So for us it was a no brainer that I would stay home with our little one. But just how exactly do we make it work on one income, in a major metropolis in the US? To start I have to tip my hat to our debt free journey. I doubt we could have pulled the single income household off if we still had monthly debt payments. At its peak our student loan debt totaled $80,000 and between the two of us our monthly payments were right around $1,200 a month. With that kind of debt and monthly payment hanging over our heads there was no way I could envision us having a child AND going to a single income.
So with our household debt having been cleared collectively four years ago, having spent the time since our debt elimination pouring extra income to building a six month emergency fund and funneling as much as we could to retirement and non-retirement investment accounts, we felt confident at this time to drop to a single income and ultimately lose our excess disposable income for this period of our lives.
At the onset I will say that my wife continues to max out her Roth 401k match with her employer, so in that sense we are still contributing to our retirement accounts in at least some form. And to spare you the agonizing details of our full blown budget I have only included the major categories and percentages that comprise our monthly budget so the total does not equal out to 100%, as this is merely an overview snapshot. So here it is, a quick look at the major nuts and bolts of our budget.
- 31% Rent
- 26% Entertainment and groceries
- 10% Give
- 9% Travel
- 8% ESA and diaper service
- 8% Brokerage
For starters we put together before the start of every month a zero based budget that starts with our expected take home pay and ends with that number being dwindled down to zero. Again, these are some of our major categories and the percentages allotted do not equal to 100. At first glance obviously monthly living expenses in the form of rent, going out and groceries take up more than half of our monthly budget. We also are continuing to tithe, save specifically for ongoing travel as well as into our taxable brokerage account. It is also a priority for us to use a sinking fund to both max out annual Education Savings Account contributions (annual max of $2,000 as of this year) and to pay for cloth diaper delivery and cleaning service for our little one. For posterity purposes I will say that the missing percentages are scattered amongst non medical insurance premiums, saving for clothing, utilities and blow money. So what I have listed are the heavy hitters of our budget.
Overall I am happy with our planning and implementation. In the months leading up to us formally shifting to a single income household we did practice living on this type of budget before my paychecks stopped coming. We were surprised to find that aside from cutting the amounts that we saved and invested, that we were kind of already were living off of one income when we had two. Although the details of who paid what expense were split between my wife and I, numerically speaking we had been for years living off one income and saving and investing the other. So thankfully this shift has been a seamless one for us. And even pulling back to look at it now, knowing what we used to bring, I really don’t miss the extra income at all. Having this time with my son is something that does not have a price tag on it in my book and I am forever grateful and thankful to my wife for helping get to this scenario where I could stay home with our little guy. It still amazes me that this was not the plan, but here we are and I could not be any happier than I am now.
