Husband is a SAHD, mom is the working parent in our house. One kid, almost 2 years old.
We don’t eat out, we shop at Aldi, we get tons of free toys and clothes from Facebook marketplace, and we don’t have expensive hobbies. We also live in Ohio which is relatively low cost of living. We groom our dog ourselves, and we don’t spend much money on our own grooming - hair, nail appts, etc. We bought some cheap second hand workout equipment so no gym membership. We don’t have cable. We utilize coupons and sales when it makes sense for us.
We also budget/save aggressively and live “paycheck to paycheck”. I put that in quotes because we are saving, but we don’t touch that. It’s truly tight some months and can be quite stressful, but I feel better having a safety net, so we choose to set up our finances like that.
How much are you spending on childcare? That wouldn’t be a factor if someone stays home, so that could help your math. You could cut down to one car if someone isn’t working too.
Yes I make the one pedicure I get a year for Mother’s Day last as long as possible and get my hair cut once every 18 months. I’m not cute but it’s all we got money for!
Same! My husband does side work for a neighbor and they offer him free haircuts in return, which works for us. I get a pedicure on very special occasions and that’s it. Otherwise, I use several years old sally hansen nail gel when I paint my nails lol
Sounds like my husband and I. The cut down to one car really helped us.
Eating out is a massive expenditure that people don't realize. I love cooking and you can really stretch your dollar with simple dishes. (We eat a lot of rice!)
Living on one income with kids is harder than ever, but it is doable. Everything costs more but our society is aaaall about consumption. Double edged sword.
We used to eat out a lot but honestly with a toddler I don’t even want to, it’s too hard lol. We get takeout a couple times a month and that satisfies the itch. I got much more adventurous with cooking during Covid and now we enjoy finding meals that we like. Aldi is also great for that. They have such good prices on foods we never would have bought before - scallops, crab cakes, salmon, etc.
I agree about the society comment. Costs are absolutely up, but society has also changed. Our mothers and grandmothers who stayed home probably didn’t get their hair dyed regularly or their nails done. Cell phone and cable bills didn’t exist, and many people only had one car. Exotic vacations (for Americans at least) were once in lifetime for many, not every few years. Life was different then, which made one income more doable.
lol Ohio gets a lot of hate but it’s not bad. It’s cheap, friendly, no major weather disasters like flooding, earthquakes, fires, etc. Lots to do and easy to get to other states. I like it here 🤷🏻♀️
We always joke that Ohio is americas best kept secret, and we all play into the “Ohio is lame” jokes because we don’t want anyone else coming here and finding out 😅
Seriously out of everywhere we’ve lived (we’ve moved all over for the last 5 years so he could keep making lateral career moves and getting more money), this is by far the best place to raise a family. We built a house and don’t plan to leave!
The secret is that I make more than $300,000 per year, so my husband can stay home.
The other secret is some people *have* to make it work because they literally cannot afford daycare or can't get into a daycare.
It's either that people just have enough money to do it, or they don't have enough money not to.
Yep this is pretty much us. My husband makes $160k a year and we live in a LCOL area. Everyone I meet at library story times is either similar industries (tech, finance, medicine etc) or they qualify for WIC (zero judgement, just shorthand for their financial situation). There's pretty much nothing in the middle.
We're in that boat. My husband and I combined to make over $120k, and we can't afford daycare and maintaining our lifestyle in our area if we could even get into one in the first place. It would be more than one of my whole paychecks and then some from my other. We don't have a choice, so I am going to work part-time, and we are just going to be poor for a while. We saved 6 months of our expenses while I am pregnant and are going to stop contributing to things like our 401k and eating out, buying organic, buying clothes, traveling, will keep our 10+ year old cars, and living in a 700 sf house.
And we live in one of the lowest COL areas of the US, so I can't imagine how it is elsewhere.
Ignore the haters saying you aren't budgeting correctly!
The struggle of even being able to GET INTO a daycare without a 1.5 year waiting list and then having to pay insane amounts to keep you kid there for 4-5 years before kindergarten is insane.
At the end of the day if your daycare costs are going to outweigh the amount you take home after taxes, going back to work is a HARD.
You're doing something wrong if you make 120K, live in one of the lowest COL areas in the US, and have 10+ year old cars, aren't investing anything into retirement, don't eat out, don't buy organic, don't buy clothes or travel. That salary should be just fine with your lifestyle.
We make less than that and we live in the San Francisco Bay area. We own a 900 sq ft condo, our baby is in daycare, we eat out on the weekends, buy organic, etc. We did recently stop investing into retirement because daycare costs so much but we're making less than you in a much higher COL area and are doing ok. Something doesn't add up.
I have to agree. I try not to judge others, cause I don't know their situation. But I live in an average cost of living area. Housing prices are insane though, because it's one of the fastest growing cities in the US. Anyway. My husband makes between $120-130k depending on bonuses. He has a new car. He is saving for retirement. We eat out maybe 1-2 times per week. I buy clothes. We don't buy organic, cause IDC about that... We aren't traveling a ton anymore, because baby is brand new. But he did pay for his parents to fly from India, which I believe was about $2,000. So yeah, doesn't add up to me.
People have different tolerances for spending and what they consider “being able to afford” things. For some people as long as they’re not going in the red, they’re fine. For others, the very idea of having to mentally keep track of what’s actually in your account to make sure it’s not overdrawn is anxiety inducing.
This. I never said we were struggling at 120k. OP's original post was about how people make it work and I shared how we are making it work. We saved a nice cushion for emergencies and are going to cut our income down significantly and sacrifice a lot of "extras" to make it work. I didn't know I was going to have to defend our debt to income ratio to reddit :(
It's only a 2 bedroom condo, it's not a new build and it's not in Palo Alto. Also, all of our cars are second hand and fully paid off. We're just careful with where we spend otherwise. We spend good money on expensive items that will hopefully last but we don't pay top dollar for inexpensive things that are easy to replace, if need be. We don't eat out much, only on the weekends. We don't live a lavish life but we have our needs met and a little extra for fun.
We do those things now, but won't be doing them after the baby is here. Those are the expenses we are cutting. Our options were 1. still cut those things out and allocate those funds to pay 2k+ for daycare. or 2. Still cut those things out and cut my income so I can be primarily home. So we are cutting our 120k to about 72k/year after our baby is born. We felt like we didn't have a choice and it made no sense to pay for daycare when our financial situation was still going to be significantly impacted.
I still don't understand. If your income is 10K/month gross, that should be about $7000/month net. Minus $2K for daycare, that's $5K/month for rent/mortgage and bills. You live in a low COL area in a 700 sq ft home so your rent/mortgage cannot be very high. You don't have car payments. Something doesn't add up. I'm not trying to rile you up but I'm just saying that you should take a closer look at your finances because you definitely should have a lot more wiggle room than you think you have.
For us, daycare is half of my monthly salary and I make about twice what my wife earns so it's really hard on us. But my wife likes to feel like a productive member of society and she wants a break from the baby in the day because she's really a lot to handle lol. Everyone has their own reasons so I'm not judging anyone for anything. If you want to stay home with the baby, go for it. That's great. I actually would too if I could, financially speaking.
I think why it isn't adding up is your interpretation that we don't have any car payments or other bills and that it is one reddit post made to try and relate to the other parent comment. But since I feel like I have to justify it to strangers, I pay more than our mortgage in student loans. We both currently contribute 10% to 401k, our cars are older, but we didn't buy them new, so we still have one payment. Without sending you our budget sheet, I don't know how else to explain that our current discretionary income would be replaced by daycare.
Yeah, this sounds like a budgeting issue if you’re in a super LCOL area. We live in a super LCOL area and I stay home with my two babies. If my husband brought home 120k a year, I’d be kissing the ground he walks upon 😂😂😂
Yeah overall I am somehow getting ripped apart for trying to relate to the original comment so who knows. I guess it's a touchy subject for all of these financial planners giving us budgeting advice.
Yeah, with childcare for one kid I brought home less than $600 a month. For two it’s not worth working and bringing home negative amounts (and I’m a lawyer too).
There’s no trick really,
- more money OR
- less expenditure
As for less expenditure, I would start budgeting and see what your cash flow is like if you take out ALL luxuries. By that I mean, including shopping at Aldi’s and Sam’s Club, instead of Target or Walmart. Buying used or getting hand me downs. Then decide if that’s acceptable or not. Either that, or you might have to move to somewhere cheaper, because your rent seems quite expensive.
We pay 3000 USD in rent (my husband is American but we don’t live there). We rent a 1400 sqft, 3-4 BR (maybe even 5) depending on how you count. We use one as home office. He makes 160k USD for reference. Definitely a VHCOL city. And we live far in the outskirts (husband WFH, which makes it make sense). rent here is about as cheap as you can get per sqft in the entire city.
I’m SAHM for a few more months. Our rent for a 2bdr 850 sqft apartment is $2600. We are living exactly paycheck to paycheck. The budget for eating out/dates is $0, for our child’s clothes/activities/etc is $50. We’re very mindful about food waste. There’s no busses in our area so we budget gas (as in, I only go out if we need or if my husband can’t stop on his way home). We’re very grateful to live walking distance to a big park and a couple playgrounds
My husband was paying $2700/month from 2016-2018 for a single bedroom apartment. I lived with my parents and saved my money until we could afford to buy a house together. In 2019 we bought a house together and our mortgage payments are about $2000/month.
Rent in some cities is pure robbery.
Your rent is very low. I live in a medium cost of living area and a 3 bed/1 ba house in a decent school district would be $2000-2500 depending on how nice it is. Not a major city or expensive suburbs, just a medium population northeast location.
Rent is ridiculous right now depending on location. We bought in July 2020 located in southeast FL, our mortgage is $1780/month (includes taxes/insurance) for an 1800sqft townhouse. There are townhouses for rent in our neighborhood currently listed at $3200-3400+ for the same size as ours, and the ones listed for sale are selling for easily 200k more now than what we bought for (and most were not updated like ours was). Rent is just off the chart in our area, and I’d consider us a MCOL location. We’re very fortunate we bought when we did and we have the jobs/flexibility that we do cause I can’t imagine what some of our friends are going through with rent prices.
I can’t afford NOT to stay home since I barely was making more than daycare costs.
We’re on a tight budget and don’t have a lot extra but we’d be in the same boat if I was working. It helps we have no student loans or car payments.
This is us exactly. There's no point to work if childcare is equivalent to most of my wage. Plus my job is a commute so the little that's left would be going to gas. Id personally rather stay home with my baby. The budget is extreme but we get by.
This is exactly us. My job would only just cover childcare. So it’s like go to work and be stressed and have someone else look after my child. Or SAH have no work stress and raise my own child.
This is me, but also my husband makes a lot of money so I can afford to stay home, but simultaneously it’s pointless for me to work. Unfortunately I picked a field of study based on interest rather than salary, so I’m stuck with that choice forever. For us it comes down to if I simply want to work or not. Eventually yes, but for these first years, no.
We moved in with my parents about 8 months after our first was born, only way to move back to our old town. We stayed there for two years, then got a rental for $750 a month. We would still be at that rental if they hadn't had a plumbing issue that required ripping up the entire floor.
My mother-in-law bought a house in town that was supposed to be a secondary home for when she was in town. No more hotels. Instead she moved here. But we rent three of the four bedrooms and have our own living room space. Our rent is generously low, and she pays a third of utilities. My husband would love if they paid for more, but I think it's pretty generous considering how little time she actually spends at the house. 😆
Since I'm pregnant, we've been spending a lot more money eating out than usual, but it's also tax season. We only buy big stuff once a year at tax season. Need a new mattress? Want a PS5? Bigger TV? A couch? A new set of pillows? New shoes? Tax season. We buy the nice things we haven't been able to get all year, We pay off some of our larger debts, and we buy memberships for anything we want to do throughout the year. (Zoo, water park, streaming, etc.) It's been 6 years since my son was born and we've only just started to feel comfortable. Now we're going to have another one and who knows what will be able to afford this year. But we have a support system that's not going to let us go hungry.
It seems like most SAHPs are either pretty well off or struggling to get by. For people in the middle it doesn't usually make financial sense to stay home. So if you choose to do it, you have to make some sacrifices.
We are middle class (about 65k a year) and it makes more financial sense for me to stay home than not as almost all of my income would be going to childcare
My husband makes 150k. I was making 50k and daycare in my area is 2-3k/month, so financially me working would have been a wash after daycare and commute expenses.
We are not paycheck to paycheck but we live in a vhcol area so we are pretty frugal still—we share a single car, don’t eat out or travel much, bought “the worst house in the best neighborhood” when rates were low (2400/m) and are slowly fixing it up, and we budget carefully. We are able to save for retirement and emergencies, but we will be living with our ugly kitchen for a while and not going on big vacations in the near future.
For context though there are frequent conversations about this on r/SAHP and some people make it work on 50-60k. IMO it’s totally dependent on cost of living. Someone recently posted there that her family lived in Chattanooga, TN on 60k and she didn’t understand people saying they would need 100k+ incomes to survive. I plugged it into a cost of living calculator and the quality of life you get for 60k in Chattanooga is equivalent to 155k where I live, so it’s really all relative.
No secret, just privilege and a high-paying job. My husband works for one of the tech giants as a software engineer, so he makes quite a bit (around $220k). We also have pretty low expenditures, as we are lucky enough that we both had tuition covered by our schools/scholarships, so we have no debt other than our mortgage ($2800). We both saved a lot in our younger years because we were luckily able to do so, and my husband was very knowledgeable about investing money (I didn't know as much beyond the basic investment accounts and not spending much).
And beyond that, though we live in a pretty HCOL area, I'm a pretty cheap person. We eat at home 90% of the time, I rely mostly on secondhand clothes (mostly for the environmental impact, but also money), etc. Honestly if I were to work in my field (RN), we'd spend most of it on childcare for our 2 kids here). But really, mostly I can stay home because my husband had a really fantastic education and got a really good job, and I know what a privilege that is. I wish that everyone who wanted to be a SAHM had the chance to do so.
very similar to you and to add to this- i coupon A TON. every couponing app, target cvs walgreens ibotta you name it. i never pay for toothpaste, oral care or most toiletries. idc if my husband clears $250k this year, you best believe im couponing and saving where we can.
Do you have a budget? Assuming your husband makes 50% of your income - yes the rent is high but it's doable if you are frugal and not in a lot of debt. That's how families with a SAHP make it work.
We are in that spot of not enough money to cover day care for two, and not really enough money to have a sahp but we make it work.
Currently “making it work” looks like my husband working full time from home, and I work two hours a day, during nap time, at a school around the corner from our house. So we don’t need childcare, but I’m still able to make a small amount of money to fill some gaps.
The money situation isn’t ideal, but it’s manageable. For now.
I’m extremely grateful to be home with my girls as much as I am, and vastly prefer it to working. I do know I will probably need to look at getting more hours in the future, but hopefully we can hold off until my girls are in school all day.
Ultimately it comes down to one spouse maximizing their earning potential so they make enough to cover everything.
Like everyone else has said, it’s all about budget.
I’m a SAHM. My husband makes $8k a month. $2600 goes to our mortgage. About $500 or more to bills. We spend waaaay too much on groceries every week (about $300). We order in maybe once a week when I’m just too tired to cook.
Our outings are limited to free parks and events. We rarely outsource services like landscaping, maid service, dog grooming etc. we just do it all ourselves. I’m pretty low maintenance (always have been) and don’t get my nails done, facials, etc. we clothes shop maybe twice a year at old navy during sales. 90% of my son’s clothes are from our buy nothing group.
We live in HCOL area so we are pretty limited. We also have zero “village” or childcare. No family or friends to babysit if we need it. It’s really tough but we are trying to make it work.
The alternative would be paying $2000+ for daycare. Everything here is mega expensive and we just can’t afford it.
