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?

I think it depends on how necessary you consider things like holidays, new clothes, makeup, latest tech/car are to you. You could make it work as a SAHM on that salary but you’d have to get very savvy with your food shopping and other bills. For example, I make everything (even bread) from scratch and freeze it all. We have next to zero food waste and we eat extremely well on a small budget. We take pack lunches and do lots of walks and adventures. It’s a lifestyle I love but I have friends who would hate to live like I do as they prioritise different things to me. From what you have said, you’d have around £1400 a month after the mortgage and bills are paid which is loads to me and you could very easily afford to be at home with that to cover food and activities.

Two adults on full time minimum wage would bring in more income after tax - and is that now considered a high income to support a family in some areas?

No not in uk.

I had no choice as I couldn’t do hospital shifts using nursery hours, and DH worked away. We bought a house we could afford on his wage only as we knew this is what would have to happen if we wanted kids. There were no holidays for the first few years and we only bought what we needed.

Well your situation isn't really helpful to the conversation then (unless you had said you were not in the UK and it could have served as a comparison of cost of living).

I was a SAHM for three years and we lived off one teacher's salary. We could only do it because my (wealthy and generous) parents bought my house outright, so we had no rent or mortgage to pay. And we both had good savings before I gave up work.

Well yeah it is because broadly speaking the ability to be a sahm depends on the same factors, and costs here are very similar to the UK. I don’t pay council tax, but I do pay more tax so it’s almost the same.

It's not a lower standard of living to not have regular beauty treatments or holidays if they are not important to you though. We have high standard of living for US. Big house, no money worries, buy what we want. Never budget for food or heating etc. But we don't go on holidays, have many clothes, go out fur dinner much...... Because those things aren't important to us. We spaff money on cars...... As said many times, it always depends on what your priorities are.....

We always said the house and kids private school came first.... Then essential bills, then everything else.

Yes I agree. We have a high household income (c.£200k). I’ve never had a beauty treatment in my life (bar hair trims)! Not because we can’t afford it, but because it’s not something I’ve ever felt the need or desire for.

Either the WOHP earns more than your DH does.

Or the SAHP has such low earning power that the cost of childcare cancels out any financial benefit of working.

Or they choose to live a much more frugal lifestyle.

Or they have family money or investments etc that mean that they don't need to rely on income from work alone.

Because not everyone has so many expenses or a large mortgage.

That was the case when I stayed at home for a year. My husband did not have a high-paying job.

I mean, your second line nails it.

Round here the husbands would be working on financial services on 6 figures. But very long hours would be expected.

I'm actually on about that as a 0.8 FTE teacher in central London and the second earner. We don't have a big mortgage though.

Whereas I know barely anyone in my circle who didn't go back full time. I've been promoted 3 times since ds was born 7 years ago. My salary far outstrips nursery costs which are only temporary anyway. The school mums who didn't go back or didn't go back full time were generally in very low paid/nmw type jobs and their husbands are not high earners so I wonder if they get some kind of UC. I grew up very poor but everyone's mum worked, things like nights in a supermarket, a couple of evenings bar work once dad was home from work, cleaning jobs during school hours etc. lots had multiple part time jobs to juggle. No childcare support then either.

Started off great - dh had his own business that was going well, and being a sahm was easily affordable. Then recession started to bite hard. His business had lots of work coming in but was struggling with cash flow and the bank would only loan what we could match. All our savings were loaned to the company and his salary was slashed. We had two under three and another on the way.

I watched every penny - the oven went on once a week. We shut rooms in winter to save heat, and the dc shared a bedroom. My “hobby” was growing food in our garden, and knitting. Everything was second hand. I cut everyone’s hair but his. He kept up appearances because that mattered for work.

Wouldn’t have got buttons for my car, but I only drove it once a week to get groceries and visit granny for the day which was the highlight of the week for her and the dc.

We couldn’t afford coffee mornings and baby groups - just the park, beach and library. They played out in the garden a lot, in all weather. I used to buy and then resell rain gear, and wellies. It cost pennies. We had no tv, no licence fee and no subscriptions. Everything was cooked from scratch and I knew the price per kg of everything. We made paper decorations for occasions, lit candles, set the table with a cloth, and barely ever ate out.

The one stroke of luck was a tracker mortgage which made a big difference. We had the space so could have taken on a lodger but we were holding back on that. The fact that it was an option, helped us feel like we weren’t quite on the edge. When the eldest started school, I took on some child minding.

I’d do it all again. It was the best of times. I’m saying that looking back and forgetting about the anxiety because it all came good. But if you’re both willing to cut your cloth to make it work, on a stable income, it’s doable.

DH is a senior registrar in ICU and I’m a SAHM to our autistic 4yo and baby. I think he earns about 80k. Our mortgage is around 1700£ a month. He also has to pay for exams (around 700£ a time) , insurance, royal college fees, GMC fees etc. His student loan repayments are grim and because of interest it only ever goes up in total each year.

