Below are my quick thoughts on this post. I should agree with this article because I am making it on one income, but I am also aware enough to know this doesn’t work for all nor is it beneficial for all even if they can make it. There is a value to work for women besides money.
Many women try to convince me that it’s simply impossible for women to be keepers at home due to the cost of living these days. Every family needs two incomes, they proclaim. There’s a video called The Homemaker’s Biggest Obligation that I encourage you all to watch about living frugally at home. Here is a great response by Lindsay Harold to the claim that women can’t afford to be home full time.
The biggest barrier to women staying at home is finances. A lot of people look at their current expenses as a two-income family and think they could never afford to pay the bills if they suddenly lost the wife’s income. But this is a short-sighted view. The family expenses also drop when when the wife comes home, not just the income.
When a wife stays at home, she can cook from scratch rather than eating out, getting takeout, or relying on boxed meals.This saves a ton of money.
Hold up. Before kids I use to to think this is what stay at home would be like–tons of time to cook from scratch! What a joke. Kids change everything and are an all consuming time suck while they are under three. Its round the clock feedings, diapering, and tantrum diffusing. There is little time to do much else. I am a stay at home mom to three kids and my day stays busy just being mom and tending to them. I usually get cleaning done, but when it comes to meal prep forget about it. I am exhausted and burned out when it comes to dinner and so no I do not make meals from scratch. Proud of it too. In this season of life, I have different priorities. Like sleep because I am still up 3-5 times a night with a fussy baby.
Also, cooking from scratch only saves money if your time is worthless. There is a trade off to everything. What you gain in money, you lose in family time. And I am not exactly convinced cooking from scratch saves money. I’ve had some great prepared meals that are very reasonable. The cost of fresh and organic ingredients to make from scratch sure adds up quickly.
When she is at home, they don’t have the expense of her commute (gas money, train, or bus fares), her work clothes, a second car (possibly with payment) and all the expenses for its upkeep (maintenance, insurance, and smog checks), childcare costs, and so on. Keeping a job requires a certain amount of expense. It takes money to make money, as they say. So the expenses involved in keeping that job have to be taken into consideration in order to make an accurate assessment.
I use to work. True no commute expense. Work clothes for me were minimal because I would get them at the thrift store. A second car doesn’t go away once you are home unless you live in Mayberry. How else are you suppose to make that meal from scratch if you can’t go out to get the fresh, organic ingredients? How do you get yourself and the kids to doctor appointments? Not everyone has relatives to help or a bus system they feel safe using.
In addition, the couple pays taxes on that second income. Those taxes are an expense that reduces their net income. In fact, a second income often puts families in a higher tax bracket, so this can have a big effect. If they had only one income, they would pay a lot less in taxes. So this is another expense that must be considered.
Can’t argue with that, but sometimes the value in health insurance makes up for that difference. I never see them talk about that. Working for health insurance alone can be a huge money saver. Its common to have health insurance deductions of $800 every 2 weeks for the family. A woman might have a job where it is a lot less for the family or cheaper for her to get her insurance at her job and her husband at his job. There is no longer one size fits all answer of how family are set up and operated. If only this were the 1980s.
If the wife stays home, they not only eliminate those expenses from her job, but she can also save extra money by finding ways to be more frugal. I would suggest trying to downsize a car, a home, cable TV, or a cell phone plan, for example. There are a lot of ways we often don’t realize that we are spending money unnecessarily because everybody does it that way. We tend to spend what we have and adjust our lifestyle to our income. We don’t look for ways to save if we have the money to cover our lifestyle as it is, but if we have to cut back, there are usually ways to do it.
Yeah, most people do cut back in those ways and its still not enough. That is what they don’t understand. How do you downsize a car if you are suppose to have a quiverfull anyway? Downsizing a home doesn’t mean the home will be cheaper. Here is a cost example of an average home in my neighborhood. This is on the cheaper side too. The average price is more in the 500Ks.
