My income is about half of what I used to make so I could spend more time with my daughter. Funny thing is . . . I'm just fine. I find the more you make the more you spend.
What would you do if your income was dropped by half?
Well, with me on maternity leave as of last Monday, our income has been cut by half.
How are we going to cope? Well, by doing all of the frugal things that we already do and by making an extra effort not to spend any money, which shouldn't be too hard, since we don't ever buy anything anyway.
Also, buy soaking up every new tip and piece of information I can here at the village!
My income is less than half now that I have retired--it will come up some when I receive SS. Like you Shell, I have found the more you make, the more you spend.
__________________
Vannie(~.~)
Life is a journey--not a destination
Reach Higher!
** August reads: Southern Fried by Cathy Pickens & Dakota by Martha Grimes TBR
Well, we would seriously have to cut back. We would drop our cell phone and internet. We would also stop all extra curricular activities, for us and the kids. It would be bare minimum of everything. Liviing off the stockpile and savings, barely able to scrape by. We would not be able to do it for long - mainly because of our house payment - it is almost $1400 - and that is a 30 year mortgage. It is terrible! Let's hope it never happens! We have taken paycuts though over the years and seem to manage.
Our income was cut from over $100,000.00 8 years ago to under $25,000.00 today. We are doing quite okay.
And like you Shell, we found out the more we made the more we spent. We had to learn a whole new way to live and found it wasn't near as hard as we thought it would be.
My income was cut by half in November when I lost my job. Luckily I was already a frugal person, no cell, no cable, no take outs or eating out.
I joined FV for more ideas and I am getting by. I could certainly keep going for a while longer but hope to find a job soon. It's amazing what you can do if you have to. I too have a big mortgage - 1650 including escrow for property tax. That's about 80% of my monthly income right now.
I'm dealing with this right now. I work full-time, but my dh isn't. He hasn't had a paycheck since 12-31-05. He's starting his own business so that means that the money he saved is going towards start-up costs for the new business.
Fortunately, I really started to stockpile in the late summer and fall. That has really helped to reduce our food expenses. At that time, we limited the amount of eating out we did to once a week. At the same time, we eliminated the better restaurants to the more affordable ones.
Staying out of the shops, is the best way to save money for me. I think three times before I buy something.
I've also returned quite a few things that were purchased in the past that I didn't really need.
I'm selling as much excess stuff as I can.
I spent the last 6 months, improving my credit score, paying down a lot of debt, and researching better interest rates. Most of the cc debt that I have left is now at 0% till April 2007. Though I can't be putting as much money towards debt reduction as I did, at least my debt is growing. All my extra $ at the end of each month goes right into my EF.
Obviously, no expensive vacations. If we go away, we'll just stay at a friend's house.
We live under our means. So, when we bought our first house, we qualified for a house on my income. If we had purchased a house based on two incomes, then it would be very difficult to make the house payment. Right now, we can easily make the payments provided I'm careful with the budget.
Actually, living on one income is probably the best thing people can do. Most people who make more, do spend more money. So, if you live on one income, then the second income could be snowballed into debt reduction or retirement accounts.
When I went from full-time to part-time to not working, our income dropped, not quite in half though. When I originally looked at our bills and our monthly credit card bill, I didn't think we could "afford" for me to stop working. But I also realized that it didn't make any sense that it was pathetic if we couldn't live off DH's salary. So I started looking at what was being spent. And the first year without my income we spent so much less. I lost the automatic "of course we can afford it" and therefore bought it attitude. We've been lucky that we always spent less than we made. And we bought our house based on one income - but we were also lucky we bought before the big runup on house prices.
Well being as I am the only source of income, I would have a heat attack if my income dropped in half. I'd only be making around $20,000 then. It would be impossible to make ends meet.
But after my first reaction, I would continue to sell off as many things as I could. I'm making reasonable money doing this right now as I have a lot of stuff to get rid of. I'd eat down my stores, I'm doing this already though in preparation for a move. I'd also finally give up my cable internet access. I've cut everything else I can from the utilities stand point.
I'd also stop going out on the weekends. I keep it as cheap as possible but I still use gasoline and such which could be stopped.
I'd just try to hang on until July when I move back home with my parents.
This whole time, I'd be job searching as well. I'm job hunting anyway so it wouldn't be that big a change for me.
However my debt repayment would take a major hit which would make me mad.
__________________
Have a nice day. Traci
Just moved into my first house. It's a little bit of a fixer but not too bad. 9-1-2009
Ours was a 40% wage cut so dh could stay in town to work and we lost the company car. So he bought a reliable used car with cash and we used all of our savings over the next couple of years plus my stockpile. We are doing well now, except for the fact he has never recieved a raise from this place, no matter how good a job he does, oh well, he's going to school and hopefully will change careers again soon. At least we know what it's like to live on a static income!
my income is just shy of $25,000 (this includes chtx credit) for the year. i am the sole support for both of my children. i have learned to live on less and find it very satisfying. i look for creative solutions to whatever presents itself to me and go with the flow.
frugality and living simply is about all it takes. one thing i did to help myself along was join this group!
Connect with Facebook
August reads: Southern Fried by Cathy Pickens & Dakota by Martha Grimes TBR
Princess and 
Scampy
Linear Mode
