Do I/is it even possible to be a SAHM?

[bzarda]

My baby is 4 months and I cannot imagine leaving her. I love staying at home with her, going to baby classes and taking her for walks. I cannot imagine going back to work but I also don't see how financially people make things work?

I'm a teacher (HOD) earning 54k. Husband also a teacher earning 47k. I want to go down to 3 days a week, but with nursery costing £1050 a month, is it even worth it?
I'm basically wanting opinions on if it gets easier leaving them over time and if financially it would be possible to give up work completely or if I should try to stick it out 3 days a week?

You can do a extended career break where the LA keep your job open for you for up to 5 years.

Can you live on your husbands wage?

It does get easier to leave them over time. A 12 month old is very different to a 4 month old.

Speaking from experience, if you go to 3 days a week and keep your HoD role, you will end up doing a full time job in part time hours. Unless there is the chance to just be a classroom teacher, but even then it can be hard to prevent the job from expanding over the part time hours.

As your DH is the lower earner, would it not make more sense for him to go to 3 days a week? Or both of you to 4 days?

Financially, it's clearly still worth it as your take home pay on 3 days is still likely to be around £2k per month, correct? Likewise, from the perspective of maintaining your own pension and NI contributions and keeping your foot in the door career-wise, if that's something you value.

Yes it gets easier as they get older. 4months is so little and I remember thinking the same thing. Dc started nursery at 14 months and I was ready as she was exhausting and I needed to get my brain working.

I went back part time (3 days) and it worked really well. Financially it will be worth it. You can apply for tax free childcare and maybe try and find a nursery or child minder who will do TTO or half retaining costs in school holidays.

Hello OP, I felt the same as you when my son was 4 months old and I stayed at home with him until he was 20 months old. It was definitely tough surviving on my partners salary alone, but I imagine it would be different if you were the higher earner (I wasn't, so there wasn't as massive financial impact as there could have been). Even so, we had to be frugal and make sacrifices but equally we didn't want to do holidays abroad or anything like that when baby was young (ventured to Wales a couple of times, that was it).

I now work 3 full days per week and my son goes to nursery 2 full days, then the 3rd day is looked after by my parents. So our monthly nursery costs are £600, and after that comes out of my salary, I am still taking £1,200 home. I am really happy with that - if he was the 3rd day in nursery too then obviously that would eat into that amount even more. So it depends if you have any family support there to help make things more affordable.

I would say that - as time goes on, and your little one becomes more mobile and energetic, you might feel differently about leaving them. I absolutely adore spending time with my son but I definitely reached a point where a full day with him -day in day out - was tiring me out and draining me a little. It felt good to return to work. I cherish my days off with him, and he loves nursery now. I'm happy he gets to go there 2 days a week, do the activities he does and plays with the other children.

So it really depends on your financial situation, your outgoings etc, your priorities - whether you would have enough left each month to be comfortable with only one salary or a part time salary. We have a relatively small mortgage and live in a tiny cottage - things would have been very different if we had added pressure of bills etc and the cost of living increases.

Four months old they are easy to look after. At 19 months like my son you will be wishing for a break. Personally I would wait to make such an important decision.

This is the dilemma I've got too, I've got a 1 year old and just can't imagine leaving him. We have such good fun together, also I like getting the house chores done so when my DH is off then he can just play with our son and its lovely at lunch that we can have lunch together as my DH works from home.
To be clear DH does do some house work.

My thoughts:

Honestly almost no mother wants to leave their 4 month old baby to go to work (of course there are some exceptions but by and large). But most mothers are much happier to do so once their child is a charging about toddler. So give it some time.

Run your salary through the tax calculators - dropping a day or two when you're paying higher rate tax costs less than you think.

Are there other options - e.g supply teaching or tutoring?

Hi OP,

Ex-teacher now very happy SAHM here, we have made it work with ease financially over the past 7 years, my DH is a UPS 1 teacher, so very similar salary to your DH.

Things that helped us achieve this:

• We stuck with our first time home (3 bed, 1 bathroom), which means our mortgage and bills are cheaper.
• We share 1 car (everything is walkable for both of us).
• We switched to food shopping at ALDI and to non-branded items for majority of food, cleaning products, personal care products, etc.
• We do 1 main holiday a year, more often UK.
• I instantly stopped things like paying to get my nails & lashes done and found a very cheap hairdresser who comes to our home.
• My DH cancelled his gym membership and runs outside for free.
• We can still afford paid swimming lessons, days out for our children. Everything goes on them 😊
• I buy ahead in sales for all occasions regularly (eg I do a huge stock up on Dec 27th/28th for birthday party gifts, Mother’s Day, the following Xmas 😂).
• Picnics and a flask are your friends!

I haven’t missed any of the stuff we used to spend money on because I was so motivated to be at home. I have more time to wash our car, do painting & decorating/DIY, so we’ve saved there too.

It would be worth going through every single bill, outgoing and really questioning how essential is each? Can any switches/savings be made? How much do each of you value/would miss each thing?

Wishing you the best of luck and happiness whatever you decide to do 😊

As an ex teacher who is a SAHM/carer these days, I'd take your full mat leave and see if you could go back full time with maybe two early finishes per week?

I worked as a teacher until my oldest was 8 so do have experience of teaching and being a mum with childminder/nursery runs etc.

You do still get the holidays off with the children which is lovely.

If full time plus child becomes too much, then apply for a reduction in hrs/go to prt time.

Just a few things I'd do if I had my time again:

1.weekly cleaner non negotiable.

1. Car cleaned once a half term.
2. Fornightly gardener to mow etc.
3. Dont have a pet/more than one pet.
4. Online shop delivery each week.

4.cut the crap and lose the guilt over stuff like sending Xmas cards/ironing everything/any mum guilt/anytjing else silly and time consuming.