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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!!!
 :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

I thought it was fabulous and amazing to be a WOHM, and SAHMs were a waste of space!!

I thought - SAHMs provided zero value when - house was clean, laundry done, meals cooked, grocery bought, cars serviced, house organized, bills paid, drycleaning picked, social engagements met, entertaining done,  kids school and ECs nailed, eldercare sorted, petcare done, yardwork sorted, [b]haircuts scheduled[/b], wellness checkups done, dental  and eye exams done,  home remodeling/improvement  thoughtfully done.

Oh dear! What happened?? Why has life become so shitty???[/quote]

Wow, scrapping the barrel there. [/quote]

lol that one and “paying bills”. Sahm always list this as an important task and really how long does this take?[/quote]

Regards paying bills -
Monitoring for overcharges. Disputing Healthcare refusal to reimburse or false billings. And oh yeah, getting the old car off the insurance and getting the new one on - this last one i found out spouse had forgotten because HE was in charge of that and we were paying for several car insurances. That's what happens if someone is not on top of this.
Kids mobile phone renewals, parking thei number be ause they are studying in the UK. Trying to pay UK tuition because they dont ever contact you only the kid.
Checking performance of retirement accounts and moving funds per FED omens. Summer camp deposits, contractual forms, tracking number of music lessons and to keep the payments going because the teacher can be a bit squirrelly. Plumber servi e payments, making g sure they actually did the work....
If no one is on top of any of this, you can get fleeced easily.

I speak as a former SAHM. It i love working, it is so much easier on some levels. [/quote]

I'm a working mom and I "pay the bills" and yes, it's a ton of work. Our issues are different from yours but yes. It's really way more than paying bills, it's financial management and bleeds into other tasks like vacation planning (it's easier for the person who understand where all the money is and how it's allocated to plan something with a variable cost that might require deal-hunting or creating alternative plans based on budget).

One of the jobs I do as "primary parent" and the person with the lower paying, less demanding job is deal with our HOA. You might say "oh, how much work could that possibly be?" I would have said that before as well. It's really annoying. Our HOA meets quarterly and also sometimes calls for votes between meetings on things that directly impact our household (stuff like issuing a special assessment for a maintenance item, or changing a policy that impacts where our kids play) so I have to stay on top of that, not miss votes, etc. For three years prior to this, I was roped into being treasurer on the HOA board (because we were at the time only one of 6 owners in the neighborhood who had been here over a year, didn't rent our place out, or were not currently selling, just an annoying cross-over period when there were very few people available for board roles). That was a TON of work, so freaking annoying, I had to process all invoices, maintain all the budget spreadsheets, and do presentations on budget at every meeting. This is the kind of thing people get dragged into doing all the time because they are responsible, functional people, and no one else will do it. It adds up to a lot of work when you put it all together.

I could easily put together a full-time job with the unpaid stuff I do for the kids, our family, and our community. Easily. I wish I could afford to be a SAHM. I wish my DH didn't have a one our commute both ways to work (or that we could move closer to his job). I wish I could afford to pay someone else to do all the boring, annoying crap like paying bills and invoices and hiring a roofer and researching water heaters before ours totally craps out and getting the oil changed in the car and remembering to log into the portal to pay our kid's therapy bills and remembering when camp sign up happens and figuring out how which document is missing from our school re-enrollment when we get the vague email about it and on and on and on. But I don't, so I do it. It's hard.[/quote]

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