How do families have SAHMs?

[LikeDaisies]

Financially - I cannot comprehend how it’s possible!

Husband is a teacher. Earns around £44,000. That isn’t enough to cover our bills if I were to leave my job and stay at home with our baby.

Mortgage is £900. Other bills come to around £700 - not considering food, leisure, etc.

Not that I’d want to leave my job, but I’d love to be able to drop down to 3 days a week. But financially it just isn’t possible. We wouldn’t be able to afford our mortgage and bills.

So it leaves me wondering how I see so many families who are able to manage having a SAHM.

Please can anyone who is in this situation explain how it is possible/how you make it work?

My mum was a SAHM in the 80s and 90s. In our area it was completely normal then, in fact I can only think of two families whose mums worked full time. A lot of mums had a bit on the side - after school childcare, a cleaning job. But not another full salary.

We had older cars bought at the local car auction. Holidays to self catered cottages in the U.K. once a year, or camping in my grandparents trailer tent. Every other year we would drive to my aunts house in Switzerland and stay there for a week or two. No mobile phone bills, no Netflix etc subscriptions. Home made dinners every night that were fairly cheap - pasta bakes, sausage hot pots, casseroles. My mum used to spend £100 per week on our food, pet food, toiletaries and cleaning products for a family of four plus multiple animals. Picnics were taken everywhere, if we bought sweets somewhere like at a petrol station it would be one tube of fruit pastilles between us all. Clothes were always hand me down from my cousins except best dresses which my mum would sometimes make.

Although the cost of living has risen, I feel like what we expect in terms of quality of life has risen too. We add so much unnecessary cost to our lives which then needs two people to work. I can see how you would be able to have one parent SAH on £44kpa but your lifestyle would be very frugal compared to today’s expectations. Having said that, maybe that is not a bad thing. I loved the camping holidays with my grandparents, and going round theirs for Sunday tea, and watching Blind Date as a family on Sat night on terrestrial tv far more than the overseas holidays and Sky package that came in my teens when my dad started making more money

My husband’s take home pay is 2,320 per month and child benefit is 173 so just shy of 2,500 coming in each month. He also typically receives an annual bonus that works out to be around 5k after tax (this isn’t guaranteed but he’s gotten it for a few years now).

Mortgage - 800
Other bills - 400 (Rates, life and home insurance, car tax and insurance, subscriptions, internet, mobile phones)
Utilities and petrol - 300
Husband’s train tickets - 130
We put 150 away each month into a “gift” account which gives us 1,800 per year for Christmas, birthdays, parties for the kids etc.

This leaves 720 PM for food and leisure. We have one car which we own outright, eat quite simply and live quiet simply so find 720 is fine but I for sure feel the sacrifice and we need to budget well. As an example- I want to get my oven and extractor fan professionally cleaned in the next while and it’s going to cost £75. That has to come from somewhere so for the next 7 weeks I am shaving £10 off our weekly grocery budget to put away for it. But I understand how someone looking in from the outside could wonder how we can afford to hire someone to do a job like that, if they aren’t aware of the behind the scenes planning and budgeting.

This is what our month to month looks like and then if my husband gets the bonus we use it for luxury things like holidays (not abroad, just a staycation here in Ireland), savings and things we need to do to the house.

Of course they can, you just cut your cloth according to your needs, not to mention UC will help certain families. When DS says born, they're was no way to manage work. At 12 months, the latest I could have extended mat leave to, we were back in hospital with no end in sight. Two months later we were discharged with a plan to return in 6 weeks for another op. Then that went wrong and we had another op booked in, that one was at 18 months. Then it was portage once a week, physio twice a month, consultant appointments across two hospitals and four consultants. Dietician monthly. Tube feeds throughout the day. Permanent o2.

Nursery took months to sort for 3 hours a day.
Even ocne he was full time at school he was still on o2 and came home and had tube feeds after school.
I can't even imagine what that kind of care would cost professionally esp in a WC estate and a rented house with no spare rooms. We're down to fewer appointments now, tube feeds less, but the second pregnancy we selfishly chose to have produced twins so I was then looking at a career gap and childcare for 3 kids - two small ones, a complicated one, full time care for all in holidays would be astronomical.

So then the twins were in nursery, going into full time so time to look for work...
but I've spent the last two years back and forth with surgical appointments and operations for the eldest. I've applied for jobs and interviewed but then we get another operation date and I'm relieved when I don't get the job. I looked at one at my kids school but I don't see how I'd ever pass probation. We went in for an overnight stay and ended up in for 10 days. We came home and had to do twice weekly hospital visits.

Maybe I'm bloody lazy and everyone else copes and I just need to try harder and stop being a pathetic leech off my husband who'll inevitably leave me destitute (isn't that the usual mantra to put down sahp's on here?) but I cannot imagine why anyone would employ me at this point in time.

So we manage on less. We get DLA for eldest and carers for me, no UC, and we just manage. Because sometimes life is just about managing.

Hats off to you for making this work but this is my absolute nightmare scenario. No way could I live like this just to be a SAHP. If my family to make those kinds of choices, I’d be in employment. I suppose the positive of this thread for the op is that anything is possible if you decide that’s your top priority!! x

@babyproblems Nursery or childminders cost money though. It’s often the amount someone can earn with three dc needing care. People with businesses are also very vulnerable. 2 dc max for us because we knew what recession looked like without dc. So what both can earn matters and if one salary is low, you are paying a lot of that into child care. If you are on a great career ladder or relatives look after dc for free, that’s different. You pay now for a decent salary tomorrow. However business fortunates fluctuate and going out to work for very little money after childcare is hardly worth the effort for many. Never mind juggling when dc are sick.

