$169 grand family income guy wrote:
50 grand is more than the current median income. How does a family live on so little.? What kind of cars do you drive? What are your housing costs? What do you do for vacations?
I mean how often do you get to replace your running shoes? Are you deep in debt?
I can't imagine what it would be like.
First of all it helps to own your own home. Secondly be sure you own your own car, drive it for as many years as possible before getting another one. For example aim for 25 years, then sell it and get a newer car that is 5 or 10 years old, never get a new car with payments or from a dealer.
Buy or grow your own food, don't eat processed food and don't eat in restaurants.
Don't get anything you don't need. Don't watch tv, advertisements, the news, sporting events, or anything else that tries to tell you what to buy, how to think, or how to spend your money.
Fix up your own home yourself so it conserves heat in the winter and stays cool in the summer, so any utility use will be as little as possible. It astounds me at how much people pay for heating and cooling, when a little care, foresight and ingenuity could get rid of most of that easily.
Make a list of everything you spend money for each month, and then strive to either eliminate or greatly reduce the things from that list. Reduce the phone bill to a minimum. Get nettalk so long distance calls will be free.
There are many ideas. Perhaps post where you are having problems losing money and people can offer ideas. I will say you should be able to live quite easily on $50,000 a year, the only problem is that you are spending too much.