to all those that have, drastically changed their lifstyles to become sahms, how did you achieve it?

[milkgoddess]

hi, i really really do not want to return to work in june. i like my job and its pays quite well,but i want to be with dd until shes at least five.
living our current lifestyle, there is a shortfall of £200 a month on dh money alone, i want to be with dd so badly im willing to do anything.
so far ive thought of, just getting into debt for 4 years, i think it would add upto about 2400x3 so 5200 overall, which once i started working again when dd is at school it wouldnt take long to pay back, although of course i would have to pay interest.

we live in an expensive house in an expensive area, we could move about 3 miles away from here, and buy say a 3 bedhouse and have almost no morgage, and although this area isn't as nice as here, its still nice with a nice large park and shops and pubs etc.

we alrady car share and i make food go a long way!

i would even move to a holiday camp mobile home if thats what it took.

what would you do?
move? take on bit of debt for 4 years ?
we are lucky we have no other debts at the moment, other than morgage.

what have you done to enable you to say home? and what would you do in this situation?

Good ideas Xenia, espcially the cutting back ones which can make a real difference if you are disciplined.

just thought of another idea, baby massage classes or music classes or something? they charge £40 for 5 sessions round here
i could make a bit of money that way.

also i am a good cook, but i do not know how i would make money out of that

Are you a good cook in an 'fill a non-cooking/busy woman's freezer' or as in a 'I can come to your house and produce a delicious dinner party for 8'? type way?

Make home made fudge and sweeties/cakes and biscuits and sell them at farmer's market?

Although for both of those you may need a H&S checked kitchen.

milkgoddess- I hope you find a way. I was where you are 8 years ago when I had to go back to work after DD was born. I didn't want to. I didn't want to so much that I cried myself to sleep night after night and I ended up with depression. But no matter how I looked at it there was no way I could manage it. I worked full-time and I earned nearly twice as much as DH. My employers helped me out by letting me work at home out of school hours but it was only a compromise. I really wanted to be at home. I'm fine now ... I went part-time after DS#2 was born and things are OK but I still have wobbly patches.

Anyway...I will stop rambling. If you can possibly manage it, do it! Working unwillingly when you want to be at home with your DC is awful. £200 is not a huge amount. Is there nothing you can do to make it up? Evening or weekend work? Sorry. Not much help but I sympathise

I haven't tried the drastic lifestyle change to be a SAHM but I think life as a working parent is a drastic lifestyle change anyway compared to working pre-children and I have these gloomy thoughts to throw into the debate.

Will you not be planning to have any more children ? If you do intend to have more you need to plan for the £200/month deficit to go on for longer than just when your dd reaches 5.

The sum of money you have worked out as repayable failrly quickly is presumably based on you going back to work in the same sort of role from which you are currently are on maternity leave. Five years out of the workplace might make that return less achievable (there's plenty of ladies who can confirm this fact) and there'll still be the school day to fit round and school holidays to cover. If your dd has had you at home with her until she is 5 would it be a bit of a shock for her system to be in wraparound care and holiday club when other classmates are at home with mummy after school/school holidays.

Could you go back to work and stay just long enough to save up the £5,000 you need to supplement your dh's income until your dd is 5. Then you can quit having a)tried the life of a working parent and b) with money to make up the monthly deficit for a year or so.

Phoenix Cards or Usborne Book selling can be good as you can get yourself a few toddler groups or schools and take your DD with you.

If you like cooking maybe you would enjoy selling the Pamper Chef stuff in the evenings or at day time events?

If you are really stuck I would down-size if it is a viable possibility and would cover the short fall without leaving you living in a shoe box! I think if you are young enough, I would remortgage and extend the term of the mortgage to reduce the mortgage repayments. We have taken a mortgage holiday and reduced our payments at the moment so that DH can start a business but later in the year when I am working a bit again and DH's business is well underway we plan to overpay to get back on track.

Bear in mind also that although you are £200 short now, DH will probably get a pay rises in the future which will make up some of the short fall.

I hope you manage to find a way because they don't stay little for long.

Ebay ? Amazon ?

I'm a sahm. We had a fairly serious cashflow problem for most of last year. Dh is self employed, and while he was owed a lot, it wasn't all coming in in a timely way ! I was amazed at how much money i clawed back by selling things we didn't need any longer; OK not straight profit, but just getting back a fair amount of cash - up to £100+ during quite a few weeks - by selling my used pushchairs, other nursery items and good quality children's clothing. similarly with amazon - lots of mass market books CDs etc sell for 1p + postage, but look along your shelves, check out what you could get for any that are perhaps less mass market and you could be surprised. I bought packaging materials cheaply from Staples. i still sell occasionally if there's something specific to be rid of, but no longer to the same extent.

I think it would be better not to count on pay rises as inflationery ones will be to cover inflationary increases in the cost of living and interest rate rises which may occur in the next 5 years.

