To wonder how it is affordable to be a SAHM?

[Moobieboobie]

This is not a WOHM vs SAHM debate but am genuinely curious ....... I am on mat leave with DC2 and keep being asked if I am returning to work. I would love to stay at home this time round but sadly this is not a possibility as both myself and DH earn roughly the same thus my salary is 50% of the household costs. We would not receive any benefits etc as we would still be above the threshold even without my salary. If there is someway around this please let me know as I will try anything!!

Choosing.
A holiday is not as important to me as being a SAHM.

What sorts of sacrifices are you talking about?

I am choosing to be a SAHM as I said. I also want to point out that I have never stopped paying into my private pension. That is an essential bill surely? There wasn't a work pension scheme when I started work in a day nursery so I set up a private one aged 18.

We both work shifts and split childcare between us, so effectively a hybrid SAHP. We are lucky to be able to do so (especially working in completely unrelated fields) but the logistics can be complicated. In my job there are a fair amount of "extra curricular" type activities required, so even though I'm technically part time as you can't do half an exam or do half an audit I end up doing similar hours to husband.

Its doable. I'm lucky my dh earns above average wage. We've cut back a lot and luxuries have changed. Gone are the foreign holidays, the nice clothes, haircuts, posh make up and nights or meals out.

Instead I cook every day. Use cheap makeup and face cream. Walk a lot and a supermarket takeaway is a luxury. Haircuts are maybe twice a year at 25 pound for me. I cut everyone else's. We have days out near to home. Picnics, walks etc and save money for bad weather in the winter. We don't put the heating on during the day in the winter and use hot water bottles.

I do this because I'm looking for work and with two lots of childcare fees to make it worth going back to work I need to find a job that pays well. By well i mean maybe 18k full time. I would love a job but I can't justify working 5 days a week simply to pay for someone else to look after my children and spend all weekend doing the jobs I can do if I'm at home during the week.

I've had many interviews recently and although I have two degrees, a profession and do voluntary work and some private paid work I'm finding getting back into work difficult. I am entitled to no benefits or tax credits because I'm classed as self employed and can't sign on as a result.

If I had a choice if be working. Making 2-400 a month after childcare.

Choosing. As a pp said my OH is much more successful than me! OH earns 43K and I earned a fraction of this. I suppose our "sacrifices" are that we rent a small house (but in a nice area-in the North), don't run a car and don't do holidays at all. There's plenty of cash for days out, take aways etc and we don't worry about money on a day to day basis.
If one wage doesn't cover everything you need then you both have to work. If that still doesn't cover everything you need+childcare then you really need to look at if you can afford kids at all.
I think when people say "I'm staying at home because it means sooooo much me" are talking rubbish to a certain degree, it means soooo much to friends of mine but they can't afford it so it can't happen. I'm staying at home because I want to and we can afford it.
We are also thinking about the timing of our babies, ie we're trying to have them very close together to reduce the overall time I'm at home.

Staying at home does mean that much to me nickyeds . If staying at home wasn't an option we wouldn't have had children. SAH was my preferred option when I thought about being a mum as a teenager and when I became a nursery nurse and saw childcare from the inside I knew that there was no way anything other than SAH was an option.

Childcare x2 and car running costs would have exceeded my monthly wage, add to that DH runs his own business, it made most sense for me to stop working. If we had both been working we would have both been out of the house 12 hours a day AND out of pocket. And I quite enjoy being at home with the kids.

We don't live extravagantly, though tbh I don't know anyone working or stay at home that does. Everyone is making ends meet or very discreet in their purchases.

Me too SpiderTracker. I don't think we would've had DS if me staying at home was out of the question financially. I've no experience from inside childcare, for me it was my mum always working throughout my childhood and then seeing my sister stay at home and love it.

mollybdenum

Some sacrifices I have seen mentioned:

No holidays abroad.
Children/parents wearing 2nd hand clothes.
No Sky or mobile phones.
Unable to pay for house repairs.
No tumble dryer or washing machine.
Food budgeting, no meals out or treats.
People only owning one pair of shoes.
Not being allowed the heating on.
No day trips out, free places only.
No haircuts.
Household things bring bought from car boot sales or Charity Shops.
Not being able to put the hot water on.
Moving 100's of miles away from family to live in a cheaper etc.

I know some of those sacrifices are more serious than others and I completely understand why some families have to live that way once children are born and there is no other option than having a SAHP.

However, if someone said to me, "Writer, you can be a SAHM if you want but you need to make the above sacrifices to enable you to live on DH's salary alone, or you can go back to work" then I would definitely choose to go back to work.

I think only a few of that list are true 'sacrifices'. Hot water, miles away from family a few others.

Things like days out, not many new clothes, food budgeting strike me as compromises.

But really for me it boils down to this. I have a child. SOMEONE has to care for him on a daily basis.
I can neither afford nor want it to be someone else. So i do what is necessary, because that only leaves ME

We moved to a bigger but cheaper house so the mortgage went down by about £300 a month. We sold one of the cars so that saved over £100 in petrol and insurance costs per month too.

DH ended up getting a new job with a car, which is great.

After childcare we would have been left with about the same amount we saved, so it works for us now.

I did some retraining and I volunteer in the job I would like to do eventually.

