A penny saved is MORE than a penny earned:
Can a mother afford to come home?
(From the archives…I thought this may be a timely post about saving money!)
Most families believe that the wife and mother simply MUST work to make ends meet. Sometimes they don’t even consider any other possibility. In many cases, however, she works to pay for her working expenses. AND, the money she earns is taxed; therefore, money saved is actually more than money earned.
I would love to resurrect the art of “frugal homemaking” and give women who want to be at home the hope that they can stay at home and still greatly contribute to the finances. Instead of looking at a woman’s job in light of adding income, the wise family will consider the importance of the wife’s role as the “money protector”, or steward over her husband’s income. And while certainly there are instances where this doesn’t work on paper (wife is a doctor who makes $180,000 and hubby brings in $28,000), many families would be appalled to know how much money could be saved if the wife were dedicated to guarding and wisely spending the income.
You’ve probably seen similar break-downs before, but consider, first, the added expenses of the working wife:
Clothes/dry cleaning…………………………………………………$750/year (obviously this is a random guess)
Child care for 2…………………………………………………………$8,840
Lunch……………………………………………………………………..$1,300
Convenience food and eating out(lack of time to cook)……$4,000
Gas…………………………………………………………………………$2,600
___________
$17,490
That’s just the spending part, and I’m sure there are other expenses I didn’t include. But the really staggering part is the amount of money a homemaker can save, when she is excited about the prospect of staying home. I’m not talking about a “poor me…I’m so deprived” kind of saving. I’m talking about a creative, energizing, contented saving. I will share just a few from my own experience, but the ways to exercise frugality is unlimited. The more dedicated you are, the more ways you can find to save. And of course, the benefit goes far beyond just saving money. The lessons your children learn as they watch a joyful, content wife be a good steward over what God has provided are astounding.
- Cooking from scratch is one of the biggest money-savers to implement. Not only is it cheaper and healthier, but the homemaker has a lot more time to search for bargains and save additional grocery money. (We have a “bent and dent” warehouse store where I regularly save a BUNDLE on groceries. Yesterday I bought a jumbo, 9 lb bag of Quaker Oats for $3.99. Find one in your area and use it!) And alas, let us not forget how CRUCIALLY important the family table is, where hearts and lives are knit together by good food and pleasant conversation. The American family has all but abandoned this precious gift of family dining!
- Internet savings. I can’t tell you how much I’ve saved by shopping for things on the Internet. School books, videos, magazines (all for school of course!), contacts, printer ink, clothes–you name it, you can almost always find it for a fraction of the price on-line. E-bay is a great place to look for many things. Here is my most recent Internet “frugal find”…I was so excited. We were out of checks, so I scoured the Internet for check companies. I found one that offered a first-time customer discount. After ordering with the discount, my checks were $18.00 (2 boxes). BUT, they also offered a rebate if you signed up for a “free trial” with this company. I signed up, canceled before my trial was over, and a week later received my $20 rebate in the mail! I actually made $2.00 on my purchase. Can you beat it? I order our printer ink for a fraction of what you can by it at Wal-Mart. Same thing for my contact lenses. The list goes on. The bargains are out there with just a little bit of extra time spent looking for them.
- Utilities. With more time at home, you have time to implement money-saving things like hanging out your laundry (which can be very therapeutic, by the way!)
- Homemade gifts & cards. This one is a biggie at our house. You’d be surprised at all the wonderful ideas (even for the less creative person) there are for gifts and card making. I figured one time that if I make all my cards (they can be very simple but pretty), I will save on average around $120 a year. That’s a big savings for such a simple thing. Baked goods at Christmas, simple sewing projects, easy homemade skin products, there are hundreds of ideas! (Again, the Internet is a great place to find them!) Simple Homemade Gifts
- Home business is always an option. There are so many opportunities for a family who still needs additional income. Within reason, a wife can participate in a home business that lends extra money to the family’s finances. We make homemade skin products and it has been a wonderful family affair and helpful endeavor. (Our ebook about how to start a skin product business.)
- Don’t forget, there is no expense for child care…but MUCH more important than that, Mom is the one raising and teaching her little ones!
