The Numbers

I thought I would jump right into getting lean financially and address the most difficult topic - the numbers! As I was struggling with my decision to work vs. stay home, the pesky little numbers that I needed to add up just would not. My husband and I discussed the options and realized it wasn't simply an exercise of summing the numbers and coming up with a different answer. It was about how we could change our lifestyle.

With both of us working full-time, we had a huge network at our disposal to make it work. We had a nanny that spent every weekday with Aedan, house cleaners, an expensive dog trainer to try and tame our high-strung dogs, lunches out, and countless trips to Caribou and Starbucks to simply stay awake. Bottom line, although working provided a pay check, it was also expensive.

I had to pause and think about the kind of life I wanted to live for me and my family. We were surviving the two working parent household, but the way in which we were surviving was not what I wanted.
      Did everything get done? Yes.
      Did Aedan have great care? Yes.
      So what was wrong?
I felt like I was paying other people to live and experience my life and bottom line, I did not have the time to bond with my baby. I missed our days of babbling, walks and playing with blocks. I needed more time. I wanted to live my life myself.

Well, time is expensive, which brings me back to the numbers, specifically, how to make it work. Well, first we had to decide on our non-negotiable items. Although we were willing to change our lifestyle, there were certain values that we have always held that we were not willing to change. For us, this meant we wanted zero debt, with the exception of our mortgage, and we wanted to continue to contribute to our children's college accounts and our retirement account.

Okay this is where my strength from work came in handy (competitive driver). I needed to drive for results and figure out how to make this work. If you are at this time in your life now, this is the part that may take time. You may need to continue to work as a two parent family until you pay off debt, add to your savings, or work towards another non-negotiable you have. The exciting thing though is that there is an end to the tunnel and you have a goal to strive towards.

The answer for us was that we had done a good job with our savings up to this point, but to make this work now, our lifestyle needed to significantly change. I had to create a budget and stick to it! Some items were easy to cut - lunches/coffees, childcare, work clothing, dry cleaning, etc. Others, like groceries were harder to reduce spending. Then, once I had a budget, I had to look for ways to be more frugal to stick within my budget each month. Since I am just beginning, I will keep you updated on how this goes and I am planning future blog posts on the tactics I am already using and the ones I hope to learn along the way. Just to name a few: well-planned and reduced shopping trips, coupons,  free community activities and play groups, menu planning, cooking from scratch more often, homemade baby food, cloth diapers, consignment clothing stores, etc.

I like a good challenge - and to be completely honest - this will be a challenge. What I do know though, is I have all the tools at my disposal to make this work! I plan to learn a lot along the way and I love tips from mommies that have stayed at  home for longer and have ideas, so please comment and share!

I do not know how this story will end, or what the numbers have in store for me. What I do know though, my little one is ecstatic to have more mommy time :).