DH earns about 30 odd k so we're comfy at the moment. Ok we're not holidaying in Vegas but you can't do that with a 2 year old anyway.

It's a combination of one parent earning enough and (usually) cutting down on expenditure. One without the other is often not sufficient-we are lucky that dh earns enough for us to be comfortable, but we have significantly redefined "comfortable". No takeaways, meals out only when invited for close friends birthdays and usually only one of us goes, clothes only if chosen for birthday or Christmas, kids clothes mostly handed down, old cars. Even then, I feel we are very lucky-we have food on the table and the children get to do music lessons and other activities.
Since I became a sahm, dh has been promoted several times and our income is within £10k of what we earnt between us when dd1 was born nearly nine years ago. Without employing a nanny, not possible on our income, he and I would not have both been able to continue to work full time.

For us it is possible because DH has a very good job and the salary is high enough for the whole family to enjoy a very good lifestyle.

It's not just the sacrifices now though is it? It's about deciding what you want to be able to afford to give your children in the future. I could have afforded to be a SAHM (and was for 4 years), but the long term sacrifices weren't worth it for me, especially when they involved limiting my DC's choices. I was extremely lucky to get back into my career after 4 years out, but it wouldn't have happened if I had left it much longer.

There's a difference between choosing to live in poverty and deciding that you can do without holiday and haircuts and maybe bunging a few warm jumpers on than turning up the heating or even putting it on.

We live really frugally. We are at the other end of the spectrum compared to most people here - as I posted earlier dh is on a very low wage and I hated working so we manage on tax credits and dhs income (which if it paid a fair wage we wouldn't need tax credits). I'll gladly go without most things other people consider daily essentials just to stay home. I have one pair of shoes and 4 tops and I don't have a hair cut - I just have long hair. Dh is the same (although he has short hair - we have clippers and I do it for him!). The children don't go without - all our spare money goes on them.

I also find it really strange when people talk about how on earth they will find their dc through university and help them for a house deposit etc - we did all of that for ourselves and dh worked through university. I expect my dc to do the same. I wouldn't consider me going back to work to fund that kind of life plan.

Being at home is very important to me. We live in an area where childcare is not very good and I have 10 years between my dc which makes childcare expensive as well as they need different sorts of care. I did put my eldest into nursery when she was little and I worked full time but we lived in a different area. I wouldn't do it now.

To be honest though more than anything I just enjoy being at home. I love looking after the dc full time and running the house and it means when dh has time off we can just enjoy it together rather than trying to catch up on housework (which is what happened when we both worked full time). It doesn't suit everyone but it suits us and we're prepared to live frugally to do it.

I think the living far away from family comment didn't mean that moving away from family allowed people people to stay at home, but that having family nearby who could help with childcare made going back to work more affordable for people in lower paid jobs.

I work part time and am very lucky that I have childcare provided by both sets of grandparents. My DH earns enough money that I could be a SAHM in our current area and could actually afford to get a bigger house nearer his work if we moved. But he refused to even consider the idea of me being a SAHM. So I work part time. Sometimes it's not just about the money. It's the fact (for him) that both our mothers worked, are providing childcare so he can't understand why I would like to raise our child myself. That said I enjoy working part time and am very thankful that we are lucky enough to have GP's to provide childcare.

And a lot of those sacrifices are balanced by the extra time. So I would see stuff like driving everywhere instead of walking or cycling, buying furniture new from Ikea rather than scouring junk shops and ebay for the perfect bargain (and the same for clothes), having takeaways instead of cooking, having expensive trips out instead of fun free stuff as expenses caused by working and having less time to do things yourself.

Of my friends who work, not a single one could do it without childcare being provided free of charge by grandparents. It's not that they don't use paid childcare at all, just that they only use it for part of their childcare needs. In our case, both sets of grandparents are too frail to be able to do this for us, so we have no choice but for me to stay at home and do it (dh was the main earner by far). There are no nurseries in my area, although there are in nearby large towns, but they don't do school pick ups from the rural schools, only the town schools. That leaves parents relying on childminders and nine times our of ten the childminders don't work full time, they will only take a child for a few days a week, not all day Monday to Friday. There are no after school clubs or breakfast clubs at the local schools. All these things added together mean that going to work isn't just a bit of a logistical nightmare, it's just not do-able if you are reliant on paid childcare, and that's before you even take the cost into consideration.

did you think before posting OP

did it not occur to you that many people earn less than what childcare costs?

sheesh

How common is it though that grandparents actually can (or want to) provide childcare?

My parents and in-laws all work full time and will be doing so for at least another 10 years.

My mom used to provide a days childcare for my sister's two children which meant my mom had to work 37.5 hours a week over 4 days. She was absolutely shattered and all it led to was resentment. She eventually told my sister she wasn't prepared to do it anymore.

I am a sahm I hope to work pt when wee one at school. All my wages have been saved since we married, so we are used to one income. We have cut down on things a little.
I still pay into my pension.

I guess it depends if you have a partner with an income and what your priorities are.

I earnt a lot less than childcare costs.
Simple really.

I find it amazing that in these modern times when so many households rely on dual incomes that there is no after school provision in many areas. We came up against the same issue (we are not rural) and the only option for us was to go private if I was to continue working as that was the only school which had the after school provision we needed (and that was only to 4pm!).