to wish I could live in the dreamworld of, 'we don't rely on my income'?

[ash1971]

Completely realise I'm probably BU, but, how do so many people live in this dreamy world? We have 3 dds, DP earns 'national average' - and that's just about enough for bills, food, boring/insurance etc. How do people do it? We don't even have Sky or a tumble dryer FGS and I work ft as a teacher. Not that I'm at all bitter - grr, grrr, . . . .And before anyone starts ranting about teachers' holidays - I'm armed with a bottle of wine!

Do you have a high mortgage Ash?

I might have to not work. Coming to the end of my paid maternity leave and have realised that after child care and transport, my wages won't cover the bills (we're both on minimum wage). If I quit, tax credits and housing benefit will fill the gap, and we'll be skint but better off than if I was working. This is not what I want - am desperately hunting for evening/weekend work. But not all sahm's are rich!

Belmo have a look on Peopleperhour. You can take on freelance work, admin or stuff like that depending on what you used to do.

ash probably three kids! I work (self employed) and we do need my money but mostly to pay for the nursery!

Do you have childcare fees?

Colin firths girth..Yep it is relative. It'd be fine if we'd spaced our kids but we have twins and it's double the costs for wverything..childcare being the worst of our worries!

My DH earns just under £12k and giving up work is just a dream for me. There is no way we can live on just his pay unfortunately, even with tax credits. We don't have much in the way of luxuries as it is. A takeaway occasionally (birthdays, mothers day etc) and a few days in Blackpool planned this summer. Hardly living it up as the DM would have you believe for two working parents.

Yeah we'd all love to not work and get money for free. However welcome to the real world, where to have money requires a job. Where to buy food needs someone to earn it. We can't just rely on someone else and watch Jeremy Kyle all day, whether it's the hubby or the state!

We didn't but now we do - it was always our 'safety net' as in i always wanted to go back to work but it would be for extras like holidays.
DH is a civil servant and earns above the child benefit claw back threshold - he has essentially has more than a £200 a month net pay cut with the CB taking away another £180 - so i do work and instead of it paying the things we looked forward to it now just paid to fix the car this month and last month the DCs shoes and new clothes as all three of them have grown unreasonably quickly and next moth its the road tax and.....so on.
Life is just like that sometimes - but I'm drinking wine tonight too - I teach too - just a necessity of the job methinks

Redyam..she works ft. I don't think she wants to watch JKyle or get anything for free. I think she's complaining , fairly enough, that although she works hard, she can't afford what she wants (within reason). The gov take and take and take. Even your parents/grandparents hwne they die have to pay tax on their properties/savings etc. Every hard peeny you work for seems to go to a bill/tax etc.. It isn't fair!

peeeny lol...penny!Child!

Belmo - as you know - the income from two minimum wage jobs is less than some people earn from one wage. Also totally agree that not all SAH mothers are rich. I was a SAHM and some of the women I knew implied that we must be well off! I used to laugh to myself as alot of the time the woman's husband earned two to three times what my husband did and had similar mortgages/council tax etc - although I do appreciate that I did not know all of their outgoings.

Everyone has different outgoings, circumstances and lifestyles but for some it seems like a far off dream to even earn one national average wage let alone two!

Blimey redyam, didn't mean to make anyone angry, and thanks Shelly32 - think you've described me pretty accurately - just thought I'd comment on the fact that although my DP earns the 'nat ave' and I work as a teach f/t, we still kind of struggle to meet the 0.00 balance each month without being wild spenders (we're a bit boring to be honest). I'd quite like to be quite a bit wild and blow it all on a holiday to somewhere glamorous, but at the same time child-friendly - - - - any ideas anyone? (by the way, been having a mooch on 'Larger Families' or whatever it's called, and noticed that similar threads are noticeably less spiky. Maybe it's the nature of the forum . . .)

I find it odd that as a single parent who earns less than the national average I can afford a tumble dryer and a holiday every year. What are you spending your money on? I'm not being critical, it simply intrigues me how some people who have far higher incomes than me can complain of certain financial hardships. It doesn't seem to make much sense to me.

I guess I do, because DH earns enough for me to be a SAHM.

With both DDs about to be at senior school, I could find a job and make a profit. Previously having no relatives and no career to return to wages - petrol (everywhere is a commute from here) - child care - holiday club = zero+/- nothing like enough to make it worth the grief.