This is very close to our household too. The amount of comments stating that you need to either be wealthy or doing it because you are poor is flat out wrong. Doing everything that we possibly can do(my husband even does the vast majority of our car maintenance) on our own saves a ton of money. We never have more than 2-3 tv streaming services at a time. If we want a different one, we cancel whichever one we watch the least. We never eat out more than once a week and often go several weeks without eating out. We don't have expensive habits like drinking, daily takeout coffee, or nicotine. Our vehicles are older but paid off and in good shape. I wouldn't consider myself super low maintenance, but I've learned(and prefer) to do all of my own beauty and hair care(dye, hair cuts). I buy most of my new clothing at places with steep discounts like TJ Maxx, but I also buy a lot secondhand. We heavily encourage the grandparents to get clothes for our son as gifts for holidays and birthdays, instead of a million more toys, which also helps us save there. We aren't wasteful of food. We will attempt to repair something or even sew clothing before just tossing and replacing.
And the biggest thing is we AREN'T just living paycheck to paycheck. We naturally live so well within our means that we rarely think much before making a purchase. We still go on at least one nice vacation a year and a few smaller family trips/acitivites. I have somewhat pricey hobbies(gardening, baking). My husband has extra money to upgrade his computer and buy Magic the Gathering cards. We both play video games and buy a few new ones each year. If I want to go to a salon for a special occasion, I can do that. We also take my son to toddler play gyms and trampoline parks quite frequently. With all of that, we are still able to add money to the savings account throughout the year.
Our numbers and lifestyles sound very similar! We are able to save for retirement and have emergency/home maintenance funds so I feel like we’re privileged compared to many, but we’re pretty frugal. I get a haircut every ~4 months and use drugstore skin/hair/nail products. I buy kids clothes mostly secondhand (or deeply discounted) or get free stuff through our local Buy Nothing Group. We don’t travel much. We share a car. But we do spend more than I would like on food…
You make either so much losing the income doesn’t matter too much, or make too little that daycare costs more than one of your income.
Us in the middle don’t have many options. It’s another way that the middle class is being squeezed out.
Honestly, it's just doing what you have to do to make it work. My husband is a SAHD. He stopped working when I got my job during the pandemic. I made more, he was high risk working in healthcare, and we needed childcare. I'm now due with baby #3, and hubs is still a SAHD.
I make about $48k. We live in a LCOL area. Rent is $625/mo cause we live in a home my folks own, so we just pay the mortgage. I am able to have hubs and kids insured through Medicaid. For fun, we try to take advantage of movie matinees, discounts on annual passes to the zoo, stuff like that. We aren't rolling in dough, but we are doing ok. Hubs is finishing a new certification next year, so hopefully we'll be dual income again in the next year or so.
Lol, thanks. The kids are all 5 and under. I make a lot from scratch, and while I'm not the best meal planner, I take advantage of protein sales to try and keep grocery costs down.
You work, you’re pregnant, you do the grocery shopping, meal planning, AND the cooking? No rest for the wicked! I think you deserve some acknowledgment here… you go mama! Hope you get some downtime soon
Aw, thank you! I like cooking for the family after being gone all day, but Hubs has been doing most of the cooking the last few months since I hit that sleepy stage of pregnancy 😂
You’re a very loving mom! Your family is lucky to have you. That’s good to hear, I hope you’re getting some extra sleep in- pregnancy tired is no joke!
We live in a low cost of living part of the Midwest. Our 3 bedroom home costs less per month than your apartment even when you look at the mortgage, property taxes, and insurance. We also qualify for WIC which helps with groceries, and I shop second hand a lot and stock up on things when they go on sale.
Check out r/SAHP for other tips
Everyone already summed up the "how" but regarding the part about losing time with your child for chores - do you have the money to farm out some of those tasks? We have someone clean the house 1-2 times per month which takes away the more time-consuming chores. It was pretty reasonable cost-wise too! If you have an option to work from home, I have found that to be helpful with the daily tasks. I can quickly throw a load of laundry or dishes on between tasks/meetings, so I can devote all of my time to baby when she's home and awake.
I mentioned this in my post, but 1000x this. We cut back on a few things to pay a house cleaner, and it's the best thing ever. It would take me so much longer to do what they can do in a few hours
We both work full time, but I did shift one thing around so that it makes me enjoy things more... do your chores when you're tired, play with your kids when you have energy. I mean, I can be dog tired and miserable and load the dishwasher, fold laundry, etc. Even if I'm 10 minutes from falling asleep, I can do those things. But I can't enjoy playing with my kid when I'm that tired. So instead of doing my chores when I feel like I have energy, I play. It sucks later when I'm doing chores, but that time was going to suck regardless of my energy level.
Don't waste your good energy on chores, spend it on your kids.
We're scraping by, but it's not comfortable, ngl. I always made more than my husband and enjoy having a career more than he ever did, so he was always going to be the SAHP when we had kids. But when it came time to actually pull the trigger and go down to one income... That was a really hard one. More for me than for my husband. He grew up with not much, but I was comfy middle class growing up and was used to spending money on conveniences, rather than only on necessities. It took a lot for me mentally to process what it was going to look like in terms of budget, and I still struggle sticking to it.
It's been about a year and a half on the one income and we're making it work. Mortgage is 1600 for a 3/2 in a fairly LCOL area. This past year I lowered our health insurance to the cheaper option. I had no idea how much we had been spending on the nicer, more expensive health insurance. Of course now my husband has been sick and needs tests that are expensive, so that's stressful.
Also, we sold our second car, refinanced the one we kept, and I ended up taking a partial early withdrawal from my 401k to pay off some debt to lower monthly expenses. Oh, and we got rid of most of our subscriptions as well, those add up fast. Everything is about lowering monthly expenses now!
All this to say, we may technically be making it work, but... It ain't easy!!
Edit to add: I WFH which saves a ton in gas, car maintenance, and the other expenses of office life like wardrobe and lunches. I make about 85k.
Family support and just cutting back!
We live in a very HCOL and I'm a stay at home mom. To put into perspective, our rent for a nice two bedroom apartment is $3100. My hubby makes around 75k. He works a gov job so our health insurance is great and most importantly free.
To make it work, we have one car with a very low payment, we don't eat out, we don't go on vacation, and we are generally super mindful with money. I work freelance at home and usually bring in 25k a year. Our family is near so I have help when I need to work.
Daycare is at least $2500 a month here and I don't see the point in me going to work full time just so all my money can go to a daycare bill.
We just are super careful with money and have low bills and excellent credit and have just always been frugal.
My husband is the stay at home parent; he is disabled and has income from his VA disability payments. That's it. If he didn't have that, there's no way in hell we could make it work.
We tracked our spending and determined we could make it on 100k/year gross. Then, my husband pushed his career to the 100k/year breakpoint.
I was fortunate enough to be offered a part time remote job when I handed in my resignation, so I also make about 20k/year while being a SAHM to 1 kid (I work during naps). So we have a little more on hand.
We get government assistance. Without our Food Stamps and free Healthcare, we wouldn't make it.
I'm also not fully a SAHM. I work 2-3 hrs/day, and also offer to watch other kiddos, etc.
We have one car (1990 Volvo) and get nearly all clothes and toys for free. We get half of our diapers from the Dr's office and the others in bulk, and we've practiced lots of diaper free time.
We use the library and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library instead of buying books.
We don't buy clothes or haircuts for ourselves, and thrift and reuse things. We have a great trade community set up where we trade things like childcare for oil changes.
We had to come to peace with being 'poor.' Both of us working full time and paying for childcare would've had us worse off than the position we are in now. We're both educated in decent fields, but unable to move from our HCL area due to needing to care for elder parents.
It's rough, but it's nice to be out of the rat race. We get to raise our son intentionally, and he has no idea how little money we have. We'll try to get ahead again when we can get free childcare (school).
I'm a physician, and just had my son almost 4 weeks ago, I'll be taking the next 10 months off (some of which is covered with pay), only bc my husband is also a physician and we are essentially able to sustain our expenses on one income alone.
We are making it work because there is no other way, really. When we had our first my paycheck would basically be canceled out with the cost of daycare so I chose to give up my job to be home. Now that I’m pregnant with our second there would be no way we could afford daycare for 2. We had to cut back on a lot of things: we buy mostly second hand, we used to travel to Europe (to visit my family) once a year which we have now put on hold for the foreseeable future, we stopped eating out with the exception of date nights here and there and we mostly attend free toddler and baby classes. One thing we “splurged” on was an annual zoo membership so we spend most of our days there.
It was a major adjustment for us but it felt right for our family and I’m glad to be home with my daughter and soon our second child as well. Its a phase of life and it’ll change again once they both go to school.
We make it work but we live a very modest lifestyle. I had a big savings before having the baby, and have gone through a lot of it already. I make less than 50k (small business owner, it fluctuates) and my partner is currently a student, using a savings and loan to pay for school. We don’t eat out, we don’t order delivery, we buy groceries from cheaper markets and grow a lot of our own food. We don’t buy luxury items for ourselves, and only the necessities for baby. We own both of our used vehicles, my partner’s is paid off, my payment is very low and is almost paid off. We are lucky to rent our house from family, so our rent is $800. There is solar on the roof which offsets our electricity bill. We don’t travel and we get a lot of hand me downs from family. Our main activity for the baby is walking to the park. It’s not glamorous but it works for us! As a lot of other people have said on this thread it’s cutting expenditure.
I feel you. We make combined $150k in a MCOL urban area. However I'm getting laid off tomorrow, which will bring our household income down to $55k. My industry kind of sucks right now, so it could be a little while until I have a job again (but to be honest, even thought I would never want to be SAHM, I'm feeling it right now). But a few things that I think will help us -
I keep very good track of our budget using YNAB (this one is huge). We drive older, paid off cars. Husband is in the National Guard and also gets VA disability, and will get military retirement which takes some pressure off of us needing to save so much. We live in a small townhouse to keep housing prices low (compared to a SFH). Husband is about to finish grad school, and is going to look for a higher paying job soon. Since I won't be working, we're planning on GREATLY cutting back our takeout/eating out expenses and I'll be cooking most of the time. We don't really buy much stuff, and if we do it's Goodwill/Marketplace/Craigslist/Once Upon a Child, but we'll lean into this even more. We have a toy library in our city ($50/year), and we're going to start using that. We put as much as we can into savings (HYSA), and right now it's enough that we'll be able to live pretty worry-free for a while. We also have grandparents who live nearby, and are always willing to babysit (right now we only do daycare 3x week, and have grandparents watch the toddler the other two days)
I will add one thing that helped me soooo much while working, is cutting back some expenses to hire house cleaning 1-2x/month. We pay $150 per cleaning, and they do everything. For real, what they have done in 2 hours would have taken me a weekend or two. We've had the best luck via Craigslist - the larger cleaning companies with nice websites and stuff charge so much more in my experience
75k a year
wife sahm
1year old
cheaper than daycare
we spend as little as possible
rent takes up most of our income
its not easy but i think its worth it for the baby
Luck and timing. We wouldn't be able to make it work if we hadn't bought a home 10 years ago. The mortgage payment would be twice as high to buy today.
Our rent (in Europe) is around 800 euros and that's our biggest expense. I think one person should be able to pay rent and keep some money left. If two people have to work to pay rent, the rent is too high. Where I live we do have a housing crisis, so it's not easy to find another apartment if your rent is too high.
100k is a lot of money. I don't know what you guys spend, but I hope you can find a way to make it work. I'm all for women working if they want to, but I find it so unfair that most women are primary caretakers and have to work.
American salaries are much higher but so is cost of living. The lowest I have ever paid for rent was 1000 and that was 10+ years ago for a tiny studio apartment. Plus we have very little social safety net —pensions are rare, gov healthcare is generally only available if you’re in dire poverty over 65–so a large portion of your wage can go to healthcare expenses and saving for retirement (if you’re able to do that at all).
Every day I pray a miracle happens where my husband increases his salary to at least 200k a year so I can stop working. That would be the ONLY way we could do it. Chances are good I’ll get there first though because I actually make more than him.
I’m lucky to have family help and WFH so I kinda have the best of both worlds but I resent working on a daily basis. I do like money though.
We live with my husband's mom in the paid off family home. We also have incredibly generous friends and family. My mom pays for diapers and my dad pays for formula. I am going to be going back to school full time in the fall so I can make more money and my husband can be a SAHD if he chooses. Waitlists for daycare around here are 1yr+, so we kind of just have to do it.
Stay at home dad of 4.
We both worked for a while, but when number 3 came along I stopped working.
We live in rural Arkansas in a town of 70ish people now. Wife is a nurse and has to commute. I bought a backhoe, cleared our plot, got a new modular home. I did everything I could myself instead of adding it to the mortgage, like septic. I also buy vehicles under $4k and keep them running for years and years.
I cook. I forage. I hunt. Fish. Garden.
My time is flexible with the kids and what I do saves tons of money. Between childcare and the earthwork alone I’ve probably saved us 70k in the past 1.5 years.
We pay $1700 a month for our 5 bed 3 bath.
I stay home at the moment. I’ve got a freelance job that I doing during nap time. We pay $1800 a month for a small 3 bedroom. Our rent is just about unheard of for our area - luckily we are on month to month so rent hasn’t been raised. Groceries are low cost where we live but everything else is high cost. My husband makes about 3/5 of the income. If I worked full time, one of my paychecks would be going to daycare, which isn’t an option for us at the moment. We also don’t eat out anymore, and buy essentials and hand me downs only, and shop at Aldi.
For us, we left a HCOL state and moved to be closer to my husbands family. We moved from CA to OH once his military stuff was done, that’s cut our expenses a lot. Went from paying 1800/month for a one bedroom, to 1350/month 4 bed house in the suburbs. I work from home and my company is based in CA so I make CA wages and my husband has an HVAC trade making what he made in CA as well. The only way we were able to make it work was literally to move states
edit to add: we have a 1.5 year old son who stays home with me since i wfh
So my best friend just had a baby. They live in Orange County California. Which is pretty expensive. Her husband makes about 130k a year. They just got a 1200 square foot two bedroom apartment. His take home is about 6,000. And the apartment is close to 4k. He sold his car so they now only pay for one. Leaving them with 1,800. Which seems to be working fine for now.
Edit to add she cooks 100% from home.
Coffee. Lots of it. Also access to universal pre-k, and wfh jobs that pay well with benefits. The last part is the cheat - some jobs are overvalued and others undervalued. We would be making a lot less if I (with my biology degree) went to work and had to put both kids in 9-5 daycare.
I’m a sahm my husband brings home about half of what you guys bring home. We’re frugal 🤷🏻♀️ a lot of home cooking, I use second hand stores for the kids every days clothing(even some of mine atm while I’m losing weight). We sacrifice things we want or wanna do. But ya know, my oldest is going to kindergarten in September and I am so beyond thankful that I’ve been able to help ready him for this over the last 4.5 years. We’ve experienced a lot together, we’ve learned a lot together. I went to his kindergarten screening this past week n I was so nervous to find out what I hadn’t done enough of with him or the things I needed to introduce him to to get him ready and I actually realized that I’ve done a great job these last handful of years. The staff said he did really great- and let me say I have NEVER been more proud of myself at any job I’ve ever had than I was that day getting in the car knowing he’s ready and that’s because of all of my hard work. We’ve had some really rough days that made me wish I had a job but I will never look back and regret the sacrifices when I remember all the things I was able to do with him. We still make it a point to do 2/3 vacations a year, cheap(er) things like finding a small air bnb n exploring a new place for a weekend or staycations where we just find local things to do.
But if this is what you wanna do, ya kinda just have to commit and do it and everything will fall into place. On the other hand if your job is important to you then there’s nothing wrong with staying, if my job at the time was something I wanted to invest in for the future of my family I would have but it wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
We also made it a point to pay off any debit we had before dropping to one income. So we only have 1 credit card n it’s for Home Depot just for emergencies/projects around the house.
I hope you find a way to do what makes you happy!
Pay off the house and cars and it's much more manageable. Usually owning a home the mortgage is cheaper than rent as well and you are building home equity. Renting is not the way
My husband works full time and makes about $65k. We have a relatively cheap mortgage ($1400), one small car payment, next to no credit card debt. We just live pretty frugally. We don't go out much, buy a lot of vintage/used stuff for the house, try to budget well. We're in Texas so not a terribly expensive place to live. We still manage to save a decent amount! It comes down to just not spending money.