The list could go on and on, but the point is that those who want to stay home but feel that they can’t, may need to take a second look at their situation. And those who do NOT want to stay at home but use the “we can’t afford it” as an excuse, I’m on to you!
Don’t miss our family’s journey from one income, to no income, to debt, to the road to freedom! Finding Financial Freedom is full of practical tools from our own lives, about living on one income and getting out of debt.
25 comments
This and your other blog about the selfishness factor reminds me of the slogan, “It’s lonely at the top!” It is lonely to work hard for stuff, sacrificing friends and FAMILY, especially spouse and children. Someday, sooner than we had imagined, the children are grown and gone. There is no more time and opportunity to make those young family memories with our children as they grow up. The relationships are not as strong as they could have been. The mom knows more about her job and the people she works with than she knows of her own children and husband. Is being wealthier or being a “somebody” other than just a wife or mom, really worth that? The end result is often loneliness.
Thank you for this timely re-post! I work full-time and I have two children and a 3rd on the way. My husband promises me I’m coming home even if he has to sign up with the military to make it happen (if his business isn’t able to support us.) I’ve grown a lot from wanting to maintain a middle-class lifestyle like my upbringing – to now joking that even if we live in a cardboard box, I’m going to make it the prettiest cardboard box you’ve ever seen!
This post is right in-line with everything I’ve learned. By God’s grace, I will manage the home as best as I can – and I’ll love doing it! I’ve already scaled down from full-blown birthday parties with a store bought cake to homemade cakes and after-dinner celebrations with just family. That is just the BEGINNING of changes! And the memories are so much sweeter! (My 4yo DD helped me frost her own birthday cake last night by the oil lamp and the setting sun (power was out) What a memory!
Thanks for the encouragement that I CAN COME HOME and it will be SO WORTH IT! 🙂
I love this post!! My precious husband often reminds me that by being a home keeper, I save our family more money than he earns for our family. It seems a little odd to look at it that way, but it’s really neat! There are so many women I have heard say that they “wish” they could stay at home, but that they “can’t afford to”. As the saying goes…”where there’s a will, there’s a way”. 🙂 (And let’s be honest, when we really want something, we find a way to make it happen.)
Good reminders.
The financial argument for staying at home is a compelling argument if working really does cost more than staying at home. That’s a calculation that each family needs to make. I find that these calculations such as you share have a lot of expensive assumptions upon which the calculations are based.
The sample calculation you share is much different than my cost of working.
Do you mind if I share my costs? I work and my husband and I are quite proud of being frugal. I’ll offer some explanations of the costs so I don’t seem like I’m just making up numbers.
Clothes $75
I allot myself $200 per years for clothes but I probably only spend $150. Only half of the clothing I buy is for work. I dress casually and buy at a thrift store.
Childcare $3000
We don’t have children yet, but we’re waiting for that miracle to happen. We have plans for my husband to cut back to 30 hours a week. We’ll only have one child in day care for part time.
Lunch $100/yr
I bring a lunch to work almost every day. $288/yr is what I would spend on lunch if I was staying at home or going to work. Regardless of where I am, I need to eat. The $100 represents the money I spend on the few occasions that I go out to eat for lunch maybe once or twice a month and always something simple.
Convenience Food and Eating out: $0
Again, we spend $200 (at most) on groceries a month for my husband and I. Either he or I cook dinner every night. Most of the food is simple food simply prepared. We do have convenience food from time to time and we do eat out from time to time, but the convenience food and eating out is more likly to occur on the weekends. So I don’t think we use either because we’re too tired to cook when we come home. Convenience food fits into our grocery budget and eating out money fits into our recreation budget already.
Gas: 1440
And that’s being very conservative. I fill up the tank in my little Honda once a week at the most for $30. The cost of my husband’s gas is 1/4 of my cost because he walks to work almost every day. Also, we buy used cars outright. NO car payments. Yeah!
So total work costs: $4615.
How much I come ahead: $22,321
I think you’re correct in saying that most women can stay at home if they want to. You also have a lot of arguments for why women should be home. Most of which I don’t find particularly compelling, but have no interest in discussing. But I did feel compelled to point out that one can be a two income home and a frugal home.
