucks.

I would say it also depends on the skills of the homemaker. I was raised by a mom who couldn’t cook, couldn’t sew, and had no clue about cleaning or interior decorating or wallpaper or any of those homey things. I can cook a little, but more often than not, my cooking is bad and we end up going out to eat. And I can’t sew, and I have no clue about pretty little touches that can make a home look nice without costing a fortune. I also have no gardening skills–all I have to do is walk by a plant and it croaks (our lawn is dead).

But if you are a good homemaker, you can really make those pennies streeeetch! Lucky you!

Also depends on the skill of the home and car repair specialist in your family. My husband is pretty good with cars, OK with home repairs. If he wasn’t around, I would have to take everything to a mechanic or repair man and it would be very expensive. So ladies, forget the poetry and the good looks–find a man who is HANDY!

Also depends on the availability of public transportation in your area. In our city, it’s awful, and walking is out of the question as it’s just too dangerous (bad roads with no sidewalks and high crime rate). But in other cities you can easily get along without a car.

Hey, if our city sounds bad, it is! I like it here only because my family lives here, and I like the climate in Northern Illinois. But if my family lived elsewhere and if the climate changes, I would move in a minute.
 
I don’t even think living on $30,000 a year for a single person in my city is too do-able. Rent for a one bedroom is around $600-$1,100. I think they even offer some sort of housing subsidy for people who earn less than $32,000. No joke! However, the city is booming and it work is easy to come by. There is a major labour shortage.

I guess each working situation and city has it’s ups and downs.
 
it matters where you are. And if you have family nearby. Having family nearby (for free childare when it’s needed, for bringing over food for you, for inviting you over for dinner, and general mooching:D ) helps a lot. At least it does for us that is.
 
I voted for the 100K and up. I live in the Metro NYC area. Enough said. A starter home where I live will set you back 600 to 700K, add another 15K for property taxes…you get the picture. It ain’t easy.
 
kage_ar said:
Could not answer in general, it varies across the nation and by what part of a state you live in.

Where I live, 50K would allow a family of four to live on one income (not in a lavish new home). In So Cal, it would not be enough.
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True enough. I just crunched numbers and in taxes, mortgage, car payments, insurance, utilities we’re paying over 30K/year (50 year old house that we purchased 9 years ago).

I was a SAHM until the youngest was in grade 5. Luckily we’re now empty nesters, having put two kids through university and one through college. That was only possible because DH receives a pension from the military (25 years of service) + has a full-time job.

Right now we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the job will last until the house is paid off. Then we’ll sell, move back to our hometown and either move into my old family home or build a small house on the land.
 
I’m in a small suburb of Pittsburgh, and around here about 70K per year will allow a family of three to live pretty well.
 
Hubby makes $20000 a year. We live somewhat comfortably that is with NO government help either (except financial aid for school). We have two children and one on the way.

We would live a lot nicer if we didn’t have foolish debt.
 
Wow Peach. That is amazing. I can’t imagine. … you must know a lot of tricks to stretch that dollar!
 
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