"Marriage counseling is out if you're barely getting by on one salary.
We could live on one salary then because there were no $1,000 laptops, no $300 cellphones, no $200 iPods.
"If I were to lose my job, we couldn't possibly have maintained the old house on one salary.
Eventually, they want to adjust to living on one salary so that she can homeschool their kids.
A family with a median income could no longer afford a median-income house on one salary".
"Saudi households can no longer live comfortably on one salary, forcing women out into the labour market," she said.
"Back then, the value of a house was twice that of the median income and was affordable on one salary," said Roy Fedelem, principal planner at the Suffolk County Planning Department.
They lived on one salary and saved the other, and borrowed from their friends and relatives to scrape together enough money to buy a house.
Ms. Petrillo, who lives with her mother, cannot meet the mortgage payment and the children's Catholic school tuition on one salary.
There are many possible reasons a woman works: she probably needs the money because the family can't survive on one salary.
