Can You Afford To Stay Home?
By Sharon Davis
A few years ago, after the birth of our second child, my husband and I were trying to decide whether or not it would be possible for me to stay home.
At first we thought that since we were just about breaking even, there was no way we could ever make it happen. But when we decided to actually put pen to paper and calculate our bottom line with and without my salary, we were quite surprised.
What we found was that it was actually costing us to have both of us working. While that may not be the case for everyone, you may find that the second salary brings in much, much less than you think it does.
According to Jan MacGregor, a financial consultant and former analyst, “There are people out there who are expecting to be able to meet their bills better (after they re-enter the work force) and never realize they are either working for a loss or for something like $4,000 a year (after expenses).”
That may seem hard to believe, but if you consider the many “hidden” expenses of a two-income household it is often the case. There are, of course, the obvious expenses such as child care and commuting costs. Some of the hidden expenses are the money spent on lunches, more take-out and convenience food for dinner, dry cleaning bills professional clothing. There can be higher medical costs due to increased exposure to illnesses for children who are in daycare.
Many families hire a housekeeper or gardener to keep up on the household work that they don’t have the time to do. A significant factor is your taxable income. A second salary can push your taxable income into a higher tax bracket.
While the tax issue in and of itself does not eat up the entire second salary, when you add in all the other expenses of a two income family, you might find that it’s not worth it to have both parents working.
Here is a link to MacGregor’s cost of living chart that uses a second salary of $40,000 as an example: Cost Of Living Chart
If you are considering having one parent stay at home, the best thing to do is to actually calculate your income and expenses, taking into consideration the difference in taxation. You may find that you can in fact afford to stay home with your kids.
© Copyright 2001 Sharon Davis. Sharon Davis is the Mother of two girls, the owner of 2Work-At-Home.Com and the Editor of the site's monthly ezine, America's Home. In her spare time she reminisces about what it was like to have spare time. To subscribe to her free ezine, Click Here
This article may be reproduced providing it is published in it's entirety, including the author's bio.
Comment About This Article Place Holder
This page last updated — Friday, January 21, 2011 6:44 AMST
Self Employed Advanced 468x60 Advert Place Holder
Thinking About an Affiliation with Profit Being You
There hasn't been an update in a while here at SCGP, and we're about to start fixing that with a site redesign as well. While surfing around investigating some of our most recent endeavors, we've run into a website that specializes in people that wish to make a living with a blog, specifically word press, and the ways to set it up and monetize it. It's still in start-up, but being Kimberfly Castleberry, more on her in the following paragraph, is the heart and brains behind this, we feel confident in mentioning this start-up for the benefits we're sure it could offer some of our members. So drop by and sign up, then tell Kim hello at Profit Being You.
And While Thinking About an Affiliation with Profit Being You, it Brings us to Just Ask Kim as Well
We stumbled on Just Ask Kim around the same time, and this too is a site related to Wordpress blogging. However, the slight differences here is that Kim tends to focus more on the plugins and innerworkings of setting up your blogging software for maximum results, including some of the best plugins for SEO, traffic funneling and generation, and some other things as well. So, if you're a Wordpress blogger or thinkig about being one, Kim can definitely help you get started out the right way in your work from home business venture. Drop by Just Ask Kim and learn just what it takes to set up your Wordpress blog for maximum returns.
Site of the Week
This week's site ( yeah, we know, clickfire stayed up a bit longer than a week, we might need to make this a MONTHLY site :o) ) is brought to you courtesy of Sean's Web Design Help Pages.
Sean's site offers some tools, some tutorials, and also some stuff on web accessibility. He's even published an interview with Jakob Neilsen, a reported usability expert. He also has a case study he published on Tesco's accessible website, a company that reportedly brings in £13m a year.
He tosses in some software tools and rounds the site out with some 3D text and design stuff. Drop by and take a look.
About our Link Quality.
As with all of our links, they are all scrutinized heavily to ensure quality and deliverability to our visitors. Should you have ANY problems with ANY links on our pages, should any of the linked companies treat you badly or poorly, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do send us an email and let us know. All such mail should be sent to Poor Links so we might investigate and address issues promptly to keep our member community protected. Lastly but not least, we have also updated our partner's page. You'll actually find links to our partners now with descriptions of how they help Sanders Consultation Group Plus. Thanks for visiting Sanders Consultation Group Plus, keep checking back for frequent updates.
Search Engine Positioning Part IV and V
We have two new articles on search engine positioning now available. These articles look into link popularity and link relevancy, and then we show you how to use them to leverage your search engine positioning. The articles are VERY similar, and they should be, both go hand in hand with each other. We also added an article on the business side of the website design business. Look at what's needed to start your own website design business.
The PREsell concept
Wondering what the PREsell concept is and how it relates to your marketing efforts? Read this article and we'll outline it for you and tell you how to implement the PREsell concept to leverage your marketing efforts.
Other Articles Here at SCGP
Take a look at how the CANSPAM Act of 2003 will affect our marketing efforts, or look into Affiliate Strategy and ways to leverage your affiliate marketing efforts. You could also take a look into the personal side of a webmaster's life and read about time management for webmasters. You can find these articles in our webmasters resource area.
Affiliation With The Web Master's Den
We have added yet another resource to help out our would be webmasters. The Web Master's Den is another resource site with links to information for today's webmasters. Once you have looked into all of our resources, drop by and check out theirs.
Self Employed 468x60 Advert Placeholder
Site Navigation
Self Employed 120x240 Plus Advert Placeholder
Subscribe to our Newsletters
Self Employed 120x60 Advert Placeholder
