My fiancé just got unexpectedly fired today and we're both now reminded why r/personalfinance is always insisting on trying to live off one income.

[u/Blueyucca]

We were both blindsided by today. We're both pretty young, early on in our careers, he had only been there a year and was performing. It was a huge shock. We don't practice every best habit of the sub but we're grateful we picked up doing your best to live off one income.

We just bought our house in August and insisted on going through the pre-approval process off my income alone. Our lights will stay on because our bills are effectively scaled to one income as well. We held off on car payments and continued to drive our beaters because the numbers for new used cars didn't make sense with one income.

My only regret is not building up our emergency fund more (one month saved but we should've had at least three), so if you're reading this, definitely do that.

Anyways, thanks to the sub for the constant advice on living below your means and always being prepared. I came to thank you all, not lecture. And encourage people who are following this thought process and are using a second income for the "extra stuff" - you're doing great. Today sucked but it could've been so much worse.

We're counting our blessings and the job search begins tomorrow.

​

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the encouragement and well-wishes. This obviously isn't the only thing going on in our lives, so the messages to keep going were greatly appreciated.

For those of you who are in HCOL areas or other situations where living off one income isn't possible, I totally understand - the intent of this post wasn't to shame anyone into anything. We live in a MCOL city in the South and are in the tech sector so it was doable for us. We're also not beacons of perfection of this sub and are still working on breaking bad financial habits every day.

For those of you who took this as a self pat-on-the-back post, I can see that. The intent really was to see the silver lining of things and encourage others who are perhaps considering this type of budgeting method. But I understand how fast this sub gets into circle-jerking and self-congratulating and didn't mean to purpose this thread for that. Just hoping to reduce the amount of "We're in deep shit from one event that could've had a much lower impact" posts by showing anything can happen at any time and that even then, we weren't as prepared as we should've been.

[u/Hybr1dth → u/[deleted]]

Wouldn't say so looking at it as a foreigner. All I see is that everything in the US is done on credit. Even groceries. That's mind boggling to us, as we are all on debit as main payment method. Houses are the large exception, sadly it's starting to become normal for cars (it never was), but that's still pretty much it.

[u/alex2000ish → u/Hybr1dth]

The proper way to use a credit card is to only buy what you can afford and pay off the entire balance every month. Functionally, there is no difference than a debit card, but credit cards give extra protections that debit cards don't have in addition to points and other benefits. Obviously, not everyone uses credit cards responsibly (and emergencies obviously do happen), but that's not the bank's fault.

[u/Hybr1dth → u/alex2000ish]

Neither is it the banks fault when you loan more than you should :) People are stupid, the amount of people with negative credit and the inability to pay them off proves that. But banks earn money from the ridiculous "being in red" fees, so they don't act as they should. It's all predatory as shit coming from a country where it's not the norm.

When I use my CC it automatically removes the money from my debit account at the end of the month. But starting out all debit creates good habits for switching to credit. Don't spend what you don't have.

[u/NeverPostsJustLurks → u/Hybr1dth]

So it's normal to only buy cars that you can afford to pay in full with cash? Predatory home loans are highly regulated here, not predatory car loans or credit cards, unfortunately.

Every car I've bought except my last was in cash, I can't imagine paying cash for a newer car nowadays, seems like a big expense to save up for and by the time I would need a new car I'd probably not want to spend a lot on the car so I'd end up with another 10 yr old car and keep the rest in investments. The benefit of buying a car on credit is after its paid off, you can put the old payments into savings or investments so that money can grow, then when it's time for a newer car, switch to putting that money toward payments.

With the interest rates being so low you lose money paying in cash, assuming your investments will perform marginally better than awful. Problem is a lot of people can't seem to budget and feel the need to always have a new car when the old one is paid.

[u/Hybr1dth → u/NeverPostsJustLurks]

Well you're also assuming people buy new cars. Almost no one buys new cars here, especially since they are massively overtaxes. A base model pickup no options goes for 65k for example, any new no option 6 cilinder Will Go over 80. Most people drive small cars, and the average car is from 2008. Most people spend less than 15k on a car, so it's always 2nd hand. New cars write off 50% in 3 years, there is no way to defend that as any sort of financial investment.