Janelle,
No, I’m certainly not saying that all women who work would come out better financially if they didn’t. In fact, the post is meant to point out not that a woman can make or save more from home, but simply that they may actually be profiting a lot less than they think.
It should be noted though that first, your situtation is probably less common in that you are so frugal. The majority of the working women I know/talk to spend a lot more than they would simply because they “can” or because they don’t have time to be frugal. (That includes nicer cars, clothes, etc.)
Also, not having children significantly reduces the cost–not just of daycare but the “extras” that can go along with that.
I’m also wondering if you included your income that is taxed?
Again, the point being that in some cases, a woman could make up the difference both in savings and possible earning extra money from home.
Of course the post is aimed at women who do not want someone else to be raising their children most of the day, so unless you’re a woman who WANTS to be home, the case for the financial discrepancy wouldn’t matter anyway 😉
Thanks for your perspective!
Don’t forget that a two-income household also probably needs to cars! So, add on the cost of the car itself, gas, insurance, oil changes and other maintenance…and yeah. Lots of money just for an extra car.
And with a baby, you can save money by using cloth diapers and breastfeeding without bottles or pumps. Those things are harder to do with a job outside of the home.
And of course, taxes really do take a huge portion of the second paycheck!
Thanks for this post.
Another thing to be considered is that if you have children in daycare, you will probably have higher medical expenses. When our little boy was ill at 8 months and ended up at Children’s hospital, they asked how often he’d been sick before. I said he’d never been sick. Every doctor and nurse responded with the same comment. “He must not go to daycare.”
I often have women tell me that I’m lucky because I get to stay home, they have to work. I tell them they can stay home if they really want to, they just have to sacrifice. I don’t have shiny, new car or new furnishing. I don’t have “fun” money to go spend on me, but with careful planning we are able to let me stay home with our little boys. I’ve been a SAHM for 28 years, with a couple of small exceptions. Many of those years were on very small income. It can be done. You just have to want to make the sacrifice.
*two cars. Not “to cars” ugh.
What an awesome post. Cooking from scratch not only has saved us a lot of money, but we feel spoiled with all the good food!
Great post! I once calculated that we were losing money by my working outside the home. I didn’t make very much, and I was spending more money to work than I was making.
I enjoyed reading this post. I know that since I have been home full-time, we have been saving money in several areas. When I worked part-time out of the home, the paycheck I earned didn’t really go towards taking care of our family. I used most of it for my personal purposes. Now that I can’t do that anymore, it’s teaching me to be content with the MANY things I already own, as well as learning to take care of the items I own instead of instantly discarding them for new ones.
Also, now that I am home full-time, I can devote more of my time to taking care of my home, husband, and mother (when she needs me) without the extra stress of commuting back and forth to an outside job on a daily basis. Maybe one day, if it’s the Lord’s will, I will be able to discover how to earn extra income in my own home, but for now, I am content and blessed with my current situation.
I know you disagree with women working altogether, but just as a reference, I have spent $0 on my work clothes this year (last year I picked up a few scrubs from wal-mart–less than $75), and I pack a lunch. Childcare and transportation take about 1/4 of my paycheck (combined–that includes a car payment).
My job helps provide the insurance and a lot of the house payment as well. And this is only working part-time.
I would say that the food costs + day care costs would be what killed my income if I worked. I likely wouldn’t qualify for a job that required fancy clothes, and honestly, most things I’ve picked up that say “dry clean only” do just fine in cold water wash and line drying. 🙂
It may be that a couple with no children or one child *could* afford for the wife to work.
However, with three kids, and a husband who already works long hours, there is absolutely no way I would be able to do what I do in terms of food and household savings. I am not a highly organized person, and it takes me quite a bit of effort to put together weekly menus, the shopping list, and keep the household chugging along smoothly. If I were working, even part time, I know that would go out the window completely. Already I have learned that I have to be careful about how many outside activities we do because if it’s too many per week, my grip on things at home starts slipping.
Perhaps there are some superwomen out there that can be highly frugal and have a huge profit margin working outside the home, but I am definitely not one of them.