None of his colleagues have a stay at home partner, and none of our friends do. It’s unusual. It works because he has a good salary and because we don’t have luxuries. Kids clothes are hand me downs from my nephews , we don’t buy nice clothes for ourselves, I don’t get hair and nails done, DH drives a beaten up very old small car… our biggest expenditures after household/professional bills are things like 1:1 SEN swim lessons and lots and lots of strawberries for DS as it’s one of his safe foods (25£ a week this time of year 😭)

Also relevant - DS has only ever been in nursery 9 hours a week so not paying through the roof for childcare.

Also we food shop at Lidl/aldi (although it’s noticeably going up in price) and DH batch cooks each week and we eat the same dinner about 4 nights in a row… it’s tedious !! But I couldn’t go back to work as a hospital doctor with the bonkers rota with our SEN DS

We managed like this so I could be a SAHM.

It's must be lifestyle and reducing costs.
I'm a single parent and earn a lot more than your H. There is no way I could agree to support an adult partner. My adult daughter of 18yrs is off to Uni in September, she's going to get the minimum loan due to my wage and I'm very much trying to put together a plan for how we (her and I) will pay for it. Thankfully she's savvy enough to of saved her earnings from her gap year.
How do people on one wage with kids going to university manage? Do they just take bigger loans?

They earn more. My DH earned 20 times more than me so when I had my second in my 40s, we decided that rather than me paying to work (childcare for both kids in London was more than my day rate), I gave up work.

DH isn’t a SAHP but he’s been between jobs for 8 months during which time I’ve been the sole earner. I earn £100k a year, DD is in school so no nursery fees and our mortgage isn’t unreasonably high - we should have been able to manage fine, but after bills & food shops, there’s not much left at all. So my answer is, I have no idea really 🤷🏻‍♀️

It’s also been quite overwhelming, for me anyway, when the financial buck stops with one person especially as the job market is weak right now. It took DH almost a year to find a new job, I felt pressure every single day not to lose my job, to work those late evenings, to not relax for a second. It has been wonderful for him to spend more time with DD but personally I’d take that second income over the extra admin & effort every day.

How do people on one wage with kids going to university manage? Do they just take bigger loans?

Yes. There's no shame in that.

My husband earns about £75k just now & i have been a sahm for 14 years. I gave up
up my career due to having 1 not long after losing my mum (dh family live abroad so no help) followed by twins & no family help. I didn’t want to do full time nursery & the twins were “difficult” with reflux. We would have been paying a lot in child care so i was worse of financially for a lot of stress but back then my husband was only on about £40k as he had not long started his business not sure how we managed it. It was tight, no fancy cars, no holidays for a few years & mortgage breaks etc. Planned to go back to work when they started school but then covid hit. I now volunteer to fill some days & do a lot in the school. They go to high school next year and i will need to return to some sort of paid work then for my own sanity as i never considered being out this long as i worked from 15. I had / have some savings & inheritance so have still contributed to our house. We now have holidays, slightly nicer cars & moved house a few years ago (smaller but more expensive and moved for the schools - we were in negative equity for years) house is £1400 a month & after all bills we have just over £2k for food, savings, kids clubs, diesel, clothes etc. we have private health cover too but he earns more than most of the families i know with 1 full time & 1 part time working family which is why it makes sense to me. Yes, i’d like more money by earning some but my husband works long hours & often has to to go to America & as i said we have no help at all & once my oldest is 16 & the others start high school i will then but it’s a different life now to how it was 10 years ago & i do remember stressing a lot about money then but not as much as i stressed leaving them. Living costs are higher now & given how tight it was back then we couldn’t have did it on that salary but as i wouldn’t if anything after paying for childcare i’m not sure how we would have coped but we had budgeted for me returning to part time working so had been saving and also we only expected 2 lots of childcare not 3 but the simple answer to your question is they have a higher earning husband than yours & ideally some money in the bank! Had i had my mum i would have returned part time but thats life & its worked out well for us now but was stressful (nearly broke us up at one point) and very hard initially and i don’t care whether people judge me for it. It is hard going at times & we’ve never claimed benefits either.

DH isn’t a SAHP but he’s been between jobs for 8 months during which time I’ve been the sole earner. I earn £100k a year, DD is in school so no nursery fees and our mortgage isn’t unreasonably high - we should have been able to manage fine, but after bills & food shops, there’s not much left at all. So my answer is, I have no idea really 🤷🏻‍♀️

Aren't you a bit embarrassed to have such a high household income yet have no idea why you are not managing?

I'm a lone parent, the buck stops with me. I was made redundant last year and it took me 2 months to find work. It's the reality for many people.

I didn’t have children until very late-not for that reason, but it turned out to be an unexpected benefit. I had excellent benefits and DP was very well paid.