What is your income to allow one parent to stay at home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:165k Bay Area
Between rent and student loan debt we are scraping by. One car. Rarely travel.

I couldn't and wouldn't want to be a SAHM like this. It seems financially irresponsible and would not be enjoyable for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The amount of income a family needs for one parent to stay home varies with the family and their priorities. There is no set answer, every family just has to decide on where their own balance point is between spending money and spending time.

Yes. It's a your numbers thing not a set amount someone else has. Like retirement. If you can swing it, you do it. Your numbers not someone else's.

We have no mortgage, no vehicle loans, no credit card debt, no student loans. I never liked the idea of working and paying some stranger to raise my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Even when DH was earning 200k, I didn't think we could make it. When you stay home, you tend to spend money. I would hate to be home all the time with no money to spend on activities and vacations.

This has not been our experience.

I know SAHMs who don't send their kids to preschool, never eat out, can't afford gym memberships, can't join the pool, etc. I would not want to live that way. As kids get older, their activities also start adding up. I'm a SAHM and we still spend $5k+ on just summer camp.

Why are you spending that kind of money on summer camp if you're SAhm? The whole point of sahm is not outsourcing all day childcare.

Not a SAHM, but we have an AuPair and camps are not meant to warehouse our kids. Many of the camps we do are only 5-6 hours and don't cover our work day, hence the AuPair. My kids go to the Computer programming camp that Georgetown puts on, the Naval Academy lacrosse camp, camp friendship for a week, and archery camp. None of the adults in our home can give our kids the rich experiences that these camps offer, regardless if myself or DH SAH. These camps run us 8k each summer.

PP here. My kids go to tennis, golf and various enrichment camps. They are not cheap and kids love them. Most of the camps they attend are 3 hours per day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of income a family needs for one parent to stay home varies with the family and their priorities. There is no set answer, every family just has to decide on where their own balance point is between spending money and spending time.

Yes. It's a your numbers thing not a set amount someone else has. Like retirement. If you can swing it, you do it. Your numbers not someone else's.

We have no mortgage, no vehicle loans, no credit card debt, no student loans. I never liked the idea of working and paying some stranger to raise my kids.

So you don't send your children to school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of income a family needs for one parent to stay home varies with the family and their priorities. There is no set answer, every family just has to decide on where their own balance point is between spending money and spending time.

Yes. It's a your numbers thing not a set amount someone else has. Like retirement. If you can swing it, you do it. Your numbers not someone else's.

We have no mortgage, no vehicle loans, no credit card debt, no student loans. I never liked the idea of working and paying some stranger to raise my kids.

So you don't send your children to school?

Yeah the judgement is disgusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of income a family needs for one parent to stay home varies with the family and their priorities. There is no set answer, every family just has to decide on where their own balance point is between spending money and spending time.

Yes. It's a your numbers thing not a set amount someone else has. Like retirement. If you can swing it, you do it. Your numbers not someone else's.

We have no mortgage, no vehicle loans, no credit card debt, no student loans. I never liked the idea of working and paying some stranger to raise my kids.

So you don't send your children to school?

Yeah the judgement is disgusting.

It's also strange because childcare is needed for such a short period of time. I had six months off of leave and my child will start prek at 3.5. So this means the child is "raised by someone else" for three years. That's besides the fact I have weekends, don't work long hours and take plenty of vacation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of income a family needs for one parent to stay home varies with the family and their priorities. There is no set answer, every family just has to decide on where their own balance point is between spending money and spending time.

Yes. It's a your numbers thing not a set amount someone else has. Like retirement. If you can swing it, you do it. Your numbers not someone else's.

We have no mortgage, no vehicle loans, no credit card debt, no student loans. I never liked the idea of working and paying some stranger to raise my kids.

So you don't send your children to school?

Yeah the judgement is disgusting.

It's also strange because childcare is needed for such a short period of time. I had six months off of leave and my child will start prek at 3.5. So this means the child is "raised by someone else" for three years. That's besides the fact I have weekends, don't work long hours and take plenty of vacation.

For us, we both work but we really wished we could have the summers off, I feel like those could be magical times with the kids. But of course that only comes to fruition when you have plenty of money and perhaps a vacation home at the beach -- staying in the house all summer, no pool, no beach, with maybe some free trips to the museum and baking hot public parks probably won't be the magic i envision! My DH only makes $120k, and our PITI is $3600 a month (soo jealous of folks who bought before the boom, should have put my allowance into real estate rather than teen magazines ). We have a nice nest egg so I could stay home for a spell, but spending down (non-retirement, cash) savings to stay home feels very irresponsible.

[Anonymous]

The real answer is that it varies (obviously). If you require the 8000 sqft Hardieplank McMonstrosity, a few European cars in the driveway and the girls at Madiera then the number is a lot higher than if you buy a sensible home that isn't ridiculously oversized and sensible cars and drive them until they actually need replacement. Granted, a certain base level income is needed in order for it to work at all, but that number certainly isn't >200k.

