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.

Actually many of them could not stay at home if they wanted, because they have built a lifestyle around the High Double income. If your ability to pay mortgage and monthly "needs" you have established as well as retirement/college/emergency fund requires both incomes then you cannot stay home without major adjustments.
I agree---it's ridiculous to live like that IMO, but many do. If the mortgage is more than 50% of the top earners salary, the other cannot really stay home without selling the house and moving (not going to happen in todays environment)

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.

I think you mean we don't have any maternity leave

We do have maternity leave. It's called saving your leave like some of us did. I worked for many year at the same job, and rarely took a vacation or sick day knowing I wanted maternity leave. Then I used it all (and then realized how much I hated the job and quit).

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.

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.

I think you mean we don't have any maternity leave

We do have maternity leave. It's called saving your leave like some of us did. I worked for many year at the same job, and rarely took a vacation or sick day knowing I wanted maternity leave. Then I used it all (and then realized how much I hated the job and quit).

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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:For us it was $115K but its all about lifestyle choices.

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.

I think you mean we don't have any maternity leave

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.

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.

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.