How We Thrive on a Single Income | Family of 12

We should be broke. That's what many people think when they hear we're raising a family of 12 on a single income. So how are we making it work? The answer isn't a secret investment or a huge salary. It's God's faithfulness, a willingness to work hard, and learning to be content with what we have. One thing many people often assume when you have a large family is that we always planned to have this many kids. And the truth is, we didn't. Our family happened slowly over time. Like many couples, we had ideas about what our future might look like. We wanted, well, I wanted six kids, so I did kind of want a large family. My husband wanted four, so we were going to settle with five. And we had our first two sons. When our youngest son was seven months old, I found out I was pregnant again. And this was not part of the plan. I wanted each of our kids to be spread out probably like about three years. Then I had a good amount of time to spend one-on-one with them before the next one came along. So when I found out I was pregnant with our daughter, it kind of took us both by surprise. And I'm sad to admit that I cried over it because I was in for the biggest blessing. The Lord knew better than I did. I was afraid that our second son would just get passed over because now we're going to have a new baby and he was only going to be 16 months old when she was born. And how could I manage both of them? And if you know our second son, he has the most vibrant personality. There is no way he could possibly be passed over. And we just had no idea what a gift children were. And the Lord worked in our hearts. When our daughter was born, she was just so beautiful and precious. She was a quiet, easy baby. And my husband and I kind of looked at each other and said, why wouldn't we want this? We had to seriously think, are we going to view children primarily as an expense? Or can we trust God with what his word says that children are a gift from the Lord? We certainly didn't know how we would afford a large family, but we decided to have an open hand and accept whatever he gave us. One person who was influential for me at that time was Kelly Crawford from Generation Cedar. You can look her up online if you're interested. She talks about how our society doesn't really love children. We love drywall. We talk about how we value life, but people, even Christians will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading houses, renovating kitchens, adding square footage, or taking on debt for lifestyle improvements without thinking about it that much. But when it comes to having another child, suddenly the conversation becomes whether it's quote, responsible or not. As Christians, we say we value life, but do we actually put our money where our mouth is? That's a question we had to wrestle with ourselves. For us, we decided we'd rather invest in something that could outlive us. Children require sacrifice, yes, but they are eternal souls. Before I get going into this topic a little more, I want to introduce myself if you're here for the first time. Hi, my name is Sherry. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom married to a high school sweetheart. We have 10 children ages 21 down to three, and I love encouraging other families here on my channel and on the blog ourlifehomeschooling.com. If you're looking for a way to make home education much simpler and family oriented, I teach you all about this in my course, Beyond School, The Home Education Breakthrough. I share with parents the complete approach I've refined in over 16 years of raising and educating our 10 children, so you can build a home education lifestyle that truly works for your family. If you want to learn more about it, the link is in the description box below. Back to the topic of children, we didn't have a spreadsheet showing how we were going to budget 10 children into our lifestyle. We didn't see how it was going to be 20 years down the road. What we did know was that God calls children a blessing, and we wanted to keep an open hand toward whatever he had for us. And we didn't arrive there here. We didn't arrive here all at once. God gave them to us one at a time. That's something else people don't realize. They think that all of a sudden you just know how to manage a family with a lot of children, but we just had one at a time. And each child that came, we had to adjust to a new normal, different challenges, having to trust the Lord in some areas that we just didn't know how to do things or how it was going to turn out. But God never asked us to have faith for 10 years ahead. He gave us just what we needed for that season and then the next one. And looking back now, I can see his faithfulness to us every step of the way. I was just reading this week from Psalm 103, where it says, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. And this has been the anthem of our lives. God loves when we trust him and rely on him in complete dependence. Now, I don't want to paint a picture that this was easy. It wasn't. There were many things when we did without things that we wanted. There were times where if you would have talked to me about having a lot of kids and our lifestyle, I probably wouldn't have always have had the best attitude. Sometimes we lived with old carpet longer than I wanted. We postponed updates and renovations. There were projects that sat unfinished. There were opportunities we passed up. There were just plenty of times when we looked around and realized that other families our age had nicer things than we did. But we had to decide what we were investing in. Were we investing primarily in our comfort or were we investing in people? So it wasn't easy. But one thing I didn't realize was that those hard times were temporary. There were many challenges. I think back to the times when I felt very overwhelmed, years when I was pregnant every other year, when we genuinely had no idea how to manage this growing household with so many people. It was a steep learning