Tips for Living Debt-Free on a Low Income

Is being a stay-at-home mom a privilege or a sacrifice? I went into marriage believing that any married couple could afford for the wife to stay home with the kids, no matter the income. That belief was sure put to the test over the next decade! I wanted to be home with my baby from the day he was born. I quit my job and never looked back. As a 21-year-old mama, I was determined to live within our means. Even when we had 2 kids and 2k per month to live on, we made it work. As a family living in California, it seems like it gets more challenging every year! Today I want to share some of my top tips for living debt-free on a low income.

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“What Does Your Husband do for Work?”

I was 26 years old when I first attended a homeschool conference. My eldest son was nearly 5 years old and learning quickly. I was excited to gain some wisdom and inspiration as I began to take his schooling seriously. Entering the venue, I noticed a big table covered with leather scraps and supplies for making earrings before the conference started. Always loving a good craft, I jumped right in.

As I glanced around at the other moms, one approached me. “What does your husband do for work?”, she asked. Her question caught me off guard. What a strange thing to ask! A little bewildered I responded, but the question stuck with me for years.

What I came to realize was that many people believe that it is a privilege to be a stay-at-home mom, only for those who are well off. It was a completely different core belief than what I held. At that time, I truly believed that anyone could make it work, even on the lowest income. I now know that there are legitimate reasons why not everyone can do it. But if you’re willing to put in the work and sacrifice, it IS possible.

Here are some of the practices that my family has put into place over the years to live simply within our means and avoid debt.

1. Commit to Living on One Income

From the time we had our first child, I committed to only living on what my husband made and saving anything else. Even when we were living on less than 2k per month, we sacrificed whatever was necessary to live within that means.

I did work a little, but it wasn’t much as I was primarily home with my baby. I worked 4 hours a week and brought my babies along up until 6 months old, carefully tucking as much of that money as possible into savings. Even just $250/month can add up over time.

There is so much freedom to living simply within your means, and even though we were low income, I always felt rich to be home with my babies. It’s all about recognizing your priorities and shaping your life around that. It felt like a challenge to me to live on just what my husband made, and I took it seriously!

2. Live Humbly Below Your Means

Housing is most often the biggest factor.

To keep expenses low, we stayed in a 1-bedroom house until we had 3 kids, and in a 2-bedroom place with 4 kids. The last year in our 1-bedroom house I longed for more space. But I loved the amount of yard we had for 2 little boys to play, and the timing didn’t feel right. Instead, I began saving the amount I knew we would be spending monthly on a larger place, pretending we were already spending that.

We got creative with our space and made part of the laundry room into a sleeping area for our little boys. If you have a small house and want to learn to make the best use of your space, try searching Pinterest for apartment living ideas and hacks. There are so many creative ideas to minimize and use a small space. It can be worth it to carefully buy the right furniture pieces to help make a small space work a little longer in order to save.

It ended up being the best thing we could have done, as my son was about to be diagnosed with cancer and the next few years would be very difficult. We moved to a much more expensive area of California where the rent would be more than triple. By staying humble and saving a lot that year, we were at least a bit prepared for the huge life change ahead.

3. Cook Everything from Scratch

Being home with babies can mean very limited money to spend on food. Challenge yourself to learn to make as much as possible and not eat out. We saved eating out for just birthdays and anniversaries and learned to make everything at home. It doesn’t have to be boring either. We made our own sushi and authentic Indian food.

Doubling a meal and freezing it once a week gives some quick options when you’re too exhausted to cook. Bread, tortillas, snacks, yogurt, granola, mayonnaise, salad dressings, and more can be made on a weekly basis.

Try to work in batches and make larger quantities at a time, freezing or sealing it to last longer. We soaked and cooked beans from dried instead of buying canned. I would try to cook enough at dinner to have leftovers for lunch. Thankfully my husband only worked 5 minutes away and he could come home to warm food for lunch. Once my babies started eating solids, I made their baby food, so we didn’t have to buy that.

Once a week I would boil a whole chicken with celery, carrots, herbs, and even some eggshells for added minerals. When the chicken was cooked and the carrots were soft, I put them through the baby food mill. My baby got a healthy lunch, and I got a head start on dinner prep.

Learning to cook from scratch can save hundreds of dollars per month. If you can reduce your grocery bill by $50 per week and instead put that money in savings, in 10 years that adds up to over $25,000. Food cost is often one of the biggest variables for young families, and setting up practices to keep this on track and under control is very much worth the effort.

Cooking from scratch allows for better quality of food

Not only that but cooking at home also helps to provide the best nutrition possible on a low income. It can allow room for purchasing quality, organic foods to feed a family.