Looks pretty modest, right? Can $399K be afforded on one income? Depends big time. A house similar too this is probably 150K in other parts of the country.
Reevaluating the budget is often painful at first. Nobody likes to cut their favorite luxuries, and might even tell themselves it’s not luxury but necessity. But if it is important to have the wife stay home and care for the home and children (and it is), changing our mindset about spending is vital.
This is the part that outrages me and many others the most. Women aren’t working because they are selfish and refusing to give up luxuries. Many have already given all those things up long ago and still they struggle. Health insurance and medical bills being the hardest part. Most women work to help their family survive. Much like how women work 100 years ago in the factories.
For families interested in having the wife come home, the first step is to evaluate your current spending and see what expenses and taxes are associated with the wife’s job. If you consider those expenses, then you have a better picture of your net income (income after expenses of keeping the job). A lot of people are very surprised when they run the numbers and find out that they are getting little financial benefit from a second income after figuring expenses. Some even find that they would be better off financially to have the wife stay home.
On top of this, it is important to evaluate how much you can save if the wife has time at home to do a lot of things for her own family, including cooking, shopping sales, coupon clipping, making her own items (laundry soap, yogurt, clothes, food from a garden, or whatever else she can learn to do), home decor, cleaning, and anything else you currently outsource. Doing things for yourself and your own family means you are paying yourself in savings for your own labor at home rather than paying someone else to do it for you. This can really add up. A penny saved is a penny earned.
LOL. Like I said in the beginning, with young kids you can barely take care of the basics like laundry and cleaning the toilet. Adding in yogurt making is just too cute for words, so LOL. Paying yourself in savings and stealing your family’s time.
If your budget is still short after considering all of these factors, then it’s time to start thinking about making money from home. There are lots of options out there. A wife at home can make crafts and sell them on sites like Ebay or Etsy. She could work for a company out of her home (things like medical billing, for example, can often be done from home). She could start her own business. She could buy and resell wholesale items. She could do online tutoring. She could provide childcare out of her home. We need not be bound to the typical career of a nine to five job outside the home.
Oh yeah sure, try working from home with small kids!! I can barely get this blog post out. Let alone do anything that takes real focus. I got the toddler napping and the baby sleeping in my lap and its a race against the clock to get this done before a kid screams. There are often 5 days that go by and I don’t even open the laptop. I instead do short screenshot posts on my facebook page that take only seconds in comparison.
If you’re willing to do the work as a couple, there is almost always a way to survive, and even thrive, on one income. Millions of families do it every year, including plenty of people who never thought they could.
Terry Starnes added this to the conversation: “Another thing I would like to add if your priority is to stay home with your children, you will have to be able to make sacrifices. You may have to move to a more affordable state or neighborhood so that you are not house poor (renting may be cheaper than owning), be willing to stay home and not take the car out unless it is necessary, eat less meat, or eat meat less often, and opt for other options of protein such as dried beans, cook from scratch, and cut out cable TV. These are just a few ways to cut back and live on one income. If you truly desire to be home with your family you will be willing to do whatever it takes. You cannot have the same lifestyle you enjoyed on two incomes. Sacrifices have to be made.”
This is another part that frustrates me to no end—not everyone can just up and move to a cheaper state. You go where the jobs are or you stay where the family is (free help). Moving to a cheaper state may not make a difference if you lose your free help. 10 years ago I was in a cheaper state. Made great sacrifices to go there and yet was laid off three times only to be forced back home to the more expense state. Life is funny.
Doug Harold wrote, “One should also add to this the cost of private education since it is so irresponsible these days to put your children in ‘free’ government schools. If a mother is at home, she can save the family a great deal of money by homeschooling.”
Sure, add homeschooling right along with yogurt making to the list of a millions things women have to do to be deemed good, godly women. Do tell me how are all these things are suppose to get done in the very, very short day? There just simply aren’t enough hours but godly women pile and pile and pile more onto women and then wonder why women long for the workplace.
Things Godly Women Say 