The biggest issues is the health insurance his company has great plans for the employee but it is very expensive for dependents. On the other hand we would switch to one car family so that would help.

We make 50k a year between myself and my husband. He is self employeed so we have health bennifits and life insurance that we pay for. ( Which is very important- you NEED to have these things if you are a working mom or not. ) You should always figure out in yor stay at home budget these costs if you would lose them from leaving your job) In my case I never had any of that from my job anyways. We own our own home ( small 3 bed 1 bath), and a camp. We live modestly, drive older vehicles, but still eat out once a week. We have cable, internet, a snowmobile, and an off road truck. We budget budget budget. Cut back where we can, and splurge where we feel we need to the most. Our home is paid off in full as of after Christmas because we have made many many extra payments. I am 26 years old and my husband is 32. We are building our dream home next year with the proceeds from selling this one ( my husband is a contractor- so our home has increased in value, and he will be building our new home). We will have our new home paid off in 10 years. Plan Plan Plan.

I am not saying that my way is the only way. I am just saying if you are creative you can have the best of both worlds. DON’T let anyone tell you that you can’t as I have seen on here over and over again. If you are looking for a balance think outside the box. You dont need to “stuff envelopes”, or “deliver papers”. Use your passions, and your talents to your advantage. Be creative and even try brainstorming ideas based on your own financial and emotional needs with your husband/sig other.If anything it could make a nice date night . the only person standing in your way of your dreams is yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t. I have had many tell me taht. Luckily I have a very strong relationship with my husband and we KNOW we CAN accomplish anything!! Which we have now proven to everyone ( including our parents who doubted us). Think positive and have a plan, have goals and dreams.Make sure you communicate those with your husband or sig other and develope your plan together it is the only way for it to work. But most of all DO NOT LET WHAT SOMEONE ELSE SAYS INFLUENCE YOUR DECISION AND YOUR DREAMS. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a working mom, there is nothing wrong with being a stay at home mom. You do what you know you need to do. If you do anything else you will not be happy. Take care of yourself for once, and put your needs first. no child will be happy if they have a mom and or dad who is unhappy. You need to make yourself happy BEOFRE you can make ANYONE else happy!!!!!

I don’t want someone else raising my child with their values (or lack thereof). I’m more appreciated by my partner than I ever was by my boss. I’m not a social person, so the isolation doesn’t bother me. Besides, we get out a lot on walks and errands and such. Also, I really hated my job, and since I’ve been home with my son, I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I am a happier person and I have a higher self-esteem. I also feel more fulfilled, and I feel like I’m contributing to society more now.

I can’t believe that some people get bored staying at home all the time. With me, I always have lots to do. I love taking my son outside around the yard and on walks. We play with toys together, and sometimes I find extra time for chores, or for reading that I so love to do. How are people getting bored at home? I don’t get it.

But anyways, I agree that you have to find what’s right for you, but please also think about what’s right for your children. If you’re hardly ever around, then what’s the point of even having any children?

Raise your children! Don’t let some stranger raise YOUR children. While I do take my son to a babysitter once in awhile so my partner and I can have a date night (like once a month), I will never EVER take him to a daycare on a full-time basis. I love him too much for that.

just everyony talking about beniffits of both working, but whats better £ in the bank or the happiness or being there for the priceless moments in life which you can never get back

My wife is the primary wage earner at the moment – hopefully, once I’m done with school, we can flip things around a bit and she can stay home for a while.

JD, thanks for the site – it means a lot…

– Z

It absolutely sucks that you can’t make the numbers work for your situation for no good reason. I’m sorry that you have neither affordable independent insurance, nor legal/financial recognition for your partnership. I remain grateful that I live in somewhere where both problems have more helpful solutions.

But there’s another factor – does it really help society for parents with important job skills to drop out of the work force, even temporarily? Does it really help society for doctors, research scientists, firefighters, etc. to stay at home with their children?

I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I have a job that’s important to society, and I’m good at it. I don’t see how it benefits anyone for me to stay home with one child, when I have the skills to help a lot of other people, AND other people are willing to provide loving care for my child during the few hours a day I can’t be with him. And I am grateful that my child’s caregivers also have the skills and willingness to help others that allow me to work.

I hate being made to feel guilty for my choice. It’s bad enough to make women feel bad for their choices. It’s above insulting to presume to tell them what they should do.

On one hand, I was raised by a SAHM. And I would like to be a SAHM. But this didn’t make me closer to my mother. It didn’t create some fabulous bond. Many of my friends had parents who both worked but who understood how to raise a kid positively, how to be an active part of their lives.

So why doesn’t the concept apply to me? My partner and I are planning to have a child in the next year. Since we cannot legally marry, and cannot get on each other’s health insurance… if I were to stay home after the child is born neither myself nor my child would have health care (remotely affordably). If I were to return to work and have my partner stay home, then she would have no health insurance. Never mind the other retirement, etc arguments that apply to everyone.

I know that many people don’t realize these impacts of not allowing gay marriage, but there are great families– that can’t make great decisions because of these policies.

While I still would rather not work outside the home, I can see the benefits of my job. Beyond my salary and benefits (the benefits where I work are VERY good), I have provided a lot of stability for our family. DH has had a turbulent career, including six months of unemployment and working for years in an unstable job with threats of layoffs and a paycut. In addition, from age six months until kindergarten (and the summer after kindergarten) we were blessed with a daycare situation that provided a sort of “second family” for our child. We can no longer use the family because they moved, but we keep in touch. I’m unconvinced that daycare cannot, in fact, be beneficial to a child if you find the right situation.

The calculator, of course, captures none of this. This is not a black-and-white issue.

