How To Become A Stay At Home Mom On A Tight Budget

Living on one income, in this country, is certainly not easy.  Making ends meet in a two income household can be tough (depending on your lifestyle and spending habits) and if you are a one income household, it can seem next to impossible…but if you really want to know how to become a stay at home mom on a tight budget, I can certainly tell you how we did it!

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Here’s our story:

My husband and I were married four years before we had children.  I finished college, getting my Associates degree the first two years and then got a job with Compaq Computer Corporation.  My husband went to Fire School and graduated from the training academy about 2 months before our first child was born (4 years after we were married).  If you know anything about the pay scale of most firefighters, well…let’s just say…It’s low.  Most of them work extra jobs.

I knew without a doubt, that I would have to return to work after she was born.  They were very kind though, allowing me to take 12 weeks for maternity leave, instead of only 6 weeks.  (I was only paid for six.)  I prepped for this by starting early in the pregnancy, putting extra money aside.

Fast forward 2 1/2 years to when my second child was born.  I knew that there was no way that I wanted to return to my job and let someone else care for my babies.  Again, I began prepping very early in the pregnancy and trying to figure out exactly what I needed to do to make this happen.  I worked very hard and learned how to budget and live frugally on what my husband was bringing in.

In the beginning, it wasn’t easy at all, but when we began changing some of our habits and lifestyle, it became so much easier.  It took many sacrifices, but for our family, it was so worth it.

How to become a stay at home mom on a tight budget

Here are the steps we took to bring me home and allow me to become a stay at home mom on a very tight budget, but would also work for those wanting to return to school, need to quit for medical reasons or are facing an impending job loss, for whatever reason.

You need a budget

It seems like every post I’ve written makes this same point, but I can’t stress enough, how important having a budget is when you want to achieve anything, financially.

You need a budget to get out of debt, to be able to save money, send kids to college, build wealth and to retire.  No matter how much (or how little) you make, a budget is your road map to success.  You must know how much money you have coming in and going out.

Where to begin…

The first step in the budgeting process is assessing the damage.  You need to look at all of your obligations AND your spending habits before you can even make a budget.  (You may need to track your spending for a month or two so you can get a clear picture of the income versus the outgo.)

Step two would be listing all your income.

Step three would be to list your expenses for each month.  That includes everything from mortgage/rent to life/health/auto insurance, household expenses, medical/dental, cars, utilities, food, entertainment, etc.  You name it!

Step four would be to subtract expenses from income and see what’s left.  This, of course, is a brief synopsis on budgeting, but you need to become very familiar with these numbers.

If you’re new to budgeting and not sure how or where to start, there a tons of resources on the internet.  I even have a post, 8 Simple Steps for Setting Up a Budget The Easy Way! to help get you started and How To Do A Zero Based Budget And Why They Work, which is what’s worked for us.  I’m a pen and paper kind of girl, but if you prefer a more modern approach, Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar is an awesome budgeting tool and pretty simple to work with.

Practice living on one

This is for those of you that are still in the workforce and want to come home, one day.  This is what we did, among other things, when I found out I was pregnant with our second child.  We tried to save as much of my income as we could.

By trying to live on one income before, we actually had the opportunity to see where we could actually cut expenses, change some lifestyle habits and evaluate if it was even possible for me to quit.

is your job costing you?

Have you ever thought about how much it actually costs to work or even put a pencil to it?  When we take a job outside of the home, it’s either because we really enjoy working or it’s out of necessity to pay bills.   But, the reality of it may be that once you pay for the costs of working, that you’re really not coming out much ahead.  Surprisingly, when you write it down, you may find that having one person at home might actually cost less and be less stressful.

When we were contemplating me staying at home, before the birth of our second child, I actually did the math on this and to my shock, I was almost working to pay for the daycare.  I was making around $13.00/hour, which was fairly decent money, back in 1988, but daycare was already costing a lot.  When I did the math on putting two in daycare, I was going to either have to make a lot more money or make a big decision.

Daycare wasn’t the only expense that I had with working out side of the home, although it was probably one of the largest.

Some of the other expenses that we incurred were:

1. Taxes – Because of my income, we were thrown into a higher tax bracket, resulting in a higher tax bill.
2. Commuting –  My commute wasn’t far, but it was still a commute.  Gas, wear and tear on the car, etc.
3. Clothes – It was a corporate job, so I had to dress the part, wearing dresses, nice slacks, blouses, heels, etc.  And, I might add, that was when I really enjoyed going to the mall…sometimes on my lunch break.  I could always justify my purchases…especially if they were ON SALE!!
4. Lunches – There was always someone wanting to go out for lunch.  I didn’t go everyday, but it was very much the norm to eat out for lunch with the group.
5. Convenience foods–  We all know how it is when we’ve spent a long day at work and are too tired to cook when we get home.  May I mention, that was also before I really knew what meal planning was.  I would either opt to go out to a restaurant or when I grocery shopped, I would buy convenience foods that were not only more expensive than homemade, but were unhealthy.

