How a Stay at Home Mom in Washington, DC Does Money

How a Stay-at-Home Mom in Washington, D.C. Does Money

Maia (not her real name) is a 29-year-old stay-at-home mom and former attorney in the D.C. area

Maia (not her real name) is a 29-year-old stay-at-home mom and former attorney in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

So, Maia, what is your income situation?

My husband makes ~$170K, plus bonus. I decided to stay at home because daycare for two babies was a wash for me.

Daycare in the D.C. area would run in the… $30K/year mark? Higher?

I never did the research for two kids, but I have a friend who puts her two kids in daycare part-time and she pays $2,700 a month.

Yeah, that’d be about $32,000 over the year.

So I would assume even higher for full-time daycare. Isn’t that insane?!

YES!

So you chose to skip the daycare expense. What are some of your other major expenses?

We bought a house recently so we are “house poor.” I’m rounding up the monthly mortgage payment to pay off the principal balance a little earlier.

We refinanced the student loan down from 10 years to 5, but are trying to get rid of it even sooner than that. We just hate being in debt, which is 60 percent of the reason why we are soulmates.

Awwww. ❤ How much do you have left to pay off?

Oh, man. It’s sickening. A little over $100K for the student loan, and somewhere between $500 and $600K on the mortgage.

Basically if I were a millionaire all of a sudden, I would just break even.

I love that. It is also terrible. What degree did that student loan buy?

Law. I would not recommend law school to 99 percent of the people out there, but that’s another story.

Care to give the two-sentence version?

Hmmmm…

If you don’t get into one of the top 30 schools WITH some financial help, it isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it even if you DO get into one of those top 30 schools and you DON’T want to go into Big Law.

Of course that doesn’t apply to anyone who wants to practice law under LRAP (Loan Repayment Assistance Program, which basically forgives your loan after ten years of paying your loans while working for the government).

But that’s not what you and your husband (who also works in law?) ended up doing?

He is in Big Law. I was working for the federal government. Fed gov attorneys start at like $65K a year, which is a lot in some parts of the country, but in D.C.…

… not so much.

For instance, I pay $4K towards my mortgage every month, and $7 for a gallon of organic milk.

I just feel horrible for fellow law graduates who still can’t find jobs and have $200K loans accruing and going delinquent. It’s so scary.

I was already anxious when you mentioned the milk. But yes, it is very scary. What worries you about your own financial situation?

Where do I start?

I do want to preface by saying that I feel lucky about the worries that I have about my financial situation. I grew up poor and I vividly remember how frightening that was.

As for my current situation: I worry that we aren’t saving enough for retirement. We are saving a little bit in our 401(k) but not enough. We figure we will really tackle retirement/investment savings once the student loan is off the table.

I worry because we don’t have much in savings. We poured everything in the house. Fortunately, we do have families that could provide help if a tragedy occurred. But we do need to work on savings.

This is a bit unrelated, but I worry that our worries about money overshadow my husband’s happiness. I mean, he does important work, but he works long hard hours and has to fight to see the kids for 20 minutes combined each weekday. He used to be really into fitness and eating right, but that’s all fallen to the wayside.

As his coworkers say — you either work or you work out. You can’t do both.

He loves making things by hand and fixing up stuff around the house but he never has time. His happy place would be in the middle of nowhere fishing by himself. And yet he is here in D.C. for the foreseeable future.

I don’t know, just something I worry about.

It’s very worth worrying about. It seems like you have a lot of your choices made for you by money, and the need to earn more money. This is not a unique situation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important.

Sometimes I think about the road we could have taken. Taken a smaller firm job in a smaller city (I would have loved Philadelphia). Bought a smaller house.

We want to pay for our kids’ college educations since our parents did that for us. So there’s another need to earn more money…

Oh gosh, I just keep going, I’m sorry.

No, please do. I was going to ask about college.

My husband’s grandparents bought their generation’s equivalent of Amazon at the right time, so that money went to paying for their grandchildren’s college educations.

My parents retired and we had no family income so I didn’t pay much for college. Maybe $2K a semester? Something ridiculous like that. And it was a nice cushy private school, too.

So you’re trying to do the same thing your families did for you, but in a much more difficult way, because you have to earn and save everything yourself.

Yes… because I definitely didn’t buy into Amazon at the right time! And we will be working, so none of those need-based scholarships will be available to us.

And yes, I do plan on going back to work once the kids hit kindergarten.

And yes, we plan on at least one more kid, haha.

So what advice do you have for other young couples with kids? What have you learned since you started about family/jobs/work/life/money?

Financial advice?

Whatever comes to mind.

I’m still in the thick of it so I’m not sure whether I am worth listening to over here, but here goes! It’s good to be frugal. But it’s also good to just plan for what you want and enjoy it to the fullest, without guilt. As I mentioned before, I grew up poor so buying a $5 Auntie Anne’s pretzel at the mall on a whim was totally unheard of. But sometimes I buy one for my kid, because life is short and it makes her happy and it makes me happy to see her happy.

What do you think you do really well financially, and what do you wish you could do better?

I’m a carbon copy of my mom when it comes to spending money. I shop only the sales racks (and it isn’t a sale if it isn’t at least 50 percent off). We are really frugal except when it comes to eating out. We don’t even eat at nice places. I’m talking about Chipotle and Jimmy John’s. But it adds up. We’re both just so tired and over it by the time the weekend rolls around. I would say that we spend almost as much on eating out as we do on groceries!

The story of our generation.

I feel so guilty about that on a daily basis.

So does everyone I talk to! They all feel bad about restaurants and takeout! But we have to eat.

Well, that makes me feel less bad, haha.

I think everyone is Doing Money the best that they can.

It really is our biggest downfall. My husband and I always talk about it when I’m doing bills at the end of each month. But nothing ever changes.

How much do you spend on restaurants, do you think?

$500?

Per month?

Yes. Not even good restaurants. Takeout.

It isn’t that bad. Not for a family of four. You’d spend at least half that on groceries to make up for those meals.

Yes, but one family member isn’t eating solids yet.

Fair enough.

The other family member eats better than my husband and me … she eats all organic and we eat conventional, for instance.

She has no idea how great she has it.

LOL, indeed. That $7 milk!

Haha, yes. Her childhood is so different than mine!

Let me ask you this last question, then: If you were to give your children one financial tip to follow and one financial mistake or vice to avoid, what would they be?

Tip: Start building your credit score as early as you can, but never go into debt. I have friends who didn’t try to open credit cards until after college, which was when the 2008 Financial Crisis hit and credit dried up. I also have friends who are living on credit cards — I can’t even imagine how anxious I would feel doing that.

Mistake: I know love is love, but try not to link up with someone whose financial perspective is totally different from your own. Back when I was dating, I ended relationships based on things like … the fact that he didn’t mind that he had credit card debt.

You don’t want to waste your life arguing about money — how to spend it, whether to save it. It’s just so much better when you’re on the same wavelength. It streamlines everything. It engenders such an openness about spending.

My husband knows every stupid bag purchase I make, and I know his impulse buys at Home Depot. But we never nag because we trust each other with our money. Which I’m thankful for because my life is stressful enough as it is!

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