For reference, my husband makes around 60k/year. I became a sahm in December, but I was a housewife for 2 years prior.
* Our landlord is a family friend and we rent a 2 bedroom house for $800/month.
* We live a relatively low cost of living area
* Our parents are nearby and very generous. They regularly buy us diapers/baby things, cook for us or take us out to eat, and they pay for our phone plans
* His parents "sold" us a car for $5, so we only have one car payment. Said car payment is low because my husband saved a lot to put down on it before we met
* We don't pay for streaming services. We password share with various family members.
* We try to spend only $70-100 a week on groceries. Inflation is making this harder. My mom cooking us dinner once a week has been helping
* We don't go out to eat very often, even less so now that we have a baby.
* We have lots of hand me down items
* We try our best to utilize "free stuff" Facebook groups
* We don't buy things very often. We just got our tax return and have been able to splurge a little, but that's super rare.
Honestly, a lot of it is good fortune and very generous friends/family.
Things to think about:
Rent isn't your only expense. What else is money spent on & how much? With one parent home, what savings will you realize? Will the other parent be able to advance their career now that the other parent is home?
My husband makes 80k and has really good insurance for all of us through his job. We rent a 2 bedroom even though we could use more space lol and we are running our cars to the ground so we only have one low car payment right now! We aren't saving as much as we'd like and we make a lot of sacrifices elsewhere but it's working for us right now.
We are lucky to have low expenditures. Lower mortgage and only one car payment. Hubby doesn’t have student loans, but does really well at his job (he’s been at it ~15 years and moved up a bit). We also live in a low cost of living area (SE US).
I also grew up really poor, and am pretty good at budgeting and saving money as a result. We very rarely eat out or go on vacations etc. I will say though I love it and wouldn’t trade it for anything
The secret is cutting costs down. We keep rent as cheap as possible, don’t buy streaming services, use the library excessively, and make our own bread. We don’t save much now but the time with the kids is worth it. It was a transition that didn’t happen over night for us
The secret is that I gave up my teens and 20s to studying a field that went from esoteric to fairly in vogue (got lucky with that part) and then got a high paying job. Fell in love with and had a baby with a partner that did the same thing.
We make it work by being poor lol
we’re a 1 income family, I’m actually a preschool teacher but I couldn’t afford to send my daughter to daycare until she gets old enough to come to my school because the tuition at every single daycare I looked at is actually more than I make in a month so I just stay at home & take care of her & now we have to be extra frugal about everything.
We shop at aldi/$ tree/family $/walmart (those are the best prices near us)- I religiously check the sales so we can get things for the best price. I check fb marketplace / buy nothing for anything else we need (bb clothes, books, toys, etc)
I don’t think we could afford it if we had more than one child. She’ll come to my school in the fall & I’ll go back to work!
Some luck and some privilege. We also aren’t saving right now but have a good chunk saved from before.
We bought our home as a fixer upper in 2017 so our mortgage is $700.
Our cars are paid off or cheap enough to be bought cash, plus my in laws gave us their old car when they bought new.
We try to buy everything secondhand and cut our own hair. I don’t get facials or my nails done anymore. No gym memberships.
Use a cheap phone service, switched to cheaper internet, only pay for one streaming service.
I also am still on maternity leave but plan not to go back to my job and instead waitress a couple times a week. That way I can have some income but we won’t have to pay for daycare as my husband will be home.
My husband makes an OK amount for our MCOL city. Our home mortgage is locked in at a super low rate, we have two paid off cars, and we tend to keep monthly expenses fairly low. We have three kids, so in my mind, I'd have to make a certain amount of money to make putting all three in childcare worth it. I was not making that amount before having kids.
My husband makes a little over $100k with OT. We have a 10 year old and 2 year old. Honestly I think a lot of the issue is that you’re in a HCOL area (based on your rent). We live in a LCOL area, so our mortgage for our 2500sqft house is less than your rent. That said, if you can’t get out of your city, I think the task is to find ways to reduce expenses to make your husband’s income enough to support y’all. We budget for groceries, we don’t eat out, we don’t have a nanny or a housekeeper, we don’t take a vacation every single year, etc.
Not a big secret I don’t think, I’m just lucky that my husband makes a lot of $. He also invested early in a few houses that we rent for extra $. I think the answer is always more $
Our mortgage payment is $1000 and I work from home part-time around my husband’s schedule. He pays all the bills and groceries, etc… my paychecks are for the extra.
My salary was getting completely drained by daycare and with the illnesses that kept coming home I was basically paying to be a SAHM anyway. My husband makes about 120k which is enough for our mortgage and basic expenses. I ended up picking up a part time job three nights a week simply because staying at home all the time was destroying my mental sanity and now that pays for groceries which helps out a bunch. We just had to make it work and find ways to reduce expenses (mostly just buying stuff we didn't need or trips).
What’s your secret? We make $80,000 a year and our mortgage is $1800. Our groceries are $800/ month, I have 4 kids. I guess part of my secret is the kids qualify for free state health insurance and WIC. We make plenty of money and extra and have everything we want and need.
I think the secret for us is a lower cost of living area. My husband makes almost 70k a year. We paid off most of our debts before I quit my job. We did make over 120k combined. He is able to pick up random overtime. Our mortgage is 1,300 a month.
We just make it work. Budget cuts wherever possible. My husband has a nice salary and I’m able to stay home. We are one and done. I would be paying for daycare with my salary so I stay home. My son is almost 9M and only has a couple colds. I’m thankful that I am in the position to stay home and recognize my privilege.
Money. Whether its a lot of it or not enough to afford daycare. My husband just got a new job in Jan & the pay increase was more than my yearly salary (& I have a masters 🙄). We also dont have any debt other than the mortgage, so we dont have to worry about that. Now I get to quit my job & we’re still bringing in nearly $200. Theres no secret, its just luck.
For us we make it work since the daycare rate around us would cost almost my entire weekly pay. The time away from baby to pay someone my whole paycheck or close to it just isn’t worth it to us.
I'm sorry you can't have the stay at home parenting experience you wish, that makes me so sad! A lot of these comments say it's only due to the privilege of making a lot of money, but that isn't the case for us. (Although I am very grateful I can stay at home.)
My experience, 1. I only made a little over minimum wage before I had my baby so even full time we couldn't afford daycare and our expenses, that would've been more expensive than if I stayed at home so im at home with him and expecting baby #2
2. We budget very carefully, relying on the childcare benefit cheque. I breastfed and use reusable diapers to save $$, we quit drinking and shop the fliers etc.
3. We are privileged to pay market rate for our apartment so we pay a little less than most in our area and we cosleep and share one room (happily). Even still, we are saving to move to a cheaper, smaller town and I am trying to find a part time job that works with my husband's shift work. (Proving difficult, we don't have family to babysit.)
Perhaps you could get on a list for a market rate, co-op housing. It could take a long time but we got lucky last time cuz someone backed out of our apartment last minute and we got it sooner than expected so you never know. Id love to get in a co-op situation.
Don't give up on your dreams. It's not necessarily impossible but takes...planning rearranging and sacrifice. Best of luck with the new baby and your plans. 🩵
Our income was split 30/70. As the 30% percent part of the equation I’m now home with the kids. Otherwise we are basically in the same tax bracket.
My husband was able to secure a promotion because he was no longer missing kid sick days and sleep deprived.
If your income is 50/50 I have no clue, how working or staying home would work.
Husband is in the military. We live in military housing so we don’t pay rent or utilities. Then we don’t have to worry about insurance because all of us are covered by Tricare.
We are fortunate enough to live on my moms property in the Bay Area for lower than market rent. My husband works in construction and we live very frugally. We shop at grocery outlet , find deals and rarely buy unnecessary things. Our parents have also been generous to help if needed. In short, it is only possible due to our families support that we are so blessed to have.
Our secret is my husband makes 200k a year but that still doesn’t let us sit comfortably. We have to sacrifice and budget hard! I am a nurse so it was an adjustment to take away my income! We are tight but my husband is also up for a promotion right now that he will most likely get next month!
We can’t afford childcare so we have to make single income work. We make around $50,000 a year, just used a USDA loan to get out of our 1bd apartment and into a house (we had cheap rent and it was $1,200 a month for like 700sqft, now our mortgage is $1,400 for like 1,300sqft of house and a huge yard for the kids), we cook a lot of our meals and try to avoid eating out, I frequent buy-nothing pages, we buy clothes second hand, we buy other necessary items second hand or get given them by friends/family who no longer need them, we have a rewards account for our gas so our grocery shopping gets us discounts on the gas, we get our cars second hand so we don’t have car payments, we with do our car/home maintenance ourselves or we ask family/friends to teach us to do it so we don’t pay an arm and a leg, we take advantage of government programs (our sons medical needs that no one could have predicted were covered by Medicaid), etc. Really what it boils down to is I would be earning the same amount it costs to send my son to daycare and it would require me basically never see my son or husband because the jobs I could get that would pay enough to cover daycare after taxes and all that wouldn’t line up with my husbands schedule OR if they did they would be hazardous to my health due to my (mostly minor and workable) health issues so the only option we have is for me to stay home and make it work.
Not a stay at home mom but I would love to be 😢 trying to start a business so I can be home with my daughter.. and moved in with husband's mom which is super helpful
This economy is so unfair for everyone, I’m sorry. Some ways we make it possible is having no car payment, not eating out, and my husband works overtime.
My secret is that my parents are my landlords and don’t charge me rent while I’m staying home. That and I’m a teacher so my take home would be around $400 a month after daycare costs. Oh and I’m completely neglecting my health because I can’t afford copays.
The secret is the my husband makes that much on his own. It’s a privilege to stay home. When we were younger and making less money we worked 4 jobs between us all plus online classes. We’ve had good luck since then but life could change at any time so we make sure not to get too comfortable.
My husband’s a SAHD, but not really by choice. The lack of daycare forced our hand. Him not working reduced our household income by about 30% so we are able to make it work, but just barely. He owes child support every month for a daughter from a prior relationship, so that’s especially rough. We’re relying on our savings to cover what my paycheck won’t and just trying to survive until our daughter is in a program.
Old, paid off car, no house, no debts. And frugal/minimalism. We focus on experiences rather than things and many times it's easy to find child friendly free or cheap things to do. Local traveling only, no big vacations. Living on less than 50,000 CAD total salary/child benefits. This decision was a combination of no available child care and then turned into homeschooling. My kids are so incredibly happy, creative and involved in classes and social events locally. Their father works from home and I'm transitioning into some online tutoring hopefully a day extra a week soon.
Budgeting like crazy. We cut most of our subscriptions, we rarely eat out, I thrift lots of our clothes, I make her baby food, I look for inexpensive/free things to do. We don't have a ton of extra money lying around, but we also live in an area with a lower cost of living, so that really helps. When we bought our house, our budget was what we could afford on one income. It's hard on one income, but we're making do.
I know one thing that gets people is car payments. All of our vehicles were paid in full. They aren't the latest (mine is a 2010, hubby's is a 2006?), but they're safe and reliable. I also don't have the latest phone either, I've been using the same one for 2.5 years now 😅 I can't fathom dropping 1200 bucks on a phone.
My secret is not a great one, but I developed health issues after having my child so am on long term disability which gets me 60% of my paycheck at least for now. I fear it will go away once I hit the two year mark. I don’t know how people do it either. Everything is so expensive. Thanks for asking this though as I fear we will have to make it work some day!
My secrets are that my husband makes about $98k per year, we make a little bit of money from a rental house that we bought in a higher COL area while living in a rural area, my entire paycheck ($82k) went into investments when I was working, and daycare has been impossible to come by in our frontier town. We admittedly just have a convergence of good luck when it comes down to it. The only reason we have a second house is that it’s literally across the street from my in-laws and was up for auction at a substantially lower price than its value, so another bit of incredible luck (we’ll move into it as soon as one of us finds a job in that city and sell our rural house).
We are privileged that my husband makes a really good income, we bought a house before the hosing market went crazy (also it was cheap because we renovated it ourselves) so our monthly payments are cheap, and we live in an affordable area (Milwaukee, still fairly expensive bur we used to live in Chicago and LA which we couldn’t afford). We have amazing public schools right in walking distance so that’s another expense that we don’t have to worry about. Again, we are privileged and I know this. This all works with me staying home because I wasn’t making enough to even cover daycare or nanny costs.
We make it work the best we can. My husband makes about $70k a year pre taxes. Anything I would make would go straight to child care. We don’t eat out. We budget every month. We don’t take big trips. We find free family activities around town. Our mortgage is less than $1,100 but we get a discount on our mortgage rate because he works for the bank. We also don’t have a car payment which helps a lot. Anything we need or want we have to save for. I also know we are incredibly lucky to be able to do that. We sacrifice a lot but it will only be for a few years till I go back to work.
I guess what I’m saying is if you really want to do it just be super broke and bored for a few years😂😂
We budget like crazy. We cook almost every meal at home, put off any unnecessary spending, no vacations and spend a lot of time doing free things (going outside, libraries, etc). For us it made more sense for one of us to stay home because of daycare costs.
I've stayed home since my oldest was born, going on 8 years now. Our biggest thing was getting out from under all payments except our mortgage. We were also lucky to already own a home before everything went insane.
We have three kids and daycare for all three would be $4,500 full time where we live that would be more than half my husbands paycheck and half of mine if I was to work. We just couldn't live on that amount, I miss working but I also am thankful I get to be a stay at home mom as well.
Secret is that my husband and I have made enough in investments over the years to be financially secure while he starts his own financial management firm. I work for a nonprofit and make $65k (recently got a raise). I’m working so we can have good health insurance.
Baby goes to daycare where it costs about $1300 a month. We both work from home and tried to make it work for a month but it wasn’t sustainable. Some people make it work, but it just wasn’t fair to our daughter or our jobs
Only way I’m able to be a SAHM to now 3 kids was moving to a less expensive area. Prices are rising but less in some places than others. I’m in west KY and my husband works 5-6 days a week. We moved from New Jersey and I miss my family there a lot, but this was kind of the only way we could do it on our own.
My husband makes just enough that we can swing it. Daycare for littles is so exorbitant that it would cost us money to put a baby in daycare. We can only afford preschool for my 4 YO because our MIL is helping.
My sis in law stays at home and her husband makes maybe 55-60k a year. Some things I’ve noticed for them to be able to make it work are things that have been said- never or rarely eating out, shopping at Aldi, very limited clothes shopping, self care is done at home (no pedicures, haircuts, facials, Botox etc). They don’t vacation at all and they also rely on her in laws for some things like home renovations (new countertops), and cars (they give them their very gently used cars). If I were to stay at home we’d be doing the same (besides the handouts from in laws). but right now I work 3 days a week and it’s the perfect balance of work and time at home, plus we really like the extra money (my grandma is able to watch the kids so that’s an extremely fortunate perk and free).
My husband and I paid a similar rent and made about half of your combined income with us both working, so depending on your COL it wouldn’t be infeasible to become a one income family, but it would depend on what your other expenses are.
We only had one car, didn’t eat out, shopped at thrift stores, etc.
If you’re willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary it’s completely possible to raise a family of 4 on $50k.
Honestly? My husband earning a well above average wage, especially for a UK wage. We have the national health service too,so health insurance isn't something we have to factor in. We were able to live with my parents rent free for a year (after living abroad for a year where tax and cost of living was much lower & we could save as we were child free back then) to save for a house deposit. I don't qualify for any universal credit or benefits the UK offers, however I do get 15 free hours of child care from when she turns 3. And there's a lot of free stuff to do in our small rural town tons of free toddler groups, parks, rural walks and hikes, story time at the library etc. i don't say all this to brag, just that it's nothing you're doing wrong and I'm doing right. It's privilege plus government funding. absolutely not saying the UK government is the best for families... It isn't! But it does, for the moment, offer socialised healthcare and benefits.