In the end, I found that we could save plenty with me at home.  So many of the expenses we had went way down or completely disappeared.  We also found that our debt was higher when I work because. let’s face it…the more we make, the more we spend.  I think this is true with most of us.  When I let go of my income, I became very aware of where every penny went and our spending became less.

get rid of debt

This is rather obvious.  The more debt you have, the more fear you will have of losing an income.

We bought our ONLY brand new car in 1985.  It was a Suburban.  I can still remember that our car payment was $356 a month.  That’s a lot for now and especially back then.  We justified it, though because I was working and we were making decent money.  I knew that payment was going to have to go if I was going to be able to stay at home.  Luckily, I was offered stock options at Compaq and had been buying them, a little at a time.  In the three years that I had been working there, their stocks prices tripled from what my option was.  It was a tough decision, but I decided to sell all of them and pay off the car and what ever other debt we had.

If you have a plan for getting out of debt, that’s half the battle.  I suggest using the Debt Snowball method that Dave Ramsey is famous for.  I did the Debt Snowball before I knew what the Debt Snowball was.  List your debts smallest to largest and begin knocking them out, one by one.  If you would like more details and information on the Debt Snowball, you can read How To Get Out of Debt With the Debt Snowball .  You don’t need to be completely out of debt to stay home, but you need to get rid of as much as possible and have a plan on getting rid of what ever is left, when you take the plunge.

develop a frugal mindset

Being frugal has always been a way of life for me.  My Mom was queen of stretching a dollar, so instead of rebelling against that, I basically embraced it.  There were, however, a few years…early in our marriage when I fell off of the frugal wagon.  But, what I learned from those years, was that when I stopped being frugal, our money situation was far worse.  I guess that makes sense..right?

One thing I want to stress is, being frugal is not the same thing as being cheap AND frugal people are not necessarily poor people.  It’s actually quite the opposite.  The average millionaire is extremely frugal.  Frugal is simply being deliberate and non wasteful with your money.  Whether you’re frugal out of out of necessity or because you enjoy it (For me, it’s both), the frugal mindset is what’s going to allow you to achieve your dreams of staying at home with your children, getting out of debt, having a nice home, having enough money to retire on or sending your kids to college, debt free.  These dreams are lasting dreams and how you achieve these things is up to you and how you manage the money you have.

cut unnecessary expenses

One thing I found out, once I was at home, was our wants are not necessarily our needs.  We NEED food, shelter, clothing, electricity.  Our wants are satellite/cable tv, new/newer cars, new clothes, the latest, greatest cell phones, etc.  You get the idea.  But you have to ask yourself…are these wants more important than being able to be there for your children.  Only you can answer that question.

Some expenses that we were able to cut, right off the bat, were:

Groceries –

I made our budget my job.  Once I established a budget that was doable, I was able to take each category and see how far I could whittle it down.  Groceries, for me, was a no brainer.  The first month I did this, I kept my receipts for each shopping trip.  What I found was there was a lot of wasteful spending going on.  We had spent a lot on groceries, but still didn’t seem to have much in the pantry and fridge.  Why was that??  Well…convenience foods.  They were expensive and they were also the first things that got eaten.  You pay a price for convenience.

The next month, I made it my mission to cut the spending by at least $100.  Well, guess what?!  I did even better!  I knocked over $200 off and something weird happened.  We actually had more food in the house!!  How can that be??  Well, let me tell you I had a plan!  A Meal Plan!  I planned dinners, lunches, breakfasts and snacks and I monitored the kids a lot more closely and doled things out.  I was so much more deliberate in this area and it really paid off and it didn’t take a lot of time to do it.  Here’s a great post on Simple Meal Planning on a Budget – Save Time and Money! and 20 Practical Ways To Save On Groceries.

Some other expenses that can be cut or trimmed down from your budget may include:

• Cable/Satellite
• Dining out
• Alcohol
• Cigarettes
• Amazon
• Gym Memberships
• Fast Food
• Mani/Pedis
• Subscriptions
• Starbucks
• Vacations
• Cell phone plans
• Car/Homeowners insurance

Use cash

I can’t say enough about using the Cash Envelope System and how it turned our spending around.  It is much more painful to spend cash than to swipe a credit card.  We don’t quite feel the pain of our purchases when we use plastic.

But, what’s great about using cash is you have cash earmarked for certain things.  When the cash is gone, it’s time to stop spending and make do.  If you’ve never implemented the Cash Envelope System or would like to know how it works, check out How To Use The Cash Envelope System.

evaluate where you live

I’m not saying you have to do this, but it may be something to think about.  Many times, couples buy a home, based on their salaries in that particular moment in their lives.  When you’re both working, it’s so easy to get caught up in house fever and buy more, rather than less.

We did this, as well.  When we both worked, the house payment was a piece of cake!  After our first child, I went back to work.  When I had the second child, we still were able to maintain the mortgage, but it was sometimes a struggle.  I saw my husband a little less and when I got pregnant with the third one, we knew that we wanted to simplify things.

