Author Topic: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?  (Read 4078 times)

shanaling

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Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« on: July 27, 2017, 04:13:12 PM »
I'm trying to decided whether to send my 6 month old daughter to daycare or not. Daycare would be $1660/month. Husband makes $50k a year. I make $150k a year. We live in California. Thanks.

mxt0133

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2017, 04:16:55 PM »
If I had to take care of my kids it would not be good for them.  I would send them to daycare even if it meant it would cost us money in the short term.

Luckily my wife is great with our kids so we decided to have her stay home and take care of the kids even if we came out ahead financially if she worked.

Sarah Saverdink

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2017, 04:25:51 PM »
What are the long-term career prospects for your husband? If his salary has the potential to grow significantly over the next several years, that should also be considered.

But more importantly, how does your husband feel? Does he want to be a stay at home dad?

shanaling

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2017, 04:31:56 PM »
My husband is fine with staying home. He's able to freelance from home if he doesn't have the full time job.

ysette9

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #4 on: July 27, 2017, 04:39:05 PM »
Any idea how much he might make while freelancing? Have you run the numbers on the impact to your taxes and other savings from having him home? I suspect it is close on how the numbers fall out, so your preferences matter a lot.

ixtap

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #5 on: July 27, 2017, 04:50:29 PM »
I'm trying to decided whether to send my 6 month old daughter to daycare or not. Daycare would be $1660/month. Husband makes $50k a year. I make $150k a year. We live in California. Thanks.

Well, from a purely financial perspective, I know that when I made $50k a year, I brought home a lot more than $1660/month, and that was after contributing to a 403b, paying premiums, etc.

Does your husband want to stay home? You say he doesn't care, which isn't the same. Would he rather be spending time with the kid and building his freelance business than what he is currently doing? Does he realize what staying home with the kid entails as they are about to become mobile?

As long as you get quality daycare, the outcomes for the kid aren't going to be much different.

sparkytheop

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #6 on: July 27, 2017, 08:57:25 PM »
A lot of things to consider...

Would he be the kind of SAHD to do housework, make dinner, take care of things during the week so you can have time to relax together on the weekends/nights? 

For me, if he wasn't willing to do the things I'd expect of myself as a housewife (I've never been one, but my mom was), I would see myself getting resentful.  However, if he was home doing those things so I didn't have to all the time?  That would be awesome.

I've been a single mom since my son was three, so I have to do it all on my own anyway.  I wouldn't do it all on my own with another grown adult in the house.  But if it's a partnership and both take on roles that balance things, great.

shanaling

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #7 on: July 27, 2017, 09:11:53 PM »
Yes my husband is willing to cook and clean. He already does that for us. He's also looking for a change from his full time job, so even though he is not making a lot from freelancing, this will give him the opportunity to put more time into it.

Hotstreak

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #8 on: July 27, 2017, 09:21:35 PM »
Yes my husband is willing to cook and clean. He already does that for us. He's also looking for a change from his full time job, so even though he is not making a lot from freelancing, this will give him the opportunity to put more time into it.


Sounds like you have your answer.  With his freelancing he should be able to return to the workforce easily, either when the kid(s) are older or if staying home isn't working.

YttriumNitrate

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #9 on: July 28, 2017, 08:21:17 AM »
Well, from a purely financial perspective, I know that when I made $50k a year, I brought home a lot more than $1660/month, and that was after contributing to a 403b, paying premiums, etc.
To be fair, there are some major differences between a single person making $50k and a married couple going from $150k to $200k. For example, a rough estimate shows that the take home pay off a $50k salary is about $38.9k ($3240 a month), while the increase in take home pay going from $150k to $200k is only $30.8k ($2570 a month). Additionally, the Roth/Standard IRA is already available to stay at home parent, so that isn't a benefit of working.

meatface

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #10 on: July 28, 2017, 10:11:56 AM »
We've thought about this in our house, too. One issue is that taking care of kids during the day leaves very little time for freelancing. He may have to do all the freelancing in the evenings and on weekends, leaving little time for your marriage. Furthermore, if he finds that he has no time and energy to work on the freelancing as a result of taking care of the kids, then how will that effect his mental health?

Just some food for thought.

shanaling

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #11 on: July 28, 2017, 12:20:01 PM »
yep it's true that with my income, my husband's income gets taxed higher than what he would've been taxed.... we set the tax withholding to him getting about $3k/month but may end up still owing taxes in April..