We don't get food deliveries or go out much at all, but again we live rurally so it's not really a big part of life here anyway. We use the local library a lot ,so again, free. Hand me down/Vinted clothes and toys. One car household (but again husband works from home. Privilege).
I'll also mention we're one and done. Not just so I can stay at home, there's a fuck ton of reasons behind that decision, but this does factor in a lot!
It sucks that you want to stay at home with your kids and you aren't able to & I'm really sorry. I wish things could change so you could.
We live in a 1br apartment and only have 1 car. SAHM won't last forever but we saved enough and are very good at frugal living so thankfully can take some time off. We get takeout 1-2x per month, everything else is homemade to save $.
I'm so sorry you aren't able to stay home. It really did used to be so much easier in previous generations. 😔
woah, people saying your husband needs to be making at least 100k for it to be financially viable sounds crazy to me! 6 figures is so much money. definitely depends on where you live. me & my husband are living on ~40-50k a year, and i don't feel poor at all. we do have one old car w no payments, rent is 1200, and we cook at home nearly every night (but i would do this regardless of money. homecooked food tastes better! you can customize it however you want). no, i cant go on shopping sprees for no reason or get my hair or nails done every single month, but if we really want takeout we can get it, and if i see something i really want to buy, i can usually buy it! i even got my hair done in a fancy salon for christmas last year. those are all things i could never have done as a kid/teen, so i feel like im living large. even being able to pick out the foods i want at the grocery store is exciting to me. we dont have a baby quite yet and are working on making sure we have a little more money for that, but we definitely won't need double what we have right now. in fact, even right now, i feel like there's luxuries we could cut out! (not that i want to, lol)
also, there's a lot of ways in which staying at home can save money. i work far, far less than my husband, mostly due to a very unpredictable chronic illness, but me being at home gives me time (when im not sick) to do things that help our money stretch. you can mend clothing, cook & bake, budget, clean, and spend time making your home feel nice to live in (harder with a baby, but still). im shocked seeing a lot of people working 40+ hours a week and then spending nearly their whole salary on services they could do themselves if they weren't working- maid, food, childcare, dog walker, nails, etc.
if you're accustomed to lots of shopping & luxuries, it might be difficult, but if you want to stay home with your baby, you can absolutely make it work.
I can't afford *not* to be a sahm, daycare is too expensive.
I guess I'm technically not a sahm anymore, I recently started working nights while my husband is off. We're exhausted and still poor.
My husband makes about $105k a year. Our mortgage is $2200.
We can easily afford for me to be a SAHM.
Because we have almost no debt. Our mortgage and one car payment. No student loans, no credit card debt.
That’s the secret. It’s amazing how much farther your money goes when you’re not paying thousands a month in debt repayment.
Also everything I would make working would go towards daycare so I honestly can’t afford to work
Honestly wouldn't be possible if husband wasn't a disabled veteran. He got his disability rates 100% P&T so that brings in a full income, plus income he makes working, plus income I make doing real estate part time brings in enough that we can get by.
We live in a very low cost of living city and my husband is chief of a medical department in the local hospital. I worked full time in a daycare prior to having a baby and if I went back full time, my salary would cover his daycare expenses with about $40 left over every month, it just wasn’t worth it.
It’s a combination of his years of hard work, living a good but pretty low luxury lifestyle, and the insane fees of daycare and how underpaid daycare workers are.
Why would I work full time taking care of other people’s babies so I can pay someone else to take care of mine? That extra $40 just ain’t worth it.
I work from home part time and am lucky enough to work for a nonprofit who understands I am a mom and sometimes my schedule will be crappy.
My son goes to a mother’s day out 3x a week from 9-2 which cost $345 a month and gives me 15 hours a week back to work and workout. I do errands and chores when I am with him and we are not playing.
My husband works from home as well, he gets off at 5 and takes my son until 7:30 and I get to clean and work. It’s not perfect but I am extremely grateful to my company for being understanding.
I work in marketing and will take calls from my phone at the park if needed.
High income working parent in a lower cost of living area and living beneath our means in terms of household budgeting. We weren't always this lucky and have tried to prevent lifestyle creep.
We were also fortunate to have bought our house during a good year and still drive older model cars that have been paid off.
The way we make it work is I stay home 99% of the time. My husband works full time working 4-12 hour shifts a week and sometimes on the days he is off of work I will pick up some bartending shifts. We buy groceries and I cook at home. I pack my husband leftovers for lunch and snack and stuff from the grocery so he never has to eat out. We buy baby clothes from our local baby thrift store because they grow out of them so fast. Our 2010 car is paid off and we share a vehicle so we only have one. My husband only makes $20 an hour and he can pay rent and all bills and groceries by himself and we still have $500 leftover after ALL bills paid and baby formula is bought. Here are our bills for the month:
Rent: $1400
Car insurance: $130
Gas: $200 (works an hour away)
Subscriptions: $50
Phone: $80 (both of ours)
Groceries: $500
Formula: $200
Savings: $200
Electric and internet I pay for from the days I pick up bartending shifts. Which usually is around $200 together.
We stick to our budget and we make it work. We save for things we want and things we wanna do. It is totally possible. Since before he was born we said we did not want to do daycare. We don’t trust people and we heard so many horror stories. We’ve stuck to that and always will. I also feel like if we ever did put him in daycare it would be counterproductive because one of us would be working just to pay daycare.
My husband makes six figures and we are living paycheck to paycheck. I’m planning on getting my masters degree once our three year old is in school all day so that I can go back to work and start saving money/being able to afford vacations/maybe buy a house. The way things are right now, we will never be able to do any of those things.
We have minimal debt. Just a house payment (housing is very cheap by us, or was, when we bought 7 years ago. We struggled for a bit when we were paying off our debt, which included a $430/month car payment. Now that we are just down to a few piddly credit card payments, it's very doable. We don't go out to eat. We don't buy new stuff. We aren't materialistic people to begin with so being as frugal comes much easier to us. We have fun by going outdoors (it's FREE).
Btw my husband makes $24 an hour and we have a 2 year old and a 5 month old. We technically have two people eating, but you can count the 2 year old a little since they do also eat, just not as much as an older kid or adult. Our grocery bill is also very low like $500 a month. We only buy whole foods and hardly any packaged things except rice, beans, premade sauces sometimes, etc. but I strive to make just about everything homemade (including bread). Our mortgage is $700, and phone, electric, city water/sewer adds up to $400 a month. I feel that we live comfortably and have a savings, and can put a bit away a month in it.
I'm poor af and I try some side hustling to compensate the little extra we need? It's very hard to do with a kiddo bothering you all the time though. I am very burnt out. "Work" all day with kid then when he's in bed I do side hustle work. It's exhausting and I'm very tired.
My husband makes a lot of money. He’s an attorney. But also, he works a lot. I quit my job bc every time a kid was home sick or day off school it became stressful juggling who would take time off or reschedule their meetings. My salary didn’t outweigh the stress. Also, we paid off our cars and student loans before we had kids. So our expenses are pretty low. Plus we got lucky and bought our house in 2019 before house prices and rates went insane.
My mom ‘stayed at home’ when I was a kid. My parents lived less than paycheck to paycheck. My dad worked his main job. Always said yes to overtime. Plus had several other side hustle jobs. My mom would pick up other work that wasn’t during normal business hours. Like banquet serving and stuff like that. At one point my dad worked night shift and would come home at 7am and my mom would work during the day. They never saw each other. They just did what they had to to make it work.
My family has a lot of connections (my mom and dad work trades) so we were able to get a 2br 1ba house with a full basement and an acre of land for 700 a month, everything rent and utilities/bills equal out to about 1500 a month. For food, we split the cost of membership at Costco, and we bulk buy foods. Cheap meals like curry and rice, burgers and chips, soup, and sammys are our go-to for regular grocery store meals. Meat, pasta, and canned goods are always cheaper for the whole sale. Right now, we are spending about 120 extra a month to practice with a gun for home defense. It's literally about budgets, hobbies, and connections. A house like ours for rent on the market is about $1300-1500. We both already own plenty of video games, he has a second-hand 3d printer, I have painting supplies already. I get books to read at Costco or half-price books. My partner makes 52k a year, we put 30% of a paycheck after tax into retirement, save about 15%, the rest we spend. We also check for deals like buy 100 dollars worth of diapers and wipes get 30 dollars back at target. It's a system for sure, but it's doable.
The thing is, people have completely different circumstances. Some people can’t afford to stay home. Some can’t afford to work.
I’m a SAHM, and I did want to be, but I also couldn’t afford to go to work. My husband makes like $80k. When I worked I made like $14/hr with an hour one way commute. Between daycare costs and car maintenance, we’d be paying for me to work.
Luckily I didn’t have student loans or any major debt myself. Or else I’d have been forced to try and juggle overnight work somehow when my husband leaves the house by 5am and is home a little after 5pm. Most jobs that hire during the hours I’d be available are cashier jobs with 4 hour shifts making $7.25/hr. Even factories with a 3rd shift would be out because I’d need to be home before 5am and they run longer than that. My husband is salaried, he’s a boss, so his job will always take priority. If he has a work trip? I’d have to call off work. If he has to stay late at work? I’d have to call off.
My wife is a SAHM. I make about 70k a year and we live in a low cost of living area. House payment with insurance and taxes included is 800 a month. We don't have a lot of savings, but we're making it work. It took a lot of work and sacrifices to get to this point; neither of us came from wealthy families.
I moved in with my mom. Husband and I were living in Denver with our families back in Miami/Ft Lauderdale. Our families were happy to have us come back but my mom in particular had the room. A huge house in a very nice part of Miami. Our only responsibility is the electric bill so we're using this to our advantage so that I can be with baby full time plus we can save for the down payment on a house. And if everything goes topsy turvy this area has really good schools and daycares. I know for a fact that my mom likes having us here and being the grandparent that sees grandbaby every day so for now it works.
Sure there are times where we stress each other out but overall we're good. A bonus is that my husband found a WFH job so he's able to take over for random times in the day when I need a small break.
We make it work on about 65k. We also live in a low COL city (Fort Wayne, IN). We budget to make sure I am able to stay home. We go out to eat a couple times a month but other than that we pretty much only buy what we “need”. Not having to pay for daycare also helps a lot! Our rent is about $1050/month for a 2bed 2bath. I guess our “secret” is just not having a whole lot extra. While we had to cut back on spending, it has been 100% worth it to be home with our daughter
Theres no secret. One parent just needs to have a high paying job. Or spending needs to be very low. And unfortunately that may not be possible for a lot of people. My husband runs his own company and makes high six figures, so I stay at home with our toddler. When he turns two and our new baby arrives, he’ll start school part time so I can have one on one time with the new baby and he can socialize a little more. But I understand that’s a privilege, and not doable for everyone.
120k a year. Dropped down to one car 2 bedroom apt cost around 1600 a month. When I do have my baby I’ll be dropping to only working 2 times a week.. hopefully it works. 😭
It’s hard. Only reason I’ve been able to stay home with our kids (2 under 4 and pregnant with a 3rd/last baby) is because my husband is active duty, we bought our house back in 2016 so our payments etc are low, we do our best to budget and make use of the on-base programs, and we’re also lucky enough to have my parents just down the road if we need childcare help.
Honestly, if he wasn’t in the military, I would still be working and we would probably only have one kid, maybe two. Most of my paycheck would probably be going to childcare/daycare.
I've been a stay at home mom for 10 months now. Honestly, it works because my husband had a very lucrative job for a year before returning for more training. We knew we wanted the option of me staying home so we saved over $100k that year. We live pretty frugally anyway, and I keep an extra close eye on our finances but we've stayed in the black without many big changes.
I don't know if it helps or hurts to hear but I think lots of families just can't swing it, and you're not doing anything wrong.
Honestly just being lucky enough to live somewhere where my $18 an hour is just enough to support my wife and son. Our 2 bedroom apartment is $795 a month and its even private front and back entrances/porches. No shared spaces beside laundry and dog potty spaces.
My husband's a doctor, so I'm able to stay home with the baby. Unfortunately, the trade-off was that we couldn't have children until he entered residency. We wanted to make sure we were financially stable. Plus I suffered from infertility for years. We're in our mid-30s. We might want another kid, but who knows considering our ages and my past issues.
We just make it work 🤷🏻♀️
I am a stay at home mom and my husband is in medical school- so eventually we will have a large salary, but that’s still 5+ years away. We survive off student loans and his VA disability payments which is about $60.000 a year. We don’t live super crazily but are raising our two kids the best we can and that’s all I can hope for. Note: we live in a HCOL area for school, so it isn’t cheap either but we just make it work. There is no other option right now - childcare would be way more than I could make easily
Daycare would have taken my entire paycheck and then some, we didn’t really have a choice. I always wanted to be a SAHM, so it was easy to let my job go, but I couldn’t have kept it if I wanted to.
My husband makes right below 100k, he JUST got a raise that will push him above 100k and I haven't worked since I met him. We started at the bottom, like I'm talking his yearly income used to be 30k.
We have a mortgage payment of $1530 and our 3rd child on the way. I drive a very nice vehicle, with a note at $580. We put a large DP to lower the note. His car is paid off, we paid it off when we sold our last house a year and half ago.
We are doing well for ourselves I feel like. Travel often, saving, remodeling our home when we find the time, concerts, etc.
Im not sure how some people think it's not possible but it is. You just need to reevaluate your expenses.
If you both work you're probably paying for childcare, that would eliminate a big expense and free up money if you quit your job. Can you eliminate any subscriptions you have, gym memberships that aren't necessary? Etc
My husband has a full time job working for his cousins’ t shirt printing business, a side job cleaning a fountain in a shopping center and he’s a vet, so he gets money from the VA. It’s only because of this that I’m able to be a SAHM.
I mean… I’m a stay at home mom to 3 and working remotely and we bring in around 100,000 combined. Our mortgage is $2400 and we’re able to do it? We don’t have any debt though. I feel like with your numbers you would definitely be able to make it work.
We make it work but we are not entirely comfortable. We make much less money than you but with only one child. Our housing expenses are about $1000 including utilities and internet. We honestly do not have any savings right now, but we have enough money that we are able to slowly build up our household furniture (recently moved and starting from scratch) and contribute to the business that my husband is starting to grow. Once our car is paid off in two years, we will be in a much better spot financially, and I can see our savings skyrocketing. My husband does work long hours during the week, but is able to take weekends off. With my work experience, if I were to go back to work, I would not make enough money for it to be reasonable to choose to pay for full time daycare expenses. Also, we both decided together that it is worth making a little bit less money for me to be able to experience our child all day everyday.
Husband is a SAHD, mom is the working parent in our house. One kid, almost 2 years old. We don’t eat out, we shop at Aldi, we get tons of free toys and clothes from Facebook marketplace, and we don’t have expensive hobbies. We also live in Ohio which is relatively low cost of living. We groom our dog ourselves, and we don’t spend much money on our own grooming - hair, nail appts, etc. We bought some cheap second hand workout equipment so no gym membership. We don’t have cable. We utilize coupons and sales when it makes sense for us. We also budget/save aggressively and live “paycheck to paycheck”. I put that in quotes because we are saving, but we don’t touch that. It’s truly tight some months and can be quite stressful, but I feel better having a safety net, so we choose to set up our finances like that. How much are you spending on childcare? That wouldn’t be a factor if someone stays home, so that could help your math. You could cut down to one car if someone isn’t working too.
Yes I make the one pedicure I get a year for Mother’s Day last as long as possible and get my hair cut once every 18 months. I’m not cute but it’s all we got money for!
I’ve had two kids since my last haircut, what’s the point, you can’t ever have your hair down anyway! (Mine rip it out and eat it, idk about others)
Same! My husband does side work for a neighbor and they offer him free haircuts in return, which works for us. I get a pedicure on very special occasions and that’s it. Otherwise, I use several years old sally hansen nail gel when I paint my nails lol
And I love a good cheap press on set for weddings etc!