It depends exactly what you’re asking.
Ivey never been a SAHM but when I dropped down to 2 days after DC1, a member of my NCT group told me how lucky i w as there was no way she could afford to go PT.
what she really meant was that she couldn’t maintain her current standard of living on a PT wage - she saw holidays abroad, 2 cars on finance, hair appointments, meals out etc as essential whereas many people could sacrifice these things and be able to afford to be a SAHM or go PT,

I stayed home with young children. My husband is a secondary school teacher but nursery fees was insane for two kids. We choose to have a small home and no car. Didn't travel. Spent less.
It worked well. We had savings for a rainy day.

I'm a sahm in London and we can afford it as DH is a high earner. We don't have to scrimp and save for it and I wouldn't do it if we had to do that. It's unusual in our circle to be a sahm though, it seems to be more of a status thing to have a career.

We are on 45k after tax so not rolling in It by netmums standards but comfortable as long as we keep our life pretty frugal. In the SE so life is expensive. Our bills are lower than yours I'm not sure if you added a breakdown of your £700 ? No benefits just child benefit of which we pay back a portion as slightly over the threshold.

We prioritise saving above everything some months we can't do this at all but we will where we can.

We have a child with additional needs that childcare doesn't seem to exist for or if you're lucky to find some in your area it's super expensive one to one nanny etc I'd be paying way more for childcare than I would earn.
I would dearly love to work but its just not an option right now.
I am very much working on a longer term plan of self employed work that pays ok. It's an incredibly vunerable position to be in. We may downsize and relocate to do this.

All the SAHMs I know are married to corporate lawyers or bankers.

Are you being serious? There are loads of better paid jobs than teachers. That’s how. If one parent has a big salary then it is totally feasible to have the privilege to stay home till their at school.

For us it was because husband earned just enough to get all bills paid and have savings too , we saved a fortune on childcare for 3 children ( no free hours back then ) didn’t need to pay after school care when the older child started school , because I was home with the little ones , I cooked more meals at home , we didn’t have a cleaner etc etc .
Didn’t have weekends away and had fairly simple holidays.

My dh earns 30k. I work 2 days a week and earn peanuts really. We have 4 dc and recieve UC top up. We live in a council house, albeit a lovely one. Drive 2 cars. Go on holidays. I don't miss a school run or school event. Not everyone would like our lifestyle but we are happy.

I was a stay at home parent because my husband earned enough to allow it and then me being at home enabled him to choose a different career path which involved travel, working late, working weekends etc. I sometimes miss my career but we have benefitted from me being at home. I think a lot of it is down to affordablitily, opportunity and then choice as there are always sacrifices to be made with any decision in life.

It's just as well because my ds was born with disabilities and I got very ill for about 15 years after he was born so was never well enough, and free enough of caring responsibilities to return to work. I'm now home schooling through no choice of our own

Similar. Dh had a reasonable salary, prob equivalent of circa £65k nowadays. I wasn't ill myself, that would have made it so much harder, but my child is disabled and there was no support that would have allowed me back to work.
No childcare facility could (or could have been expected to) give her the one to one she needs. Even though she got a place at a special school she was home more than she was there. You have to cut your coat according to your cloth.
Tighten your belt. Pull your horns in as my mother would have said.

You make it work because you have to make it work.

With 4 under 6, childcare costs were more than my salary so I stayed home. Holiday was a caravan for a long weekend or Mon - Fri - very close to home. Took them to the evening entertainment but instead of buying snacks there, saved a fortune and took our own - 4 little bags and refilled each night. Took a couple of tubes of glo sticks - bought in advance from Poundland. No takeaways, cooked from scratch and always took picnics out. Most entertainment was local. Happy days.

In all honesty nursery fees are that high I do wonder how many families afford to have both parents working. When I returned to work with 2 children under 2 my wage just covered their nursery fees. I soon to dropped to 3 days as I was no worse off.

Only female people though, in the vast majority of cases.

I haven’t needed my vagina to do any parenting since DD came out of it, nor my boobs since she turned 1, so the perpetual view that mothers are the only ones that should focus on childcare is absolutely regressive and is a massive part of the male domination in boardrooms and lower paid, lower grade roles for women.

Both DH and I have full time jobs that involve travel, working late and working weekends………

And? I assume you have help for the times you’re both travelling/working late at the same time?

Better in which way? Genuinely interested - I've never heard that before

Hello! I am a stay at home parent to my 15 month old. I had an £150k job and saved for years (not scrimped) I enjoyed my money and lifestyle. I also bought 2 London properties when still a bit young.(27 and 32) My husband earns twice more. We have no mortgage on our joint property (south london) I am living off my mat pay - didn’t use any of it whilst on mat leave and I got full pay for 6 months and my rental income. We too had the discussion about work, I went back and felt after waiting nearly 8 years to have her I would rather be home with her! We make it work by having saved separately for it before. She goes to preschool when she is 3 annd the plan is to go back to work( as I do like to work i just like her more) . I work in a profession where this would be possible in the future.

(private practice) I know it’s hard to balance work/financial with parental responsibilities.

Erm, nope. We travel around each other. We’ve always worked full time and never used paid childcare. No family support either.

Maybe but unlikely unless somehow there’s serious cash. Inheritance or whatever.

Ok, well obviously you know that not all jobs are the same? DH and I used to work in the same industry. We travelled when told, at short notice. We couldn’t ’travel around each other’. Glad it works for you, it didn’t work for us.
I’m not actually a SAHP, but we couldn’t have both worked in the same roles we worked in pre children without leaving our kids alone overnight when told to travel 🤷🏻‍♀️