Motherhood Articles > Can You Afford to be a Stay at Home Mom?

Can You Afford to be a Stay at Home Mom?

Deciding whether or not you can stay at home after you have a baby can be a big decision. Emotions play a big factor, especially after holding your newborn for the first time. It's hard to imagine leaving this tiny little thing with a stranger. On the other hand, you can gain a tremendous sense of accomplishment from your job that you couldn't feel after a day of changing diapers and wiping up spit up. No matter how you face it emotionally, if you are considering becoming a stay at home mom at all, you first need to figure out if you can financially afford to.

Make a Budget
If you don't already have a budget or track your expenses, now's the time to start. For at least one month, better yet three, record everything you spend. There is no need to go on a budget diet yet, the goal is to find out how much you currently spend and on what items.

There are a couple of ways you can go about recording all of your purchases. One is you can carry around a little notebook and make a note every time you buy something. The other way is to charge everything you purchase with your debit or credit card and use your monthly statement as your notebook of purchases. However, if you choose to charge everything to your credit card, you must promise yourself to pay off the full amount when your statement comes. Going into credit card debt is not going to help you achieve your goal of becoming a stay at home mom.

Once you have every cup of coffee, every grocery trip and every pair of new shoes accounted for, it's time to write it into a budget worksheet. This free Excel budget spreadsheet will automatically add all of your expenses together and subtract them from your income. When you have the form filled out, look at your bottom number. Hopefully this will be positive. Now go up an delete your income at the top. Don't forget to delete any expenses that occur from you working (dry cleaning bill, gas costs, lunches out, etc.). Remember also that your taxes will change once you drop down to one income. Go to the IRS website and use their tax withholding calculator with only your husbands paycheck information to see how much you can change your withholdings. If your bottom number is still positive, then you are able to afford to stay at home. If it's now dipped to a negative number, it's time to look over your expenses and find ways to minimize them.

Saving on Your Expenses
Let's start by looking at your big ticket items and see if we can't save a couple hundred dollars right off the bat.

• Mortgage or Rent. This is often a couples largest monthly expense. The obvious way to reduce this cost is to move to a less expensive place to live, but that's not always the best option for your family. Try looking at refinancing. That can be a fantastic way to lower your monthly mortgage payment if you and may make you able to become a stay at home mom. Plug some numbers onto an online refinancing company (Refinance your home to consolidate debt regardless of credit history. Click here to learn how.) to see if this might make sense for you. If you rent, ask your landlord if there is anything you can do around the property that could reduce your monthly rent. Ask if you can help manage their other properties, take on the yardwork or do other chores or even sign on for a longer lease for a reduction in rent.
  
• Credit card, car payments and other 'bad' debt. These kinds of debts you want to try and get out of as soon as possible. Make is a goal to get out of credit card debt before you decide to become a stay at home mom. There are a number of credit cards that offer zero percent interest for a specific amount of time. Take advantage of these offers to reduce your monthly bill and use the amount you would have paid with your old card towards paying off the principle. Condense your monthly expenses and throw everything you can towards paying your credit card debt and car payment off so that your time for being a stay at home mom will be less stressful.

• Grocery Bill. You can easily reduce your grocery bill by planning a weekly menu and making a shopping list. Designate one night a week for sitting down with the grocery ads and your cookbooks. Come up with seven different meals that take advantage of the weeks grocery sales and write down the list of ingredients you will need. There are many great website services, like Healthy Menu Mailer, that will plan your weekly meals and e-mail you a weekly shopping list too. Make sure to clip coupons from the Sunday paper and from coupon websites (Over $100 in printable grocery coupons right from your browser.). Also try the generic version of your favorite brand. Chances are you'll never notice the difference.
  
• Utilities. Take Dad's advise and start turning off the lights when you leave a room. Replace incandescent lights with florescent, get a hot water heater blanket for your hot water heater. There are a number of different ways you can reduce your energy bill. Don't hesitate to call your utilities and ask how you can save money on your monthly bill. You phone company can find a more efficient and cheaper plan for your and the garbage company can suggest a smaller garbage can size. And don't forget about the option of reducing or eliminating your cable service.

Keep moving down each category on your budget worksheet and ask yourself how you could reduce costs. Many families have to make sacrifices for a parent to become a stay at home parent. Remember that it's temporary though. Children grow up before you know it and being a stay at home mom may just be more satisfying than any job you could ever have.