Anonymous wrote:A Stay At Home Parent is a gift to your children. Not everyone wants to give them that gift.

What if your children are all 16 or older?

Anonymous wrote:LOL. We made SAHP work on 50k. The key was not choosing a house that cost more than twice HHI.

And counting on scholarships/heavy duty loans/community college for your kids, and living a bare bones existence in retirement.

Anonymous wrote:Without commenting on the use of the word "let," no one married to me would be staying home on purpose/ not earning unless they want a divorce.

+1

This is becoming a problem for me, because my husband wants to quit his job way too young just because he's sick of working. Um, no. We will still have kids in college and he brings in almost half his income. He doesn't want to stop working to take any burden off me, since he won't clean or cook and we'll still need to pay our cleaning service and our children will be grown or almost grown.

Anonymous wrote:If you don't "let" your wife stay home and you make $400k, she might resent you and it could ruin your marriage. So there's that. Do you have young children? You may not realize it while you are in the rat race, but having 2 adults that work FT outside the home and doing the daycare/school/activity shuffle is stressful.

In what universe is $400k not enough?

My wife makes more than 400K, and I still work even though I make less than half of what she does. Am I supposed to resent her? Is it going to ruin my marriage? Sure I'd rather not work, who wants to work, but why should I get to be lazy and spend my time reading books and working out at the gym while my wife busts her ass every day at a 400K+ job.

I make more than $400k and my DH is a SAHD. It would work at less and definitely works great for our family, but I worry that he thinks it is unfulfilling and an insufficient use of his talents. I wish he would take classes or really develop a hobby/interest as it can be isolating, esp with kids in school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without commenting on the use of the word "let," no one married to me would be staying home on purpose/ not earning unless they want a divorce.

Why?

Do you feel an adult's only contribution to the world is by earning filthy lucre, I mean money?

How small-minded you are, Ebenezer.

I feel that I am not going to support an able-bodied adult who chooses not to work. I would love to stay home and pursue my dreams with that time instead, but if I don't work, I have no home in which to do that. My spouse can choose not to work in someone else's house.

What if you chose to stay home while your spouse worked? It works both ways, you know. What if your spouse really wanted to stay home with the children, and was depressed at the idea of going back to work? There are many opportunities in life where flexibility is important, and this could be one of them.

I would not choose to stay home, because then I would have no means to support myself. I don't live off other people. If my spouse wanted to stay home, he should have the independent means to do that. Financial stability is not flexible.

You have reached the independent stage. Yeah! Some never get there. The next stage is interdependency and that opens ups different outcomes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What kind of job brings a $200k promotion. G-d do companies overpay people.

A fake job held by a troll...

DING DING DING! Winner here! OP has mysteriously never come back. Had to crawl back under the troll bridge.

If my income doubled tomorrow, overnight I would be earning our family's entire household income through my efforts alone.

I don't know that I'd tell my husband to quit his job, but two things would be true - we'd keep our current spending + savings plan, based entirely on my income;
Any money my husband earned would go straight into investments or debt payoff;
I'd tell him to quit the job he dislikes and find a job in his area of actual passion, where he would make significantly less.

If you don't "let" your wife stay home and you make $400k, she might resent you and it could ruin your marriage. So there's that. Do you have young children? You may not realize it while you are in the rat race, but having 2 adults that work FT outside the home and doing the daycare/school/activity shuffle is stressful.

In what universe is $400k not enough?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A Stay At Home Parent is a gift to your children. Not everyone wants to give them that gift.

Children eventually become adults and what happens then ? Going back to work after voluntarily taking yourself out after what 17 , 18yrs ?

At 17/18, that will take us to retirement age for my husband. We had kids older.

How do you figure 400k is not enough? Why can't you live on $250 or 300 and bank the rest? The key is to not upgrade your home and expenses tremendously with the new raise.

You might be surprised how well your home functions if you have someone there to do all the kid stuff/be the default parent/cook/grocery shop/manage finances etc. It's a much less crazy and stressful existence. It will give you back your weekends.

And I say this as a WAHM, but I've also worked PT and SAH at various points.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A Stay At Home Parent is a gift to your children. Not everyone wants to give them that gift.

Children eventually become adults and what happens then ? Going back to work after voluntarily taking yourself out after what 17 , 18yrs ?

There is more to life than an office career.

Anonymous wrote:A Stay At Home Parent is a gift to your children. Not everyone wants to give them that gift.

Children eventually become adults and what happens then ? Going back to work after voluntarily taking yourself out after what 17 , 18yrs ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without commenting on the use of the word "let," no one married to me would be staying home on purpose/ not earning unless they want a divorce.

Why?

Do you feel an adult's only contribution to the world is by earning filthy lucre, I mean money?

How small-minded you are, Ebenezer.

I feel that I am not going to support an able-bodied adult who chooses not to work. I would love to stay home and pursue my dreams with that time instead, but if I don't work, I have no home in which to do that. My spouse can choose not to work in someone else's house.

This is funny. That what happened after our divorce. Both got stay at home significant others, but neither was willing to support the other one in our marriage.

Politely tell your spouse you're not her ATM. What if you lose that job ? Usually recipients of such high salaries are the first ones to be let go when the inevitable downsizing comes around . Sorry but your spouse lacks basic common sense