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

80k + 20% bonus. Don't live in London etc and have a small mortgage / outgoings. Shocked by so many people saying 100k plus and have to make sacrifices ... Can only assume cost of living where they are is dramatically different!

£100k is 5550 a month after tax. Student loan will often be 9% - let us assume a housewife situation with one worker on £100k - so probably 750 if it's off gross pay. levaes 4800. No childcare in our example as one parent does not work. no child benefit. The person probably makes a pension contribution 6% - 500?

So probably £4300 hitting the account each month. Sounds loads. They will oprobably live in London with a £500,000 mortgage of about 3% - so about £2300 a month on loan - about half their net income or they live further out with less mortgage but commuting costs of about the same.

So they are left with £2000 a month = £461 a week, heaps better than benefits but not a king's ransom. They probably spend £100 a week of that on food and they might feel on £100k they can go out to eat a bit and have some reasonable holidays. They may however want to save up a bit for future school fees even if the parent at home plans to return to full time work.

IN other words due mostly to the massive massive tax rates higher earners now pay (never in UK history have they pais as much as the tax burden and probably never in UK history has there been such a disconnect from what the press says about high earners - that they pay not tax and evade it - and the reality), No one of course will weep for us and we don't expect it. In fact what I am happiest about is that I am just about never ill and have very robust mental health. I put just about everything behind that.

When I gave up work I earned more than DH but he was catching up fast and had better prospects and i wanted to be a full time mummy. The first few years were tough but built on a lot of security and high equity. It wasn't an overnight decision because I did go back part-time but ds was so I'll so often it didn't work out. Also because DH was focussing 120% on his career it didn't work for us.

Looking back and ds is 22 now, DH wouldn't have been as successful without my full support in those early years. So I regard what he earnt then and now as a team effort.

But I did go back to work when our youngest was settled in reception and have been so glad I did. Those first years I earnt peanuts and when I went full-time it was barely breakeven after childcare but it have me the experience, the qualifications and the will to do a professional role again. Really importantly it means I have my own full state pension and will have 3/4 of an occupational pension.

That's a very interesting example lucy. We actually have more than 2k left after student loan, pension and housing costs, and that's on well under half of the 100k household income! Closer to a third actually!

Littledrummergirl I'm wondering if this was a few years ago? Simply because utility bills now are such a lot higher than they were even 10 or 15 years ago.

Lucy's family will be getting no child benefit or tax credits though. Not sure about the pension tax treatment but I think it's a pretty realistic example and indicates why they will move out or Lucy will go back to work.

Lucy, don't forget all the choices you have that make it seem like your money doesn't go far. You can have that London mortgage, whereas my dh who works in London of a far lower salary has to do a 6 hour daily commute because he can't get a mortgage in London. You can think of saving up for school fees, whereas somebody on a lower salary will have to take whatever state school they can get into. You can choose to save up for that pension, whereas somebody on a lower pay scale just has to hope they won't live too long after retirement.

All fair points Cory. But don't underestimate the brutality of living in London and the hamster wheel it dictates until those choices are exercised.

I don't think school fees are within Lucy's reach to be fair it that income or unless she goes to work. School fees for two dc (boys) are about £44k at London day schools post 11 now; for girls a bit less. Lucy would need an extra £4k (almost) net monthly before they could think about private schools.

I think living on less than £40,000 is uncomfortable in the SE. I don't know if it's easier elsewhere?

@LittleLeif

Phew You'd have been in for a shock otherwise, lol. I must admit, being a TA is so tempting. Very similar classroom experience with none of the extra work.

HuffleTuff tell me about it! I was a TA before I trained to be a teacher. I was always jealous of the teacher . The grass is always greener!

Been a piece of piss the times we've done it in the north west littlelief. A modest lifestyle, no 5 star holidays or £200 nights out, but then with very young children we had no interest in those things anyway. Granted, it was not much less than 40k, but I wouldn't particularly feel the pinch until we were well below 35k I don't think.

Dh only earns £22k and we aren't entitled to any government help (as dh used to earn over double, but retrained in the emergency services about 18 months ago). Still, we are homeowners and make it work although money is tight.

Just checked and £100k with student loan and pension contributions of £500pcm is indeed waaay lower than expected - £4600 take home. Interested.

However, a £500k mortgage is a choice, private school is a choice, and surely the student loan would be paid off relatively quickly if paying £7200 off per year.

Two people earning £50k (£2700pcm after pension / loan) or even £45k (£2450pcm) each would get child benefit and be much better off!

I am a SAHM and after tax, pension, ShareSave scheme of £100pcm and housing costs we have £2200 which includes child benefit. I would say we are very fortunate. We can't afford private school but we save a good whack each month and rarely have to say no to stuff for financial reasons alone.

I live south east, isn't it crazy how much difference there is with north and south considering what a small island we all live on!