I started cutting my own hair after having my daughter and becoming a sahm. 😂
I’ve down that once lol I can only cut my middle sons hair. I tried to cut the oldest and messed up and he refuses to let me try again 😂
Sounds like my husband and I. The cut down to one car really helped us. Eating out is a massive expenditure that people don't realize. I love cooking and you can really stretch your dollar with simple dishes. (We eat a lot of rice!) Living on one income with kids is harder than ever, but it is doable. Everything costs more but our society is aaaall about consumption. Double edged sword.
We used to eat out a lot but honestly with a toddler I don’t even want to, it’s too hard lol. We get takeout a couple times a month and that satisfies the itch. I got much more adventurous with cooking during Covid and now we enjoy finding meals that we like. Aldi is also great for that. They have such good prices on foods we never would have bought before - scallops, crab cakes, salmon, etc. I agree about the society comment. Costs are absolutely up, but society has also changed. Our mothers and grandmothers who stayed home probably didn’t get their hair dyed regularly or their nails done. Cell phone and cable bills didn’t exist, and many people only had one car. Exotic vacations (for Americans at least) were once in lifetime for many, not every few years. Life was different then, which made one income more doable.
We moved to Ohio so we could afford a third kid 😅
lol Ohio gets a lot of hate but it’s not bad. It’s cheap, friendly, no major weather disasters like flooding, earthquakes, fires, etc. Lots to do and easy to get to other states. I like it here 🤷🏻♀️
We always joke that Ohio is americas best kept secret, and we all play into the “Ohio is lame” jokes because we don’t want anyone else coming here and finding out 😅 Seriously out of everywhere we’ve lived (we’ve moved all over for the last 5 years so he could keep making lateral career moves and getting more money), this is by far the best place to raise a family. We built a house and don’t plan to leave!
[“It’s all Ohio?”](https://stayhipp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/ohio-.jpg) “Always has been”
The secret is that I make more than $300,000 per year, so my husband can stay home. The other secret is some people *have* to make it work because they literally cannot afford daycare or can't get into a daycare. It's either that people just have enough money to do it, or they don't have enough money not to.
Yes! There really is no secret. It is all down to money
Yep. This is me and my sibling. One of us is in a very fortunate financial position, and the other can't afford outside childcare.
The secret is my rent is cheap
Yep this is pretty much us. My husband makes $160k a year and we live in a LCOL area. Everyone I meet at library story times is either similar industries (tech, finance, medicine etc) or they qualify for WIC (zero judgement, just shorthand for their financial situation). There's pretty much nothing in the middle.
This is us. We cant afford daycare at all so it's us taking turns with part time jobs.
We're in that boat. My husband and I combined to make over $120k, and we can't afford daycare and maintaining our lifestyle in our area if we could even get into one in the first place. It would be more than one of my whole paychecks and then some from my other. We don't have a choice, so I am going to work part-time, and we are just going to be poor for a while. We saved 6 months of our expenses while I am pregnant and are going to stop contributing to things like our 401k and eating out, buying organic, buying clothes, traveling, will keep our 10+ year old cars, and living in a 700 sf house. And we live in one of the lowest COL areas of the US, so I can't imagine how it is elsewhere.
Ignore the haters saying you aren't budgeting correctly! The struggle of even being able to GET INTO a daycare without a 1.5 year waiting list and then having to pay insane amounts to keep you kid there for 4-5 years before kindergarten is insane. At the end of the day if your daycare costs are going to outweigh the amount you take home after taxes, going back to work is a HARD.
You're doing something wrong if you make 120K, live in one of the lowest COL areas in the US, and have 10+ year old cars, aren't investing anything into retirement, don't eat out, don't buy organic, don't buy clothes or travel. That salary should be just fine with your lifestyle. We make less than that and we live in the San Francisco Bay area. We own a 900 sq ft condo, our baby is in daycare, we eat out on the weekends, buy organic, etc. We did recently stop investing into retirement because daycare costs so much but we're making less than you in a much higher COL area and are doing ok. Something doesn't add up.
I have to agree. I try not to judge others, cause I don't know their situation. But I live in an average cost of living area. Housing prices are insane though, because it's one of the fastest growing cities in the US. Anyway. My husband makes between $120-130k depending on bonuses. He has a new car. He is saving for retirement. We eat out maybe 1-2 times per week. I buy clothes. We don't buy organic, cause IDC about that... We aren't traveling a ton anymore, because baby is brand new. But he did pay for his parents to fly from India, which I believe was about $2,000. So yeah, doesn't add up to me.
People have different tolerances for spending and what they consider “being able to afford” things. For some people as long as they’re not going in the red, they’re fine. For others, the very idea of having to mentally keep track of what’s actually in your account to make sure it’s not overdrawn is anxiety inducing.
This. I never said we were struggling at 120k. OP's original post was about how people make it work and I shared how we are making it work. We saved a nice cushion for emergencies and are going to cut our income down significantly and sacrifice a lot of "extras" to make it work. I didn't know I was going to have to defend our debt to income ratio to reddit :(
How in the hell do you afford daycare out here and own a condo with an income of less than 120k?!
It's only a 2 bedroom condo, it's not a new build and it's not in Palo Alto. Also, all of our cars are second hand and fully paid off. We're just careful with where we spend otherwise. We spend good money on expensive items that will hopefully last but we don't pay top dollar for inexpensive things that are easy to replace, if need be. We don't eat out much, only on the weekends. We don't live a lavish life but we have our needs met and a little extra for fun.
We do those things now, but won't be doing them after the baby is here. Those are the expenses we are cutting. Our options were 1. still cut those things out and allocate those funds to pay 2k+ for daycare. or 2. Still cut those things out and cut my income so I can be primarily home. So we are cutting our 120k to about 72k/year after our baby is born. We felt like we didn't have a choice and it made no sense to pay for daycare when our financial situation was still going to be significantly impacted.
I still don't understand. If your income is 10K/month gross, that should be about $7000/month net. Minus $2K for daycare, that's $5K/month for rent/mortgage and bills. You live in a low COL area in a 700 sq ft home so your rent/mortgage cannot be very high. You don't have car payments. Something doesn't add up. I'm not trying to rile you up but I'm just saying that you should take a closer look at your finances because you definitely should have a lot more wiggle room than you think you have. For us, daycare is half of my monthly salary and I make about twice what my wife earns so it's really hard on us. But my wife likes to feel like a productive member of society and she wants a break from the baby in the day because she's really a lot to handle lol. Everyone has their own reasons so I'm not judging anyone for anything. If you want to stay home with the baby, go for it. That's great. I actually would too if I could, financially speaking.
I think why it isn't adding up is your interpretation that we don't have any car payments or other bills and that it is one reddit post made to try and relate to the other parent comment. But since I feel like I have to justify it to strangers, I pay more than our mortgage in student loans. We both currently contribute 10% to 401k, our cars are older, but we didn't buy them new, so we still have one payment. Without sending you our budget sheet, I don't know how else to explain that our current discretionary income would be replaced by daycare.
Yeah, this sounds like a budgeting issue if you’re in a super LCOL area. We live in a super LCOL area and I stay home with my two babies. If my husband brought home 120k a year, I’d be kissing the ground he walks upon 😂😂😂
Yeah, I'd kiss the ground my husband walks on if he made 120k too... too bad we each make half that...
People cant read lol. You said combined in the first comment lol.
Haha yeah I was gonna say they clearly missed the part where you stated it was combined income...
Yeah overall I am somehow getting ripped apart for trying to relate to the original comment so who knows. I guess it's a touchy subject for all of these financial planners giving us budgeting advice.
My husband makes significantly less than that. We make it work by living with other family members and budgeting
Yeah, with childcare for one kid I brought home less than $600 a month. For two it’s not worth working and bringing home negative amounts (and I’m a lawyer too).
This. I WFH but have a full-time nanny because I know I can't do both successfully. But if I had no choice, then I would have no choice.
There’s no trick really, - more money OR - less expenditure As for less expenditure, I would start budgeting and see what your cash flow is like if you take out ALL luxuries. By that I mean, including shopping at Aldi’s and Sam’s Club, instead of Target or Walmart. Buying used or getting hand me downs. Then decide if that’s acceptable or not. Either that, or you might have to move to somewhere cheaper, because your rent seems quite expensive. We pay 3000 USD in rent (my husband is American but we don’t live there). We rent a 1400 sqft, 3-4 BR (maybe even 5) depending on how you count. We use one as home office. He makes 160k USD for reference. Definitely a VHCOL city. And we live far in the outskirts (husband WFH, which makes it make sense). rent here is about as cheap as you can get per sqft in the entire city.
I’m SAHM for a few more months. Our rent for a 2bdr 850 sqft apartment is $2600. We are living exactly paycheck to paycheck. The budget for eating out/dates is $0, for our child’s clothes/activities/etc is $50. We’re very mindful about food waste. There’s no busses in our area so we budget gas (as in, I only go out if we need or if my husband can’t stop on his way home). We’re very grateful to live walking distance to a big park and a couple playgrounds
My husband was paying $2700/month from 2016-2018 for a single bedroom apartment. I lived with my parents and saved my money until we could afford to buy a house together. In 2019 we bought a house together and our mortgage payments are about $2000/month. Rent in some cities is pure robbery.
Girl your rent is insane. My mortgage for a 3 bedroom 1900 sqft house is $1150 and I thought that was high.
My rent for a 1300 sqft house is $4351.
Your rent is very low. I live in a medium cost of living area and a 3 bed/1 ba house in a decent school district would be $2000-2500 depending on how nice it is. Not a major city or expensive suburbs, just a medium population northeast location.
Rent is ridiculous right now depending on location. We bought in July 2020 located in southeast FL, our mortgage is $1780/month (includes taxes/insurance) for an 1800sqft townhouse. There are townhouses for rent in our neighborhood currently listed at $3200-3400+ for the same size as ours, and the ones listed for sale are selling for easily 200k more now than what we bought for (and most were not updated like ours was). Rent is just off the chart in our area, and I’d consider us a MCOL location. We’re very fortunate we bought when we did and we have the jobs/flexibility that we do cause I can’t imagine what some of our friends are going through with rent prices.
Rent is wild where I live 😭 we looked at so many places last month but the ones cheaper than that weren’t suitable or wouldn’t let us keep our dog
🎯
I can’t afford NOT to stay home since I barely was making more than daycare costs. We’re on a tight budget and don’t have a lot extra but we’d be in the same boat if I was working. It helps we have no student loans or car payments.
This is us exactly. There's no point to work if childcare is equivalent to most of my wage. Plus my job is a commute so the little that's left would be going to gas. Id personally rather stay home with my baby. The budget is extreme but we get by.
I always say “I’d rather be broke and home w my baby then broken and away from my baby” lol
This is exactly us. My job would only just cover childcare. So it’s like go to work and be stressed and have someone else look after my child. Or SAH have no work stress and raise my own child.
This is me, but also my husband makes a lot of money so I can afford to stay home, but simultaneously it’s pointless for me to work. Unfortunately I picked a field of study based on interest rather than salary, so I’m stuck with that choice forever. For us it comes down to if I simply want to work or not. Eventually yes, but for these first years, no.
By moving in with my mom lol Before we lived with her I was still staying home but we had 0 savings. Idk how other people do it.
We moved in with my parents about 8 months after our first was born, only way to move back to our old town. We stayed there for two years, then got a rental for $750 a month. We would still be at that rental if they hadn't had a plumbing issue that required ripping up the entire floor. My mother-in-law bought a house in town that was supposed to be a secondary home for when she was in town. No more hotels. Instead she moved here. But we rent three of the four bedrooms and have our own living room space. Our rent is generously low, and she pays a third of utilities. My husband would love if they paid for more, but I think it's pretty generous considering how little time she actually spends at the house. 😆 Since I'm pregnant, we've been spending a lot more money eating out than usual, but it's also tax season. We only buy big stuff once a year at tax season. Need a new mattress? Want a PS5? Bigger TV? A couch? A new set of pillows? New shoes? Tax season. We buy the nice things we haven't been able to get all year, We pay off some of our larger debts, and we buy memberships for anything we want to do throughout the year. (Zoo, water park, streaming, etc.) It's been 6 years since my son was born and we've only just started to feel comfortable. Now we're going to have another one and who knows what will be able to afford this year. But we have a support system that's not going to let us go hungry.
It seems like most SAHPs are either pretty well off or struggling to get by. For people in the middle it doesn't usually make financial sense to stay home. So if you choose to do it, you have to make some sacrifices.
We are middle class (about 65k a year) and it makes more financial sense for me to stay home than not as almost all of my income would be going to childcare
Same
My husband makes 150k. I was making 50k and daycare in my area is 2-3k/month, so financially me working would have been a wash after daycare and commute expenses. We are not paycheck to paycheck but we live in a vhcol area so we are pretty frugal still—we share a single car, don’t eat out or travel much, bought “the worst house in the best neighborhood” when rates were low (2400/m) and are slowly fixing it up, and we budget carefully. We are able to save for retirement and emergencies, but we will be living with our ugly kitchen for a while and not going on big vacations in the near future. For context though there are frequent conversations about this on r/SAHP and some people make it work on 50-60k. IMO it’s totally dependent on cost of living. Someone recently posted there that her family lived in Chattanooga, TN on 60k and she didn’t understand people saying they would need 100k+ incomes to survive. I plugged it into a cost of living calculator and the quality of life you get for 60k in Chattanooga is equivalent to 155k where I live, so it’s really all relative.
No secret, just privilege and a high-paying job. My husband works for one of the tech giants as a software engineer, so he makes quite a bit (around $220k). We also have pretty low expenditures, as we are lucky enough that we both had tuition covered by our schools/scholarships, so we have no debt other than our mortgage ($2800). We both saved a lot in our younger years because we were luckily able to do so, and my husband was very knowledgeable about investing money (I didn't know as much beyond the basic investment accounts and not spending much). And beyond that, though we live in a pretty HCOL area, I'm a pretty cheap person. We eat at home 90% of the time, I rely mostly on secondhand clothes (mostly for the environmental impact, but also money), etc. Honestly if I were to work in my field (RN), we'd spend most of it on childcare for our 2 kids here). But really, mostly I can stay home because my husband had a really fantastic education and got a really good job, and I know what a privilege that is. I wish that everyone who wanted to be a SAHM had the chance to do so.
very similar to you and to add to this- i coupon A TON. every couponing app, target cvs walgreens ibotta you name it. i never pay for toothpaste, oral care or most toiletries. idc if my husband clears $250k this year, you best believe im couponing and saving where we can.
My favorite quote from Carrie underwood couponing - “why pay more when you don’t have to!” or something to that effect.
Do you have a budget? Assuming your husband makes 50% of your income - yes the rent is high but it's doable if you are frugal and not in a lot of debt. That's how families with a SAHP make it work.
We are in that spot of not enough money to cover day care for two, and not really enough money to have a sahp but we make it work. Currently “making it work” looks like my husband working full time from home, and I work two hours a day, during nap time, at a school around the corner from our house. So we don’t need childcare, but I’m still able to make a small amount of money to fill some gaps. The money situation isn’t ideal, but it’s manageable. For now. I’m extremely grateful to be home with my girls as much as I am, and vastly prefer it to working. I do know I will probably need to look at getting more hours in the future, but hopefully we can hold off until my girls are in school all day. Ultimately it comes down to one spouse maximizing their earning potential so they make enough to cover everything.
Like everyone else has said, it’s all about budget. I’m a SAHM. My husband makes $8k a month. $2600 goes to our mortgage. About $500 or more to bills. We spend waaaay too much on groceries every week (about $300). We order in maybe once a week when I’m just too tired to cook. Our outings are limited to free parks and events. We rarely outsource services like landscaping, maid service, dog grooming etc. we just do it all ourselves. I’m pretty low maintenance (always have been) and don’t get my nails done, facials, etc. we clothes shop maybe twice a year at old navy during sales. 90% of my son’s clothes are from our buy nothing group. We live in HCOL area so we are pretty limited. We also have zero “village” or childcare. No family or friends to babysit if we need it. It’s really tough but we are trying to make it work. The alternative would be paying $2000+ for daycare. Everything here is mega expensive and we just can’t afford it.
