Friday, April 12, 2013

Working Mother



I recently read an article Moms: Making Working Outside The Home Worth It--7 Ways To Do It on my favorite financial blog site And Then We Saved.  (This site is how it all started with the idea to do our own Family Financial Fasting--click here to see how our journey started.)  A lot of "working mother" articles stereotypically assume that working mothers "have" to work, and give the impression that every female in America who has borne children longs to stay home if given the choice.  I'm here to say:  this is not the case for all of us.

This particular article about working mothers kind of struck me as a "this is my life" snapshot.  I've never really thought of our family structure....me working full-time, Bryan staying home full-time....as a form of financial fasting.  But in reality, there are a lot of sacrifices we make in our family in order to make it work.  We know that we are still the rare couple--we have met a few stay-home-dads....but not a lot.  But we're essentially no different than a lot of households who have one income and the other parent stays home to focus on child-raising.  We just do it in the opposite roles.

Here's how we've made it work financially:

1.  We have been a one-car family for over six years.  Yes--there are times it's rather inconvenient.  But with a little creativity, and a lot of planning ahead, it can be done. 

2.  With the one-car strategy, comes additional decisions:  when we moved to a new town, we intentionally chose a neighborhood close to my work.  Then we found activities for the kids close to our house.  We do a lot of zig-zag driving back and forth with three kids and a working mom schedule; but everywhere we go is within a three mile circle.  It's just not worth it to have to drive across town--and back, and back again--and spend all that time in the car.

3.  Working relatively close to home (1.5 miles), I go home for lunch every day.  I see a number of my co-workers eating out on a regular basis.  Really?!  Let's say lunch costs $7--that's roughly $160 a month....and $1820 a year!

4.  The article above lists work-related savings:  the office betting pool, weekly happy hour, monthly employee-funded birthday parties.  My office recently did a March Madness pool--this was easy to pass on because I don't really care about sports!  But, I admit it was tempting to "join the club" and be involved with everyone else.....just to throw money away.  I've also discreetly passed on multiple requests for gifts for employees leaving the company, babies being born, surgeries/medical issues, birthdays.....and who knows what else.  If I participated in every one, it could have easily been $100 a month.  (Now some of you might disagree with this strategy--if you're one of the office gift-givers, go right ahead!)

5.  Weekly meal planning:  we make a menu for the entire week, try to use groceries/staples we already have, then make our grocery list according to the meal plan.  If our schedule has a night with busy events, we'll plan a time-bake casserole or a crock-pot meal.  We also try to keep a few homemade freezer meals stored, so if we have a "we don't have time" night, we can pop it into the oven or microwave.  In our pre-financial-fasting past--we had many nights of "I don't feel like cooking, let's go out".....not any more!

6.  As a supervisor, I do dress up somewhat for work--but that doesn't mean spending a lot of money on clothes.  One recent perk from my office is a yearly "Bag Lady Exchange" where we clean out our closets and bring those clothes we no longer want.  Then we all forage through everyone else's bags, and come home with new-to-you clothes.  I recently scored two weeks' worth of new clothes!  I'm also pretty selective when buying anything new--I absolutely refuse dry-clean-only, NO WAY!  And I rarely buy something at full price: 30% off or more is my goal--no 10% sale is worth it in my eyes!

There are lots of reasons mothers work: some out of necessity, some of us choose this lifestyle.  "Working mother" is not for everyone....."stay-home-dad" is not for everyone either.  But as for us....we wouldn't have it any other way.

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