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 was a sahm mum about 18-22 years ago so my experience may not be relevant now.
But DH earned well above average at the time probably around 60k ish .
There was also nowhere near as much help towards childcare costs.
We had an old car, went on camping or caravan holiday once a year often drove to france or stayed uk , didnt fly. We didnt really eat out, rarely had take aways .
House and furniture was a bit scruffy, not a lot of any spare money. If washing machine needed replacing or car bill came in it was a disaster .And we had debt. No savings.
So it was very tight financially
not a utopia and DH earned more than your DH but also was barely present as worked long hours and not much annual leave (and he didnt always take it all)
I did start my own business that I could do flexibly round DC to bring in extra income.
But i did love being at home with DC

You said that 200k in the North is very different from the SE implying that somehow costs in all of the SE were enormous…. Actually what’s happened is you’ve chosen a crazily expensive house, a paid for school and a bizarre place to live with transport costs I’ve never heard of being so high. None of that has anything to do with it being the SE and everything to do with your choices.

You could also do all of that in the North and be skint if you chose to commute from Leeds to Liverpool everyday, buy a £3m house in Linton and send your child to bloody Queen Ethelberger’s.

Agree. My DH is about to start earning the same and it's an eye opener bc whilst we're very lucky to be comfortable, it doesn't afford the lifestyle id always assumed...at least not in the SE.
We can afford for me to be a SAHP but I was only working 14hrs at min wage.

I earn £49000 a year. We have a £700 mortgage and have £600 outgoings.... We also have 2 holidays a year. I don't feel that we struggle and we have some personal training sessions and do go out once a month. Hubby has PIP- £400 per month and he stays at home, and child benefit tops it up slightly as well....

I don’t think having nice stuff is better than spending time with DC. Going back to work after mat leave wasn’t primarily about being to afford treats etc. That was just one aspect. For me it was about future planning. It meant that my earning power gradually increased over the years which today gives me choices and ultimately benefits my DC. I have a good deal of flexibility and autonomy in my role now and WFH is almost every day so I’m around for my DC who are now 10 and 12. I earn roughly £140k but actually work fewer hours than I did when I earned half as much.

Would my DC have benefitted more if I’d been at home when they were younger rather than now as they approach teenage years? I’ll never know but on balance I think I made the right decision for my family.

I couldn’t comfortably stay at home dependent on my someone else’s money. It’s not a criticism or SAHP’s, it’s just a personal preference. As said, I know many parents feel differently and I have friends who are/were SAHM’s and could not understand why I gave up spending time with my children in order to work.

It boggles my mind that a family needs more than that to support a SAHM. It's all about priorities and lifestyle expectations.

Didn't you make the most of having decent mat pay being a teacher? My friends who are teachers all went back for like two weeks or something, then holidays would come up and then they'd go back to work - at about 10/11 months.
And as I said, my friend discovered working 5 days would have gained her £20 a week so wasn't worth it to go back full time! 3 days seemed to be about the best 'value' if you call it that.

But yeah I barely know anyone. I mean yes a few people. But nearly everyone works part time if they work. I know a couple of nurses and midwives and they all seem to do 2 shifts a week.

Yeah but that's to support one adult, not two.

I just don't think many families would willingly have one of them as a SAHP (unless some kind of medical issue with them or child) if they were on 40k or less.

To be fair to the poster its very normal to cost that much in transport to get to work in the SE if you're not on TFL and getting the train in. I used to commute to London from one of the most popular commuter locations and it was about £4k a year on the train. So I would guess is probably is about £7k now. A train ticket into London is about £50 return peak time. Hence why I don't do it anymore!!

But I agree - of course you can do nails if you're getting £200k!

We do. We live in an affordable area up north and have a basic lifestyles. My husband earns less than that. We are entitled to some UC/child benefit, but even combined, income is still much less than 44k. It's tight, but we manage fine. Clothes from charity shops. Home cooked meals. Closely managed weekly budget.

We are willing to make the sacrifices and take the hit so that I can stay home. It's as simple as that

Also - not everyone can afford to go back to work. Before the 30 hours funded hours for 9 months old came in, it would literally cost a lot of women more money to go back to work, than to be a SAHM.