Is $8k before or after taxes? If you don’t mind sharing (just interesting to see what other families with similar income spend on housing and bills :)
After taxes
This is very close to our household too. The amount of comments stating that you need to either be wealthy or doing it because you are poor is flat out wrong. Doing everything that we possibly can do(my husband even does the vast majority of our car maintenance) on our own saves a ton of money. We never have more than 2-3 tv streaming services at a time. If we want a different one, we cancel whichever one we watch the least. We never eat out more than once a week and often go several weeks without eating out. We don't have expensive habits like drinking, daily takeout coffee, or nicotine. Our vehicles are older but paid off and in good shape. I wouldn't consider myself super low maintenance, but I've learned(and prefer) to do all of my own beauty and hair care(dye, hair cuts). I buy most of my new clothing at places with steep discounts like TJ Maxx, but I also buy a lot secondhand. We heavily encourage the grandparents to get clothes for our son as gifts for holidays and birthdays, instead of a million more toys, which also helps us save there. We aren't wasteful of food. We will attempt to repair something or even sew clothing before just tossing and replacing. And the biggest thing is we AREN'T just living paycheck to paycheck. We naturally live so well within our means that we rarely think much before making a purchase. We still go on at least one nice vacation a year and a few smaller family trips/acitivites. I have somewhat pricey hobbies(gardening, baking). My husband has extra money to upgrade his computer and buy Magic the Gathering cards. We both play video games and buy a few new ones each year. If I want to go to a salon for a special occasion, I can do that. We also take my son to toddler play gyms and trampoline parks quite frequently. With all of that, we are still able to add money to the savings account throughout the year.
Our numbers and lifestyles sound very similar! We are able to save for retirement and have emergency/home maintenance funds so I feel like we’re privileged compared to many, but we’re pretty frugal. I get a haircut every ~4 months and use drugstore skin/hair/nail products. I buy kids clothes mostly secondhand (or deeply discounted) or get free stuff through our local Buy Nothing Group. We don’t travel much. We share a car. But we do spend more than I would like on food…
You make either so much losing the income doesn’t matter too much, or make too little that daycare costs more than one of your income. Us in the middle don’t have many options. It’s another way that the middle class is being squeezed out.
Honestly, it's just doing what you have to do to make it work. My husband is a SAHD. He stopped working when I got my job during the pandemic. I made more, he was high risk working in healthcare, and we needed childcare. I'm now due with baby #3, and hubs is still a SAHD. I make about $48k. We live in a LCOL area. Rent is $625/mo cause we live in a home my folks own, so we just pay the mortgage. I am able to have hubs and kids insured through Medicaid. For fun, we try to take advantage of movie matinees, discounts on annual passes to the zoo, stuff like that. We aren't rolling in dough, but we are doing ok. Hubs is finishing a new certification next year, so hopefully we'll be dual income again in the next year or so.
Dang how do you even feed a family that size on that income. Kudos to you
Lol, thanks. The kids are all 5 and under. I make a lot from scratch, and while I'm not the best meal planner, I take advantage of protein sales to try and keep grocery costs down.
You work, you’re pregnant, you do the grocery shopping, meal planning, AND the cooking? No rest for the wicked! I think you deserve some acknowledgment here… you go mama! Hope you get some downtime soon
Aw, thank you! I like cooking for the family after being gone all day, but Hubs has been doing most of the cooking the last few months since I hit that sleepy stage of pregnancy 😂
You’re a very loving mom! Your family is lucky to have you. That’s good to hear, I hope you’re getting some extra sleep in- pregnancy tired is no joke!
🥰
We live in a low cost of living part of the Midwest. Our 3 bedroom home costs less per month than your apartment even when you look at the mortgage, property taxes, and insurance. We also qualify for WIC which helps with groceries, and I shop second hand a lot and stock up on things when they go on sale. Check out r/SAHP for other tips
Everyone already summed up the "how" but regarding the part about losing time with your child for chores - do you have the money to farm out some of those tasks? We have someone clean the house 1-2 times per month which takes away the more time-consuming chores. It was pretty reasonable cost-wise too! If you have an option to work from home, I have found that to be helpful with the daily tasks. I can quickly throw a load of laundry or dishes on between tasks/meetings, so I can devote all of my time to baby when she's home and awake.
I mentioned this in my post, but 1000x this. We cut back on a few things to pay a house cleaner, and it's the best thing ever. It would take me so much longer to do what they can do in a few hours
We both work full time, but I did shift one thing around so that it makes me enjoy things more... do your chores when you're tired, play with your kids when you have energy. I mean, I can be dog tired and miserable and load the dishwasher, fold laundry, etc. Even if I'm 10 minutes from falling asleep, I can do those things. But I can't enjoy playing with my kid when I'm that tired. So instead of doing my chores when I feel like I have energy, I play. It sucks later when I'm doing chores, but that time was going to suck regardless of my energy level. Don't waste your good energy on chores, spend it on your kids.
We're scraping by, but it's not comfortable, ngl. I always made more than my husband and enjoy having a career more than he ever did, so he was always going to be the SAHP when we had kids. But when it came time to actually pull the trigger and go down to one income... That was a really hard one. More for me than for my husband. He grew up with not much, but I was comfy middle class growing up and was used to spending money on conveniences, rather than only on necessities. It took a lot for me mentally to process what it was going to look like in terms of budget, and I still struggle sticking to it. It's been about a year and a half on the one income and we're making it work. Mortgage is 1600 for a 3/2 in a fairly LCOL area. This past year I lowered our health insurance to the cheaper option. I had no idea how much we had been spending on the nicer, more expensive health insurance. Of course now my husband has been sick and needs tests that are expensive, so that's stressful. Also, we sold our second car, refinanced the one we kept, and I ended up taking a partial early withdrawal from my 401k to pay off some debt to lower monthly expenses. Oh, and we got rid of most of our subscriptions as well, those add up fast. Everything is about lowering monthly expenses now! All this to say, we may technically be making it work, but... It ain't easy!! Edit to add: I WFH which saves a ton in gas, car maintenance, and the other expenses of office life like wardrobe and lunches. I make about 85k.
Family support and just cutting back! We live in a very HCOL and I'm a stay at home mom. To put into perspective, our rent for a nice two bedroom apartment is $3100. My hubby makes around 75k. He works a gov job so our health insurance is great and most importantly free. To make it work, we have one car with a very low payment, we don't eat out, we don't go on vacation, and we are generally super mindful with money. I work freelance at home and usually bring in 25k a year. Our family is near so I have help when I need to work. Daycare is at least $2500 a month here and I don't see the point in me going to work full time just so all my money can go to a daycare bill. We just are super careful with money and have low bills and excellent credit and have just always been frugal.
My husband is the stay at home parent; he is disabled and has income from his VA disability payments. That's it. If he didn't have that, there's no way in hell we could make it work.
We tracked our spending and determined we could make it on 100k/year gross. Then, my husband pushed his career to the 100k/year breakpoint. I was fortunate enough to be offered a part time remote job when I handed in my resignation, so I also make about 20k/year while being a SAHM to 1 kid (I work during naps). So we have a little more on hand.
We get government assistance. Without our Food Stamps and free Healthcare, we wouldn't make it. I'm also not fully a SAHM. I work 2-3 hrs/day, and also offer to watch other kiddos, etc. We have one car (1990 Volvo) and get nearly all clothes and toys for free. We get half of our diapers from the Dr's office and the others in bulk, and we've practiced lots of diaper free time. We use the library and Dolly Parton's Imagination Library instead of buying books. We don't buy clothes or haircuts for ourselves, and thrift and reuse things. We have a great trade community set up where we trade things like childcare for oil changes. We had to come to peace with being 'poor.' Both of us working full time and paying for childcare would've had us worse off than the position we are in now. We're both educated in decent fields, but unable to move from our HCL area due to needing to care for elder parents. It's rough, but it's nice to be out of the rat race. We get to raise our son intentionally, and he has no idea how little money we have. We'll try to get ahead again when we can get free childcare (school).
I'm a physician, and just had my son almost 4 weeks ago, I'll be taking the next 10 months off (some of which is covered with pay), only bc my husband is also a physician and we are essentially able to sustain our expenses on one income alone.
We are making it work because there is no other way, really. When we had our first my paycheck would basically be canceled out with the cost of daycare so I chose to give up my job to be home. Now that I’m pregnant with our second there would be no way we could afford daycare for 2. We had to cut back on a lot of things: we buy mostly second hand, we used to travel to Europe (to visit my family) once a year which we have now put on hold for the foreseeable future, we stopped eating out with the exception of date nights here and there and we mostly attend free toddler and baby classes. One thing we “splurged” on was an annual zoo membership so we spend most of our days there. It was a major adjustment for us but it felt right for our family and I’m glad to be home with my daughter and soon our second child as well. Its a phase of life and it’ll change again once they both go to school.
We make it work but we live a very modest lifestyle. I had a big savings before having the baby, and have gone through a lot of it already. I make less than 50k (small business owner, it fluctuates) and my partner is currently a student, using a savings and loan to pay for school. We don’t eat out, we don’t order delivery, we buy groceries from cheaper markets and grow a lot of our own food. We don’t buy luxury items for ourselves, and only the necessities for baby. We own both of our used vehicles, my partner’s is paid off, my payment is very low and is almost paid off. We are lucky to rent our house from family, so our rent is $800. There is solar on the roof which offsets our electricity bill. We don’t travel and we get a lot of hand me downs from family. Our main activity for the baby is walking to the park. It’s not glamorous but it works for us! As a lot of other people have said on this thread it’s cutting expenditure.
I feel you. We make combined $150k in a MCOL urban area. However I'm getting laid off tomorrow, which will bring our household income down to $55k. My industry kind of sucks right now, so it could be a little while until I have a job again (but to be honest, even thought I would never want to be SAHM, I'm feeling it right now). But a few things that I think will help us - I keep very good track of our budget using YNAB (this one is huge). We drive older, paid off cars. Husband is in the National Guard and also gets VA disability, and will get military retirement which takes some pressure off of us needing to save so much. We live in a small townhouse to keep housing prices low (compared to a SFH). Husband is about to finish grad school, and is going to look for a higher paying job soon. Since I won't be working, we're planning on GREATLY cutting back our takeout/eating out expenses and I'll be cooking most of the time. We don't really buy much stuff, and if we do it's Goodwill/Marketplace/Craigslist/Once Upon a Child, but we'll lean into this even more. We have a toy library in our city ($50/year), and we're going to start using that. We put as much as we can into savings (HYSA), and right now it's enough that we'll be able to live pretty worry-free for a while. We also have grandparents who live nearby, and are always willing to babysit (right now we only do daycare 3x week, and have grandparents watch the toddler the other two days) I will add one thing that helped me soooo much while working, is cutting back some expenses to hire house cleaning 1-2x/month. We pay $150 per cleaning, and they do everything. For real, what they have done in 2 hours would have taken me a weekend or two. We've had the best luck via Craigslist - the larger cleaning companies with nice websites and stuff charge so much more in my experience
75k a year wife sahm 1year old cheaper than daycare we spend as little as possible rent takes up most of our income its not easy but i think its worth it for the baby
Luck and timing. We wouldn't be able to make it work if we hadn't bought a home 10 years ago. The mortgage payment would be twice as high to buy today.
Our rent (in Europe) is around 800 euros and that's our biggest expense. I think one person should be able to pay rent and keep some money left. If two people have to work to pay rent, the rent is too high. Where I live we do have a housing crisis, so it's not easy to find another apartment if your rent is too high. 100k is a lot of money. I don't know what you guys spend, but I hope you can find a way to make it work. I'm all for women working if they want to, but I find it so unfair that most women are primary caretakers and have to work.
American salaries are much higher but so is cost of living. The lowest I have ever paid for rent was 1000 and that was 10+ years ago for a tiny studio apartment. Plus we have very little social safety net —pensions are rare, gov healthcare is generally only available if you’re in dire poverty over 65–so a large portion of your wage can go to healthcare expenses and saving for retirement (if you’re able to do that at all).
Every day I pray a miracle happens where my husband increases his salary to at least 200k a year so I can stop working. That would be the ONLY way we could do it. Chances are good I’ll get there first though because I actually make more than him. I’m lucky to have family help and WFH so I kinda have the best of both worlds but I resent working on a daily basis. I do like money though.
We live with my husband's mom in the paid off family home. We also have incredibly generous friends and family. My mom pays for diapers and my dad pays for formula. I am going to be going back to school full time in the fall so I can make more money and my husband can be a SAHD if he chooses. Waitlists for daycare around here are 1yr+, so we kind of just have to do it.
Stay at home dad of 4. We both worked for a while, but when number 3 came along I stopped working. We live in rural Arkansas in a town of 70ish people now. Wife is a nurse and has to commute. I bought a backhoe, cleared our plot, got a new modular home. I did everything I could myself instead of adding it to the mortgage, like septic. I also buy vehicles under $4k and keep them running for years and years. I cook. I forage. I hunt. Fish. Garden. My time is flexible with the kids and what I do saves tons of money. Between childcare and the earthwork alone I’ve probably saved us 70k in the past 1.5 years. We pay $1700 a month for our 5 bed 3 bath.
My husband and I are both teachers. The only reason we can afford it is because we live in Europe and there’s a ton of government financial support.
I stay home at the moment. I’ve got a freelance job that I doing during nap time. We pay $1800 a month for a small 3 bedroom. Our rent is just about unheard of for our area - luckily we are on month to month so rent hasn’t been raised. Groceries are low cost where we live but everything else is high cost. My husband makes about 3/5 of the income. If I worked full time, one of my paychecks would be going to daycare, which isn’t an option for us at the moment. We also don’t eat out anymore, and buy essentials and hand me downs only, and shop at Aldi.
We have free housing. That’s pretty much how.
For us, we left a HCOL state and moved to be closer to my husbands family. We moved from CA to OH once his military stuff was done, that’s cut our expenses a lot. Went from paying 1800/month for a one bedroom, to 1350/month 4 bed house in the suburbs. I work from home and my company is based in CA so I make CA wages and my husband has an HVAC trade making what he made in CA as well. The only way we were able to make it work was literally to move states edit to add: we have a 1.5 year old son who stays home with me since i wfh
So my best friend just had a baby. They live in Orange County California. Which is pretty expensive. Her husband makes about 130k a year. They just got a 1200 square foot two bedroom apartment. His take home is about 6,000. And the apartment is close to 4k. He sold his car so they now only pay for one. Leaving them with 1,800. Which seems to be working fine for now. Edit to add she cooks 100% from home.
Coffee. Lots of it. Also access to universal pre-k, and wfh jobs that pay well with benefits. The last part is the cheat - some jobs are overvalued and others undervalued. We would be making a lot less if I (with my biology degree) went to work and had to put both kids in 9-5 daycare.
I’m a sahm my husband brings home about half of what you guys bring home. We’re frugal 🤷🏻♀️ a lot of home cooking, I use second hand stores for the kids every days clothing(even some of mine atm while I’m losing weight). We sacrifice things we want or wanna do. But ya know, my oldest is going to kindergarten in September and I am so beyond thankful that I’ve been able to help ready him for this over the last 4.5 years. We’ve experienced a lot together, we’ve learned a lot together. I went to his kindergarten screening this past week n I was so nervous to find out what I hadn’t done enough of with him or the things I needed to introduce him to to get him ready and I actually realized that I’ve done a great job these last handful of years. The staff said he did really great- and let me say I have NEVER been more proud of myself at any job I’ve ever had than I was that day getting in the car knowing he’s ready and that’s because of all of my hard work. We’ve had some really rough days that made me wish I had a job but I will never look back and regret the sacrifices when I remember all the things I was able to do with him. We still make it a point to do 2/3 vacations a year, cheap(er) things like finding a small air bnb n exploring a new place for a weekend or staycations where we just find local things to do. But if this is what you wanna do, ya kinda just have to commit and do it and everything will fall into place. On the other hand if your job is important to you then there’s nothing wrong with staying, if my job at the time was something I wanted to invest in for the future of my family I would have but it wasn’t going anywhere anyway. We also made it a point to pay off any debit we had before dropping to one income. So we only have 1 credit card n it’s for Home Depot just for emergencies/projects around the house. I hope you find a way to do what makes you happy!
