SAHM: how much does spouse have to earn to make it work?

[Anonymous]

I am a SAHM in suburban Md (DC suburbs)

Our HHI is about 280k.

I had to quit my job when our eldest was in kindergarten because he would have gotten fired for taking time off to care for our kid when he got sick. He is a healthy child with a normally functioning immune system. My employer wasn’t accommodating of this either, but I took the fall because I made less. The first year I was a SAHM was 2012.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is your husband missing work to care for the baby too? Are you using backup care options? This shouldn’t all fall on you.

Not realistic for all employers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

If you’re the working husband and you’re pissed that your wife wants to stay home and take care of your children rather than amass half a million dollars per kid for their college fund, it’s because you’re pretending you care about the college fund when in reality you want to protect your own paycheck/assets for the inevitable divorce that you know is coming down the road when you get bored of your wife and want some strange.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH makes 800k now and I still work. I’ve told myself that once he makes 1mm, I’m out of here. We have a lot of expenses (private school, travel, mortgage).

FWIW I quit when DH was around there and I was surprised by how many expenses (especially convenience taxes) evaporated when I was home to mind the budget. It didn't burn nearly as much as you'd think... and I was making $300k so nothing to sneeze at.

Well $150k went to taxes right off the top.

Same--when I worked, 50% went directly to taxes.

Sad country where we penalized the success

Taxes aren’t a penalty, loser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

Less than 1% of families would fully fund private college and all of grad school.

[Anonymous]

For us, it was around 120k. At the time, we had student loans, and we rented a small apartment. We figured out that to make working worth it (for me, I’m mom), given daycare/childcare costs, I’d need to pull in at least 80k…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

Can't you see the huge difference between needing 2 salaries to pay for rent/mortgage, utilities, and food, and keeping the second salary just in case a kid has extra needs or don't get scholarships/fellowships for any part of their up to 7 years of college + grad school? I mean, none of the things you listed are guaranteed to occur.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

I feel so sorry for your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

I feel so sorry for your kids.

Not PP, but please, stop with this patronizing, fake "feel sorry for your kids" nonsense. It's totally reasonable for one spouse to want the other spouse to work in order to meet important financial goals like fully funding college and extra kid activities. By the time the kids are in school, there's not a lot of difference between working moms and SAHMs in the amount of time they get to spend with their kids, anyway. More stress for the working parents to get it all done, definitely - but worth it to be able to meet financial goals, if those require two incomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

I feel so sorry for your kids.

Because they're not a SAHM? I feel sorry for your kids being raised by such a miserable biaatch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

I feel so sorry for your kids.

Because they're not a SAHM? I feel sorry for your kids being raised by such a miserable biaatch.

+1!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

I feel so sorry for your kids.

Okay, sanctimommy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These posts are insane. We are a dual income household comfortably living on $200k total. We could probably live on 1 income without daycare expenses. It’s all about your lifestyle and trade offs.

I'm guessing you will not have fully funded college plus grad school for each kid ($70k * 7 years= $500k per kid at least), and if any of your kids have extra educational needs, you won't be able to switch to private school or hire tutors. Also presumably no sleep away camps.

Fine that you don't want those things, but if I'm the working husband, I'd be pretty pissed if my wife insisted on staying home and we couldn't afford those things.

I feel so sorry for your kids.

Because they're not a SAHM? I feel sorry for your kids being raised by such a miserable biaatch.

Bet one of them will be a SAHM. Kids can tell when they are not the priority. Money for grad school means nothing to a 7 year old.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People can lol at the comments about $800k not being enough (it probably would be for us), but here's the thing: If someone is making $800k, they probably work a lot and have a pretty high stress job. You go down to one income, and while you definitely have a nice life still, you don't have a "rich" life where you don't have to worry about costs. If you have two kids, $800k does not pay for 13 years of private school plus college and grad school and summer camps, plus a couple expensive vacations every year. So you have one person working the life of a high income person and making the money of a high income person, but with only one income you're not actually in the income bracket where money doesn't matter. And as someone who makes that kind of money myself (as does DH), i can tell you that the idea of putting this insane level of effort into my job for the next twenty years isn't doable. At some point (soon) both of us need to downshift. If you have another person making $250k (pretty normal in HCOL city if one spouse makes $800k; eg dual lawyers where one is a fed), now you have that extra money to pay for the schools and camps and all the extra stuff.

So yes of course $800k is more than enough to have a sahm. But it's not rolling in it money. And if i'm the spouse working hard enough to make $800k, i'd like to be rolling in it.

I come from a middle class family (and I mean actual middle class, not DCUM middle class) - and from the type of place where hitting 100K salary means you have MADE IT BIG.

Serious question:

What do all of you actually DO that warrants these 500k+ salaries? I honestly cannot wrap my brain around it. And if possible (if you feel like answering) please avoid using corporate jargon catchphrases that don’t actually impart any meaningful information to those of us outside the know.

I'm a private sector attorney. My billing rate for my very niche, high skill area is $1575 an hour. People pay me that to be available to them for a lot of hours every week. So do the math on what my revenue is per year. Overhead and other costs get paid out of that too, so I don't see it all.

In DC, I have many friends in the federal govt with "mommy track" lawyer and nonprofit jobs making $220-250k. So two feds or comparable nonprofit jobs easily get you to HHI of $400-$500k. That's why people claiming $700k is some bizarre hyper wealthy upper class salary are living in a fantasy world. Yes, if you look at the US as a whole, and look at people of all earning ages, $500k is a very high salary. But if you look at people ages 38-52 (basically, the group this thread is about) in HCOL cities (SF, NY, DC, LA) with college degrees..... it's pretty run of the mill UMC.

DH has a group of buddies from his college fraternity. Public school in the south, back when it was easy to get in. None of them are rocket scientists, none did STEM degrees (lots of "business" and history degrees). But by their mid 40s, the whole group of 7 guys live in HCOL cities and makes in the $300-$700k range. Women (especially ones trying to justify staying home) use national data to undervalue themselves so frequently. "Oh the average household income is only $45k! We're rich at $100k!" Without acknowledging that average HHI includes unemployed students and the 35% of americans that are retired. If you actually look at full time working people in the middle of their careers (not early years, where it's common to make crap, and not later years where people start to do a lot of non-job jobs), people with true "careers" rather than "jobs" generally make a lot more money than a lot of women would like to believe.

This is such bullshit. My siblings and I all went to Holton-Arms or Landon, where the richest of the rich send their kids. We know LOTS of former classmates making individually in the $80-$140K range. The idea that $700K is the norm if you were UMC or went to college is totally false.

You must only know duds. Or those who chose fake jobs while living on their parents' dole. Any middle of the road corporate is paying new college grads $90k for their first year out of college this year.

Wow, so someone who isn't trying to scrape and claw for the absolute most money they can get is a “dud”? Nice values.