Thanks for bringing up the lack of time for freelancing. We talked about this - he understands that taking care of baby is really a full time job and he may not have that much time for freelancing in the beginning. He's used to doing his freelancing work during the evenings and weekends now so at least it won't be worse than now.

mrsnamemustache

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #12 on: July 28, 2017, 12:58:59 PM »
My husband has been a stay at home husband/dad on and off. One downside I have found is that it puts more pressure on me to be the "on" parent when I am home, and to not work any late hours. By the time 5:00 roles around, he is exhausted from parenting and needs relief. This puts more pressure on me to do all the parenting in the evening (and not to go to the gym very often, for example). If we were both working, I think we would both have energy to split the parenting more in the evenings/weekends. Whether this is a problem for you may depend on your husband's capacity for childcare.

Blonde Lawyer

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #13 on: July 28, 2017, 02:26:02 PM »
I feel like this thread should be linked as a response anytime anyone asks if they should be a SAHM or ask their wife to be a SAHM.  These responses are much more measured and what I always recommend women ask of themselves.  The only other response I usually add for women that would apply to men too is whether you want to give up your source of income.  It's a safety net for divorce, death, disability, etc.

I don't know if the responses are different when it is someone asking about a SAHM because of gendered cultural ideals or sexism but it is really interesting.

moof

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #14 on: July 28, 2017, 05:08:09 PM »
My husband has been a stay at home husband/dad on and off. One downside I have found is that it puts more pressure on me to be the "on" parent when I am home, and to not work any late hours. By the time 5:00 roles around, he is exhausted from parenting and needs relief. This puts more pressure on me to do all the parenting in the evening (and not to go to the gym very often, for example). If we were both working, I think we would both have energy to split the parenting more in the evenings/weekends. Whether this is a problem for you may depend on your husband's capacity for childcare.
I echo this experience.  My wife is SAH, and there are plenty of evenings/weekends where I need to decompress, but she's had a rough day and needs a break from our kid before she rings his little neck (and we have a pretty easy going and mostly well behaved kid).  You just have to suck it up and do your best.  Plenty of other times we do dad/son weekend outings that are a complete blast with the side benefit of giving my wife a break.  If the roles were reversed I would not do near as good a job raising him, but I would also not have chosen to have a kid if I wasn't readily willing to be a full-time parent as the situation warranted it.  Our incomes were similarly lop-sided so being SAH dad was not an option I had available to me.

All that said, I am very glad my kid has been raised by us, and not largely by a daycare.  Having a SAH spouse lets allows more home cooked meals (saving $$$), makes getting errands for the household easier to take care of, and many other side benefits.  We almost never had to deal with missed work to take care of a sick kid, or deal with a daycare shutdown on a holiday.  I am able to go in early or stay at work late as needed (I try not to abuse this), while daycare hours often force one parent to arrive late after drop off, and the other to have to leave early to make pick-up.  Such strict regimens can be taxing and plenty of couples I know barely see each other during the week.  As mentioned above the delta in take-home pay is probably only $900-1000/mo or so a month, which is $6/hour, which is a pretty pitiful sum if your husband is working to live and not pursuing his passion.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2017, 05:15:30 PM by moof »

CalmSeas

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #15 on: July 28, 2017, 08:36:32 PM »
Financially it sounds like you would come out ahead with the daycare option. Of course, the way you prefer to live your life for the next several years should weigh in as well!

One other factor: in ~5 years your child will go to school. At that point your husband can return to work without daycare considerations, presuming you haven't had more children. Will his income potential be reduced by the long absence from full time work?

alwayslearning

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Re: Please help me decided if husband should stay home?
« Reply #16 on: July 31, 2017, 08:40:06 AM »
I have to agree with the previous posters about the mental strain of staying at home. I am a SAHM and there are days where I can't wait for my husband to come home to take over. The hard part is he has also had a long day, so it can be draining for both of us on rough days. That being said, I love being a stay at home mom and feel there would be long days even if I had a full time job.

Do you have family nearby? We've starting having a family member watch our little guy every other Saturday (one grandparent from each side, once a month) and that's been so nice. It gives us both time to finish projects or just have self-care time without having to feel like we are dependent on the other spouse to watch the little one. It's the right amount of refresher we both need to feel complete as individuals, spouses and parents. Plus, the grandparents LOVE it.

Also, he will likely not have much time during the day to do a lot of freelance work. Maybe at bedtime? Our little one goes to bed pretty early (5:30PM and sleeps for 12 hours), so that helps. But, during the day he is very active.