[Anonymous]

$175k was our number. One of us just retired when we hit this number, and we are comfortable on that living in a close in suburb in MD. I'd add one caveat that we're empty nesters with many years of saving behind this choice, so YMMV if you're younger, just building a nest egg and starting a family. I agree with people who say it's challenging to have a good quality of life in DC making HHI of under $150k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The amount of income a family needs for one parent to stay home varies with the family and their priorities. There is no set answer, every family just has to decide on where their own balance point is between spending money and spending time.

Yes. It's a your numbers thing not a set amount someone else has. Like retirement. If you can swing it, you do it. Your numbers not someone else's.

We have no mortgage, no vehicle loans, no credit card debt, no student loans. I never liked the idea of working and paying some stranger to raise my kids.

So you don't send your children to school?

Yeah the judgement is disgusting.

LOL, NP. I grew up in NYC, my mom and actress and my father a businessman. We had a nanny and my parents absolutely raised me. I know who my parents were and they set the tone. My parents raised us better than anyone else with an appreciation for music and the arts. We were surrounded by the arts, different and eccenteic people and our parents absolutely shaped us. Without giving much detail, my mother was not born an American and we spoke only her native tongue with broken English until we entered school, despite having a nanny. Our mothet was a powerful influense in our lives, despite her greuling career of show after show at night.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I stayed home at $85k. It is now $120k.

Did I write this while otherwise engaged?
My numbers exactly.

Same here, with the benefit that we'd bought our Arlington house a while ago and our mortgage was only $1K. I'm now back at work making $116K while DH is now up to $140K.

I would give anything to have a $1k mortgage. Is this even remotely feasible these days?

Does that include real estate taxes and insurance? I feel like just RET and INS would cost about $1k per month.

We pay insurance and taxes separate (no escrow) so I don't think of them as "mortgage" so, no, that wasn't included. I don't think it's possible to have a $1K mortgage any more (that is, just the mortgage no including tax/insurance) unless it's a condo. We were lucky that DH bought our house in the late 90s when you could still get a basic house a few blocks from the metro in N. Arlington for around $220K! We lived with a lot of problems in the house so that I could be a SAHM but once I went back at work we renovated and with the refinance to make that possible our mortgage is now just over $2K (+ taxes/insurance).

[Anonymous]

100K in Rockville MD. We gave up living in DC, but that's about it. DH has a commute instead of just walking to work.

After the baby was born we didn't even want to do vacations beyond a week or two at the Delaware beaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on what kind of lifestyle you consider acceptable for your family.

+100

And what you think you'll do when kids are in school 6.5 hours a day beginning at age 5.

DH makes $400-500k. I had a full-time flexible WAH job with great health benefits $165k so I still work. 7-3:30--basically when kids are in school. The 2 years before they started full-day preschool I did 4 day weeks with nanny at the house with me.

Look to future, not just immediate.

OK. Tell me how to get your job. Because my field was 9-6 WOHM and salaries topped at about $60k. If I could make what you make working 7-3:30, either in or out, I would do it in a heartbeat!

Not this poster but similar set up making $125. WFH 2x a week and when I go in hours are 8-4:30. I'm in policy with an MPH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI was around 110K when I started to stay home. I worked part-time some years (making around 15K), but much of the time I'm taking care of one of our ailing parents in addition to kids. HHI is now closer to 135K. We have set aside for college and retirement. Vacations were always going to be visiting family anyway.

Live in DC, mortgage (all in) is 2K on a row home (purchased in 2008). We aren't big spenders on clothing or cars (1 car family as we're downtown). Preschool is a co-op. We do some classes, but the schedule isn't packed. We spend a ton of time walking the city, utilizing parks and the abundant free entertainment that DC offefs. We've never felt it was too tight, but know we live more modestly than many of our peers.

Are you planning to win the chart a lottery, or are your inbound D CPS schools good all the way through high school

Locals are not a good option for us. Oldest is in private, youngest is at a co-op. I'm back to part time and will transition to full time next year. Depending on where the finances settle, we'll stay and keep them in private or move out of the area completely. TBD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The real answer is that it varies (obviously). If you require the 8000 sqft Hardieplank McMonstrosity, a few European cars in the driveway and the girls at Madiera then the number is a lot higher than if you buy a sensible home that isn't ridiculously oversized and sensible cars and drive them until they actually need replacement. Granted, a certain base level income is needed in order for it to work at all, but that number certainly isn't >200k.

Its not the mcmansions or fancy cars; a run down house within 45 minutes of the city is going to be at least $800k if you want good schools. That's about $3500k PITI, and you can't swing that with standard 1/3 housing cost equation (assuming 20% down) for less than $190k or so. Even GS15 won't make it swing, so you are looking at long commute or crummy schools. Maybe a townhouse would bump that down a little, maybe.