‘Our daycare expenses rose to $1000 a month.’ Husband Wonders How To Tell His Wife She Can’t Quit Her Job To Stay Home With The Kids

Once you have children, there is a choice to make – is one of the parents going to stay home and raise the kids or do both parents work and pay the additional cost of putting children in full-time care?

For some, money makes the choice easy. For others, their desire to have a career outside the home is a deciding factor.

Sometimes, though, what we want and what we can swing just don’t match up.

OP and his wife have three children. Recently they had a change in income that meant one of them is making what they used to make combined, and so his wife was hoping she would be able to quit her job and stay home.

I (28m) recently finished my PhD and my income rose significantly (from $35,000 to $73,000). My wife (26f) also moved jobs and increased her pay (from $40,000 to $50,000.)

We recently welcomed our third child into our home, and our daycare expenses rose to $1000 a month, which ends up being a little less than half of my wife’s take-home pay. Also, for context we share finances completely, so when I say “my pay” or “her paycheck” to us it is really just our money.

My wife told me that she would like to stay home with the children following this school year (she works as a teacher).

They tried living for a month on just his salary and things were pretty tight.

I told her we could try to make it work and we started budgeting to live on only my income without her check. We still pay daycare with her check, but that is all.

The rest of her check we pay extra on our debt ($40,000 in consumer debt, $110,000 mortgage debt). The last month we have been able to do this, but it is much tighter financially than we would like to have it.

If you notice, our incomes combined a couple years ago totaled $75,000, which is close to my income alone now. So we are essentially living on our old incomes, but with 3 children to care for and with significant inflation.

They could make it work but he doesn’t see how they could manage it and continue living without anxiety, but he’s worried about seeming unfeeling by communicating this to his wife.

I am sad that we are struggling so much with this new budget. I want to tell my wife that I’d like her to continue to work so that we can have an easier life with more margin.

I am worried, however, that it would be an ******* move to tell her to keep working when I know she is a great mother and is really struggling with wanting to stay home with them.

The only other option we have as far as money is to reduce our retirement contributions to give us more margin (I contribute 8% pre-tax, employer matches 8%, then I do an additional 8% in Roth). I don’t want to reduce these contributions because I want us to be able to retire comfortably.

WIBTA if I told my wife that I am not comfortable with our budget on only my income, and that I would like her to continue working to give us more financial margin in our lives?

Do the Redditors think he’s being overly cautious or controlling? Let’s find out!

The top comment says it’s not his fault the numbers don’t add up.

This person agrees that the numbers don’t lie.

A lot of people had suggestions for possible alternate options.

And they have thoughts as far as communication style, too.

Other people have done it.

It’s not always easy, I know.

But where there’s a will there’s a way.