The more babies I had, the harder it became to bake everything from scratch. We still continue to cook 3 meals a day at home, but the amount of baking I can do has become more limited as my duties as a mom have grown. In certain seasons I have had to pick and choose a little more what was the most worth my time. Though the ability to bake our bread has varied in the seasons of life, a few things we have always continued: we never buy salad dressings, and we still make granola and don’t buy cereal (except as a very rare splurge).

More recently, learning to make sourdough has been both a creative outlet and a practical way to care for my family. It is therapeutic and I love the science of it. I especially love to make whole wheat sourdough bread, as well as discard recipes such as sourdough discard green tortillas and sourdough discard triple ginger scones. A sourdough starter can be picked up for free. Simply ask around and there is usually always a local baker happy to share!

4. Buy Food in Bulk and Learn to Preserve Food

Buying food in bulk can help save a lot on grocery expenses over the course of a year. Wheat berries and other grains, oats, and beans are great to buy in 25 or 50lb bags. Things like polenta, coconut sugar, nuts, and dried unsweetened coconut can be bought in 5lb bags and stored in half gallon jars in the pantry or freezer to last a few months. We have used a wheat grinder our whole marriage, and it has saved a lot while providing better nutrition with the fresh nutrients from whole grain. Whole wheat flour has a very short shelf life, which is part of the reason why so many foods are now made with processed white flour. Grinding it fresh right before baking gives more protein, vitamins, and trace minerals that white flour does not provide.

I love to buy from Azure Standard, and I’m blessed to have the local drop-off location at the park right around the corner from me. To start with Azure Standard, you simply make an account and find out where your local drop-off location is. Put together an order throughout the month and once you place it, be ready to go pick it up right when the truck arrives. Everyone helps unload the truck and takes their food. Azure Standard is a great way to get quality, organic foods in bulk.

Try Azure Standard HERE

Learn how to can and dehydrate food

Depending on where you live, canning food can drastically reduce food costs. When my older boys were little, I could pick enough blackberries to make enough jam to last all year. Many people in that area let their apples and pears fall to waste. All it takes is knocking on someone’s door and asking. Usually people are thrilled for someone to use the fruit, and even more thrilled to receive a pie or jar as a thank you.

We would make canned pears and applesauce enough to last the year, as well as canned tomatoes and jam. Sometimes relish, pickles, homemade ketchup, and other fruit jams. Depending on where you live, some fruits are easier to come by for free or cheap. Where I live now it hasn’t felt worth it to can our food. Either that or I haven’t made enough connections to find inexpensive or free fruit. But canning and dehydrating foods is a great way to help get through the early years of raising a family.

5. Use Cloth Diapers

Cloth diapering can reduce monthly expenses by a lot. Many people who are open to cloth diapering decide that they want to wait until the baby is out of the newborn stage to begin. This is because you can’t use the same set of cloth diapers from newborn to potty training. I think it is very much worth diapering for the first 6 months, especially if your baby is breastfed. When I had my first baby, a friend generously let me borrow her newborn set of diapers. That set got us through the first 7 months. I learned to sew diapers and made most of his set that he could wear from 7 months until potty training.

When I had my 2nd son, I spent $200 on a set of newborn cloth diapers. These lasted until 6 months old. When a baby is breastfed, their poo is water soluble. It doesn’t take quite as much work to clean off poo with a diaper sprayer before washing. Later I would sell that set used (with tons of life left) for $80. So, for $120 plus utility costs, I diapered him for 6 months. Disposable diapers for that time period add up fast. Newborns have to be changed frequently and go through as many as 12 diapers a day.

Washing cloth diapers is a lot of work, but there are many forums and online groups to help nail down the right washing routine for your particular situation. The Facebook group Fluff Love & CD Science helped me a lot during those years.

6. Learn to Sew and Make Your Own Clothing

Sewing can be a fun and fulfilling hobby, as well as helping to save money. It’s more expensive than it used to be, so you have to be savvy if you want it to help reduce your expenses. Upcycling thrifted and no longer worn garments is the cheapest way to start. I love looking for garments with quality fabric and turning it into something else entirely. Start out practicing with old garments you no longer wear and slowly work into buying nice fabric.

Start With a Used Machine

I like to recommend buying a used sewing machine rather than new, especially when you are first starting out. When I was pregnant with my first son, I bought a used serger/overlocker machine on Craigslist and began learning to sew knit fabrics. It took a couple years to get comfortable with the machine. Now there are way more online resources to help learn threading, machine tension, and how to sew garments.