To the gal who said she ate lunch for $100/yr – no way, unless you’re eating ramen noodles daily, I don’t buy it. Also, childcare runs way more than 3k a year – between the extra time/gas/kids lunch/occasional running late fees, the real world number is at least twice that. And when you’re dropping your real life infant off at real life day care, suddenly your baby just got cuter and more important, up goes day care to 12k, or enter Nanny for at least 18k a year. There goes the “surplus”, without even factoring in the missing diaper bags, supply fees, etc., that make up “childcare”.
To the gal who commented that children in childcare typically have more incidence of illness, requiring more medical care costs, excellent point. Not to mention that it is usually the Mom who takes said child to the Dr., missing work, which costs more still. Even if Dad takes the kiddo to Dr., someone is missing work and burning hours. I would throw in the cost of an extra Dr visit, prescription and a day off (not much fun spending your vacation time in a waiting room) – minimum 2k a year. And there’s the added stress, your additional sick days, and suffering work performance because you are rightly distracted by thoughts of your child in day care.
Just thoughts from a former six-figure earner who learned better than “but my income is how we live, and my work completes me”. Not really, much to my self-important dismay :)Love.
To add to Cottage Child’s observations:
My former employer would only allow employees to take a specific portion of our sick days to care for our children. We were absolutely not allowed to use vacation days to care for children. So, if a supervisor discovered that the employee had violated this rule that would be grounds for dismissal.
Of course, there were some sympathetic supervisors who would turn a blind eye, especially if a person had more than two children. But that wasn’t always the case.
Can you imagine what implications this has during the flu season? If you can’t, I’ll tell you. I will never forget how one parent whose child was at the same daycare as mine was telling me about how they sent their child on to school even though early that morning they had a fever of 101+ (they gave them a “good dose” of Motrin to mask the fever). Needless to say, within days other children in this class, including mine, came down with similar symptoms. :-(.
By the way, I’m am in no way trying to say that just because you stay at home with your children they will never get sick. We’ve had our share of illness this year because we’re around other people, including other children, who are infected themselves.
Oh yes, and we were spending $1000/month on childcare (just in tuition, not additional childcare expenses for supplies, fundraisers, etc.). Yes, there were places that charged a lot less, but you should have seen the conditions to which our children would have been subjected. (Higher child-to-caregiver ratios, unclean, smelly facilities, no attempt at educational/cultural enrichment, high turnover for caregivers, etc.)
In fact, at one point our children were in a more expensive center. I happened to “pop in” one day unexpectedly to find my child sitting in a diaper on the dirty, rubber mat leading to the outside exit of the classroom. And the waiting list for this center was several months long!
Once again, I’m not saying that all stay-at-home mothers are super perfect with super perfect households (myself included especially). But this isn’t about what everyone else is doing, this is about doing the best I can by the children God has entrusted to my care.
I just skimmed through the comments, so please forgive me if this has already been said! 😉
In response to Janelle,
I just wanted to point out that if you put your baby in Childcare to return to work, you most likely will need to use disposable diapers, instead of cheaper cloth diapers. Also, you are WAY more likely not to breastfeed, or to give up on breastfeeding early. If you do try to breastfeed while working, you will need an expensive pump, bottles, and possibly more gas money for a lunch break feeding. If you decide to use formula- quote from The Cottage Child above “when you’re dropping your real life infant off at real life day care, suddenly your baby just got cuter and more important”, same goes with the brand of formula, quality of water, and the type of bottle. One site I visited estimated the cost of formula feeding to be between $750-$3000.+ /yr. Just a few more things to consider that will eat away at your income. I also think your Childcare cost estimate is very low, or I live in a very expensive area. Here, the lowest price for a full day at daycare is $29/day. Even part-time, (3 days a week) this is still much higher than $3000. per year. My Sister is attending college part-time, and pays $650/month for her 2 year old to attend part-time daycare. She spent months researching and visiting less costly homes/centers, and decided it’s true, You get what you pay for! Just some thoughts. 🙂
Hi Kelly,
I tried to post a little earlier, but I wonder if it got stuck in the spam folder?
