Hello Lamb :)
I am at home, with no cash-income while my man works at a job for our cash-income. We have five children. Right now, we are moving over 7000kms away from where we live, because we foresaw the difficulties with remaining where our cash-income would not be enough for very long. My man took a second job during the days (his career job happens overnights) to buy an acreage for us to live on. It is vacant, and we will build a winter cabin there until spring next year, when we will build our permanent home. The second job only pays for the land, and we use every penny of the first job paycheques for sustenance. Our food bill each month has increased from 40% to 55% of that income each month, just over the last year. Our housing cost is very low presently because we built it ourselves, buying lumber slowly over the course of a few years and living in the space that was built until we could finish another room. Now, it no longer makes sense to stay here doing this, so we are going to start again (with so much more experience and skills!).
My point is that it might not work the way you are living right now. We have had a goal to build our own home on an acreage for ten years, and during that time, we equipped ourselves with skills and knowledge to do it. I used to suffer badly from chronic illness, which slowed everything down, but I still think ten years to get to this point is pretty good, given where we were ten years ago. We have only briefly exited the the line of poverty, but more importantly, I have balanced our finances and learned to trade our dollars for the best value possible. We eat a lot of coconut oil, and we were paying $100/gallon (we live very remotely and most of that cost was shipping). I found a way to get the coconut oil we need but for much less, saving us over $2000 over the course of a year. I try to buy all the best quality foods I can, but in bulk and at the best rate. The cost is a lot of time and effort on my part, but I am happy to do this. My time and effort are worth more than the dollars, but the dollars are more limited a resource than my time presently.
To live the way we want to, we spent ten years working slowly toward being able. We have learned to widen our definition of "money" to include the work of our hands and gifts from the Earth. By that I mean that presently, my man works a solid four months for just the meat portion of our diet, whereas if he hunts three large animals each year, taking a maximum of one week each time, then it takes both of us a week to properly butcher, prepare and preserve each animal (we don't have refrigeration), then that's six weeks for the same amount of food that it takes him four months to gain through cash-income. In our case, meat is MUCH more valuable money than dollars are.
Also, given the cost of living where we are moving, my man's wages can drop to only a third of what they are now, and we'd be in exactly the same financial situation, giving him so many more options to choose a job that fulfils him as a priority over what pays the best. In other words, if we hunt and butcher our meat (among a lot of other things, but just as one example), and he earns only a third of the cash he does now, we will be wealthier than we are now.
Aside from the investment advice, the book Your Money or Your Life can be very helpful in calculating exactly what the cost of a job is, the real wage as opposed to amount on the paycheque, and also for inspiring the reader to consider ways that other resources are actually money, and sometimes much richer sources of it than cash currency.
It can be done. We're seven living on one very modest income.
ETA: We live in a very high cost of living area presently, which is also remote. We will be moving to a low cost of living area and to a remote acreage that happens to also be only 6 minutes away from a port town, and twenty for a main one. It is ideal, and we waited and watched for this opportunity to arise. And it did! :)
Edited by ImogenSkye - 8/13/12 at 4:56pm
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