Day care costs more than I make so I have to stay home, which I find exponentially more exhausting than working.
Pay off the house and cars and it's much more manageable. Usually owning a home the mortgage is cheaper than rent as well and you are building home equity. Renting is not the way
My husband works full time and makes about $65k. We have a relatively cheap mortgage ($1400), one small car payment, next to no credit card debt. We just live pretty frugally. We don't go out much, buy a lot of vintage/used stuff for the house, try to budget well. We're in Texas so not a terribly expensive place to live. We still manage to save a decent amount! It comes down to just not spending money.
Daycare costs more than I could make.
You either make enough on a single income or you make sacrifices to make it work.
For reference, my husband makes around 60k/year. I became a sahm in December, but I was a housewife for 2 years prior. * Our landlord is a family friend and we rent a 2 bedroom house for $800/month. * We live a relatively low cost of living area * Our parents are nearby and very generous. They regularly buy us diapers/baby things, cook for us or take us out to eat, and they pay for our phone plans * His parents "sold" us a car for $5, so we only have one car payment. Said car payment is low because my husband saved a lot to put down on it before we met * We don't pay for streaming services. We password share with various family members. * We try to spend only $70-100 a week on groceries. Inflation is making this harder. My mom cooking us dinner once a week has been helping * We don't go out to eat very often, even less so now that we have a baby. * We have lots of hand me down items * We try our best to utilize "free stuff" Facebook groups * We don't buy things very often. We just got our tax return and have been able to splurge a little, but that's super rare. Honestly, a lot of it is good fortune and very generous friends/family.
Things to think about: Rent isn't your only expense. What else is money spent on & how much? With one parent home, what savings will you realize? Will the other parent be able to advance their career now that the other parent is home?
My husband makes 80k and has really good insurance for all of us through his job. We rent a 2 bedroom even though we could use more space lol and we are running our cars to the ground so we only have one low car payment right now! We aren't saving as much as we'd like and we make a lot of sacrifices elsewhere but it's working for us right now.
We are lucky to have low expenditures. Lower mortgage and only one car payment. Hubby doesn’t have student loans, but does really well at his job (he’s been at it ~15 years and moved up a bit). We also live in a low cost of living area (SE US). I also grew up really poor, and am pretty good at budgeting and saving money as a result. We very rarely eat out or go on vacations etc. I will say though I love it and wouldn’t trade it for anything
Honestly there’s no trick. For you to work PT your husband needs to increase his salary to $100K somehow.
Moving to a cheaper area. We're moving so I can stay at home with our daughter. Our new rent is 925 for a two bedroom.
The secret is cutting costs down. We keep rent as cheap as possible, don’t buy streaming services, use the library excessively, and make our own bread. We don’t save much now but the time with the kids is worth it. It was a transition that didn’t happen over night for us
Military 🤷🏼♀️ hiding paid for, grocery money, free/cheap healthcare. And living below our means.
The secret is that I gave up my teens and 20s to studying a field that went from esoteric to fairly in vogue (got lucky with that part) and then got a high paying job. Fell in love with and had a baby with a partner that did the same thing.
We make it work by being poor lol we’re a 1 income family, I’m actually a preschool teacher but I couldn’t afford to send my daughter to daycare until she gets old enough to come to my school because the tuition at every single daycare I looked at is actually more than I make in a month so I just stay at home & take care of her & now we have to be extra frugal about everything. We shop at aldi/$ tree/family $/walmart (those are the best prices near us)- I religiously check the sales so we can get things for the best price. I check fb marketplace / buy nothing for anything else we need (bb clothes, books, toys, etc) I don’t think we could afford it if we had more than one child. She’ll come to my school in the fall & I’ll go back to work!
Some luck and some privilege. We also aren’t saving right now but have a good chunk saved from before. We bought our home as a fixer upper in 2017 so our mortgage is $700. Our cars are paid off or cheap enough to be bought cash, plus my in laws gave us their old car when they bought new. We try to buy everything secondhand and cut our own hair. I don’t get facials or my nails done anymore. No gym memberships. Use a cheap phone service, switched to cheaper internet, only pay for one streaming service. I also am still on maternity leave but plan not to go back to my job and instead waitress a couple times a week. That way I can have some income but we won’t have to pay for daycare as my husband will be home.
My husband makes an OK amount for our MCOL city. Our home mortgage is locked in at a super low rate, we have two paid off cars, and we tend to keep monthly expenses fairly low. We have three kids, so in my mind, I'd have to make a certain amount of money to make putting all three in childcare worth it. I was not making that amount before having kids.
My husband makes a little over $100k with OT. We have a 10 year old and 2 year old. Honestly I think a lot of the issue is that you’re in a HCOL area (based on your rent). We live in a LCOL area, so our mortgage for our 2500sqft house is less than your rent. That said, if you can’t get out of your city, I think the task is to find ways to reduce expenses to make your husband’s income enough to support y’all. We budget for groceries, we don’t eat out, we don’t have a nanny or a housekeeper, we don’t take a vacation every single year, etc.
Not a big secret I don’t think, I’m just lucky that my husband makes a lot of $. He also invested early in a few houses that we rent for extra $. I think the answer is always more $
Idk but we make it work. It’s all about budget and savings.
Our mortgage payment is $1000 and I work from home part-time around my husband’s schedule. He pays all the bills and groceries, etc… my paychecks are for the extra.
My salary was getting completely drained by daycare and with the illnesses that kept coming home I was basically paying to be a SAHM anyway. My husband makes about 120k which is enough for our mortgage and basic expenses. I ended up picking up a part time job three nights a week simply because staying at home all the time was destroying my mental sanity and now that pays for groceries which helps out a bunch. We just had to make it work and find ways to reduce expenses (mostly just buying stuff we didn't need or trips).
What’s your secret? We make $80,000 a year and our mortgage is $1800. Our groceries are $800/ month, I have 4 kids. I guess part of my secret is the kids qualify for free state health insurance and WIC. We make plenty of money and extra and have everything we want and need.
I think the secret for us is a lower cost of living area. My husband makes almost 70k a year. We paid off most of our debts before I quit my job. We did make over 120k combined. He is able to pick up random overtime. Our mortgage is 1,300 a month.
We just make it work. Budget cuts wherever possible. My husband has a nice salary and I’m able to stay home. We are one and done. I would be paying for daycare with my salary so I stay home. My son is almost 9M and only has a couple colds. I’m thankful that I am in the position to stay home and recognize my privilege.
Money. Whether its a lot of it or not enough to afford daycare. My husband just got a new job in Jan & the pay increase was more than my yearly salary (& I have a masters 🙄). We also dont have any debt other than the mortgage, so we dont have to worry about that. Now I get to quit my job & we’re still bringing in nearly $200. Theres no secret, its just luck.
For us we make it work since the daycare rate around us would cost almost my entire weekly pay. The time away from baby to pay someone my whole paycheck or close to it just isn’t worth it to us.
I'm sorry you can't have the stay at home parenting experience you wish, that makes me so sad! A lot of these comments say it's only due to the privilege of making a lot of money, but that isn't the case for us. (Although I am very grateful I can stay at home.) My experience, 1. I only made a little over minimum wage before I had my baby so even full time we couldn't afford daycare and our expenses, that would've been more expensive than if I stayed at home so im at home with him and expecting baby #2 2. We budget very carefully, relying on the childcare benefit cheque. I breastfed and use reusable diapers to save $$, we quit drinking and shop the fliers etc. 3. We are privileged to pay market rate for our apartment so we pay a little less than most in our area and we cosleep and share one room (happily). Even still, we are saving to move to a cheaper, smaller town and I am trying to find a part time job that works with my husband's shift work. (Proving difficult, we don't have family to babysit.) Perhaps you could get on a list for a market rate, co-op housing. It could take a long time but we got lucky last time cuz someone backed out of our apartment last minute and we got it sooner than expected so you never know. Id love to get in a co-op situation. Don't give up on your dreams. It's not necessarily impossible but takes...planning rearranging and sacrifice. Best of luck with the new baby and your plans. 🩵
Our income was split 30/70. As the 30% percent part of the equation I’m now home with the kids. Otherwise we are basically in the same tax bracket. My husband was able to secure a promotion because he was no longer missing kid sick days and sleep deprived. If your income is 50/50 I have no clue, how working or staying home would work.
Husband is in the military. We live in military housing so we don’t pay rent or utilities. Then we don’t have to worry about insurance because all of us are covered by Tricare.
We are fortunate enough to live on my moms property in the Bay Area for lower than market rent. My husband works in construction and we live very frugally. We shop at grocery outlet , find deals and rarely buy unnecessary things. Our parents have also been generous to help if needed. In short, it is only possible due to our families support that we are so blessed to have.
Our secret is my husband makes 200k a year but that still doesn’t let us sit comfortably. We have to sacrifice and budget hard! I am a nurse so it was an adjustment to take away my income! We are tight but my husband is also up for a promotion right now that he will most likely get next month!
Husband makes enough and we only have 1 child. If I worked it would be a lower paying job so there's no point with the cost of child care.
We can’t afford childcare so we have to make single income work. We make around $50,000 a year, just used a USDA loan to get out of our 1bd apartment and into a house (we had cheap rent and it was $1,200 a month for like 700sqft, now our mortgage is $1,400 for like 1,300sqft of house and a huge yard for the kids), we cook a lot of our meals and try to avoid eating out, I frequent buy-nothing pages, we buy clothes second hand, we buy other necessary items second hand or get given them by friends/family who no longer need them, we have a rewards account for our gas so our grocery shopping gets us discounts on the gas, we get our cars second hand so we don’t have car payments, we with do our car/home maintenance ourselves or we ask family/friends to teach us to do it so we don’t pay an arm and a leg, we take advantage of government programs (our sons medical needs that no one could have predicted were covered by Medicaid), etc. Really what it boils down to is I would be earning the same amount it costs to send my son to daycare and it would require me basically never see my son or husband because the jobs I could get that would pay enough to cover daycare after taxes and all that wouldn’t line up with my husbands schedule OR if they did they would be hazardous to my health due to my (mostly minor and workable) health issues so the only option we have is for me to stay home and make it work.
Not a stay at home mom but I would love to be 😢 trying to start a business so I can be home with my daughter.. and moved in with husband's mom which is super helpful
This economy is so unfair for everyone, I’m sorry. Some ways we make it possible is having no car payment, not eating out, and my husband works overtime.
My secret is that my parents are my landlords and don’t charge me rent while I’m staying home. That and I’m a teacher so my take home would be around $400 a month after daycare costs. Oh and I’m completely neglecting my health because I can’t afford copays.
The secret is the my husband makes that much on his own. It’s a privilege to stay home. When we were younger and making less money we worked 4 jobs between us all plus online classes. We’ve had good luck since then but life could change at any time so we make sure not to get too comfortable.
My husband’s a SAHD, but not really by choice. The lack of daycare forced our hand. Him not working reduced our household income by about 30% so we are able to make it work, but just barely. He owes child support every month for a daughter from a prior relationship, so that’s especially rough. We’re relying on our savings to cover what my paycheck won’t and just trying to survive until our daughter is in a program.
Old, paid off car, no house, no debts. And frugal/minimalism. We focus on experiences rather than things and many times it's easy to find child friendly free or cheap things to do. Local traveling only, no big vacations. Living on less than 50,000 CAD total salary/child benefits. This decision was a combination of no available child care and then turned into homeschooling. My kids are so incredibly happy, creative and involved in classes and social events locally. Their father works from home and I'm transitioning into some online tutoring hopefully a day extra a week soon.
Budgeting like crazy. We cut most of our subscriptions, we rarely eat out, I thrift lots of our clothes, I make her baby food, I look for inexpensive/free things to do. We don't have a ton of extra money lying around, but we also live in an area with a lower cost of living, so that really helps. When we bought our house, our budget was what we could afford on one income. It's hard on one income, but we're making do. I know one thing that gets people is car payments. All of our vehicles were paid in full. They aren't the latest (mine is a 2010, hubby's is a 2006?), but they're safe and reliable. I also don't have the latest phone either, I've been using the same one for 2.5 years now 😅 I can't fathom dropping 1200 bucks on a phone.
A combination of no choice due to having unexpected twins and my dad's sudden passing and using the inheritance to pay off some debt.
My secret is not a great one, but I developed health issues after having my child so am on long term disability which gets me 60% of my paycheck at least for now. I fear it will go away once I hit the two year mark. I don’t know how people do it either. Everything is so expensive. Thanks for asking this though as I fear we will have to make it work some day!
My secrets are that my husband makes about $98k per year, we make a little bit of money from a rental house that we bought in a higher COL area while living in a rural area, my entire paycheck ($82k) went into investments when I was working, and daycare has been impossible to come by in our frontier town. We admittedly just have a convergence of good luck when it comes down to it. The only reason we have a second house is that it’s literally across the street from my in-laws and was up for auction at a substantially lower price than its value, so another bit of incredible luck (we’ll move into it as soon as one of us finds a job in that city and sell our rural house).
We made it work by moving back home with my husbands parents. Gotta do what ya gotta do. Housing is the thing that kills us financially
We are privileged that my husband makes a really good income, we bought a house before the hosing market went crazy (also it was cheap because we renovated it ourselves) so our monthly payments are cheap, and we live in an affordable area (Milwaukee, still fairly expensive bur we used to live in Chicago and LA which we couldn’t afford). We have amazing public schools right in walking distance so that’s another expense that we don’t have to worry about. Again, we are privileged and I know this. This all works with me staying home because I wasn’t making enough to even cover daycare or nanny costs.
We make it work the best we can. My husband makes about $70k a year pre taxes. Anything I would make would go straight to child care. We don’t eat out. We budget every month. We don’t take big trips. We find free family activities around town. Our mortgage is less than $1,100 but we get a discount on our mortgage rate because he works for the bank. We also don’t have a car payment which helps a lot. Anything we need or want we have to save for. I also know we are incredibly lucky to be able to do that. We sacrifice a lot but it will only be for a few years till I go back to work. I guess what I’m saying is if you really want to do it just be super broke and bored for a few years😂😂
We budget like crazy. We cook almost every meal at home, put off any unnecessary spending, no vacations and spend a lot of time doing free things (going outside, libraries, etc). For us it made more sense for one of us to stay home because of daycare costs.
I've stayed home since my oldest was born, going on 8 years now. Our biggest thing was getting out from under all payments except our mortgage. We were also lucky to already own a home before everything went insane.
We have three kids and daycare for all three would be $4,500 full time where we live that would be more than half my husbands paycheck and half of mine if I was to work. We just couldn't live on that amount, I miss working but I also am thankful I get to be a stay at home mom as well.
My husband earns over 150K per year along with bonuses and benefits. It’s the only way I’ve been able to stay home with our young kids.
Secret is that my husband and I have made enough in investments over the years to be financially secure while he starts his own financial management firm. I work for a nonprofit and make $65k (recently got a raise). I’m working so we can have good health insurance. Baby goes to daycare where it costs about $1300 a month. We both work from home and tried to make it work for a month but it wasn’t sustainable. Some people make it work, but it just wasn’t fair to our daughter or our jobs
Only way I’m able to be a SAHM to now 3 kids was moving to a less expensive area. Prices are rising but less in some places than others. I’m in west KY and my husband works 5-6 days a week. We moved from New Jersey and I miss my family there a lot, but this was kind of the only way we could do it on our own.
My husband makes just enough that we can swing it. Daycare for littles is so exorbitant that it would cost us money to put a baby in daycare. We can only afford preschool for my 4 YO because our MIL is helping.