Oh and I'm about to get a washer without a tumble drier because I hardly ever use the thing and combi washer driers are ££££ and the extension to fit a separate one would clearly be silly.

Shelley, your parents and gparents will not have to pay tax when they die.

IHT is payable from the living only.

We live in an area where cost of living/housing is very low. Wages/job market is correspondingly low, but dh is self-employed with international clients so is not affected by this. We can get by without luxuries on the money he brings in. This is just as well as there are no jobs for me in this area - can't even get minimum-wage work - and we can't move away. House has been on the market for two years.

I've come to believe that whatever your income, and whatever your outgoings, we all think that if we just had that little bit more, life would be so much better / easier / nicer. thing being, when you get there, you start looking that little bit further on, where you wouldn't have considered looking 3 years ago, when you were that much poorer.
Sometimes it takes some big shock in life - like a potentially life threatening illness or accident, or a close friend dying young, to make you take stock and realise, actually this is my life, this is the time I've been saving a little bit for (the rainy day), or 'I'm now probably literally middle aged (in that I've probably lived more years than I've got left) and when you take stock, you realise that life's not so bad.

How's that for a bit of home spun philosophy when I've not even had wine ?

EBDTeacher Not many Clinical Psychologist posts around these days. Psychology seems to be being hit hard by the NHS cuts. So perhaps you made the right choice after all

I used to have the same dream, was married to exH on average wage and no chance of being a sahm. Then we split, I was a LP and everything depended on my salary...now remarried to DH, higher earner and finally able to be a sahm. Quite a drastic measure though - wouldn't really recommend divorce and remarriage as a way to boost your income

I had the same dream until a few weeks ago, when DH was made redundant. Now I've had to cut my maternity leave short and return to part time teaching job... So glad I have my job to keep my family afloat. Previously with DH earning more than double my salary it didn't make sense for me to return (childcare and travel took most of my wage). Now we will be ok but things will be very tight, no luxuries in the shopping basket and I'll be reading the threads on budgeting and meal planning alot more carefully!

We live on my DH's wage. He earns above average but we also live cheaply. We chose to live in an area that was cheaper, and further away from his work so we could have a nicer house but for less money.

We don't have overseas holidays (helps that we live in Australia). We don't eat out or have takeaways, we run 2 cars but one was v v cheap. We waited to have children until we knew we could afford it on one salary. We budget carefully, buy cheap clothes, do lots of park trips etc.

I really think it is time that women stopped seeing their jobs as little add ons to their husband's job, that help pay for frivolous things. Something that can be reduced or, ideally, dropped once the husband earns enough. Even if the woman is the higher earner.

I know this isn't the view expressed by everyone, but I'm a bit shocked that it is a theme! Being a teacher is a great profession, not something small on the side.

All well in theory Mockingjay but many of us find that after having children it is too difficult to cope with full time work. Many cope brilliantly but I couldn't have. The downside is that now after nearly 12yrs out of the jobs market I am facing a tough battle to find something part-time that isn't brain numbingly dull.

We all make the choices we feel suit our families best if we are able to and I think the OP is just expressing what lots of women secretly feel...over-burdened.

Yes OP I guess it is a combination of choices but also a big dollop of luck sometimes.

We could live without my wage as DP earns a pretty good salary but that is after years of working and saving and paying off our mortgage, forgoing luxuries like nice cars (still have a 15 year old banger we bought for a thousand quid!). Delaying having kids too - didn't have DD until I was 37 and we were really sure of our financial stability and I, personally, have chosen to only have one due to costs etc-(not criticising anyone elses choices!!)

I made sure I spent my childless years getting trained up for a job that was pretty reliable and going into a sector of the job that is very specialist and therefore people with my skills are not oversupplied.

I say luck too as DP is a freelance contractor in his job and we have had times when the TV industry was very slow and he was lucky to get jobs.

We are in that position but it's not without hard work on the way nor is it without sacrifices now. My DH is fairly highly paid but works away a lot. He works long hours and works at least one day most weekends. When he's home he has a lot of paperwork to do or emails to send. If he has a day or two of annual leave chances are he will get some work-related calls in that time, he even got called several times when we were abroad for a week recently. In the early days of us being together we both worked (I had DD1 from a previous relationship); DH worked days, I worked evenings. We were lucky and bought a house at the tail end of houses being dirt cheap, hence we've never had an enormous mortgage like some people have.