Sewing your own clothing allows for a higher quality at a low price. As more and more garments are being made from synthetics, many people are wanting to go back to natural fibers such as wool, cotton, and linen. I made the shirt below out of a European organic cotton, and it lasted beautifully through all 3 of my boys and one of their friends. Not many little boy clothes can make it that long! I made it from a little fat half, which is a half yard cut vertically on the bolt. That shape allowed me to squeeze our this 5T shirt, whereas a regular half yard of fabric would not have worked for this. I love making merino wool and linen clothing for my family as well.

7. Grow Your Own Food

It’s possible to have a big garden even if you don’t have the space for it. For 2-3 years, my brother and I shared a big garden at the home of an elderly couple who had been avid gardeners for 50 years. They even had a greenhouse and a lath house where I was able to start all the seeds.

It was a win-win situation. We reaped quite a harvest, and the elderly couple could use the food as well as enjoy seeing their space put to use once again. They were even inviting friends over to show off the super tall corn!

One of the things we did to reduce the cost of a big garden was to start everything from seed. We used High Mowing Organic Seed. Their quality is fantastic! I was so impressed with the nearly 100% germination rate.

Something that helped us have success was to utilize a book written by a local man in the county who owned a CSA Farmshare. His book became my guide, and I carefully followed his recommendations on when to plant and how frequently to plant for continuous harvest.

Check out your local community for resources and get advice from gardening experts as to what grows best in your area and what time to start planting.

Test your soil

Before starting a big garden, we took a soil sample and mailed it into a lab to be tested. It cost only about $12 plus shipping to find out exactly what we were working with. We ended up buying oyster shell powder to adjust the PH of the soil a little. Then we were good to go!

Here is a little harvest day from our garden at that time. Splitting the work with someone else can make it much more doable! Since my brother lived close to the garden, he handled most of the watering. I was 20 minutes away and would come over in the evenings or put my baby down for a nap in the garden shed and get to work while my toddler played nearby.

If you can’t find someone to split a garden with, consider contributing to a community garden near you.

8. Focus on Learning Skills

Focusing on learning skills as a young family will go a long way in the future. As I was growing skills, my husband was also growing in many skills. He learned to fix our vehicles and appliances, as well as all different aspects of remodeling houses. You can learn so much on Youtube these days! We have saved so much money over the years with him being able to do many repairs himself.

9. Keep a Careful Budget

I’ve tried various methods of budgeting over the years. I like to break up the budget by paycheck and map out exactly what needs to come out of it. Splitting up the bills evenly through the paychecks and writing down the remainder makes it easier to see which week has a bit more wiggle room to put money toward savings, etc. I remember a time when we only had $30 after the set bills, and it helped to see exactly where the money was going and be able to work within that.

More recently I have enjoyed using the paid version of Every Dollar app. I love how easy it is to keep track of exactly where our money is going. Set a budget that gives every dollar a job, and as the transactions come through drag them into each category. It gives a quick visual as to whether you are on track for the month. This gives time to make adjustments if spending starts to go off course. We’ve saved a lot since I started using this, and it feels totally worth the yearly fee!

Try Every Dollar with $10 off.

10. Maximize Your Savings with a High-Yield Account

A few ago I switched our savings to Ally Bank, and I couldn’t be happier! After making pennies at our previous bank, I was suddenly so proud to show my husband how much we were making in interest each month. Keeping your savings in an account that can at least keep up with inflation is important.

Ally also has the option to put money in “Buckets”, which is a feature I really like. Rather than having one lump sum, you can designate buckets toward emergency fund, downpayment savings, vacations, etc. You can even set goals for each bucket, such as what amount you will need by the end of the year for Christmas, or how much you need in your emergency fund.

Try Ally here with my referral link. If you’re like me, you will wish you had made the switch sooner!

11. Know Your “WHY” when Living Debt-Free on a low income

For me it has always been to be able to stay home with my babies. Though it has been challenging at times, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not everyone has that same goal and that’s okay. But having your “why” in mind will help keep you on track on the hard days.

When my eldest son got cancer at age 5, so many of the cares of life faded into the distance. Nothing mattered but the people I loved. I became even more thankful for the choice we made in the early years for me to be home with our kids full time. I could still be there for him, and though we had many life changes at that time, we weren’t relying on 2 incomes like so many families are when they face a diagnosis. That and the fact that we were already on the track to homeschool made the transitions so much easier on him. Many children facing a cancer diagnosis end up needing to switch to homeschooling.

Consider what truly matters in your life and shape your life around that. It’s worth it!

This post was all about living debt-free on a low income. I hope that it inspires you to work toward becoming debt-free, or to continue living simply within your means. If some of these tips sound overwhelming, consider picking one or two to try this year. You might find yourself saving a lot more money!

What about you? Do you have any tips that you would add?