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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a SAHM to 3 kids and homeschool. My husband makes 100k. We’re not big spenders and I had a good salary before becoming a SAHM, so I had savings to help pay down the mortgage. We live in Alexandria.

What’s your PITI?

[Anonymous]

I've been a SAHM and a WOHM mom. Now I kind of split the difference. But the most important thing is this: stay home because you WANT TO STAY HOME. Not because it makes life easier or whatever. It's not easier. Being a SAHM is a vocation and unless you really want to do it you'll be miserable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP many of us have been there, so know you are not alone.

First, that first year is brutal. The US is cruel that we don’t have longer maternity leave. But many of us would advise you not to make rash decisions. Unless you’re a nurse or teacher, it can be very difficult to re enter the same career, even after a couple years. It may be better to do a half ass job for a couple years and ride on the goodwill you generated pre kids, with the plan to change jobs for a fresh start once you’re more settled. Or to ask about PT or remote options. The pay may be barely break even for those more flexible jobs, but the upside is that when you’re ready to ramp up, you’re starting from a very different place than had you left the industry.

For me, I wouldn’t quit unless DH was making at least $700k. He makes that already (so do i) but we both keep working. Ours was never a goal of “what money do we need to pay the bills” but “what money do we need to ensure both of us have freedom to do the jobs we want and retire when we want”. I would never have been okay letting dh be in a job that adding only marginal savings to our retirement every year, knowing he’d have to do it for 45 years - if the alternative was I could materially contribute to retirement and we could both be retired by 50 or 55. Reality is that most women who decide to stay home do it both because they want to be with the kids but also because they don’t love working. Now imagine imposing that working on your spouse for the rest of their healthy lives. Just not cool with me.

Finally, I wouldn’t assume costs go down when you stay home. For typical UMC moms, they spend as much or more than the “work tax”. I worked very part time for two years after DS was born and hung out with the stay at home mom crew, and most days involved a mommy and me class and coffee, and there was a lot of time killing shopping (in person or online) because they had more time to worry about if baby had the right pair of arch supporting shoes, or tracking the fact that Janie and jack was having a sale, or just killing time at Target.

$700K is not UMC.. that is upper class. You are exhausting.

Sure, 10 years ago. The economy has been bonkers for 5 years though, and especially in the upper 20%. If you're measuring yourself relative to your peers (which is what UMC and UC are), $700k in a hcol city like DC is the equivalent of what $400-500k was 5 years ago. Which for a couple people in their 40s was not upper class then either. That's solidly UMC. If you and your spouse are both feds, and you missed that gravy train - sucks for you. But don't act like a combined HHI of $700k in DC is rich compared to your peers.

That's your opinion. You're entitled to it, but it doesn't mean you are right. Find me an objective calculator that defines $800k as UMC in DC. I'll wait.

[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.

Your friends in the federal gov have mommy track nonprofit jobs? You know that’s not a thing, right? The fed gov is not a nonprofit. I work in the private sector but know many highly educated hard working people who are GS-14s or at NIH or State and they are making around $150K in their mid-30s. There are not a bunch of mommy tracked women in the fed gov making $220-250K. There are actually very few women and men overall making that much in the fed gov. My husband and I are mid-30s HHI $800K and we are in the private sector. Tech and investment banking.

NP here. I think we all know what the pp meant. Mommy tracked feds, lawyers and people working in non profit. I know lots of these people as well. The dual flex job people who probably have a HHI of $250-400k. I think pp may be slightly off by 100k too high with 2 feds.

To answer OP’s question, I would need DH to earn 500k to stay home. I started staying home when he earned 800k. Now he earns $2m+. I have considered going back to work and then Covid happened. We have a high standard of living. If Dh earned only earned 150k, I would have gone back to work a long time ago.

A HHI of $250-300K for mid career dual income feds is very different from $400-500K, so the entire point of the post is undermined by that fact. PP’s point was it’s very common. It’s actually not. And I actually thought she didn’t understand the fed gov wasn’t a nonprofit because her salary data points were incredibly skewed. I assumed she didn’t have a good handle on what the fed gov was. Also, there are very few (like none) mommy tracked nonprofit jobs where $220-250K salaries are normal. Again, the thesis promoted in the post is based on incorrect info.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us it came down to this formula:

my income-daycare=not enough to make a major difference in our lifestyle

This was it for me. Plus I had a job that I knew I could go back to.

Same for us. When ours were very young DH’s company had a lot going on and he worked long hours and had to travel. I would have had to be the primary parent for everything and my job wasn’t flexible. It made more sense to step out for a bit.

Agree with the others commenting about those in the 800+ income range being able to take a break if they wanted. It’s totally fine to keep working if you love your job and lifestyle. But you truly could stay home if you wanted. That’s a different situation than OP is asking about.