I think that $100 a year for lunch for part-time working over and above what you would spend for lunch normally (i.e., if you were at home) is doable. Maybe it’s harder to realize that if you had been making a triple-digit income, but not all of us live like that or have ever lived like that.
I make almost all of my husband’s lunches, and the rare times he goes out to eat, it’s usually because his boss is treating him and his coworkers because of their extraordinary work (not to brag on him!). I haven’t calculated exactly how much we spend on his lunches, but I don’t think it can be much more than if he were eating at home.
Sometimes I sense an an attitude here that any woman who works is doing it out of selfish ambition. But again to mention a difficult situation in my own past, my own mom worked for a time when I was growing up. Primarily because my dad’s insurance wouldn’t pay for the costly surgeries I needed to survive. My parents alternated working day and night shifts so one of them could be with us at almost all times to try to get out of debt, and as soon as she could, she stopped working and stayed at home with us. the poor and needy in our communities. For her, working was a difficult sacrifice. I’m very thankful for her sacrifice, in some ways you could almost say I owe her my life because of her sacrifice.
But some women *do* work out of financial necessity, out of love for their family, and to serve their community. I think this is something that needs to be acknowledged, especially as we reach out to the poor and needy in our communities.
I’m working–y’all can decide whether I’m working “at home” or not, if you must–teaching homeschoolers piano for about 10-12 hours a week. My kids spend time with other homeschooling families during that time, and with their grandma and grandpa, and have a great time (does that mean am I letting other people raise my children?). But I’m teaching in my mom’s house (out of my house) and at a church (out of my house) and at my own house (in house). But because I’m doing this, my husband doesn’t have to take another job, so he gets to spend more time raising our kids, which I feel–and he feels (he’s a very involved dad)–is extremely important. And I feel like I’m sharing the love of music with another generation, and that is important, too.
You work, Kelly, on this blog and your other online projects probably at least as much as a part-time worker might work out of the home. I do think it’s important to be with our kids, I really do and I appreciate your heart for your family, but I think it’s also good to acknowledge that women have found some creative ways to balance kids and earning income, as you have.
Sorry, didn’t mean to write a book on this! 🙂
Kelly:
Yes, I “lose” money on taxes, but the calculations I did were based on my post-taxes income. I may see taxes differently than you do (for example, federal taxes indirectly pay my salary) so I don’t think of it as “losing” money.
By the Cottage:
I spend $288 a year on lunch for myself regardless if I work or not. The $100 is based on the few times I decide to not pack a lunch and grab something simple for lunch.
Childcare:
Childcare expenses only last for a short period of time before preschool and school starts. Just a thought as you consider these calculations.
Overall, I was just trying to make the point that in doing the calculations it should be based on individuals. I have seen these calculations on the cost of working on a lot of different websites before. I just hate for everyone to see these calculations and think, “oh you poor working women who really work for nothing”(and thank you to Kelly for saying that you don’t make that assumption).
So I offered up my own break down of expenses. You can believe them or not. It doesn’t matter to me because I’m not engaging in a debate on whether women should stay home or not. I’m more engaging in a debate on the caculations that I think give an inaccurate picture.
As Kelly said, if you want to stay home, you can make it happen. If I wanted to stay home, I know I could make it happn. But I don’t want people thinking I work for nothing. Because I don’t. My pay covers our retirement (so we don’t have to depend on Social Security), a literal 10% tithe that we give every month, and few extra niceties in life. Not to mention the intangible things like job satisfaction and working to help others (I’m a social worker).
Joanna,
Yes, I agree that not all women work out of selfishness (and I don’t think I’ve ever indicated that). I’m fully aware of difficult/tricky situations that may require women to out of the home for a season. I do emphasize the importance of Christian women maintaining that their “starting point”, that is, our default thinking and encouragement to other women should be to “teach the younger women to love their husband and children, to be keepers at home, etc.) I don’t think it’s a made-up opinion, but a mandate from Scripture that we like to neatly “re-interpret”. If our situation requires us to be away from raising children and helping a husband, we simply need to be always looking and trying to return to as close a picture of the keeper at home Scripture describes as we can.