[...] The Parents.com Stay At Home Calculator h/t (GetRichSlowly) [...]

I’m sorry, but what percentage of women can actually manage this? I hear it all the time, but meanwhile what I see is a bunch of women guilting friends and family into buying Pampered Chef stuff that they don’t need. It’s not hard to supplement a little, but I don’t know very many real people who actually make real incomes doing things like stuffing envelopes or online tutoring or filling out surveys or whatever.

Even if I were to add day care, just with the ordinary standard office job I got with my college education, I would bring home far more a year than I could ever fill in with odd jobs from home, and real home businesses take a lot more time and energy than new parents ever seem to really have.

Sure, there may not be a financial advantage to working outside the home if you’re making $8/hour doing data entry, but if you’ve got a degree and/or job skills, you can do way better than they seem to acknowledge. As Dave Ramsey sometimes points out to people, sometimes it’s not your expenses, it’s the fact that you need to get a better job.

(I mean, by all means stay home if it’s important to you to stay home–I might, myself–but I think it’s silly to put it in terms of being something financially preferable for a large portion of the population.)

On the other hand if staying home with kids is priceless (as I know it is for many) then the parents.com calculator (and others) is helpful for planning purposes (i.e. can we pay our present bills on 1 salary).

As always, people should do what makes the most sense to them, as an individual and as a family.

For example, when the calculator showed we’d lose $2500/month if I or my wife stayed at home, the advice was: “unfortunately the numbers aren’t in your favor here’s how you can cut costs …..”

I’m sorry, but I don’t consider it unfortunate at all that my wife and I both have decent jobs where we earn about the same, and that high quality childcare is affordable where I live.

Similarily, their “should dad stay at home?” article essentially says NO. It just wraps it in more words to make it sound “sensible”. Who earns the most, they ask. In 80-90% of the cases that’s going to be DAD, and if parents.com has it their way, this won’t ever change. What does that matter if you still earn -enough- to reasonably support the family on the wifes income ?

Is Dad emotionally prepared, they ask. Which I take as an insult; nobody would advance a similar argument in opposition of mom staying at home, no moms are all prepared by default, it’s only when it comes to males that there’s a question….

The trend continues. And it’s stupid.

Here’s some thougth-provokers; (and I write this with my twin girls happily playing on the floor in front of me)

Would it be nice for your children to have a equally close bond to both parents ? Would you as a father like to spend more time with your kids ? Did you, as a father, ever spend considerable time as the main responsible for daily care of your kids ?

We share it, currently so that my wife works 4 days a week, and I work 1 day a week, the percentages may change over time. Has the added benefit that none of us lose touch with working-life. Oh yeah, and taxes tend to be nicer with two moderate incomes than with one high income too.

Recommended ! And *not* primarily because of the financial advantages (allthough those are realy too)

[...] J.D. at Get Rich Slowly talks about how for many families, having both parents work doesn’t pay off, but the decision about who stays home isn’t as simple as dollars and cents and how the Parents.com Stay-at-Home Calculator can help them make a decision. [...]

You can’t have it all. End of story. Big fat myth. So choose what’s important to you. Your children or your career. I bet the majority of dual-income families could live on one income if pressed. You just have to value it.

The big key is having the right benefits and a good emergency reserve. Once we decided on this I upped my normal 3 month emergency fund to 6 month just because of the large burden on the family if I got injured and couldn’t work or lost my job (has never happened but there is always a first for things). My wife will probably go back to teaching once our kids are school age and since we have adjusted our lifestyle for one salary that should just be gravy for retirement and life pursuits.

While money is such a pressing issue in most decisions that we make, please don’t forfeit precious time with your children just because you think you’re ‘losing time’ in the work force, you won’t have a 10 million dollar retirement or you don’t find it “fulfilling.” Children deserve to be raised by a parent at home. Period.

This line doesn’t resonate for me. It “makes more sense” to do what you feel is right, either way. Nearly everyone can work out a way for one parent to stay home if he or she wants to. I have seen low income families do it and high income families do it.

I’m not saying you must stay at home, but IF YOU WANT TO, finances should have almost nothing to do with it. You CAN do it. (We did it on $40k a year, no problem. I have friends who do it on 20k a year.)

I’ve never, for example, seen one that mentioned that your health insurance premiums may go up if both you and your partner got primary coverage from your own employer. Nor do they mention that your grocery bill will go up, albeit slightly, from feeding your child lunches and snacks at home (most full-time daycares include this in the cost). Plus there’s the incremental costs like future raises and opportunities that have been mentioned. None ask if your employer offers a 401(k) or 403(b) match, either, or what other sorts of benefits you might be losing (a mass transit pass in a large city? access to inexpensive life or LTD insurance you may need to replace?).

Not to mention that many full-time moms feel a bit trapped in the house and end up with memberships to playspaces, classes, activities, or cultural institutions like museums or zoos that they likely wouldn’t have sprung for if they’d been working. Yes, these things are completely optional, and if you’re focusing on frugality above all else you’ll find free things to do with your kids. But after-work drinks and work clothes that you can’t or don’t wear on the weekends (unless you wear a uniform) are optional too. To assume that people will spend rather mindlessly on, say, eating every working lunch out but suddenly curb all their excess spending in the name of frugality if they’re staying at home is . . . optimistic, I think.

I don’t have a horse in this race — I’m a parent and I work from home, as it happens — but every calculator I’ve seen of this sort seems like its real purpose is to make people who are determined to stay at home feel financially justified in doing so. It’s a choice that’s eminently possible (and rewarding) for plenty of people, but I find this tool a bit dishonest in helping families figure out whether it’s feasible.