Mom’s Money

Can I Afford To Stay Home With The Kids?

I knew I wanted to stay home with my daughter from the moment I found out I was pregnant. But wanting to and actually being able to stay home and still pay all the bills were two entirely different things. It ended up taking me almost 3 years … but I am now staying home with my little girl full-time.

Here are some of the questions we asked ourselves and some of the things we put in place that eventually allowed me to quit my job and become a stay at home mom.

1) We paid off all credit card debt and cars to get our overall bills down.

2) We knew we wanted to move and buy another house… to make sure we would qualify for a good loan with a low interest rate, we purchased the new home before I stopped working. Of course we made sure we could make the house payments without my job income.

3) We cut down on a lot of extras like a big satellite package, cell phones and eating out.

4) We sat down and did the math. We listed all our expenses, figuring in that I would no longer have to commute every day which would save us in gas, work outfits, makeup and lunches and of course without the cost of daycare. Then we looked at the money coming in without my salary. When that was enough to cover all costs and then some, it was time for a trial run.

5) For the next three months, I continued to work, but we lived without my income… it went straight into a high-yielding savings account that would become our safety net. With just one person working, you need a good emergency fund in case that person looses his or her job and you’re left with no income at all.

6) After the three months we sat down and were pretty frank with each other what we did and didn’t like about living with quite a bit less money to spend. In the end we both decided that the sacrifices were worth being able to raise our child instead of having her in daycare or with a sitter.

My job now is to run a household, raise our daughter and make our dollars stretch as far as possible. That means cooking a lot more from scratch than before, shopping smartly and coming up with fun things for our family to do that don’t cost much.