Hi I’m glad you found this place.
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Hi I’m glad you found this place.
My name is Owen. I’m a Taiwanese missionary, a husband, a dad of two, and someone who spent six years learning everything I know about money the hard way, on a tight budget, with no financial safety net and no room for error.
In 2020 my wife and I got married in the States and moved back to Danshui, Taiwan to begin our missionary work together. She’s American. I grew up in Taiwan. We were both missionaries before we met. We knew what a tight budget felt like individually. What we didn’t know was how different it would feel to manage one together. For her, Taiwan was a new frontier. For me, it was coming home, just with a very different life than the one I’d left.
Our monthly income sat somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500 USD (at its best $2,000). We had rent, utilities, groceries, a scooter, two currencies to juggle, and a support-based income that didn’t always arrive on time. Two years in, our first child was born. We kept the budget running. We kept investing, starting at $30 a month, automating it from day one, never stopping even when it felt almost laughable to do so. Six years later that investment account holds over $23,000.
We didn’t get there because conditions were easy. We got there because we had a system and we stuck to it.
Now we are making our biggest financial transition yet. We’re moving to America, me for the very first time. New country, new financial system, new cost of living, a toddler and a newborn. The stakes have never felt higher. Neither has our confidence in the habits we built in Taiwan.
This blog is where I write about all of it, honestly, practically, and from the middle of it rather than looking back from a finished life.
Who is this blog for?
Small Budget Big Life is for families who are trying to make one income stretch further than it feels like it should. Maybe you’re a single income family feeling the pressure of a budget that never quite has enough room. Maybe you’re newly married and realizing you and your partner have completely different instincts about money. Maybe you’re an immigrant, or married to one, trying to figure out a financial system that nobody explained to you. Maybe you just want to spend less, save more, and actually build something without waiting until you earn more to start.
You don’t need a higher income to get your finances in order. You need a system, some honesty about your numbers, and the willingness to start before you feel ready.
That’s what this blog is about.
What you’ll find here
Practical budgeting frameworks built for real family incomes, not theoretical ones.
Honest conversations about money and marriage.
Simple investing for people who are starting small.
And the ongoing story of a Taiwanese dad and his American wife navigating the American financial system for the first time, with two kids, a tight budget, and six years of missionary life behind them.
No sponsored content pushing products I don’t believe in. If I recommend something, I use it.
Just honest writing from someone who has lived this and is still living it.
Disclosure
I believe honesty is non-negotiable, so here it is: I use AI tools to help with structure, editing, and research. But every number on this blog is one I actually tracked, every story is one I actually lived, and every lesson is one that actually cost me something.
Start here
Six years ago I was sitting in a tiny apartment in Danshui, Taiwan with $2000 in our bank account and a $30 automatic investment transfer I’d just set up. It felt almost embarrassing at the time. Today that account holds over $23,000. This blog is the whole story, how we budgeted, how we invested, and what we learned living on a missionary income with no safety net. If you’re new, this is where I’d start:
Our full story: What 6 years as a missionary in Taiwan taught me about money
How we budget on one income: The exact budgeting framework we used in Taiwan
How we started investing on $30 a month: And what 6 years of small deposits looks like today
Get the free Family Budget Template!
If you want a simple place to start, grab our free one-page Family Budget Template below. The exact budget we used to live on $1,200/month in Taiwan and still invest every month, built for one income families or people living on a tight budget, designed to be filled in together.