curve. And yes, today I earn a side income through YouTube, but for the majority of our parenting years, we lived on one income. The thing I realized looking back is that all those difficulties were temporary. We learned how to manage the house better, how to organize our days. We've learned how to stretch a budget. We grow a lot of our own food. Here I'm taking chicken off the bone. When we butcher our chickens, we save all the carcasses and bag them up, put them in the freezer, and I'll get them out, usually a bag of three or so of them a week, and I'll make broth. When the broth is done, we take all of that meat. This isn't the thigh or the leg or the breast. This is the leftover meat. We take it off the bone and I use it for a meal. So this is just one small practical example of how we've learned to stretch things. The obstacles have been real, but many of them weren't permanent. The children are what remain and the blessings have far outweighed the challenges. Our kids always have someone to play with. They're rarely lonely. They have built-in friendships and not just for childhood. They will be friends for the rest of their lives. My husband and I will be gone someday, but they will have each other. I love the activity in our home. The laughter. I love seeing growth and life happening all around me. Lord willing, our kids will grow up to know and love Christ, raise families of their own, and share the gospel with others. That's why I can honestly say we are thriving. Now, I'm going to just share some practical ways that we have made it work. For one thing, we lived in a very small house for a long time. For 12 years, we lived in a house that was about 1600 square feet. Now, I know there are houses that are smaller than this, but the thing about our house that made it small is that the living space was very small. I thought when we moved there, oh, this place has four bedrooms. That's great. But the bedrooms were kind of big and the living space was small, and I can't tell you how many times I would have traded that bedroom space for living space. But we lived there for 12 years. By the time we moved, we had eight children. Most people would have upgraded much sooner, but we stayed. We worked hard. We paid it off. The house we're in now is a tremendous blessing from the Lord. We have more room, and it's not a lot. The house itself isn't a lot bigger, but we do have more land, which is really nice when you have a lot of kids. But I never want to forget where we started from. Many of our most precious family memories happened in that small house. Another practical way that we make it work as a large family is growing our own food. Over the years, we've learned to have a garden. It's getting bigger every year, and we've raised animals. We've learned skills that help reduce expenses but also give our kids life skills, just learning where their food comes from and how to raise animals and see it all the way through to processing them and preserving them. Our kids also don't need endless entertainment. One thing I think some people don't realize is that children in big families have differing needs. It's always busy in our house. They entertain each other, and for the most part, they aren't bored looking for things to do. We have a very busy household. They have siblings projects. We're always working on something. They have imaginations. They're out in the woods playing in their imaginary worlds, and there's just more work to do, which keeps everyone busy. We do get involved in activities. Our kids do some extracurricular activities, but we're selective about it. For example, we send our kids to camp twice, and then after that, they contribute if they want to go to camp again. So they're not in multiple camps every summer. They play sports, but we allow each child to pick one sport they want to get involved in, and we're very selective about our involvement because we don't want it to infringe on our family life. Now, before I finish off with the last two ways that we thrive as a family of 12 on one income, I want to tell you about Made to Homeschool. Made to Homeschool is an online supportive community for homeschooling families. Once a year, they host a three-day online homeschool conference. This year, Brave 2026, is July 30th through August 1st. It's free to watch live, but you do need to grab a ticket to reserve your spot, and if you want on-demand access to all the sessions, the VIP early bird price is $29 through the month of June. I'll be there live on the third day for the all things homeschool panel answering your questions. Brave 2026 is growing every year. You can grab your ticket by clicking on the link in the description box below. Another way we're thriving as a large family is learning to be content. We don't eat out very often. I cook at home a lot. We thrift our clothes. We buy used vehicles. We've experimented with side businesses and hobbies that bring a little extra money for things like music lessons or trips, and most importantly, we've learned that not every desire needs to be fulfilled immediately. It's good for our children to learn to do without sometimes. Doing without is often what helps us learn to appreciate what we do have. Now, at the end of the day, none of these practical strategies are the real answer. The real answer is God's faithfulness. There were many times when we couldn't see what the future was going to look like. Things were uncertain, but when I look back over 21 years of raising our children, I see God's hand over and over again, not always giving us everything we wanted, but giving us what we needed at that moment. His provision wasn't always the way I expected, but He has been good to us. Psalm 112 says, For the righteous will never be moved. He will be remembered forever. He's not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. That verse describes what we've learned. Looking back, I wouldn't trade these years for an easier life. Children truly are a gift from the Lord. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.