Kicking the tires on going from a two income household to one. What are some budgeting pitfalls I should watch out for?
My wife and I (Mid 30s) are lucky to both make pretty good money and live in a MCOL area. Her job has gone downhill so far this year and for the first time this week she is openly talking about quitting it and becoming a SAHM.
We have been living a good amount below our means so I haven’t been that into budgeting. I have a monthly cash flow tracker where I figure out how much in excess we have each month to put into investment accounts or (on a rare month usually around holidays or vacations) what I need to pull from savings, and I keep a “balance sheet” for us that I update quarterly.
This obviously changes if we go down to just my salary. The belt is going to get a lot tighter, though on paper, based on an excel I just made we can make it work. For reference our monthly mortgage is about 34% of my take home pay.
The issue I’m running into is worrying if I am missing something big that is going to come back to bite us or trying to plan for the unexpected. How do you factor in the fact that there is a good chance we will need a new HVAC in the next 3-5 years but probably not this year? Or how the TV might break and we need a new one?
Other parts of our financial situation that may be relevant:
Debt free except our house.
Have an emergency fund with about 6 months of living expenses but if it gets depleted I’m not sure there will be enough leftover with just my earnings to replenish it.
Have non-retirement investments that I would prefer not to touch.
Wife may be able to pull part time freelance work but can’t really count on it. Was thinking her proceeds from that could be used to partially fill the “fun” budget.