So, we sold our home in the city and moved to a small town, 60 miles west of where we were and bought a major fixer upper.  Luckily, my husband is handy and did most of the work on that old house, himself.  It was what we could comfortably afford and because of his job, he only had to commute back to the city a couple days a week.  So for us, it was totally worth it.  BTW..we lived in that house for 21 years and sold it for 3 times what we paid for it.  I can definitely say it was a good investment.

Anyway, if your not in love with where you are living, downsizing may be a good option to achieve the goal of being able to stay at home.

Diy as much as you can

In this day and age, with YouTube and Pinterest, there’s not much we can’t do on our own.  YouTube has opened up a whole new world for us when it comes to fixing everything from our cars to home repairs.  Boy! How I wished we would’ve had these things when we first bought our fixer upper!  Can you imagine how much time (and money) that we would’ve saved.  I said earlier, that my hubby is very handy.  He has saved us a bundle using YouTube because when he runs into something that he doesn’t know how to do, instead of calling a professional first, most of the time he’s able to fix/repair things by pulling it up on YouTube.

Pinterest is more my style.  Throwing birthday parties, budget decorating, recipes, gardening, saving money, you name it!  It’s there!!  These two internet giants have saved us all a bundle!

learn contentment

Learning to be content is huge if you want to want to be able to stay at home.  I wrote a whole post on 15 Ways to Live a Life of Contentment because I have seen that when people are discontent with their lives, this can lead to reckless spending and deep debt.

I’ve always said that the mind is a powerful thing.  Attitude is everything.  When you find yourself faced with adversity, you can choose to focus on the negative or you can choose to make the most of the situation.

Contentment may or may not change our circumstances and it’s not about getting what we want, but contentment will change our hearts and allow us to be grateful for what we have.

Look for wahm side hustles

Sometimes, it’s just necessary to pull in a little extra income.  When my kids were younger, I had several side hustles.  I started decorative painting in 1985 and did my first craft show in 1991.  I can remember that I made about $100 and my mom and aunt bought most of it!  But, I didn’t give up.  While at the show, I looked around to see what was selling and at that time, hand painted t-shirts were the rage.  I did my second show several months later and sold about $1,500!  Boy, was I stoked!  I did those two shows for almost 10 years, before I quit the craft show gig.

other things i did:

Other things I did to make extra money was selling Avon.  You won’t get rich, but Avon gave me what I called my bread & milk money.  I had to be very careful not to take my earnings and turn around and buy too much from Avon, even though it was sometimes very tempting, so I usually would set a budget and stick to it.

I cleaned houses with a friend.  It was very hard work, but it could be extremely lucrative.

I became a certified personal trainer.  This one can make bigs bucks and since I was my own boss, I scheduled clients on my time.  I went to work after my kids were in school and made sure to be off when it was time for them to come home.

Later on, I opened an Etsy store and I still do that to this day.  My hobby (decorative painting) is what has brought the most in, consistently.  I have a couple of stores in my town that carry my things and a few customers that buy from me on a regular basis.  And…I have done this for years from the comfort of my home.

work at home ideas:

Now, with the internet, there are so many opportunities to work from home and thrive.  Some other ideas (not necessarily internet based) to help you become a stay at home mom on a tight budget, may be:

• Child care
• Sell handmade crafts
• Bake cakes/cupcakes
• House sitting
• Meal planner
• Mystery shopper
• Personal shopper
• Pet sitting
• Professional organizer
• Photographer
• Flip garage sale/thrift store items on Ebay
• Tutoring (math, reading, second language, etc.)
• Wedding planner

So you see…there are so many things one can do to bring in extra money and can be done on your own schedule.  You can work as much or as little as your schedule will allow.

save, save, save!

I can’t stress enough, how important it is to have an emergency fund.  An emergency fund is what will keep you from going further into debt.  In my post, A Simple Guide to Starting An Emergency Fund, I show you how easy it is to start one and why it is so important.  Ideally, you should have 3-6 months of monthly expenses saved and savings should be a priority line item in your monthly budget.

If you think your budget is just too tight to save anything, How To Save Money On A Tight Budget Every Month may help you out.

If you know of other expenses that will be coming up during the year, sinking funds are also a great way to save for them.  Check out Sinking Fund: Every Budget Needs Them if you’d like to know more about them.

taking the plunge!

Taking the plunge into the stay-at-home world can be very intimidating and actually becoming a stay at home mom on a tight budget is just downright scary, but for those that truly want it, it can be so worth it.

And…while it may not be the perfect solution for every family, it worked well for ours on a very modest income. And if it has worked for us, it can be completely achievable for you.

Are you in a one-income or two-income family? If you’ve made the transition to being a stay at home mom, what have been some things that you’ve done to achieve it?

Feel free to share any advice and/or tips from your own experiences in the comment section, below.  Also, be sure to subscribe to Love To Frugal for more money saving tips!

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