To ask if you can afford to live on one salary?

[coffeeforone]

I'm currently on mat leave and due to go back full time soon. DH found out last week that his job is at risk of redundancy.

We need to do the sums to work out if we would be able to manage on one salary in the short-medium term and if not, what cutbacks we need to make.
I was chatting to a family member earlier who is very shocked that we do not already know with confidence we can live on one salary and should already have been living within the means of the lowest earner in case of this eventuality.

AIBU to this it is ok to need to spend more than one salary if you both work?

Well in theory we’d be able to live on OH in that we’d be able to cover all the bills with perhaps £40 a week left over for food. But then we’d have nothing left, no uniform money, no ‘shit the car broke’, in fact no extra fuel money, no money for the Vet, or MOT etc. So whilst we’d cover minimum expenses actually we couldn’t really afford it. One of the reasons we paid for the salary protection with our life insurance

To live in one wage is doable. We did it for a number of years when DC where small income went down by 2/3rds but we planned and lived off one wage during the pregnecy. It’s amazing when you start to budget and look at your expenditure how much waste there is. At the time we used to buy lunches. Spend about £50 per week. When we planned and budgeted we spent less than that on total food budget.

If we needed to now we could do it easily off either salary. But have always planned our budgets that way just in case. So we could have a bigger mortgage or better cars but we choose not to. Though we do enjoy a good holiday.

"Life is for living, not just existing"

Tell your relative that.

Depends who's salary...
Mine? 17k, god no. I mean we could probably survive but it wouldn't be fun.
DP, 35k, yes we could but again, would prefer not to.

We certainly wouldn't be living in the lowest wage anyway.. mental.

On my DH’s FT wage = Yes.
On my PT wage = No.

We could live off DH’s salary but it would include a lot of sacrifices that neither of us would want to make.

Depends on who's salary - I earn significantly more than my dp so yes on mine, his wouldn't even cover the mortgage payment

Your family member is batshit. I’m the type of person that keeps a bit of a stash for ‘emergencies’. But we live off what we have, why live off less than half what you have?

We could possibly just about manage it but it would require giving one car up, cutting out extras like Netflix, Sky etc and taking cheaper phone contracts.

I have always done so. I've gone from single mum to married mum (one wage) and now back to single mum again.

I'm aiming to live on one part time wage in the future.

We do, but this is largely driven by the fact that when we got our mortgage we did it on one salary, but we could because we bought before the boom in a cheaper end of a cheaper part of the UK.

If we were buying now we would have to use both salaries (equivalent of) to even get a reasonable house in a reasonable area.

I’m the only earner too (single mum). We’re doing fine, but we get help from tax credits and child maintenance.

Yes we could live a normal lifestyle on DH salary.
We could survive on my p/time salary.
That's mainly because we have savings, a low mortgage and no debts or child related costs as DD18 is financially independent.

We'd have about £500 after rent and household essential bills (electric, gas, council tax) a month on DH's salary so would struggle to do much more than feed us.

On my (part time) salary we would probably have less than our essential bills alone, so no.

On my income - yes. I’m the breadwinner.

On DH’s salary 1- technically if we sold house, fired our Nanny (which we could do if I wasn’t working)...

We could live on my salary, with cutbacks. We couldn't live on dh's salary, no matter how many cutbacks we made.

That's why we have 6 months of outgoings in savings. I would need to get another job within those 6 months.

No we can’t. But if we had to we could. Ie if one of us lost job long term we could re mortgage over longer term, wouldn’t need the childcare costs and cancel all non essential spends
Tight but possible

I’m a single parent to a teenager with a mortgage, car finance, usual bills, tutor fees etc. I’m with someone and we’re planning to buy a place together but I will never buy a place or commit to bills that couldn’t afford on my own.

Hmm. I guess it depends. I haven’t worked in 5 years and my husbands salary supports the family comfortably. But if it were me trying to support the family on my salary (no way in hell!!). But my husbands salary is quite of a lot higher then mine was.

It isn't always the best financial decision to do what your relative says anyway (save all of one salary) - for example you might spend more money on a mortgage to get a house that will hold its value.

When we brought the house we brought it in the knowledge that we could afford it on just one wage (in actual fact the morgage was just based on my income as he'd not been in his job that long at the time)

When we both worked we had more disposible income (several holidays a year etc), since having children we've done both working part time, one working fulltime only and we have made all work

However we brought our house 19 years ago when prices were much lower than they are now - had it been a new house (new to us rather than brandnew) we'd be talking a very different story

I kinda have to as a single mum but I guess the top ups in tax credits are similar to that of a partner - a not very well paid one though. I have precisely 10 years to bag a man or I’ll have to take in loggers

We could absolutely live on one salary. But I don't fancy old age on one tiny pension.

We have enough in savings that we could for about fifteen years, but it would be miserable.

No plans to have kids though so it’s a less likely situation for more than a few weeks (neither of us have ever struggled to find work).

I bet your family member doesn’t know how much childcare costs now!

Shortly before meeting dh I changed career and dropped salary to entry level, while he was very comfortable, so mine went towards “extras” rather than essentials. When the dc arrived and I stayed home, it wasn’t a huge adjustment, particularly as we didn’t have time for extras anymore!

Two dc in, our financial situation changed abruptly and things were very tight for a while. We lost our savings overnight and dh took a sizable pay cut. I think the fact that we already had a clear distinction between essentials and extras helped a lot, and that we were both committed to the same financial goals.

One of our dc has sn, which factored into the decision to stay home. I think if you plan to have a family, it’s wise to live largely within the means of one salary, or at least know you can shrink to that level if necessary. Because you don’t know what circumstances would compel you to give up work.

I realize we were extremely privileged in being able to afford to live on one salary, albeit very modestly at that time.