What the heck did we get ourselves into ☹️

Question

Our daughter is 3 years old, my husband and I have respectable full time jobs (medical biller/mechanic), own a townhouse, have 2 cars, don't have any debt. I thought we were doing great, now is the time to have our last baby. Now I am stressing over our finances, I guess I didn't factor in sending 2 kids to daycare, stupid me. After crunching the numbers my salary won't even cover both kids. UGHH! We depend on both of our salaries to have a good life, now it looks like I'm going to have to quit my job because we can't afford daycare. I'm not sure how we can survive on one income ☹️ I just don't understand how two adults working real full time jobs can't afford to live, it's sad living in America you can mooch off the system and live a better life than if you work hard. Every thing we've worked so hard for seems like it's just been flushed down the toilet. I give up.

Answer

My husband and I both work, he'll be m-f and I'll work Sa-su once baby comes. So we won't be paying for daycare much. We live pay check to pay check, between a mortgage, student loans and monthly bills. Money goes into savings only when we get OT or gifts of money.  We felt we had to go to college to get these great jobs! So my best advice is find tooth comb your bills. We got rid of kindle, daily burn, Netflix and Hulu, (we have cable so we were like triple dipping on the tv action)$40 a month,  my husband stopped smoking $ 200 a month !!!! My ass won't be in the gym for a long time now$45 a month, plus we grocery shop every couple of days instead of huge trips that result in wasted veggies fruits and dairy! I'm currently talking to a new isurance agent trying to get cheaper home and auto insurance. There is a way to have your career and still have a job, it just takes being creative!! Hope this helps!

Answer

At the Dr's office I used to work at, our biller worked from home! Look into telecommuting medical biller positions and see what pops up!

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Can u do medical billing at home? Your 3 yr old will be in school full time very soon.

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Here in Pennsylvania one parent working can support a family with 3 children off of 46,000 a year but a single parent would need 67,000 per year. All that extra money is because the single parent would need daycare. I don't know you or your life or spending habits but I do think you may benefit from just staying home.

Answer

Lol into a part time job after hubby gets home from work to watch the kids?

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I highly recommend taking the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace class. My husband and I took it before we got married. We paid off my 30,000$$ student loans in one year and are now debt free besides the mortgage. We've been married for two years now, and both of us work for non profits. I work at our church and he works at Habitat for Humanity. Together we make a little less than 50,000 a year. We did a mock budget for when baby comes and discovered that I can go down to working 16 hours a week. We won't be living a fancy life but we will have what we need. You just need to figure out what your priorities are. My priority is that we are the people raising our children and being the main influence in their lives, rather than strangers at daycare. But every one has different priorities. Talk about what yours are, and then sit down and put together a budget for each month. The key is to tell your money where to go, and be in control of it. That will keep you from overspending, and going into debt.

Answer

When I had my first I decided to stop working. I'd first call your student loans and explain how you are losing your job and try getting on an income based repayment plan so that it isn't as high as it is right now. Next is we started couponing which saves us soooo much money, we cut all our bills to the absolute minimum and then accepted that the first year with the new baby we wouldn't be traveling and pretty much just enjoy free things, like the beach and park. Also, if you find yourself sinking don't be embarrassed to see you options with government help, it's not a permanent solution but just something that can help you get from point A To B and they can probably also point you in the right direction for daycare help when you are ready to return to work!

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We haven't even decided what to do yet... I keep putting it off to really sit and crunch numbers.

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My husband always said if we stopped saying 'free health care, free higher education, free housing, free food, free cell phones, free electricity, free tv, free daycare, free formula, and free welfare cash for odds and ends' and started saying 'youll pay for someone else's __/someone else will pay for your __' it would wake some people up. There's this huge stigma by those who get all these 'freebies' that they 'may as well, its free' or 'if I dont get them someone else will' and its really only the working class to acknowledge that it ISNT free and that they are very much being paid for out of our pockets. I have two family members very high up with Dept of Social Services and they both agreed that while all these surveys 'say' there are very few people that take advantage of the system, on THEIR end it looks more like 1 in 5 are taking advantage, that the White House is well aware and wont let them do anything about it, in fact, they encourage it by setting up separate locations for illegals at hours like 10pm-2pm to keep it lowkey, and that it SUCKS because they SEE people who truly need it, that have absolutely nothing and they cant approve them because they 'dont have the funds', but they can approve illegals or those who have been in the system for generations with more 8 or more kids because they are priorirized. :/

Answer

That is a tough situation and one I feel as well. Have you looked into a nanny or babysitter? Nannies have a stigma of being paid even more than a daycare. But I was a nanny for two children (one preschool one kindergarten) and did the driving to and from school, before school, and after school activities, and was paid $300 per week. At that time I was still living at home so my bills were minimal (I was 19-20 and doing school part time). So I'd think that there must be more young people like I was at the time who'd be grateful for a nanny job (I know I'd rather still be doing that than my "real" job!).

What the heck did we get ourselves into ☹️

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