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$5 per hour

Recently, a woman told me that her husband felt that her “stay at home mothering” could be replaced by a $5 per hour childcare worker.

Ouch.

I thought “everyone” had heard the annual media reports about stay at home mothers being worth over $130K per year, but I guess not.

Now, to be fair, a lot of what a “stay at home mother” does is also done by a mother who has a job outside of the home—it is estimated that a stay-at home mother works 92 hrs per week in the home, while a mother who works outside of the home works 50 hours per week in the home (while the father does less than 20 hours per week of housework/childcare, even when the mother is working full time outside of the home)—but even that difference amounts to 42 extra hours of work per week a stay at home mother does for an added value of over $48K…or $23/hour.

Of course, I have to wonder about that…would I really pay a housekeeper $23 per hour to do what I don’t have time to do? Someone to do my laundry?

Well, realistically, no. I have been a mother who worked outside of the home…and what happened was a combination of my husband having to pick up some slack, and a lot of things just not getting done. So where does my staying at home bring economic value, assuming the value of my being around to care for my children is insignificant? I decided to see how a stay at home mom can create tangible financial value for her family. For the sake of convenience, I’m going to consider the “average” family with 2 children, rather than my robust family of 5 children.

Food: The second biggest single budget item (after housing) for a family is food. According to the USDA, a family of 4 on a “moderate” budget can expect to spend about $200 per week on groceries, where as a family on a “thrifty” budget can expect to spend about $125 per week, a savings of $75 per week. I can say from my own experience that when I worked, my food budget tended more toward the “moderate” (or perhaps even “liberal”) range simply because I didn’t have TIME to do the coupon clipping and sale-flyer studying required to reach the “thrifty” budget. But now…not to brag, but I spend about $600 per month to feed my family of 7…even though according to the USDA, even on a “thrifty” budget I should expect to be spending about $900 per month. And I feed my family good, healthy food.

In addition to food spending at the grocery store, there is eating out. A family with two working parents will tend to eat out (or order carry out) more often than a family with one parent at home. This can easily add $50-$100 per week to the family budget. “Work lunches” can also add to the family budget—even if a working parent is disciplined to bring $2 frozen meals to work (I tried to stock the freezer in the break room so that I didn’t need to remember on a daily basis to grab my lunch), but at the “extreme” end, a woman working outside of the home (and her husband) might eat out for lunch each day.  Those lunches will cost $10-$40 more per week than the leftovers or homemade sandwich the stay at home mom will eat or pack for her husband.

Childcare: Childcare in a group setting for two children is going to run about $200-$250 per week, depending on the ages of the children. Hiring a private sitter or a nanny can cost more, for example, it is typically expected that you will provide housing for a nanny in addition to a pay of approximately $250 per week for 2 children.

Transportation: The average American worker commutes 16 miles each way to work.  The IRS has determined that the average cost of driving a car (depreciation of the car, maintenance costs, insurance, and fuel) is $.55 per mile…so in one week that totals up to a cost of about $80 per week (allowing for 6 weeks of vacations/holidays/sick days per year). To further that, a family with the mother staying at home might choose to downsize their vehicle inventory to one vehicle (choke, sputter…we have 3—the family minivan, an “economical small car,” and my husband’s truck for his business), saving hundreds of dollars per month in insurance, car payments, and maintenance costs. When I was a child, many families in my neighborhood did just fine with 1 car. Working parents carpooled to work to leave the stay at home parent with a car in the daytime, or the stay-at-home parent did without a vehicle in the daytime.

Clothing: Buying new clothes for kids each year is pretty much a fact of life—kids grow, and need new clothes to fit them. A pretty basic wardrobe would include (with pricing at discount retail stores):

§ 2 pair sneakers per year, $20/pair
§ 1 pair dress shoes per year, $20/pair
§ 1 winter coat, $30
§ 1 light weight coat, $20
§ 10 “winter” shirts, $5-10 each
§ 5 pair pants, $10-15 each
§ 3 “dressy” winter outfits, $20-40 each
§ 10 “summer” shirts, $5-10 each
§ 5 pair shorts $5-15 each
§ 2 swimsuits, $15-20 each
§ 3 “dressy” summer outfits, $15-$30 each

Like I said, “pretty basic.” I’d hazard a guess that most American kids have much more clothing than this. But even at this, it works out to about $550 per year per kid…or for a family with 2 kids…about $100 per month.

But the stay-at-home mother can easily obtain these clothing items for much lower cost by shopping at yard sales, consignment stores, and swapping clothes with other moms that she has time to develop relationships with. Her annual costs can easily be brought down to $200 per child, or a savings of $65 per month. (This only works with children up until about age 10 or 11…after that…sigh…clothing costs spiral, and acceptable second hand clothing becomes more difficult to obtain.)

In addition, a woman who works outside of the home will find herself needing to purchase “work clothing,” and perhaps needing to dry clean some of these clothes, for an added cost. I spent about $120 per month on new clothing when I was working, but less than $50 per month now, but I’m a fairly “low budget woman” when it comes to clothes—the average woman would likely save a LOT more than I have saved. A woman working outside of the home may also have less time to mend existing clothing of her own or her family members, leading to replacement of damaged clothing items that might have simply been repaired if she’d had more time. So lets say that the savings on clothing purchases in the categories of “work clothes” and “damaged clothes” amounts to about $150 per month.

So how much of a savings have I calculated so far? Lets see:

Food: $135-$215 per week
Childcare: $200-$250 per week
Transportation: $80 per week (potentially much more if the choice is made to “downsize” a vehicle)
Clothing: $11.50 per week

This totals to $425 to $555 per week.

Given how much taxes are removed from the paycheck, a mother of 2 working outside of the home would need to earn about $700-900 per week simply to “break even” on working.  And I believe that this is a *conservative* estimate, since many times a pitfall of having a higher income is that we tend to believe that we can afford to live a bit “better,” and thus make more discretionary purchases than we would have made if we had a lower income. 

Now don’t get me wrong…I realize that some women work for professional fulfillment, and some work because they want to maintain their income earning potential, and others work because they realize they are putting away money in their retirement account that will grow with interest. I don’t think it is wrong for a mother to work outside of the home.

But I know that for my family, our philosophy of not wanting to put our children in daycare aside, we simply can’t afford to have both my husband and myself working outside of the home because we would loose money on the proposition (when we were both working, the way we made it “affordable” was that we worked opposite shifts so that we did not need to utilize childcare). And I think that holds true for many families.

The “job” of a stay-at-home mother is multifaceted. Not only is she the cook, housekeeper, chauffer, childcare worker, family psychologist, and family emergency medical technician; but she is also called upon to save her family money by learning where she can cut costs.

Tags: budget, finance, mothering, stay-at-home-mother