That said, I’m a hearty advocate of women earning money and ministering to the community. In fact, I wanted to address something you said…
“But some women *do* work out of financial necessity, out of love for their family, and to serve their community. I think this is something that needs to be acknowledged, especially as we reach out to the poor and needy in our communities.”
I believe it is the church’s responsibility to reach out–though for the most part we’re not doing it. And when I say “church”, I don’t necessarily mean an establishment, but the people that make up the church. In Proverbs 31 we see a keeper at home who cares for her household, runs a home business AND reaches out to the needs, because she is available to do so. I would love to see women freed up to take over that role again more than we’re seeing it now.
I totally hear where you’re coming from; but I also see the slippery slope once we make allowance for moms to leave home full time. Does that make sense?
In case I was misunderstood:
1) I do think that a small percentage of women in two income households work outside their homes out of necessity – I’m questioning the wisdom of working outside the home when it isn’t necessary, as I agree with WW’s statement that it’s a mandate from Scripture that our post is home.
2)I never lived like I had a triple digit income – part of my point. Nearly half went to taxes, and half of that to work-incurred expenses – extra car, childcare, etc. Net profit for 50-60 hours a week at work: about 20k a year. My carefully structured budget crumbled at the daycare door, like it does for many Moms. Incidentally, I have always subscribed to the dollar per serving philosophy of meals, and cook/shop/eat accordingly. With that in mind, about $350/year is what lunch costs ME, and based on what most working folks eat for lunch, that’s cheap. Even if you pack lunch, that food cost something. I’m surprised at the number of friends I talk to who don’t factor in that cost. It’s just an observation.
3) I think it’s crucial for a woman to develop industry from home. Again, as I understand it, that’s a huge part of the Prov 31 example. It does a lot for my sanity since I get to talk to people who are over 3 feet tall every once in a while :). I think it also provides first hand experience to the kiddos about quality of work and quality of life, be it school or career, one typically enhances the other. Joanna, you are who I want to be when I get all this straightened out. There was no criticism from me with regard to work, certainly not in the context you described.
3) I don’t know much about childcare these days, but last I checked pre-school cost more than daycare, and even upon entering public school, quality afterschool care is astronomical. It’s not a temporary expense, and will continue to get more expensive over time. And sick days and holidays and summer all continue to happen.
Love.
I used to work. My infant stayed with my grandparents and when he was 18 months old I put him in daycare. All the careful budgeting and plans ended with a child that was sick almost the entire first year he was in daycare. He had NEVER been sick before. Also, I am sure there are women who do a much better job than I did, but after working all day and nursing a baby all night and getting up early to fight an hours worth of traffic to get into birmingham, pumping 3 times a day and then fighting traffic for another hour, coming home, eating dinner, giving baths and time to my little one, I could care less about making lunches or being frugal. i was just trying to “make it”. I thought I was working for insurance. I thought I had no other choice. I also didn’t know what the bible taught about wives and mothers and wish I had heard these things 16 years ago. I have 3 children now and it wasn’t until I had my 2nd little one that I realized all I missed with my first one.
There are people who have to work outside of the home out of necessity. For them I would suggest working systematically to eliminate all debt and be working towards a goal of the mother being able to work less and less until finally she can come home. You can’t put a price on a full-time mother. I have tried it both ways and I assure you no amount of effort can make up for being absent.
Also, I am assuming that when one poster was talking about daycare being a temporary problem and that preschool and school would be soon, they must be talking about the public school system. This is problematic when you look at scripture and how we are supposed to raise our children. Covenant children should not be put into secular humanist schools. We wouldn’t send them to a muslim school or a hindu school, especially so we could claim “free childcare” so we can continue to work.
I know what you give up when you quit work. I know it is a difficult transition and being a full time Mom is harder than working full time.
I also wanted to point out that realistically, the first 21,000 I made went to the expense of working. This was with 2 children, but when adding the expense of Social security, the higher tax bracket, the additional tithe, and then all the other expenses for working the first 21,000 dollars was not even mine. I personally don’t think money should be your sole motivation for coming home, but if you need to show it to your husband, then remember to add everything. You might think you will never stop and pick something up, but after caring for sick children, working, cleaning, laundry, sometimes you just can’t face one…more…chore.
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