I’m in a situation now that I pretty much need to take a year or two off work to deal with some issues my toddler is having. Me and my husband have talked it out, cried it out, wrote down scenarios and different ways to make it work and it’s all come down too it looks like I will be staying at home for a couple of years.

I keep telling myself this isn’t permanent and only temporary and we are doing what’s best for our child. We’ve looked at our finances and my husbands job would pay our bills and we could live, but we would have practically no money leftover. We are used to a double income family where we can buy what we want, go on vacations multiple times a year, etc.

How do you afford it? What are some tips to transition into this stay at home life? How can I trim our budget to make us more comfortable while I stay home?

I know many people just make it work but i refuse to go into debt when we’ve worked so hard to get where we are at. We have a decent savings and will be able to tap into that when needed but I really want to keep us in the same situation financially even though we are cutting out my income.

*please don’t think I don’t want to stay at home I’m just very conflicted. I’ve always worked full time and brought in an income to our household and we just want to give our child a better life than we had by being able to provide a stable and financially secure household. I am excited about the opportunity to stay at home with my child and spend more time with him, it’s just under not so great circumstances.