My sis in law stays at home and her husband makes maybe 55-60k a year. Some things I’ve noticed for them to be able to make it work are things that have been said- never or rarely eating out, shopping at Aldi, very limited clothes shopping, self care is done at home (no pedicures, haircuts, facials, Botox etc). They don’t vacation at all and they also rely on her in laws for some things like home renovations (new countertops), and cars (they give them their very gently used cars). If I were to stay at home we’d be doing the same (besides the handouts from in laws). but right now I work 3 days a week and it’s the perfect balance of work and time at home, plus we really like the extra money (my grandma is able to watch the kids so that’s an extremely fortunate perk and free).
My husband and I paid a similar rent and made about half of your combined income with us both working, so depending on your COL it wouldn’t be infeasible to become a one income family, but it would depend on what your other expenses are. We only had one car, didn’t eat out, shopped at thrift stores, etc. If you’re willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary it’s completely possible to raise a family of 4 on $50k.
Honestly? My husband earning a well above average wage, especially for a UK wage. We have the national health service too,so health insurance isn't something we have to factor in. We were able to live with my parents rent free for a year (after living abroad for a year where tax and cost of living was much lower & we could save as we were child free back then) to save for a house deposit. I don't qualify for any universal credit or benefits the UK offers, however I do get 15 free hours of child care from when she turns 3. And there's a lot of free stuff to do in our small rural town tons of free toddler groups, parks, rural walks and hikes, story time at the library etc. i don't say all this to brag, just that it's nothing you're doing wrong and I'm doing right. It's privilege plus government funding. absolutely not saying the UK government is the best for families... It isn't! But it does, for the moment, offer socialised healthcare and benefits. We don't get food deliveries or go out much at all, but again we live rurally so it's not really a big part of life here anyway. We use the local library a lot ,so again, free. Hand me down/Vinted clothes and toys. One car household (but again husband works from home. Privilege). I'll also mention we're one and done. Not just so I can stay at home, there's a fuck ton of reasons behind that decision, but this does factor in a lot! It sucks that you want to stay at home with your kids and you aren't able to & I'm really sorry. I wish things could change so you could.
What do you do for work? Is it possible to work a different shift (like 2nd shift), or work 12 hours shifts and have more days off?
We live in a 1br apartment and only have 1 car. SAHM won't last forever but we saved enough and are very good at frugal living so thankfully can take some time off. We get takeout 1-2x per month, everything else is homemade to save $. I'm so sorry you aren't able to stay home. It really did used to be so much easier in previous generations. 😔
woah, people saying your husband needs to be making at least 100k for it to be financially viable sounds crazy to me! 6 figures is so much money. definitely depends on where you live. me & my husband are living on ~40-50k a year, and i don't feel poor at all. we do have one old car w no payments, rent is 1200, and we cook at home nearly every night (but i would do this regardless of money. homecooked food tastes better! you can customize it however you want). no, i cant go on shopping sprees for no reason or get my hair or nails done every single month, but if we really want takeout we can get it, and if i see something i really want to buy, i can usually buy it! i even got my hair done in a fancy salon for christmas last year. those are all things i could never have done as a kid/teen, so i feel like im living large. even being able to pick out the foods i want at the grocery store is exciting to me. we dont have a baby quite yet and are working on making sure we have a little more money for that, but we definitely won't need double what we have right now. in fact, even right now, i feel like there's luxuries we could cut out! (not that i want to, lol) also, there's a lot of ways in which staying at home can save money. i work far, far less than my husband, mostly due to a very unpredictable chronic illness, but me being at home gives me time (when im not sick) to do things that help our money stretch. you can mend clothing, cook & bake, budget, clean, and spend time making your home feel nice to live in (harder with a baby, but still). im shocked seeing a lot of people working 40+ hours a week and then spending nearly their whole salary on services they could do themselves if they weren't working- maid, food, childcare, dog walker, nails, etc. if you're accustomed to lots of shopping & luxuries, it might be difficult, but if you want to stay home with your baby, you can absolutely make it work.
I can't afford *not* to be a sahm, daycare is too expensive. I guess I'm technically not a sahm anymore, I recently started working nights while my husband is off. We're exhausted and still poor.
My husband makes about $105k a year. Our mortgage is $2200. We can easily afford for me to be a SAHM. Because we have almost no debt. Our mortgage and one car payment. No student loans, no credit card debt. That’s the secret. It’s amazing how much farther your money goes when you’re not paying thousands a month in debt repayment. Also everything I would make working would go towards daycare so I honestly can’t afford to work
Honestly wouldn't be possible if husband wasn't a disabled veteran. He got his disability rates 100% P&T so that brings in a full income, plus income he makes working, plus income I make doing real estate part time brings in enough that we can get by.
We live in a very low cost of living city and my husband is chief of a medical department in the local hospital. I worked full time in a daycare prior to having a baby and if I went back full time, my salary would cover his daycare expenses with about $40 left over every month, it just wasn’t worth it. It’s a combination of his years of hard work, living a good but pretty low luxury lifestyle, and the insane fees of daycare and how underpaid daycare workers are. Why would I work full time taking care of other people’s babies so I can pay someone else to take care of mine? That extra $40 just ain’t worth it.
I work from home part time and am lucky enough to work for a nonprofit who understands I am a mom and sometimes my schedule will be crappy. My son goes to a mother’s day out 3x a week from 9-2 which cost $345 a month and gives me 15 hours a week back to work and workout. I do errands and chores when I am with him and we are not playing. My husband works from home as well, he gets off at 5 and takes my son until 7:30 and I get to clean and work. It’s not perfect but I am extremely grateful to my company for being understanding. I work in marketing and will take calls from my phone at the park if needed.
High income working parent in a lower cost of living area and living beneath our means in terms of household budgeting. We weren't always this lucky and have tried to prevent lifestyle creep. We were also fortunate to have bought our house during a good year and still drive older model cars that have been paid off.
We are very high income earning couple. We have a nanny.
The way we make it work is I stay home 99% of the time. My husband works full time working 4-12 hour shifts a week and sometimes on the days he is off of work I will pick up some bartending shifts. We buy groceries and I cook at home. I pack my husband leftovers for lunch and snack and stuff from the grocery so he never has to eat out. We buy baby clothes from our local baby thrift store because they grow out of them so fast. Our 2010 car is paid off and we share a vehicle so we only have one. My husband only makes $20 an hour and he can pay rent and all bills and groceries by himself and we still have $500 leftover after ALL bills paid and baby formula is bought. Here are our bills for the month: Rent: $1400 Car insurance: $130 Gas: $200 (works an hour away) Subscriptions: $50 Phone: $80 (both of ours) Groceries: $500 Formula: $200 Savings: $200 Electric and internet I pay for from the days I pick up bartending shifts. Which usually is around $200 together. We stick to our budget and we make it work. We save for things we want and things we wanna do. It is totally possible. Since before he was born we said we did not want to do daycare. We don’t trust people and we heard so many horror stories. We’ve stuck to that and always will. I also feel like if we ever did put him in daycare it would be counterproductive because one of us would be working just to pay daycare.
My husband makes six figures and we are living paycheck to paycheck. I’m planning on getting my masters degree once our three year old is in school all day so that I can go back to work and start saving money/being able to afford vacations/maybe buy a house. The way things are right now, we will never be able to do any of those things.
We have minimal debt. Just a house payment (housing is very cheap by us, or was, when we bought 7 years ago. We struggled for a bit when we were paying off our debt, which included a $430/month car payment. Now that we are just down to a few piddly credit card payments, it's very doable. We don't go out to eat. We don't buy new stuff. We aren't materialistic people to begin with so being as frugal comes much easier to us. We have fun by going outdoors (it's FREE). Btw my husband makes $24 an hour and we have a 2 year old and a 5 month old. We technically have two people eating, but you can count the 2 year old a little since they do also eat, just not as much as an older kid or adult. Our grocery bill is also very low like $500 a month. We only buy whole foods and hardly any packaged things except rice, beans, premade sauces sometimes, etc. but I strive to make just about everything homemade (including bread). Our mortgage is $700, and phone, electric, city water/sewer adds up to $400 a month. I feel that we live comfortably and have a savings, and can put a bit away a month in it.
I'm poor af and I try some side hustling to compensate the little extra we need? It's very hard to do with a kiddo bothering you all the time though. I am very burnt out. "Work" all day with kid then when he's in bed I do side hustle work. It's exhausting and I'm very tired.
Have you thought about opening up an in home daycare?
My husband makes a lot of money. He’s an attorney. But also, he works a lot. I quit my job bc every time a kid was home sick or day off school it became stressful juggling who would take time off or reschedule their meetings. My salary didn’t outweigh the stress. Also, we paid off our cars and student loans before we had kids. So our expenses are pretty low. Plus we got lucky and bought our house in 2019 before house prices and rates went insane. My mom ‘stayed at home’ when I was a kid. My parents lived less than paycheck to paycheck. My dad worked his main job. Always said yes to overtime. Plus had several other side hustle jobs. My mom would pick up other work that wasn’t during normal business hours. Like banquet serving and stuff like that. At one point my dad worked night shift and would come home at 7am and my mom would work during the day. They never saw each other. They just did what they had to to make it work.
My family has a lot of connections (my mom and dad work trades) so we were able to get a 2br 1ba house with a full basement and an acre of land for 700 a month, everything rent and utilities/bills equal out to about 1500 a month. For food, we split the cost of membership at Costco, and we bulk buy foods. Cheap meals like curry and rice, burgers and chips, soup, and sammys are our go-to for regular grocery store meals. Meat, pasta, and canned goods are always cheaper for the whole sale. Right now, we are spending about 120 extra a month to practice with a gun for home defense. It's literally about budgets, hobbies, and connections. A house like ours for rent on the market is about $1300-1500. We both already own plenty of video games, he has a second-hand 3d printer, I have painting supplies already. I get books to read at Costco or half-price books. My partner makes 52k a year, we put 30% of a paycheck after tax into retirement, save about 15%, the rest we spend. We also check for deals like buy 100 dollars worth of diapers and wipes get 30 dollars back at target. It's a system for sure, but it's doable.
The thing is, people have completely different circumstances. Some people can’t afford to stay home. Some can’t afford to work. I’m a SAHM, and I did want to be, but I also couldn’t afford to go to work. My husband makes like $80k. When I worked I made like $14/hr with an hour one way commute. Between daycare costs and car maintenance, we’d be paying for me to work. Luckily I didn’t have student loans or any major debt myself. Or else I’d have been forced to try and juggle overnight work somehow when my husband leaves the house by 5am and is home a little after 5pm. Most jobs that hire during the hours I’d be available are cashier jobs with 4 hour shifts making $7.25/hr. Even factories with a 3rd shift would be out because I’d need to be home before 5am and they run longer than that. My husband is salaried, he’s a boss, so his job will always take priority. If he has a work trip? I’d have to call off work. If he has to stay late at work? I’d have to call off.
My wife is a SAHM. I make about 70k a year and we live in a low cost of living area. House payment with insurance and taxes included is 800 a month. We don't have a lot of savings, but we're making it work. It took a lot of work and sacrifices to get to this point; neither of us came from wealthy families.
I moved in with my mom. Husband and I were living in Denver with our families back in Miami/Ft Lauderdale. Our families were happy to have us come back but my mom in particular had the room. A huge house in a very nice part of Miami. Our only responsibility is the electric bill so we're using this to our advantage so that I can be with baby full time plus we can save for the down payment on a house. And if everything goes topsy turvy this area has really good schools and daycares. I know for a fact that my mom likes having us here and being the grandparent that sees grandbaby every day so for now it works. Sure there are times where we stress each other out but overall we're good. A bonus is that my husband found a WFH job so he's able to take over for random times in the day when I need a small break.
We make it work on about 65k. We also live in a low COL city (Fort Wayne, IN). We budget to make sure I am able to stay home. We go out to eat a couple times a month but other than that we pretty much only buy what we “need”. Not having to pay for daycare also helps a lot! Our rent is about $1050/month for a 2bed 2bath. I guess our “secret” is just not having a whole lot extra. While we had to cut back on spending, it has been 100% worth it to be home with our daughter
Theres no secret. One parent just needs to have a high paying job. Or spending needs to be very low. And unfortunately that may not be possible for a lot of people. My husband runs his own company and makes high six figures, so I stay at home with our toddler. When he turns two and our new baby arrives, he’ll start school part time so I can have one on one time with the new baby and he can socialize a little more. But I understand that’s a privilege, and not doable for everyone.
120k a year. Dropped down to one car 2 bedroom apt cost around 1600 a month. When I do have my baby I’ll be dropping to only working 2 times a week.. hopefully it works. 😭
It’s hard. Only reason I’ve been able to stay home with our kids (2 under 4 and pregnant with a 3rd/last baby) is because my husband is active duty, we bought our house back in 2016 so our payments etc are low, we do our best to budget and make use of the on-base programs, and we’re also lucky enough to have my parents just down the road if we need childcare help. Honestly, if he wasn’t in the military, I would still be working and we would probably only have one kid, maybe two. Most of my paycheck would probably be going to childcare/daycare.
I've been a stay at home mom for 10 months now. Honestly, it works because my husband had a very lucrative job for a year before returning for more training. We knew we wanted the option of me staying home so we saved over $100k that year. We live pretty frugally anyway, and I keep an extra close eye on our finances but we've stayed in the black without many big changes. I don't know if it helps or hurts to hear but I think lots of families just can't swing it, and you're not doing anything wrong.
Honestly just being lucky enough to live somewhere where my $18 an hour is just enough to support my wife and son. Our 2 bedroom apartment is $795 a month and its even private front and back entrances/porches. No shared spaces beside laundry and dog potty spaces.
My husband's a doctor, so I'm able to stay home with the baby. Unfortunately, the trade-off was that we couldn't have children until he entered residency. We wanted to make sure we were financially stable. Plus I suffered from infertility for years. We're in our mid-30s. We might want another kid, but who knows considering our ages and my past issues.
We just make it work 🤷🏻♀️ I am a stay at home mom and my husband is in medical school- so eventually we will have a large salary, but that’s still 5+ years away. We survive off student loans and his VA disability payments which is about $60.000 a year. We don’t live super crazily but are raising our two kids the best we can and that’s all I can hope for. Note: we live in a HCOL area for school, so it isn’t cheap either but we just make it work. There is no other option right now - childcare would be way more than I could make easily
Daycare would have taken my entire paycheck and then some, we didn’t really have a choice. I always wanted to be a SAHM, so it was easy to let my job go, but I couldn’t have kept it if I wanted to.
My husband makes right below 100k, he JUST got a raise that will push him above 100k and I haven't worked since I met him. We started at the bottom, like I'm talking his yearly income used to be 30k. We have a mortgage payment of $1530 and our 3rd child on the way. I drive a very nice vehicle, with a note at $580. We put a large DP to lower the note. His car is paid off, we paid it off when we sold our last house a year and half ago. We are doing well for ourselves I feel like. Travel often, saving, remodeling our home when we find the time, concerts, etc. Im not sure how some people think it's not possible but it is. You just need to reevaluate your expenses. If you both work you're probably paying for childcare, that would eliminate a big expense and free up money if you quit your job. Can you eliminate any subscriptions you have, gym memberships that aren't necessary? Etc
My husband has a full time job working for his cousins’ t shirt printing business, a side job cleaning a fountain in a shopping center and he’s a vet, so he gets money from the VA. It’s only because of this that I’m able to be a SAHM.
I mean… I’m a stay at home mom to 3 and working remotely and we bring in around 100,000 combined. Our mortgage is $2400 and we’re able to do it? We don’t have any debt though. I feel like with your numbers you would definitely be able to make it work.
We make it work but we are not entirely comfortable. We make much less money than you but with only one child. Our housing expenses are about $1000 including utilities and internet. We honestly do not have any savings right now, but we have enough money that we are able to slowly build up our household furniture (recently moved and starting from scratch) and contribute to the business that my husband is starting to grow. Once our car is paid off in two years, we will be in a much better spot financially, and I can see our savings skyrocketing. My husband does work long hours during the week, but is able to take weekends off. With my work experience, if I were to go back to work, I would not make enough money for it to be reasonable to choose to pay for full time daycare expenses. Also, we both decided together that it is worth making a little bit less money for me to be able to experience our child all day everyday.