I can't even understand these posts (if it's not a troll). We make 300K as a dual income couple and we just reached that in our mid-40's (public servants). It's incomprehensible that people think 800k isn't going to be enough.

+1.

If they have built a lifestyle that requires the 800K+, then they have choices to make. Fact is most people live at/above their means. If they make 500K, they live and spend most of it. If they make a million, they live to use most of it. If house is locked in, you can't easily downsize without selling/moving

Well then that is their own fault. If they wanted to SAH badly enough they easily could. The bells and whistles mean more to them. I SAH on $350k HHI (and have been doing it since $140k.) We have a nice SFH, good public schools. A nice SFH and yard, take several nice vacations a year. I’m sure their life is fancier than mine but I would never trade this time with my kids. They made a different choice and that’s fine, but to act like it’s not a choice is absurd.

[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.

Maybe I need to broaden my circle but I really don't think this is representative of most fed and nonprofit jobs. GS 15 step 10 tops out at just over $180K. Yes I know some of the finacial regulators (maybe others) have special authoriteis to offer more, but it is far from the norm you describe. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/23Tables/html/DCB.aspx You also seem to write about only high skill niche legal areas, and business (certainly not all business, just the super successful and lucrative business it seems)? Seems a rather small slice of even HCOL professional careers. But I do agree with your broader point about women (and society) undervaluing themselves.

Agree with this but base salaries can also be misleading because with various increases you can make like $40K more than your base, so that $180K could actually be $220K. That said, I just wrote what you did — making this type of salary is incredibly far from the norm.

Please explain what agencies are giving this sort of cash bonus? I've enver heard of anyone getting this much- $5k is considered a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Maybe I need to broaden my circle but I really don't think this is representative of most fed and nonprofit jobs. GS 15 step 10 tops out at just over $180K. Yes I know some of the finacial regulators (maybe others) have special authoriteis to offer more, but it is far from the norm you describe. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/23Tables/html/DCB.aspx You also seem to write about only high skill niche legal areas, and business (certainly not all business, just the super successful and lucrative business it seems)? Seems a rather small slice of even HCOL professional careers. But I do agree with your broader point about women (and society) undervaluing themselves.

Agree with this but base salaries can also be misleading because with various increases you can make like $40K more than your base, so that $180K could actually be $220K. That said, I just wrote what you did — making this type of salary is incredibly far from the norm.

Please explain what agencies are giving this sort of cash bonus? I've enver heard of anyone getting this much- $5k is considered a lot.

Career SES regularly get $20k+ annual bonuses, but their base salaries are also over $200k. For GS employees I’ve heard of some very rare $10k bonuses approved by the secretary, but in my agency the norm is less than $5k for your typical attorney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Maybe I need to broaden my circle but I really don't think this is representative of most fed and nonprofit jobs. GS 15 step 10 tops out at just over $180K. Yes I know some of the finacial regulators (maybe others) have special authoriteis to offer more, but it is far from the norm you describe. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/23Tables/html/DCB.aspx You also seem to write about only high skill niche legal areas, and business (certainly not all business, just the super successful and lucrative business it seems)? Seems a rather small slice of even HCOL professional careers. But I do agree with your broader point about women (and society) undervaluing themselves.

Agree with this but base salaries can also be misleading because with various increases you can make like $40K more than your base, so that $180K could actually be $220K. That said, I just wrote what you did — making this type of salary is incredibly far from the norm.

Please explain what agencies are giving this sort of cash bonus? I've enver heard of anyone getting this much- $5k is considered a lot.

Career SES regularly get $20k+ annual bonuses, but their base salaries are also over $200k. For GS employees I’ve heard of some very rare $10k bonuses approved by the secretary, but in my agency the norm is less than $5k for your typical attorney.

This. The GS15 step 10s topping out just over $180K are NOT SES. I think the PP who posted the crazy high "mommy track" fed and non profit salaries was at best very out of touch and only associates with other high income families. Here is some context. In 2022 there were 8,222 SES out of over 2 million federal employees, so less than 0.41% Hardly "run of the mill."

https://ourpublicservice.org/fed-figures/senior-executive-service-trends-over-25-years/#:~:text=Career%20SES%20enable%20agencies%20to,1998%20to%208%2C222%20in%202022.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47716

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t want to SAH on $800k HHI, you don’t want to SAH. Period. It’s ok, but own it.

I’m PP. not true at all for me. I really want to SAH but 800k really doesn’t cut it in a HCOL city.

Agree. We started shopping at Aldi and cutting coupons. HHI 650k and we are stressing on how to make it work.

Really? where is your money going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For us it came down to this formula:

my income-daycare=not enough to make a major difference in our lifestyle

This was it for me. Plus I had a job that I knew I could go back to.

