Can I be a stay at home mom with my husbands 50k salary?

Question

I live in Michigan and we currently live in a 3 bedroom 1.5 bathroom bungalow. I understand that living in California or NY would be impossible..

Answer 1

It depends on what kind of a lifestyle you want to lead. You may need to make certain sacrifices, like not buying a brand new car every 3 years to avoid car payments, which by themselves can total anywhere between $600-1000 per month for 2 cars. If you don't mind living in your current home for a long time, this will also help, because you won't be increasing your mortgage payment.

You also have to consider how expensive it is to raise children. Consider that within the first year of a childs life, the expected cost for the parent is anywhere from $50,000-100,000 (depending on medical costs, etc...), then perhaps it levels out to $10,000-20,000 a year afterwards. Double that in case you have twins.

Answer 2

I earn slightly more than what you stated, but my wife has not worked since our children were born, 20+ years ago.

As long as you do not have to take exotic vacations every year, or need to change to a new car often, or get a boat, vacation home, etc,  you can well survive on $50K.

We take weekend mini vacations within driving distance of where we live, cook at home most of the time, and our cars are over 10 years old and running well.

We don't buy new TVs or iPhones or iPods, etc, and enjoy rented DVDs from Blockbuster.  We have no cable.  We don't change our cell phones every year.  We use fans instead of aircon, and use scrap wood for the fireplace in the winter - and plenty of thick sweaters!

Not much luxury in our lives, but no major discomfort either.  And $50K will let it happen.

Answer 3

What you need to do is to sit down with your husband and make a budget so that you have a general picture of your average family income and expenses for a year.  That will help a great deal.  Make sure you figure the income based on your husband's take-home pay rather than on his salary before taxes.

Answer 4

Not impossible. I'm a single mom in California making 45K. Surely  you can make it in Michigan for 50K.

Answer 5

It really depends on your personal standard of living. If your rent is less than $1500/month, I can see you living in reasonable comfort on $50K/year. I used to live in a 2br apartment, $800/mo, with my husband and baby daughter on $26K a year. We never wanted for anything, always had good food in the fridge, rented lots of movies and ate at a nice restaurant once a week. Baby had more than enough toys and clothes. But if you guys are the kind who need expensive cars and gadgets, you might find yourself a bit pressed for dough.

In my opinion, two salaries are pretty superfluous most of the time. It's just something the capitalist machine has driven into our heads.

Edit: children do NOT cost $50-100K a year! What??? LMAO Only if you feel the need to buy them diamond-encrusted onesies! If that were true then there would be no poor people with children, and we KNOW the opposite is true. These are all just lies propagated by the uber-capitalist agenda.