We got married when we were 21 and still in college. In deciding if we should get married at that time we came up with a budget to make sure we'd be okay financially. I carefully tracked what we spent each month to makes sure we weren't over budget so I have a page for each month until we were both working full time and things weren't quite so tight.

Our total income was between $1200-$1300 per month. Our rent was $225. We had $80 a month for student loans, $75 for gas, $120 for groceries. I remember it was during that time of hyper inflation in the late 70s and everything at the grocery store seemed to go up a few cents every week. We saved $200-$300 per month. Once in a while we'd have a credit card bill for something we needed and couldn't afford but pretty rare that we had any credit card debt.

Life was simple and we had a lot of fun.