When did you know you could afford to be SAHM?

Question

My husband and I are expecting our first in about 5 months. We’d both love for me to stay home until preK. Then work part time for extra stuff. Right now, we can make it without my income, but things will be tight..mostly just not a lot of room for entertainment. My main concern is we won’t have enough extra to continually put away for a nest egg. We thought we were prepared with savings until this weekend find out we’ll be needing a few thousand dollars of vehicle repairs, which cuts into our savings quite a bit. I’m more worried without a savings to dip into, yikes! So, if anyone is willing to be realistic with me, do you stay home knowing you could pick up a lowish paying job of things get tight? Do you keep working and pay for daycare? Do most SAH families live pretty tight for a while? I will have time to replace that money spent before we deliver, but just a few of these things in 2-3 years might take all that stash away?

Answer

For us it was the cost of child care. If I would have continued working my income would have paid for day care and my vehicle payment and thats it. So I told my husband I’d rather just sell my car for something cheaper. We haven’t had to do that yet but I’m willing to sacrifice whatever I need to to be able to stay home.

Answer

Plan three budgets:
One with you working plus the costs of childcare. 
One with you not working and changing no spending habits/bills. 
One with you not working and cutting back where needed (rescuing cell phone plans, car costs, cutting cable, etc). 
Then write the pros/cons to each and see which is your ideal situation. 
I’m a SAHM and we just watch large expenses. For us the easiest solution was having two bank accounts. One we pay our bills from (mortgage, car, bills, and savings) and the other is the one we “spend” from (gas, groceries, household, etc). That way we know every bill is paid no matter what, and once the second account is low, we are very careful spending. 
Checkout Dave Ramsay for money saving advice and budgeting. He seriously made it possible and comfortable to be a one income family!

Answer

Maybe look into a part time job you can work while your husband is home? I consider myself a SAHM, but I work 4 hours two weeknights, and 4 hours on Saturday. So just 12 hours a week, while my husband is home with our son. That way we don't pay for child support, but we're a little more financially comfortable. And it gives me some time out of the house, and as a result my husband knows all the tricks for getting our son to nap and go to bed. It took him a couple weeks, the first little bit I was back at work was pretty rough on him. But he's got the system down now 😊
Even a waitressing job at a busy restaurant would make some pretty good side money if you're open to that.

Answer

I’m a SAHM and honestly we just live tight. We don’t have savings and we have struggled but being a SAHM has been my dream and it’s what my husband has always wanted that he would rather get a second job than me to put and get a job. 
Different people are comfortable with different things. We live on a budget but we are happy and it will be ok.

Answer

For us the cost of childcare was a huge decided factor. We paid off our car and childcare for even part time would be more than our car payments. So unless I was making WAY more than him, it didn’t justify the childcare costs. 
For example - full time preschool and day care in CA was almost $1000. 
My husband’s schedule is unpredictable so it would also be a matter of having emergency babysitting when he would get called in 
For the last four years we’ve rebudgeted and lived a little more frugal. I was able to find odd and end freelance jobs and saved money from not putting her in childcare. We even paid off our debt because our spending habits changed. 
Now pregnant with number two and I’ll do the same thing. Live a bit tight but have the chance to care for my daughters without paying up the wazoo.

Answer

Get on public assistance.. we get heat for our house, wic , foodstamps And Medicaid...  
we are super tight on our budget.. we have one car.. no going out for entertainment, no cable that kinda thing... if there is a will there is a way

Answer

I worked for the first two years of my daughter’s life because we couldn’t afford life without my income. I came home when my husband got a promotion. His new income combined with not having daycare costs was only a few hundred dollars less than our incomes together. So we sold one of our cars and saved money by eating at home more. I ended up picking up a small, part-time job (15 hours a week) working from home. He recently got another huge promotion and we can afford for me to not work at all. I’m going to try though because I love my job. We’ll see once our new baby comes.
That initial leap was scary, but I was so grateful we were able to make it work.

Answer

For us, we had planned on me staying home until our daughter was school age. What we didn’t plan on, was having my entire family living  with us and me caring for my sisters 2 children. We also didn’t plan on my mom not working due to taking care of my grandmother who has dementia. We somehow make it all work (thank the lord) my husband works and is hoping to start a new job here in the next few weeks. He also receives VA benefits which have been a lifesaver. I know that our situation won’t last forever. I pray that everyone in my household gets themselves together and soon so that I can finally start living my own life.

Answer

I could never be a sahm shout out to y’all I need my own money my sister is one and I tell her all the time your the MVP cause I just couldn’t she been at home for like 3-4 years and want to work but it going to hard her to get a job without recent work experience. She’ll be staying at probably another year since she pregnant again. How have y’all found finding a job is if you’ve gone back to work ?

Answer

When I saw the cost of daycare 😱
Was not worth it to us to have more than half of my income spent paying others to do everything we wanted to do with our kids. We just reduced all our recreational spending. Less or no movies, dinners out, special events.

When did you know you could afford to be SAHM?

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