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

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We did it on less than $20K, and if we wouldn’t have had any debt going into it, we could have done it easily for a long time. As it is, we have too high of a debt load, and I had to go back to work for a while, still hoping to get home permanently in a couple years.
In other words, don’t live on the coasts, or in big cities where the cost of living is high. Move. We live in the midwest, in a small town, where the cost of living is very low, and it’s not hard. Our mortgage payment is $200/mo. Can’t beat that with a stick. Yes, mortgage, not rent, we’ll own it in a few years. I don’t understand how anyone lives in places like California. 🤷 Just do not get it.
 
I think foundation has more to do with what you can live on as opposed to actual income.

For example, we already have three cars paid in full. We have personal belongings and items such as dressers, couches, a tv, etc. We both have roths and 401ks. We’re trying to close on a house this month.

With all of that settled, the only expenses are insurance, gas and food and a monthly house payment. Those are things we could afford on a very low income.

Also, we work for the same company so we receive a discount for health care, which we don’t use at all. (Except I’ll be using it now for pre-natal care and delivery.)

Imagine someone who has to get a place to live, a car to drive and buy furnishings such as a matress. That takes more income.
 
Teakafrog said:
We did it on less than $20K, and if we wouldn’t have had any debt going into it, we could have done it easily for a long time. As it is, we have too high of a debt load, and I had to go back to work for a while, still hoping to get home permanently in a couple years.
In other words, don’t live on the coasts, or in big cities where the cost of living is high. Move. We live in the midwest, in a small town, where the cost of living is very low, and it’s not hard. Our mortgage payment is $200/mo. Can’t beat that with a stick. Yes, mortgage, not rent, we’ll own it in a few years. I don’t understand how anyone lives in places like California. 🤷 Just do not get it.
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Well, it depends on what you do for a living. DH was an air traffic controller in the military. We went where they sent us.

We were lucky to live on Base while the kids were young but my not working meant that we didn’t put anything aside for a down payment on a house. DH’s parents died in the early 90s and the small amount he inherited was put in an RRSP. We were lucky to be able to dip into that for the down payment when he retired and we had to leave the security of the PMQs.
 
Well, I’m single, no kids, no rent, living in an apartment provided by my employer at no charge. I get paid about $25,000 a year (with almost no tax), and I probably only spend about $10,000 of it on living expenses. The rest is on my education - I’m paying for a Master’s degree that I’m working on in my spare time. Before I started that I paid off my debts from college. After I finish this degree, I’m going to save my excess salary to pay for living expenses for when I move back to Canada.

It’s nice to see this thread, to have an idea of people’s perceptions of how much you need to raise a family.
 
Apparently if you’re a grad student in Ann Arbor living in student housing, you can support a family of five on a $25K student stipend. One of the other students in my program and his wife just had their third son (that makes three boys under the age of four) He’s just finishing his third year of grad school and she’s a SAHM. They have only one car, his tuition is paid by scholarship, and the school pays health insurance. They’re planning to try for number 4 as soon as they can (I’m assuming once this baby’s weaned). I have no idea how they do it but they’re awesome people and quite amazingly resourceful. Cute kids, too. 👍
 
I didn’t vote yet because I’m not sure what it would take if you had two kids a house and a car. DH and I both work jobs that bring in about $20k a year. I get half my pay for a year from the government for maternity leave. Then I will probably go back part time so we can maintain about $30k a year income. This is with a 1 bedroom appartment ($700 a month), and no car, no health care costs, a baby (soon) and a bit of student loan debt. I don’t see any way we could get by on just his salary and keep me at home permanently. I’m praying this year will bring him a better job. He certainly deserves it!
 
It depends on where you are living. Some places are higher cost of living. So, what you can live off of in one place, you wouldn’t scrape by in another.
 
Between my dh and i we make around $60,000 a year. If we had no student loans we could maybe live on one salary. We live outside of Philadelphia. Houses start at $220,000+ in the safe areas and suburbs. Rent is around $1000 a month.

I think that the income required to support a family depends on the family, where you live and so on. I know personally I would never expect my husband to work two jobs and never see us just so I could be a SAHM. I believe his job his to provide, and be part of the raising our child.
 