Yeah most of the women I know, would not be entitled to UC because they have mortgages, savings etc which are too high. So going back full time and paying thousands in childcare each month as babies meant it wasn't worth it especially if you have more than 1 child. It was better money wise to go part time or stop work for a while. One mum had twins and the nursery fees would have been more than her wage - and she was in a decent job.

I don't think there is any shame in it. But for example my daughter has two uni holder days booked. There both quite far away - one in the North and one in the South, obviously she doesn't have a loan yet so I will be doing one and her Dad the other. It's already adding up, even with a student rail card coming home is going to be expensive. I really don't want her to have to choose local to save money either.

That's fair enough. It's totally your choice and as long as your happy, that's all that matters!

I still think it's temporary though and fees come out of the household income not just mum's. Much better for the whole family if mum has a good job and earning capacity especially once they're at school and it definitely slows things down if you take time out. I earn nearly double the salary now that I did when ds was born (he's 7), I wouldn't have been on that same promotion track if I'd dropped out until he went to school. I also get more flexibility I think as someone who has been there throughout, than someone looking for a new job with his that suit or can flex.

Agreed. My package is over 4 times that of what I was on when DD (15) was born.

ETA, it’s utterly depressing that still, in 2026, it’s the woman that is assumed to be the one paying for childcare. Aside from being sexist, it hides the many additional benefits of work including employer pension contributions and studies show that children with working mums do better later in life too.

Of all the costs associated with going to university I think travel to and from is not one of the significant ones. Coaches are pretty reasonable. In my day most people only went home during the holidays.

If she gets the coach it can cost <£20 for a return. Trains are the boogie option. Also they’re the least of her uni costs… the £5-10k in rent will be the major worry. Most people I know at uni (I’m a current mature student) have jobs - some work 4 days a week.

Except paying £50 a day, 5 days a week minus 35 days holiday is almost £12,000 a year. Not £7k, not £4k, 12k each. So they spend £24k a year just on the train? I don’t know anyone who would do that they would move somewhere that didn’t have those cost. My train and then tube into London costs £16 a day and takes around 85mins.

@StrawberryJamAndRaspberryPie our brains are on the same wavelength 😁

Either 1 high earner, or from what I’ve seen a couple in rented, where one parent (usually dad) works a low wage and claiming Universal credit too ups which brings them up to equivalent of 2 full time wages.

Of the two SAHMs I know:

1. They don't go on holiday, don't go out, don't eat out, make their own clothes, grow veg on the land. Inheritance paid off mortgage.

1. The husband is a director. I don't know how much he earns but most likely more than £44k.

Some of the uni open days we went to offered money towards travel if you had travelled over a certain distance.

I do know a SAHM who has kids at uni, they have lived a comfortable lifestyle (including getting nails done!) from the looks of it, although no fancy holidays, but she said she was going to speak to the bank of mum and dad regarding uni (eg grandparents)
Even if you get a maximum maintenance loan it doesnt cover rent and living expenses in a lot of areas. My DD has a job but its a zero hours contract so some weeks she gets no shifts.

It’s because getting a season ticket brings the costs down. But if you work from home half the week etc then the normal ticket is around £50. it’s got complicated with hybrid working!

I used to work with lots of people who lived in London outer zones and took just as long as me to get home because once you get to Paddington/Euston/Liverpool st etc the trains out are fast with low amount of stops.

Well, you don’t move house because moving into outer or central London costs way more on housing than an extra £7k.

But in some cases such as a multiple birth or kids close together, who would go back to work for 5 years knowing that they are basically earning nothing as it’s all going straight to a nursery and you could be at home with the children you wanted. Not very motivating!
I know you can imagine it going out of a household pot but if you don’t go to work then it doesn’t need paying..
Plus a lot of people don’t care about promotions etc they’d rather spend time with their children. Or would go part time to keep their hand in so to speak, but money wise it works better. Also it’s not as temporary if you have more than one child, it could drag on for years!