If you buy anything over the internet or are thinking of changing your gas/electric/phone/mobile/car insurance etc then you should definitely sign up to:

www.topcashback.co.uk and also www.quidco.com, I've made £300 odd in the last 6 months just for doing all my usual shopping online but clicking through those sites first - you get either a lump sum (eg I got £60 for changing gas company and £90 for changing insurance - I kid you not!) or you get a percentage of your spend back. It won't take the place of a job, but it's free money, and can all add up.

We moved - the only way we could have stayed in London was if I went back to my full-time, full-on job. And even then, money would have been tight.

So we downshifted to a small town in the south-west. We have a house that would have cost a fortune in London, here we hardly have a mortgage. So we can survive on DH's salary - haven't needed to eat into my savings too much yet.

By downshifting, we've also saved tons - as Xenia said, you don't need lattes. I have time to cook from scratch for every meal, we will be growing veg soon. I spend far less on clothes and general 'treats' to make up for working. And I don't miss very much at all - it did help that I was heartily sick of my job though.

And I'll probably make £4k or so via eBay this year, but that's a bonus, and keeps me entertained.

vonsudenfed what do you sell on ebay?

Um, we specialise in one kind of collectables, about which we know a reasonable amount. So we can pick up things that are badly described, or under-valued on eBay in comparison to other places.

But this year we've had an absolute windfall - a huge and undervalued lot - which we are selling through a couple of the big auction houses. I think we'll be lucky to make £1k in every other year!

Hope you don't mind the evasiveness, but it's a small market, and we're also collectors, so don't want everyone piling in!

No no, that's a clear answer! Didn't want to know the EXACT things, just the general idea iyswim.

I'm wanting to up my ebaying, that's why i was interested.

2 more from me, Mystery Shopping (we are PR agents for a major one, can't believe I didn't mention it before, duh!)

Also Ciao, filling in on-line questionnaires and getting paid for it (yes, we are their PR agency also!)

If you're a pharmacist, why can't you work Saturdays? Even a morning shift 4 times a month would surely bring in £200. Also won't you have to keep up your professional development to keep registered? It would be good for your dh to have some one to one time with your dd. He could take her swimming and by the time he's given her lunch you could be home.

thats a great idea from Mog, I was thinking the same thing

you wouldn't miss out on much family time and your dh would probably love the time alone with his dd

She said earlier she didn't want to work evenings and weekends.

I must admit if I was a qualified pharmacist I'd rather sacrifice one weekend morning rather than faffing around with lots of pyramid selling schemes or setting up my own business for what might turn out to be only a few hundred pounds per month?

hi, well i suppose i just want to do something, that doesn't feel like work! iykwim?
i do not really enjoy being a pharmacist to be honest,i feel like im in som kind of pill factory!chcking script after script. also when doing locuming work you often have to travel upto an hour away. i was hoping to do something like another postr suggested delivering papers while out on my daily walks.
delivering mail in my local area would be perfect, although im not sure royal mail would employ me just to work where i live.

as you can tell our beloved dd, was a happy suprise, so we didn't have much chance to save, im not regretting spending as much as 10k a year on holidays, why oh why wasn't i more sensible with money before i had dd.
we don't even have a pension fgs

now regretting ,not not regretting

We've made some changes to survive on one income, too, milkgoddess.
I'm a freelance copywriter, so I worked from home - a few hours each week in the evenings and at weekends - from when ds was about 6 months until dd was born when ds was 19 months. But that was just extra money, really.
We moved to a cheaper area, but had to because our flat was too small. Could you remortgage? We pay an interest only mortgage which we will continue to do until the middle of next year - it reduces our monthly payments by about £200. Or, you could increase your mortgage slightly to incorporate the extra money you need. If you have a lot of equity in your home you will probably be able to get something quite flexible - it would certainly be cheaper than moving, and you can stay in your nice area with (presumably) better schools.
I would fix up an appointment with an Independent Financial Adviser and go from there.
Enjoy being an SAHM - I wouldn't go back to working in an office for anything. In fact, the way I cheer myself up when I'm having a bad day with the children is to imagine myself sitting at my old desk... bleurgh!

www.moneysavingexpert.com
I think someone mentioned him earlier..
you may find that although you can't save all of the £200 a month you may be able to find a chunk of it.

Believe me, when you have 2 or more children you will welcome a routine job that pays really well.
I would heavily suggest that you keep your pharmacy career going on a very part-time basis. Anything else that's been suggested is going to get just as boring in the long term.
Also would champion letting dh bear some of the childcare responsibilities. Better for the whole family in the long run.

tutoring? your chemistry should be good enough for A level tutoring if you brush up a bit.

I work on a freelance occasional basis, so some months I do one day a week, some months nothing, some times a week in block. We make up the childare to fit with this between dh, best friend and 2 childminders. seesm to work so far. ( boy is 2) I enjoy the level of work,I'm keping my hand in, and enjoy being SAHM most of the time.