I think at almost any income a mom can stay home full-time. I live in the Northeast, and it is expensive here - gas is now $3.97 a gallon, home heating oil about the same… so figure just to heat my house (and we are in the mountains, so we run our furnace from Sept to May), it costs us about $8000 a year, post-tax. Add to that property taxes, a high cost of living, wow, it is stunning.

My DH makes about $115k a year before his 401k and deductions, about $80k takehome. We both do some nighttime parttime work to offset that, about another $15k. But I have friends in my town who make about 40k and do ok. We have no debt except our mortgage and we save every penny we can. We do splurge on basic cable and the occasional dinner out at the pizza shop, but that’s about it. We shop consignment, eat vegetarian, buy bulk, reduce, reuse recycle. My friends do the same.

I think any of us that are above the poverty line can find things to cut. If things continue to get tough, we’ll get rid of cable, reduce our phone bill, cut the heat back more (hard with two babies tho), go back to cloth diapering, eliminate the occasional babysitter…

There’s always room to cut. I’d start with car payments. Sell your car, buy a cheaper used one that you can pay cash for. I don’t think a car payment is a good choice since cars depreciate more rapidly than loans are paid off
 
I forgot to mention that I did part time babysitting those first years when I stayed home. That seemed to make a big difference.
 
The answer is soooo variable.

There are extreme regional differences. The NYC metro area is a high cost area, for example.

Then it also depends on whether you get fringe benefits or if you have buy them for yourself. Does your employer provide medical insurance? Or do you have to pay for it 100%. In NJ, we are forbidden by law from buying economical HSA or MSA policies or other economical medical policies.

Does your employer have a retirement plan? Do you have to pay for all of it or does the employer contribute? Or are you on your own to provide for your own retirement savings?

Does your employer provide automatic cost of living wage increases? Many do not.

Some friends of mine who work for government bureaucracies assume that their non-government friends get the same benefits as they do. They cannot comprehend working in a situation where those benefits do not exist.

Is your job subject of layoffs or elimination as the economy goes through its various cycles? Do you need to constantly upgrade your skills, at your own expense? Do you have professional licenses that require continuing education for renewal, whether the continuing education is relevant / helpful or not? Do you have to pay for it, or does your employer pay for it?

Can you live with old cars? Someone confessed to me that they were afraid that they had to buy a new car because their old one had 60,000 miles; I said that my car had 170,000 miles and was still drivable. They were shocked that a car could be driven that far. One of my friends came from a country where there are very few private cars, so he has no personal mechanical skills. He feels it necessary to buy new cars and admires his friends who can nurse older cars along … but his culture just doesn’t have that kind of “skill”.

Do you “need” to spend a lot for vacations, entertainment, liquor/ clubs or can you get by with a library card, volunteer work and day trips?

Are you able to save money or is running up credit card bills at the mall part of the way you live?

Are you in good health? Or do you spend most of your time at doctors’ offices? How many prescription drugs do you take?

So, I guess there are a lot of assumptions that people make with how they live their lives … and those assumptions color how much income they need.
 
How much money is needed for one parent to be able to stay home has a lot to do with the size of that particular family. Also, if the woman is the one who is going to work outside the home and they are not dome having kids, one also need to set aside money for maternity leave and things like that.
 
We couldn’t do it for less than 60K. Health insurance is $800/month. :eek: Add that to the mortgage, 2 car payments, insurance, and utilities, and we’re barely swimming.
 
Dear Weighing the Costs of 1 or 2 Incomes,

I found how much you make is not as important as how much you can live on and what you are willing to do without. Don’t forget though “Money” is NOT everything.

My wife and I felt it was important for her to stay home and be there for our children (2). Was it hard? You bet! Did we give up a lot? Yes and No.

A second income (my wife - without a college degree), would have been eaten up by childcare, gasoline, work expenses, etc. After figuring those costs, we would have been less than $30 a week ahead and someone else would have raised our children.

However, one income (just mine - which was our choice) made it very difficult to pay the bills at times. I paid a price too. I found I had to find a second job and return to school just to get ahead! My wife had the lion’s burden of 5 years of parenting while I did my best to get through school.

But it was worth it. When I graduated, I was able to get a professional income. It helped us get the necessities in life (as well as some wants). I found the price I paid for my BA to be so great (missing out on 5 years of seeing my children grow) that I NEVER paid the same price to get the Master’s; we did without.

