From two wages to one.......ideas?

Hi all,

My husband and I would love to start a family and we have started trying.

However my question to you all, and I hope I don't sound rude or intrusive with this, is how did you cope going from 2 wages down to 1? We have a large mortgage, and between insurance, registration, private health cover, personal loans, phone bills and weekly groceries, our two wages are eaten up.

I would really love to hear advice from you all as to your experience and perhaps some ideas or reassurance that it will be ok?

Thanks all - appreciate your support and advice.

:help:

My advice is a few things you could start doing.
If you have maxed out credit cards - start putting chunks of any left over money onto them, same goes for Personal Loans, Mortgage and etc.
Another suggestion is if you can't afford to that, then I would suggest start putting some money into a savings account.
At the moment we are putting in $120p.w and have found if you don't see that money and it goes into an account you don't miss it.

Another suggestion, have you tired saving your wage for a few months and just lived off your DH and see how much money you fall short everyweek??

Hi Angela,
Tamara's suggestion is a good one. DP and I are putting my wage away in a savings account and we are living off his money to see how we go. it has the added bonus of there being that saved up money and you experiment with how it will all go, I've heard that you can always afford a baby :)

why dont you try and get a consolidation loan for your several personal loans,. this helps with repayments.

With different types of insurance, find out if you can pay weekly instalments rather than lump sum- this will help stretch your budget further.

speaking of budget, sit down and budget everything into factor and see where you can start saving money on.

it will definitely work for you--it always does...good luck :)

I agree re: putting one wage away. DH and I have car loan and student overdrafts to pay off, which eats up most of my wage, so once those are out the way we'll be saving £700 a month - so even on maternity pay we'll have more than we technically "need" for the two of us, but will probably need more money for baby things. I intend to see if we can live on DH's wage + 40% of my wage; maternity payments should be about 60-70%, maybe a bit less for a full year out.

Re: phone bills and groceries. See if you can cut down to one phone to share, not paying for 2-3 different contracts. DH and I saved a lot of money with just landline and pay-and-go phones for emergancies. See if you can get deals on the shopping: I only buy certain things when they're 2-for-1 (or BOGOF as we say here) and those are usually enough to last us for 2-3 weeks. Make sure you know what deals all the local shops frequently have on; if you get your deals in 3 different stores then that can take you an extra hour, but save you quite a bit. If you live a long way from the shops, see if you can do a home delivery every month; again, this saves on petrol and you having to spend hours wandering around a shop, most useful to have already set up with a baby.

We save my salary - have done since we started TTCing so have a fair bit saved up now!

Other ways to live is to cut down on your expenditure. For example, do you really need a fancy new car or would a second hand one do? Do you need the gym memberships, new book, new magazine, make up, eating out etc etc?? Savings like dieting - its bloody hard but well worth it! :)

The girls have come up with some good suggestions.....

~Pay off as much as you can now.....any lump sums should be used to reduce car loans/personal loans/credit cards.
~Write a budget based on just one salary....it is amazing how much that one salary can stretch to if you cut out luxuries.

If you can get into the habit of living on one salary for a whilw whilst you are TTC and whilst you are pregnant, once a baby comes, you are already in the swing of things.

Best of luck!

One thing... be careful if you do decide to put everything into ONE big repayment plan.
We were orginally going to do this with the car and put it on our home loan.
The downside to consolidating loans is if you brought your car 2 years ago and your loan is only 5 years thats only 3 years to go or less if you double your repayments.
If you combine it, that car loan will end up being 25+ years which in the long run will be worse for you.

But on the otherhand, some people find it better because its ONE repayment and being one repayment can be a lot easier to manage.

Just work out the pros and cons. See if its worth Combining or see if its worth just paying off everything indvidually and setting up an excel spread sheet.

I have about 5 spread sheets going on which has our money ins and outs...

Hi Angela!

That's a very interesting question and I was wondering the same thing myself as I just found out I'm pg.

DH and I are living with my uncle at the moment (huge house that he lives in all by himself so he's happy for the company). We don't pay rent and are saving at least $700 a week. We plan on moving out in Dec (bubs is due in Jan), renting for approx 6 months and buying a house after that. We are making sure that we have thousands of $$ saved for when bubs arrives also.

A wise woman on BB said that babies can be as cheap or as expensive as you like. Obviously you have basics that are essential, but there are plenty of cheaper options ie. cloth nappies v disposables, second-hand furniture/toys v brand new.

Most people I talk to say that if you wait for the 'perfect' time to have a baby ie. when you're financially secure etc, you'd never have a baby! Sure, there'll be times when it's tough going. But thousands of families manage every day. There's no reason why you and your DH can't do the same!

Wishing you all the best and hoping you get that much wanted BFP very very soon!

Love
Goldilocks
-xxxooo-

Thanks all for your help. I guess it really comes down to making a decision.

DH and I have talked about it and he understands that it means changing some things like mobile phone plans and internet etc. Luckily he gets a 30% discount on our insurances because of his work! DH has started doing more paid overtime to test if we can handle having a baby - so far we're putting most of my wage into savings which is a great sign.

I agree with you Goldilocks - a baby can be as cheap or as expensive as you like. I have done searches in second hand shops and eBay and found wonderful and incredibly cheap maternity wear, baby clothes and products. Things starting from a few dollars which is just so reassuring!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions - it's so reassuring to know other women go through this.

Ang

It is now nearly 5 years since I stopped working (and so six years since we have managed without my full time salary)

it is amazing what we have achieved on a budget.....far more, I think, than we would have done if we had both the salaries coming in.

We are so much more economic these days........

In terms of practicalities, we have, this year, found ourselves in credit with our electricty company. Last winter we got a shcoker of a bill, so this winter we chose to NOT use column heaters or electric blankets or the drier.

We have literally halved our bill! And since last year I strted paying a certain set amount fortnightly to the electric company.......and we are now in credit!

Any other great hints out there?