Can You Survive on Just One Income?
There is this great practice that we decided to be very intentional on, the principle of living on 1 salary. Obviously, for those whose household has more than 1 income that is coming in, we found that a great way to progress financially is to learn how to live on 1 income. Yes, it means that you have to live well below your means essentially, which will be one of those things you hear time and time again when getting rid of debt and building wealth.You simply must live below your means.
Making sure that your expenses can be covered by 1 income means that you have made massive strides going forward, whether initially it's just to pay off debt and then eventually to build wealth. This essentially means that any other income goes straight towards debt repayment or investing and the rate with which you can do this, will be substantially faster paced.
I won’t lie, it's a massive decision! Firstly if you are a household of two income earners like we were, you must be doing finances together and in alignment with the goal you are trying to achieve. Secondly, the two income earners have to find a way to live within the confines of what that one income looks like.This can be a massive challenge at the beginning as you have to ensure that your expenses fit in with this amount. Remember ‘living within your means.’
What you will find is that, once you look very closely at your budget and expenses you can quickly identify what's essential and decide what truly does matter for your lifestyle. If you're anything like us, we found that there were a lot of areas in our lives that needed fine tuning in terms of what actually mattered to us.It made us decide whether the short term sacrifices were truly worth the long term gain, and honestly we soon realised just how much this strategy was a lot more than just the money but actually about happiness, healing and fulfilment.
It is a strategy that we truly recommend to any couple new and old. This strategy will make you evaluate what really matters to you in your life, teach you great teamwork and also propel your financial goals exponentially!
