Living on a Single Income: How Your Family Can Do It

Any family can live on one income, and while I believe this to be true without exceptions, there are certainly situations where the lifestyle changes would be so objectionable as to keep many Americans from diving in. But for most, especially those with young children, a home in need of work or aspirations for food-not-lawns, it's a liberating and life-affirming choice. I, for one, would never want to go back to a two-income existence.

It's not easy, though -- meaning transitioning from double to single income is usually easy to do functionally and hard to do emotionally. When my husband and I fell in love in 2001, we were both working and nearly immediately jumped into family life. By the time our baby was seven months old, my cushy job with its middle-class income abruptly ended. Since then, we've taken turns carrying the burden of breadwinner; but we still suffer from the few years we were continuing to live as if we were bringing home two paychecks. The first thing everyone tells you is to make a budget. We did, of course: over and over and over. We didn't stick to it, though.

Through it all, I learned four lessons for successfully living on one income.