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Moms, could you support you and your kids on your salary alone?
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Anonymous
| Yes- I make about 80,000 a year and I think I could do it. There would be no frills but I think I could do it. |
Anonymous
I am this PP- we would have to move out of our house, private school would not be an option without aid and like I said before no frills. |
Anonymous
| Yes - already the primary earner. But I would probably downscale a little bit - probably sell the second house, or move to a smaller house here just to cut down on maintenance. |
Anonymous
Thought I should add that I've intentionally made sure I am in a position to support myself so never considered staying home or becoming dependent on both salaries. |
Anonymous
| What have you done PP to make yourself recession proof? I was able to support my family of 4 on my income when my husband lost his job. Then I lost mine too. Luckily after 6 months of both us of being out of work, he found a new job but even with all of our savings, we still had to borrow money from family to get by. |
Anonymous
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"It would be incredibly rare for DH to just up and leave his kids - I'm not saying divorce is impossible but the whole nervous breakdown, disappearing, etc. is rare. First of all it is incredibly hard to disappear in this day and age - likely someone would track a deadbeat dad down.
We are not going to plan our lives around a very remote possibility. We've planned for death. We could deal with divorce. But we aren't going to live on 70K a year when we can live on more than that just because something might happen. " I agree with this. I think it's kind of silly to plan for such a remote possibility as the primary earner deciding nto to have anythign to do with his family and having no legal recourse. I don't have a plan for an asteroid destroying my car, either, or be being trampled by a runaway elephand that escaped from the circus. |
Anonymous
22;15 here, not sure if you are referring to me or all pp's. Anyway, I guess no one is recession proof. The only way we plan for that is to live below our means and have a lot of savings but it wouldn't last forever. I do consulting and could easily get independent projects if I lost my job and replace a good chunk of my income. The lack of benefits would be a problem. |
Anonymous
| Wow, all these people saying that they'd be able to support their families on just one income makes me wonder -- what is it about all those other people who say that they NEED both incomes to be able to pay the mortgage and buy food? |
Anonymous
Need both incomes to afford our mortgage and buy food. We could go outside of downtown DC, get a bigger place even, for much less. And I'm thinking we should consider that. I'm so hip that I don't have to be in the city to feel cool anymore... 
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Anonymous
I don't think the OP was suggesting anything about planning for this, we were just playing "what if..." |
Anonymous
I think part of it is that there are a lot of woman that are outearning their spouses. There was just an article about it. Also, lots of people would downsize their house some from a cost - others from a maintainence perspective. We spend a lot fixing up the house - that is where a lot of disposable income goes AND I hate yardwork. Since I had a townhouse before DH and I met (actually the sale proceeds helped buy this house), and was making half of what I make now, I could have easily afforded that mortgage with 1 child in daycare. I would be going back to townhouse living and at least my biggest gripe (only having one parking space for two cars) wouldn't be an issue since we would only have 1 car in that scenario. The other thing is from a commute perspective, I would need the kids to be closer to my job and our home to be very close to the job. Right now I can drop and pickup from preschool on my own, I have to because my husband travels for work - BUT it is brutal with the drop off, pickup, getting home to make dinner, wash up all the dishes and clean up, doing all the bedtime rituals etc., packing the lunch for the next day and then having to get up to do it all over again. We eat some fast food, and when I cook we don't eat until 7 on average and they are getting to bed close to 9pm. I would need to live close to my job, or be able to telecommute, or be able to reduce hours (but still at a level I could pay bills), so I could get home a lot earlier to make dinner with the kids and eat early enough so we don't have this mad evening dash of lots of things to get done in an hour (their bedtime should be 8-8:30). |
Anonymous
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Yes, I could, but I'd have to find a way to have a cheaper mortgage -- using savings to lower it, perhaps?
Silly question, though, to pretend you're not going to have child support, which, depending on your situation, can be significant. |
Anonymous
| I like to think my SO would at least have the decency to fake their own death if they were going to disappear, so I could get the insurance money. |
Anonymous
Same here - I would skip private school entirely, and downsize on our home. I'd sell our second property (the condo I bought before I got married), and since I don't spend much on myself to begin with, I think lifestyle with the kids would be about the same (just smaller home/mortgate). Actually, we'd save a lot less as well. |
Anonymous
Well, OK. But so many times I read on this or that thread that both parents are working because they HAVE to, in order to pay for things like housing, health insurance and food. People aren't working for the frills and extras, it really takes 2 incomes to keep a family afloat in the DC area. But if you read this thread, it sounds like most people are saying, they could absolutely live in DC on just their income. Their spouse's income is for the "extras". If they didn't have their spouse's income, they would do away with the frills, but they'd be fine. Maybe those are the only people who are responding to the question? Those of us who'd be up a creek if a spouse lost a job, maybe just aren't reponding to the question. |