How To Thrive On A Single Income

Hi there, sister! We get asked how we live a life with only my husband’s income, and what I do as a stay-at-home wife and Mama without a second vehicle. Today, I’m sharing with you the ways that our family chooses to thrive in this lifestyle and the choices that we make to make it work well. I hope that these tips and ideas can help you in getting creative with how you can make it work, too! This blog and YouTube video will touch on three different themes :

The Choices We’ve Made To Live Joyfully Content On One Income

What I’m Doing All Day Without A Car & Not Leaving Home

What I Do To Ensure I’m Not Isolating Myself As A Christian Woman By Staying Home All Day

Welcome to Mama’s Fruitful Home!

My YouTube channel and blog is inspired from Titus 2:3-5 and Psalms 128:3. Titus 2:3-5 says, “Older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is Good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, homemakers, kind and in submission to their husbands, so that God’s Word will not be slandered.” Psalms 128:3 says, “Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your home, your children, like young olive trees around your table.” My hope and prayer here is to grow in sweet sisterhood, that we may flourish together in Christ-likeness as daughters of The King, always encouraging with Scripture. I will share tips on homemaking, ways to care for our over-all health in our God-given design and cooking and baking from scratch. Whether you are a brand new homemaker, or you’ve been homemaking for years, my hope and prayer is that God may use me to encourage you in your journey of creating a fruitful home. I am so blessed to have you here!

When my husband and I were courting(this is a Biblical practice of dating for the purpose of getting married), I was working at a local cafe. However, we had already discussed during our dating season, that when we got married, me working was not something we wanted for our life together. Even before having children, we wanted me home- to turn this house into a home, to learn the art of homemaking and tending to our home well, and to create a space for us to be at peace together, especially once my husband walked through those doors after a long day of work.

Here are some ways we make it work on one income.

I stay home with the children

As Christians, we see in Scripture the beautiful pictures of discipleship. It is a purposeful ministry to stay home with my babies and tend to their souls. My husband, children and home are my first ministry. Ever since I got married and learned how much I play a role in my husband’s and children’s lives by the way I keep our home and being present with them, the more I genuinely just want to stay home and create our safe haven. There’s always something to be done or learned, and that, to me, is exciting! I’m the CEO, restaurant server, hairstylist, teacher, herbalist, doctor, chef, baker, cleaning maid, interior designer, shopper, planner, organizer, mood setter- let me know what I’m missing in the comments below. Haha. I am more overwhelmed with everything I need/want/can do, that I’ve got absolutely no time for boredom here- there’s never a dull moment! I am truly SO content at home. We women did it for thousands of years until just a couple of generations ago. Our family is choosing to live a slower-paced, intentional, simple, old-fashioned lifestyle. The home is this Mama’s domain.

We only have one vehicle - one payment, very little gas & one insurance

My husband asked me the other day, after having some calls with our car insurance, how in the world people afford more than one car. I said, “Yeah, ‘afford.’ They’re likely in debt for it.” Now I know that’s not the case for everyone, but it is a point of mine- we do not want to live in significant debt, and genuinely believe that doing so is ironically a burden, not freedom. We strive to be wise with our money, which we absolutely see in Scripture. In this season, we would be in debt if we had another vehicle. We pay for one car payment and one car insurance.

My husband works very close to home

Going with the previous point, my husband has chosen to work very close to our home. There are so many people who work over thirty minutes from home, sometimes even over an hour, taking the highway or freeway and even getting stuck in rush hour traffic. My husband spends very little on gas, because he works just a few minutes away. Our husbands most often do have the opportunity to work closer to home, and it saves on expenses big-time!