Plus a lot of your OH earnings are equal to mine and DH's joint earnings which is what I thought would be the case as we toddle along fairly ok, get to have the occasional treat but no holidays. This has been great food for thought though!

LittleLeif could you do supply work rather than move back to a TA? I know quite a few teachers who've gone that route after having children. Obviously it's less certain work but it can be more flexible.

Thing is I love holidays, parties, trips, theatre so being a sahm wouldn't work for me as although dh is a high earner compare to many on this thread it wouldn't cover all tgat plus kids extra curricular

Two people earning £50k (£2700pcm after pension / loan) or even £45k (£2450pcm) each would get child benefit and be much better off!

Although they might have childcare costs too.

OhTheRoses Thu 03-Aug-17 08:04:38
"All fair points Cory. But don't underestimate the brutality of living in London and the hamster wheel it dictates until those choices are exercised."

Not underestimating. Just saying that over a certain income level there is choice, and under a certain level there is no choice. And a 6hr commute is also a pretty brutal hamster wheel.

I'm not a SAHP but my DH is, whilst I work full time. I earn around £80k gross inc bonus. In London, mortgage of about £1,400. We're lucky enough not to have money worries, we can afford bills and "nice to haves" like ballet lessons for the kids and days out. No debt other than mortgage but we have no savings either. Only just been able to afford cheap holidays in last year or two, and we don't have a fancy car and our home is fairly shabby - can't afford major redecoration etc.

That must be a colossally expensive commute. Does it really save money compared to living in London? It only takes me 3 hours to get into London but the cost would be astronomical!

yes, it's why I gave a real example as people think £100k means you keep 100k. In fact about half goes for a start. Also remember the upper tax bracket - 45% is the highest tax rate which is 47% if you include national insurance at that upper bracket. So a lot high earners well over £100k find most of their income is taxed at 47% and add 9% student loan and that is then 56%.
However people around 100k - 150k (and again they don't expect sympathy as they have more than enough to eat etc) find they are in that silly bracket where you lose your £11k personal tax allowance entirely which means an effective upper tax rate of about 62% plus national i nsurance plus often 9% student loan (on your upper bracket earnings) - that is about 71% marginal tax.

That is why a study this year found yes at first a massive 1: 12 ratio between rich and poor in terms of relative UK incomes but it comes down to 1: 4 when you add back in benefits, housing benefit, tax credits, child benefit for those on lower incomes and take off these 47%+ taxes, loss of personal tax allowance at the upper end. 1 - 4 differential between rich and poor is not that bad athough pure socialists will of course still hate it.

My £100k example (which is not me now as my younger children are about to leave for university and after 30 years I've paid off the mortgage) is based on one income. If you change it to a couple both on £50k the student loan is higher if they both had one but they keep more of their income before tax as they have a single person allowance each and I think they might still get child benefit,. However in Lodnon they will probably have about £24k per child or at least £30k out of taxed income so proably need £50k before tax income to fund childcare - full time childcare nursery in central London or nanny.

Once you get over £150k you lose the entitlement to the new tax relief/payments for childcare too of up to £2k per year per child. Not that again any of us will want to be sorry for these people.
I encourage all my children go get themselves into these higher income bands as it gives women choices as someone said above. I have so much more choice because I picked relatively high paid work. I had the choice ultimately to work for myself mostly based at home which suits me very well. I had to commute and do long hours for 11 years with very small (2 week old) babies at home but that 11 years of slog was worth it. People on low incomes slog it out too. One reason my cleaner who stayed about 20 years and I respect each other is we each work, we both get stuck in, she immigrant muslim even fit my job before and after her other mostly full time job. She does nt work harder than I do but it is a different kind of work and I am delighted her son did the same law course as my daughters (LPC). If he can I am sure a lot of people could too if they can pass the exams.

I'm a sahm to a 1yo by accident (made redundant last month as I was about to return to work). My DH's company pulls in a profit of around £92k minus appropriate taxes etc which is all ours as he has no employees.

I'm probably going back to work and I will earn around £30k.

We live very comfortably just now. Mortgage £1200 per month, no debt, comfortable amount of savings. However we are in Scotland.

We need some renovations done to the house which is why I will probably return to work. And although the mortgage only has 17 years left we would ideally like it paid off in around 10 years so we need to start over paying.

Nightmare, it's 6 hrs in total- 3 hrs each way- and work offer some kind of loan scheme for the rail pass. Costs at this subsidised rate are a little over 1/3 of dh's salary, otoh our living costs where we are are v. low. Eventually he is hoping to help in establishing office closer to home + cut commute by 1 hr each way. But nobody at his (specialised but niche and not highly paid) job can afford to actually live near the work place.

He did not really choose to work in London: council cuts in the job he'd had for nearly 30 years meant he couldn't stay where he was.

It's not a desperately difficult situation- we're fine. Just illustrating the way a lower salary limits choice.