Couples Living On A Single Income

by Martha Baer

Yet solutions like Steve and Clancy’s are rare. Sheryl Garrett, a certified financial planner who has just published Money Without Matrimony: The Unmarried Couples’ Guide to Financial Security, says she counts just one client out of 50 who has taken this sort of leap. Couples simply don’t plan for big change, generally, unless they are faced with a crisis like layoffs or problems with the kids.The reasons for this rigidity are threefold. First, says Garrett, we fear exclusion: that if we leave a job for six months or two years, we’ll be forgotten; we’ll lose our contacts and our credibility. “People worry,” she says, “that they won’t get back into the workforce. But that’s not the case if they have marketable skills. And if they don’t,” she adds, “they can put acquiring them into their long-range plan.”

Garrett’s view is that doing something exciting and new for a period of time—“Go to the Galapagos! Take up piano!”—can actually be a plus for returning to the workforce. “If I were asked in an interview what I’ve been doing for the last year,” she hypothesizes, “I would make the year sound so damn fabulous and refreshing that it would be the envy of anyone who’s interviewing me!”

More frightening to most people than any difficulty re-entering the job market, however, is surviving on a single paycheck while you’re out of it. Overcoming this concern is at the heart of adopting the taking-turns mentality. No two-income couple can choose the trade-off route without cutting back. Cris and Mark sold off a car. Another couple, Debbie and Pat E., drink cheaper wine. Laura M. and Graham C. go to fewer concerts; they’ve quit shopping at the upscale market; and if they eat out, says Laura, “it’s the burrito thing.”

The trouble is that, for many, such cutbacks are far from enough. “The problem of couples today,” says financial expert Hayden, who has a two-and-a-half year waiting list for her consulting services, “is that they spend up to what they make when they’re both working.” With rent and clothes and loan payments already demanding two salaries, how do you get down to one? “I talk to my clients about what I call under-consuming, a concept they don’t even think of.” In short, “you need to make sure that your lifestyle isn’t leveraging both incomes.”

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