Same for us. When ours were very young DH’s company had a lot going on and he worked long hours and had to travel. I would have had to be the primary parent for everything and my job wasn’t flexible. It made more sense to step out for a bit.

Agree with the others commenting about those in the 800+ income range being able to take a break if they wanted. It’s totally fine to keep working if you love your job and lifestyle. But you truly could stay home if you wanted. That’s a different situation than OP is asking about.

I can't even understand these posts (if it's not a troll). We make 300K as a dual income couple and we just reached that in our mid-40's (public servants). It's incomprehensible that people think 800k isn't going to be enough.

+1.

If they have built a lifestyle that requires the 800K+, then they have choices to make. Fact is most people live at/above their means. If they make 500K, they live and spend most of it. If they make a million, they live to use most of it. If house is locked in, you can't easily downsize without selling/moving

Well then that is their own fault. If they wanted to SAH badly enough they easily could. The bells and whistles mean more to them. I SAH on $350k HHI (and have been doing it since $140k.) We have a nice SFH, good public schools. A nice SFH and yard, take several nice vacations a year. I’m sure their life is fancier than mine but I would never trade this time with my kids. They made a different choice and that’s fine, but to act like it’s not a choice is absurd.

I'm PP, but yes I agree---it is definately a choice. If you want to do it, you will find a way. But it's a choice that is easier if you make it before you have kids/purchase the family home for the next 10+ years.

We made the concerted choice when we got married to live on one salary, that way we could potentially have a SAHP if wanted/needed. We bought our first home with that plan in mind. We paid off $60K in student loans and saved for a house all while living on 1 salary. (30+ years ago) We drove our starter/after grad school cars for 8+ years and saved so we could pay cash for the next ones (easy to do if you have a 3 year loan and continue to save that car payment for the next 5+ years). So we made choices to live modestly and were easily able to have a SAHP when kids arrived without much change to our lifestyle. But only because we planned for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We do it with 3 kids and 150K

The key is we refinanced when rates were low and our mortgage is 1,900. We could not afford to buy our house today.

2 kids in daycare would cost more than my salary. Yes, I know daycare is temporary blah blah. Still, taking in all the stress and knowing that we weren’t even breaking even on all the work I was doing was enough to quit.

We also have one child with special needs and the constant doctors appointments are brutal. Even as a SAHM it is draining. Plus it’s not something that you can truly divide and conquer—it’s important to coordinate with the doctors and make sure you’re getting all the information, so you need a point person. Even if I was working we would have redistributed other chores so one parent could be the point person for doctors/therapists/etc. and realistically that person was always going to be me. Just one small example, I can keep DS calm during an MRI, my husband absolutely cannot and he has a hard time coordinating with medical staff. This is not something you can say “have him take half of the doctor’s visits.” It’s not like soccer practice where you just drive and zone out and come home.

We do it with 3 kids on $150 as well. It was less when I started SAHM, maybe $135? Actually I was earning $150K when I left paid work and DH has just gotten to that. Child care was costing more than DH's salary at the time. We don't have a child with special needs but two kids have minor health issues, one requires a lot of MD appointments (about one every other month), the other MD and therapies (currently one weekly appointment, one appointment every other week, one appointment every other month). Plus the regular stuff kids see a doctor for, and the times they are sick. +1,000% on one parent being the point person for medical stuff. I really resented DH for a long time because he NEVER gave medication, ever, and tried to keep him in the loop just as an interested parent (which he is in other ways). It was so much effort with zero return.

Me three! Except we had two kids on $95K to start. One with Autism/ADHD and one with Dyslexia. When I decided to stay home we didn't know that, but with that plus COVID, I feel like our choice turned out to be the right one for sure. Now we have two kids on $160 (and obviously all the different salaries from $95-$165 as well.

Now that my kids are a bit older (youngest is second grade) I run my own business and will add about $30K to the pot this year. Since I work from home it's flexible. It's not a career but it's something to occupy my time (as I have it) and give us a little extra for vacations and fun.

[Anonymous]

The question is not how much you have to earn to have a SAH parent. The question is where and how can you live one working spouse's income? Many families can have a SAH parent as long as they live within the means of the family income.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

We considered it on $175k with two kids and $2650 PITI but ultimately I get a lot of personal satisfaction from work and couldn't give it up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been a SAHM and a WOHM mom. Now I kind of split the difference. But the most important thing is this: stay home because you WANT TO STAY HOME. Not because it makes life easier or whatever. It's not easier. Being a SAHM is a vocation and unless you really want to do it you'll be miserable.

This is great advice. Take the PTO to care for you sick baby, make your partner take PTO to care for the baby, fly your parents in, re-adjust you expectations of yourself but do not leave the workforce bc of a rough few weeks. - -(Someone who had this thought many times in the baby years, took a more flexible but still full time job for a while, am now WFH 5x/week and so freakin glad I still have my career now that kids are elementary age).