To ask how much your OH earns if you are a stay at home parent?

[LittleLeif]

Or how much did you have in savings?
This is very very nosey of me but I am trying to figure out if it is viable for me to ever stay at home with my baby. Unfortunately I have to go back to work full time but am hoping to maybe take a career break when she is a two or three.
We are both in jobs where you get opportunities for annually or bi-annually pay rises that can be quite substantial so I'm interested to see if he will be earning enough to support us for a year by then.
TIA

Oh, I wouldn't say that to any of the primary teachers I know!

How about teaching swimming? Relatively quick to train for, flexible hours, good hourly rate.

Uh? No work after work and finishing at 3?

I presume this is extremely sarcastic as when I'm teaching, I finish between 6-7, come home to have food then carry on working til 11ish.

OP, I think if you get free childcare you're probably a lot more reliant on the rest of your salary than (for example) someone who already spends a significant proportion on nursery/childminder/nanny, as it's available funds. So it will be harder to bridge the gap.

I think the OP meant to say become a TA.

If part time at your current school isn't an option, look at others, including private schools.

I took a years maternity because I had savings. We could afford for me to be a sahp but I like to have my own money /savings so I chose initially to go back to work part time...we are fortunate our mortgage is nearly paid off and other outgoings are low - I also earn a lot more working 3 days a week than childcare costs for 3 days a week so that helps.
I am not sure that asking peoples income alone will help make your decision op, perhaps ask yourself can your partners wage not only cover the essentials but also a few luxuries...and offset that with what you are prepared to give up/sacrifice such as financial independence (I could never feel comfortable asking my partner for a handout) pension contributions, cars,holidays etc..
Children have hidden costs so days out can be expensive, activities when they are older, not to mention all that pester power for the latest must have items. I personally would go mad very quickly as a stay at home mum but I have friends that don't work and they love it, some of their partners are in the high tax bracket some are not (I tend to agree with the other poster regarding 2 types of sahp)
Take a years maternity see how you cope on a reduced income and also how you feel not working as it does not suit everyone.

When i was a sahm for six years dh earned around £18000 after tax. Our mortgage was £1050 a month.

We had approx £40 a week for groceries so I cooked a lot from scratch, we had one car and I spent a lot of time looking for free/cheap things to do.
I ran the toddler group for a while which meant I didn't have to pay but the dc still got to have fun.

If you are happy to go without many things and be creative in your thinking then you don't have to have masses of money.

My dc remember those years fondly and still ask to get board games out on a wet afternoon (for example) as it brings back happy memories of fun time spent together.

Little that's so lovely to hear. :) I sometimes question our choices and were far from living how most people on his thread do but we've aimed for simple pleasures and lots of family time. Really pleased you've posted xx

DH earns enough that we have had to pay back some of our child benefit.

When i was a sahm for six years dh earned around £18000 after tax. Our mortgage was £1050 a month.

How did you manage on that?

So £1500 a month- minus £160 for groceries.
Leaves £340 a month for everything else.
Council tax? Electricity? Car insurance? Petrol? Tax? Clothes? Life insurance?
Kids shoes? Telephone? Broadband? House repairs? Christmas?
Sounds hard, and I was a SAHM for many years on a tight budget, not sure we could cope on that though.

DH earns more than double Owllady's DH . I was earning a good wage when I met him but he could easy double my annual income in a month so it made no sense for me to carry on working as it was quite a high stress job for me and was having some implications on my health.

HOWEVER I'm now SAHM to school aged children and I'm bored. Being bored means I'm bugging DH "when are you going to be hoooooome" and I've lost my identity. I'm no longer successful career woman, I'm just DH's wife. I hate gyms so won't even spend time getting fit. Not working and having mucho disposable income means I eat out A LOT and have gone up a dress size or two.

So long story short. Think I need a job again

Everyone's circumstances and priorities are different. My dh earns £160K basic plus an annual bonus, which varies in amount but was £100K for the last 2 years. On this we can afford for me to not work, 3x private school fees and a foreign holiday per year (we don't live in London) - we save £2000 a month for school fees (have to assume there will be no bonus, just in case there isn't) and have around £2500 left after all bills to live on - food and fuel come out of this. I am happy with the lifestyle we have, we would be a lot better off if we didn't pay for school but we feel this is a good use of our money. We have a mortgage btw. I worry about money from time to time, depending on how our savings account is looking (very low at the moment, as I needed a new car - 12 year old thing I was driving died - have already put a scratch on the new one by reversing into a bush, am deliberately parking in a way that hides it in the hope that dh doesn't spot it for a while), but we do have options and ways to cut back if necessary.

