Do you live below your means?

Amara

I don't live below my means, I live within my means. My husband and I are both low earners. We've been criticised for having two cars ( due location and very poor public transport) and sending son for swimming and judo lessons. Is it really keeping up with The Joneses? Well, so it is then.

Fireflyaway

One of the best decisions for your well-being and financial health is to ignore what everything does or says. It's not really a symbol of success to drive a fancy car if it's on credit and you have a huge monthly car payment. Just because someone has a nice house, they might be unhappy in their marriage, have body insecurities, poor mental health or loads of debt. Be thankful you have running water and a toilet. Be grateful you can access education, health care and have far more freedoms than millions around the world. The fact I have somewhere safe to live, an income and I don't live in fear is precious. In many ways I'm already rich. 

ian1246

I'm 30. Wife is 28years old. We re currently trying for our first child. We brought our 1st Home Together November 2015 - albeit a bit of a gamble (We'd only met in March 2015!) in hind sight, aged 26 & 23 respectively. We went for the largest property we could - 3 bed semi-detached house, off road parking & garage in a lovely part of the village I grew up in, maxing out the mortgage in the process. We brought the House for £165,000, utilising a 25% deposit (£41,250) which we'd saved between us (We were both saving separately for our own house, prior to meeting!). 

Since then my wife's income has effectively doubled from £10,500 to around £21,500, whilst my own income has gone from £23,000 to currently around £32,000. Goes up to £36,000 this July. Despite these increases... we have reduced our monthly outgoings vs. what they were when we first moved in (& learning to properly budget!). We've ditched our expensive monthly-mobile phone contracts for Sim Only Contracts, switched from Tesco-Home Delivery to shopping at Aldi - whilst making significant home improvements (replacing old Aluminium Patio Doors with modern PVC, de-commissioning the old back boiler and replacing with modern combi boiler etc...) which have helped reduce our energy bills. We run 2 cars - myself a 2013 Ford Focus Estate (40,000 Miles on the clock) & Wife a 2006 Vauxhall Corsa (30,000 Miles on the clock), both paid for with cash. We ve recently started saving to replace my Wife's car next year (Body Work is starting to show minor rusting).

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All things considered, we live well within our means by budgeting properly. In the last 4 & 1/2 years since buying our house we ve saved & paid for our wedding, treated ourselves to a nice holiday abroad once a year and built up a good Emergency Fund. We ve recently started decorating the house to a modern standard. 

What we haven't allowed to happen is our extra income to inflate our "life style" - since we're both extremely conscious that our current level of income is a temporary thing which we must maximise the benefits from rather than waste - since once we have kids, we'll go from 2 full-time wages to 1 full time & 1 part-time wage, with all the costs of having children....