Can You Afford to Be a Stay at Home Mom?

If you have small children or are pregnant you know how expensive they can be. Daycare is often a huge expense, even if you only have one child. If you have more than one, the price can become outrageous. How much can you afford to pay for daycare? How much can you afford to pay for working? How much do you have to make at your job to make it worth having one? When is it time to quit the job and stay home with the kids?

When you think about a mom that has an outside job compared to a stay at home mom, many people think about the money. They assume that the mom with the job has a lot more of it than the mom that stays at home. What these people seem to not realize is how much it costs to be a working mom. Sure, on paper it looks better to be a working mom. A working mom certainly brings in a lot more money than one who stays home with the kids. But a working mom has a lot more expenses as well.

Everyone knows and remembers that most working mothers have to take their children to daycare. Most people even remember that a working mom spends more on transportation than a stay at home does. A lot of people seem to forget about some of the other things though, like clothes and coffee. Sure, stay at home moms wear clothes and drink coffee, but usually both are a lot cheaper. Most people don't dress up to stay at home they way they do for work. And drinking coffe at home is much cheaper than stopping for it on your way to work. And what about those lunches? A lot of working moms eat out at lunch time. Many stay at home moms eat a grilled cheese sandwich or whatever their toddlers left on their plates.

Let's crunch some numbers here. Let's say you have an average job. For this example, you don't have any benefits, but you use your husband's and they are good anyway. You work 40 hours a week every week for $12 per hour. In a week you make $480. By the time you pay 15% of your check into taxes, you are left with around $408 each week for take home pay.