High-quality local meat, dairy & eggs

Literally the only thing we need to pay for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly is food. We choose to invest in our family’s health with high-quality meat, dairy, eggs and organic and non-GMO fruits and veggies. We get all of our meat, dairy and eggs from local farmers, and most of our fruits and veggies. I’m convinced that if we all chose this route, it wouldn’t be as expensive as it is, because it would be normal again. I don’t think we realize that we the consumer are supporting a specific kind of lifestyle. We are telling, Kellog’s cereal brand for example, to keep making us cereal by continuing to purchase their cereal. If we all stopped purchasing Kellog’s cereal, there would be much less of a fight between whole foods and something partially edible by being created in a lab. When we start supporting our local farmers and ranchers, and ditch the grocery stores, the vendor is forced to sell less of their product because less people are purchasing it. This, my friend, is how we stop the food nonsense going on in America today. Let us Make America Healthy Again. It’s either our health or our luxury of having a second car or vacations or this-or-that. I wish more people would ditch the latter and take health far more serious. Our finances go solely to feeding ourselves, and we’re not mad about it. Since we’ve healed in so many ways since making this health decision the first week of our marriage, we have seen and felt the immense difference in our health. We have healed and are continuing to heal with many things, because of the food we eat. Food is healing- which makes sense, considering we’re literally forced to eat it in order to survive. When we started eating whole foods, our hormones and emotions literally became so much more content. I don’t think a lot of us realize that what we feed our bodies reflects the way we think, react, decision-make and feel. When we changed the way we eat, we felt the difference, and it feels good to feel good. My hormones changed for the better. The longer I spent eating the way that God intended, the more I became content with how we lived for thousands of years up until just two or three generations ago. We have to look at our health declining in the recent generations, and ask why. It can be difficult and overwhelming at first, not knowing where to start(this is mainly because bad food causes bad health and bad health causes us to struggle with thinking and making decisions), but I promise you it’s worth it- just start. Let’s get back to the basics, and learn to have joy in simple cooking.

What Am I Doing All Day At Home?

I am discipling our children- Proverbs 22:6 says, “Start a youth out on his way; even when he grows old, he will not depart from it.", I am reading myself and them God’s Perfect Word Of Truth, I am teaching myself and them to constantly repent to God and each other after we sin throughout our day together, I am making every meal and snack from scratch, I am having baking dates in the kitchen with my children, I am cleaning and teaching my children how to tend to a home well and work well together, I am turning our house into a home, I am organizing, I am grocery list taking and shopping(online, because we only use local farm pickup and Azure Standard), I am sewing, I am reading for learning purposes and for fun, I am gardening, I am renovating our home- again, let me know what I’m missing in the comments below. Haha.

How To Not Isolate By Staying At Home All Day

Many people may wonder if a wife and mama struggles with isolation while being at home all day. I’m sure some do, and I’m sure I do in certain seasons. Proverbs 18:1 says, “One who isolates himself pursues selfish desires; he rebels against all sound wisdom.” The beautiful thing is- it is the least selfish thing to make the decision to stay home with our babies and create a peaceful sanctuary for our husband and our family. It is the most stretching, hard and fulfilling thing I have ever done. I belong here. I love it here. I am content here. Discipling our children is my first ministry. I do not have the capacity for friendships, outings or social gatherings in the same way that I did before I was married, and that’s okay. Here’s some insight into my week and month. We go to Church every Sunday morning as a family. Every week, there’s a weeknight where we go to Bible study as a family- this is in someone else’s home. I like to have a mama friend over once a week for coffee and fellowship. We like to have a family over at least once a month for dinner, to practice Biblical hospitality. In the last few months, the kids and I have dropped my husband off at work by 7:00AM to be able to go to one of my mama friend’s home about once a week and do a Bible study and prayer time together, as our children play together and we sip on her homemade hot coffee with homemade marshmallows and even delight in a tasty treat like her homemade muffins. I don’t go out very often at all, but I can, if we make the sacrifices because it’s important to us. Many of my mama friends do have their own car, so I invite them over. However, I do know that that can be a burden in certain seasons for them. Under those circumstances, I will gladly wake up at the crack of dawn with my husband and get us all ready to take him to work on time and go do our own thing, and then come back home for nap time, and then go back out to pick him up from work. I LOVE hosting and am more of an extrovert than I am an introvert, so isolation is not usually a problem for me. I will actually be hosting the First Day Of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter events this year, and that is a lovely way to bring together friends and make sure that we are gathering and connecting often! Look out for those videos as I share me planning, prepping and the final look of the events- subscribe to my channel so that you don’t miss them!

How does your family thrive on a single income? We all make different sacrifices for our families, and I would LOVE to know how you do that, in the comments below! It will also encourage others with navigating the best way their family can go about this. Sometimes we don’t think of something until we hear that someone else has made a certain decision. Your encouraging engagement in the comments strengthens me in my walk with God as He leads me in encouraging you to create a fruitful home. It also blesses those who may be craving sisterhood community and encouragement in homemaking. I would love for this to be a safe place filled with righteous conversation. If you enjoy content like this, please consider subscribing, liking and commenting- it really helps my channel grow! I post every Friday mornin’. Bye, friend!