I don't think that really answers your question, but I think it does illustrate that you can quite easily use up all your money even if it does seem like you have a lot on paper. All you can do is look at your own figures and see if you can make it work.

As an aside, I do miss work horribly at times. The main reason I stopped was because dcs 1 and 2 are only a year apart and it felt like the easiest (and fairest to my employer) thing to do at the time. They are all at school now and I am trapped - I can't earn enough to make going back to work worthwhile (factoring in after school and holiday clubs). They created a job that would have suited me perfectly at dh's company and I was annoyed with him for not considering me (especially as he is constantly moaning about the person they did employ), but his excuse was that it wasn't part time and that is the issue - there are so few suitable roles once you do want to go back, it is probably better to go part time at your current job and keep your career ticking over.

The variations on here are unbelievable

I left my career behind through mh issues when I was pg with ds1, really weird episode that involved severe panic attacks at the thought of childcare/ leaving Ds1.
I'm saying this as we went to extremes to enable a sahm, tax credits helped for much of it, later.
We managed on one min wage with 3 dc, were very frugal, went off grid for a while and lived "The good life"
There was childcare but not the mass we know now, there were no free hours or vouchers like today.
It was so important to us, we moved heaven and earth but others would run a mile from our lifestyle choices.
BTW I'm quite over it all now 25 years later, with normal relationships, but will never forget the fear.

Wow little. 160 would put you in the top 1% of all earners. No idea where 260 puts you!!!

Caill

I haven't bought myself clothes for 2 years and DH longer. I wear the same pair of Clarks shoes I bought in 2011. I also have a pair of trainers that were a birthday present five years ago.

We don't have life insurance. We don't buy anything for the house. We don't buy each other Christmas presents, only DS. You just manage.

I know it's a lot flower, I honestly don't think otherwise and sorry if my post was a bit flippant. We are very comfortable, but it doesn't always feel like it - our choice to pay for school gobbles up a huge amount and outwardly we don't appear particularly wealthy - if we didn't pay for school we could look the part a bit more. I know that we are extremely lucky. I know that it is our choice to pay for school.

Huffle
I don't know why but it does seem to get better when the dc are older for you x

Reading this has made me think there is no way on earth we can afford it.

Nothing anyone else has posted on this thread has any bearing on whether you can afford it or not.

My DH earns 57k and I earned 28k last year we live in the north west mortgage 1kpm and are always skint 😂

depends on outgoings, what you think are essentials, cost of childcare. whether you particularly want to be a sahp, and some of the sacrifices are worth that.

there is only so much money and time to go round and you only get one go at this life, so decide on priorities and personality.

My DH earns less than 12k and I'm a SAHM. We manage fine, even without benefits and no outside help from family as they all live 300+ miles from us. He does have some savings but that's to go towards a house deposit and he refuses to touch it.

OH earns 150k plus bonus, which is variable and we don't factor it into financial planning. We are extremely comfortable on that basic amount - save half of basic salary as a minimum and don't feel like we need to scrimp on anything. No private school fees and no mortgage probably help that but we are lucky in that being as tight as we are is a choice rather than a necessity.

I feel confident that we could survive on a lot less if we needed to and save carefully in case we DO have to. Nothing except true desperation would coax me back to work while the children are little and it's hard to see how that would happen.

Honestly this answer will be so varied, there are going to be people who live off a lot less and appear to be just as comfortable as those with higher earnings. We've undergone a lot of upheavals financially, but things are relatively stable with an income of around £62k per year for us. That's 2A,1c.
We both need cars, and both run relatively new vehicles. Oldest is mine at 3 years old, and we pay £1000 a month for the roof over our heads, there are others who have stated they don't drive, or are mortgage free, this goes to show its different for everyone.

Have a look at what you spend on at the moment. Things you'd cut back on if you weren't at work. See how it works out.

I won't say how much my DH earns, but he used to be in investment banking and now owns his own consultancy - so the salary is varied. Sometimes he earns 6 figures a year and sometimes less. We are lucky that he can choose to work as and when he wants to and when i was very sick whilst pregnant, he took the whole year off to look after me etc. We have investments and will be sending both children to private school. We are comfortable but i still will go back to work - mainly because i want to have my own income and we have agreed i will be paying for the nanny, which essentially means i will be working for not very much. I think it does depend on your personal lifestyle which determines if you can be a SAHM or not. Good luck with the decision OP.

HuffleTuff I meant become a teaching assistant. I am a teacher. I know how many hours is put in after school.