Living off one wage ideas for working couples

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Transcription

Announcer: It’s 96.5, we’re your family’s number one and it is Wednesday evening, so that time of the evening where we catch up with our finance expert Helen Baker. Evening, Helen!

Helen: Hi Beccs, how are you doing?

Announcer: Good, thank you, good, thank you. And how are you?

Helen: Alright.

Announcer: Good. Now we’re going to get straight into it this evening, you’ve got a bit of a Father’s Day theme when it comes to finances this evening. Tell me about it.

Helen: Yes, so Father’s Day coming around on Sunday and so often, to lots of people, they still have the lovely husbands and wives being together and so they kind of bring those into what I call an economy to scale. Because you can imagine as a single person just trying to pay all the bills and do everything on your own, it’s quite a stretch. So when we’ve got couples together and both working, even if one’s only working part time, you get that economy to scale, so the bills get a little bit cheaper because they’re shared across two but you’ve also got two lots of income coming in which helps to support.

So it’s a great opportunity to look at options such as the father takes on the role of taking care of all the house such as taking care of all the rent, the mortgage or whichever one you have, the bills, all those sorts of things, and the wife’s money can get parked and you can use that for the fun things such as holidays or even going traveling or a big holiday or something like that or doing extra on the mortgage. They can look at options off living off one wage and banking all of the other ones, you can look at living off one wage as much as you can and using the other one for treats and savings. So it’s about working in those parameters that work with how family’s want to manage their own little financial situation.

Announcer: I like that. Now my husband and I do that, I have to say. We sort of say we survive on his wage but we have a life with my wage.

Helen: Aw that’s nice, I like that.

Announcer: Yeah so we survive on his wage but we have a life on my wage. I’m the one – we can go to the movies, we can do things. And it’s that emergency fund sometimes, isn’t it, it’s not being frivolous, but it’s maybe putting some away so when the car breaks down unexpectedly, you’ve got that backup.

Helen: Absolutely because if everything is stretched and you really need those two wages just to survive, it puts a lot of financial pressure on everyone and we don’t want people stressed these days because everyone’s feeling quite a bit of stress. So yeah, you’re doing the right thing, I think it’s really good of you and I like your phrase. You should start teaching a segment yourself.

Announcer: Oh Helen, it’s only what I’ve picked up from you every Wednesday evening. Now if people want to find out more, they go to OnYourOwnTwoFeet.com.au. The lovely Helen, we will speak to you next week, hope you have a great rest of the week and weekend.

Helen: Same to you as well.

Announcer: See you.

Helen: Happy Father’s Day, everybody. Bye.