Only you and your husband can weigh the costs involved with only one income or having two incomes. Both have a great deal we parents have to pay. I do know one thing for certain - at some point your children will be grown and will look backwards at their lives. They will be the ones who ultimately pay for whichever choice you and your spouse makes! They will also be the ones who decide if you made the right family choices with the choices you made!

Good luck and God bless you all.

Paradise Lost (and Found)
 
mizznicole said:
We couldn’t do it for less than 60K. Health insurance is $800/month. :eek: Add that to the mortgage, 2 car payments, insurance, and utilities, and we’re barely swimming.
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That’s the point. Our health insurance is only $283 a month. We don’t do car payments because we buy all our cars used from private parties after having our mechanic check them. We don’t live in a big house. I am always on everybody about lights, heat, garbage and water.
 
My wife and I make about $130K a year. Sounds like a lot, right? Well…it would be, if we lived in Idaho or something. We live in Massachusetts where the cost of living is enormous. We ‘get by’ month to month, manage to save some and invest some, but I can’t believe how quickly all that $$$ gets eaten up. Unless we move to someplace cheaper, we both have to work just to take care of our expenses. It’s not like we take expensive vacations or own a boat or anything. It can be quite frustrating at times.

We have two little girls, and they’ll be going to day care two days a week next year. That’s **$12,000 **out the window right there. We pay around $500 in property taxes each month. Gas is almost $4 a gallon; God knows what heating oil is going to run us next winter. It’s unreal.

And with all that said, I know how fortuanate we are…but I have to wonder: if it’s this hard for us, how are folks who are less fortunate making it in this economy? It’s scary.
 
OutinChgoburbs said:
That’s the point. Our health insurance is only $283 a month.
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Nice. When I worked in high tech insurance was covered 100% for single, and cost $200-ish if you had dependents. My husband works in tv-film and the benefits aren’t good at all. But in his industry it’s rare to get a salary, so we have to be thankful. His company covers about $300/month for the insurance.

I’m really paranoid about used cars because I’ve had them in the past. It’s when they break down and you have to shell out $1000 on the spot that really gets me. At least with the payment you know what to expect. :o But I’ve definitely thought about looking for a 1 year old car and dumping our truck. The other car is a scion so we get a break on gas.
 
Paradise_Lost said:
Dear Weighing the Costs of 1 or 2 Incomes,

I found how much you make is not as important as how much you can live on and what you are willing to do without. Don’t forget though “Money” is NOT everything.

My wife and I felt it was important for her to stay home and be there for our children (2). Was it hard? You bet! Did we give up a lot? Yes and No.

A second income (my wife - without a college degree), would have been eaten up by childcare, gasoline, work expenses, etc. After figuring those costs, we would have been less than $30 a week ahead and someone else would have raised our children.

However, one income (just mine - which was our choice) made it very difficult to pay the bills at times. I paid a price too. I found I had to find a second job and return to school just to get ahead! My wife had the lion’s burden of 5 years of parenting while I did my best to get through school.

But it was worth it. When I graduated, I was able to get a professional income. It helped us get the necessities in life (as well as some wants). I found the price I paid for my BA to be so great (missing out on 5 years of seeing my children grow) that I NEVER paid the same price to get the Master’s; we did without.

Only you and your husband can weigh the costs involved with only one income or having two incomes. Both have a great deal we parents have to pay. I do know one thing for certain - at some point your children will be grown and will look backwards at their lives. They will be the ones who ultimately pay for whichever choice you and your spouse makes! They will also be the ones who decide if you made the right family choices with the choices you made!

Good luck and God bless you all.

Paradise Lost (and Found)
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As a working mom I really hate these kind of statements. They’re insulting. I know many families where they couldn’t survive without both parents working. I know in our case, my child will be thankful that he was loved, surrounded by an awesome babysitter who loves him like her own child, and he’ll know that we cherished and valued him because we both had to work to keep us in a safe neighborhood. I could be a SAHM if we moved to a high crime and drug area, but as a parent I think my morals would be a little skewed if I did that.
 
This is really fascinating - I am horrible with knowing what is reasonable and how others live on what they make. It really gives me some perspective on our own situation.

Hmmmm…

~Liza
 
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