Congrats to your Wife getting one step closer to finishing up her schooling. Graduation in May will be a very big day for her knowing she has accomplished her mission.
Know the feeling of being an sole income earner and the weight of this. It's not easy.
My Wife has been a stay at home Mom now for about 8 years and had a break for a while with the first also. This was by choice, but the missed income does hurt. We cut back on things to allow for this as it was important to us that we raised our kids, not daycare workers. Now the kids are at ages they are becoming self sufficient and my Wife is talking about maybe getting a job again. If she does the income will be nice, but we will stick it 100% into savings to start with. Don't want to become reliant on that income and would rather use it to make a better tomorrow.
It definitely has an impact on many parts of life.
We have been together for years and nearly always been on a trimmed income. We have been okay but it will be a new experience to have two full incomes coming in.
Yep, I think this is the way to go. Too many expand their life at the same rate as their income flows in. Every payrise disappears.
Or in the American way, they expand beyond each pay raise and increase their debt load that much more. Then they wonder why come retirement they have nothing or why when a big expense comes along they can't find a way to pay for it, or worse why they end up loosing everything if one of them looses their job and can't find one.
The way we live if there wasn't a penny of income I can survive for 4 months currently. This was down to a low of 30 days right after paying for my boiler ($13k...ouch), but have rebuilt the cushion. I'd like to get it back up to 6 months but that will take some time as the holiday rush is over. This is purely liquid funds that are at zero market risk. This then allows me to not worry about investments daily movements. Much easier when you aren't playing with the money you need for bills.