Surrendering a Salary, in Perspective

It was easy to make the decision to stay home with Little Guy from an emotional standpoint–it’s what I always wanted, and I knew it would make me happy–but the math had me second guessing. Looking at my salary, it felt like giving up so much–but it wasn’t as big a financial blow as it seemed at first glance. Though we definitely come away with less, the lifestyle changes create savings that soften the blow. Here are just a few of my biggest savings from staying home.

Taxes

I’ll get this obvious one out of the way. Taxes cut significantly into take-home pay. There is a certain sticker shock of giving up your salary, but factoring in taxes keeps things in perspective.

Childcare

Without doubt our biggest savings. One-third of my monthly pay would have gone directly into childcare–and my childcare was particularly cheap! There was a cooperative daycare basically on campus where I worked–monthly service hours required of parents kept costs low. Were this not the case, it might have been up to half.

Commuting

My workplace was about twenty-five minutes from home. That adds up at the pump. We also had to have two cars. Now my husband’s job is walking distance from home, and I work at home. We sold our second car for a little extra cash and thus save monthly on car insurance. Plus, having just one car and driving it mostly around town keeps maintenance costs to a minimum.

Convenience

This is a big one that seems like a small one. We have drastically reduced our convenience spending. I am not a morning person at all, and I am exceedingly forgetful. That means I often didn’t have time in the morning to make lunch, and even when I did think ahead and pack leftovers, I would forget them…a lot. I worked directly above a cafeteria, so I always had convenient, overpriced food to rescue me on these days. Then I would get home hungry and tired, and I didn’t always feel like cooking–so we went out to eat, or picked up Little Caesar’s (so temptingly close to us). These days, my husband watches Little Guy after work while I cook dinner. They get some quality time together, I get some alone time to decompress, and all three of us get delicious, healthy home-cooked meals. (Bonus: We are both home at lunchtime, so we can’t forget lunches anymore!)

Groceries

I could probably write 2000 words on grocery savings alone, but I’ll keep it short for now. When I was working, my husband did all the grocery shopping, but I did all the cooking. I rarely made time to plan meals and write him a list beforehand, meaning a lot of guesswork on his part. Often, we had to change plans because I didn’t have everything I needed, or food would go to waste because I didn’t know we had it or didn’t have a plan for it. Also, as stated in #4, I often came home too tired to cook and we would go out, and the planned-for meal would sometimes go bad before we got to it. Now that I’m doing both the shopping and the cooking, we never get more than we need–I have a plan for everything I buy, and I don’t scrap planned meals to go out to eat. I have time to shop mindfully, and even go to different stores to get the best prices.

Laundry

Our apartment, to my great chagrin, has no washer/dryer. Our favorite laundromat offers half-off washes on weekdays, but we didn’t have time or energy to take advantage of this deal. And we hated using our precious nights and weekends doing something so time-consuming and lame as laundry, so we put it off as long as humanly possible every time. Sometimes we bought new clothes (ahem, underwear) just to put off doing laundry, or at least under the reasoning that having more clothes would make it easier to put off laundry at some future date. We both had too much clothing, and spent too much on clothing. Now I always take the laundry on a half-off day, and get away spending a mere $2.50. My schedule makes it easy to make it out once a week, so no more wardrobe padding. (I have culled my wardrobe down to a small capsule wardrobe, which I’m crazy about–but that is another subject for another day!)

Pumping and formula

I haven’t had the best luck with pumping. I worked for a short time after my maternity leave, and it was a nightmare. I was constantly frustrated at not getting enough. I’m almost certain that I would have had to supplement with formula, which is very expensive. There also would have been pumping costs like replacing valves, getting flanges that are actually the right size, and extra bottles and/or disposable pumping bags.

Pick-me-ups

I was never really happy in the nine-to-five life. At work, I always felt that my time would be better spent with my husband, my baby, my cats, my books, my guitar, my kitchen, my you-get-the-idea. I was fine with the job itself and never felt that finding the “right” career would fix the problem. I never dreamed of being a “this” when I grew up. I dreamed of other things–the friends, family, husband, children, hobbies, travel. I always knew that there was more to life than work and that is what I dreamed of. I needed regular pick-me-ups to deal with my my less-than-fulfilling lifestyle. Hard day at work? Let’s go for drinks. Forgot my book for my precious lunch-time reading? Pick up a new one at the campus bookstore. Late getting home because I had to risk my life driving through a snowstorm to get to and from work, which I didn’t even want to go to in the first place, but didn’t want to waste a vacation day because then I couldn’t take my summer camping trips? Order pizza, the good stuffed-crust kind. Because I deserve it. I bought too much nice clothes, so I could feel good about my looks at work. I bought lots of expensive tea, so I could enjoy a luxury at my desk. I bought lots of expensive gifts for my husband for special occasions because I lacked the energy and time to do things on a daily basis that would mean much more to him than gifts (his primary love language is acts of service). An unfulfilling lifestyle leads to unnecessary expenses and lifestyle inflation. It just does.

It’s not easy to give up a salary, but the loss is never as big as it seems. There is value–monetary value–in having a stay-at-home parent in a household.

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