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Stay at Home Moms
SAHMs: Advice on finances
Hi ladies!
My DH and I are trying to evaluate our finances to see if it would be possible for me to stay home. I am not sure yet if this is what I want to do but just want to evaluate all options.
My SAHM friends say that between not paying for day care, decrease in car insurance and gas, and decreased taxes they feel that their expenses have gone down enough to justify them staying home. (I realize this is very dependent on your actual income but this seems to be a consensus.)
What other expenses did you see fall (or rise?) as a SAHM? Is there anything you think I should consider in addition to the above? Enlighten me! 
TIA!
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Re: SAHMs: Advice on finances
decrease: my clothing expenses, professional expenses (conferences, memberships, etc.)
increase: heating bill- since I'm home all the time, I don't let the thermostat bump down to 62 during the day, water bill- probably the case with any baby, though, plus we're CDing
lower: No eating out for lunch, professional clothing, drycleaning,
higher: energy bills by a smidge- i am sure that is just them raising the rates though-
I agree with pp.
Our energy bills went up quite a bit. Nearly 31%! It was a multitude of factors (heat/ac on during the day, dishwasher running significantly more often due to us eating home, my increase in baking/cooking and being home for meals we would have eaten at work, etc., water bills, etc). Plus, DD's room has increased electrical items running (monitors, etc.) in what was a formerly unheated the majority of the time guest room. Plus, DD generates quite a bit of laundry:)
That said, we've (sadly, because it just makes me feel wasteful) have continued to SAVE more money now that we are 100% without my income. Some how we spent my entire income on convenience items and crap. We ate out (a lot), spent way too much on groceries and lunches and entertained more often with alcohol. Gas for our cars has decreased. I no longer need or buy clothes for myself very often (no big work meeting to impress someone at, no work social functions where they just saw my new sweater last week, no matching axcess, etc.). I cook a ton more and that saves us so much money. Plus, shopping sales and having the time to bargain hunt is huge.
I have a hard time articulating this issue because I simply can't understand how we managed to save more in the last year on just DH's salary and the addition of our first child, who we spent a significant amount of $ on (diapers, formula for 6 months, general supplies). All I can think about is where in the heck did my entire salary go? Seriously, I was working for fast food and eating out at nice places? We did pay down our debt before I quit, so that our monthly expenses were utilities, house payment/taxes, insurance (car) and cell phones/cable/internet. We don't have car payments or credit cards.
HTH!
As an FYI: Obviously everyone is different, but my gas expenses have definitely gone UP since becoming a SAHM. Not so much when DD was little, but now that she's older, we go somewhere almost every day. It's also so much easier to shop because there's more time for it. Just some things to think about.
We've also noticed our heating/cooling bills are higher because we have to heat/cool the house all day long, not being able to lower it when we're at work. Our food bill is also higher because I'm cooking so many meals.
Good luck to you! Even with all of this, we sitll manage to make it work!
This! Exactly! Its amazing! Where exactly was my salary going? I thought our grocery bill would go WAY up because we'd be eating at home so much more and I'm cooking so much now, but I've actually cutting it in half just because I pay attention to what we're buying now (I don't know what the heck we were doing before!). I use an online program called Pear Budget- it costs $3 per month and its a really great budgeting tool to keep me organized.
Just an thought for those whose heating bills have gone up - have you made sure the heat your furnace is putting out is being used the best way possible?
When natural gas was so high last year, we brainstormed ways to make air circulation better. We now leave our basement door open to let the warm air up eaiser and we've used magnetic tape to cover vents in rooms we don't use much during the winter. It's cut the cost of our gas bill by over half. (We were shocked by it.)
It's just a happy coincidence that we reaped the benefits of this at the same time that I started SAH. It made the choice a lot easier to make for us.
a big saver for us (which seems surprising) is the dining out-fewer lunches on the run, fewer dinners of take out or ordering at the last minute. really does make a huge difference. filling up one vehicle one time per week or sometimes one time per two week span is awesome too--not to mention fewer oil changes, less wear and tear etc. we still do daycare (for now) but only 2 days per week instead of 5 which saves. buying in bulk or watching for sales is now my pet project-and one which i really enjoy getting creative with.
also we don't take out as much "cash" from the bank anymore.
using Quicken on line has helped me to have a better picture and helps us out a lot--i manage most of the bill paying and balancing. but dh and i have a lot of discussions. one thing that was key up front was looking at his intake and then looking at our "set" monthly bills and figuring out what was leftover-it is tight, but we have some left over which is nice.