After posting “How I Have Lost Over Half A Million Dollars Having Kids, So Far!”, I started thinking about how many of my family and friend’s spouses work.
Let me start with our parents… Both sets of parents work. All the people I know at work, their spouse works. My boss who makes at least twice as much as I do, spouse works. Where I live, only one other neighbor’s spouse doesn’t work, the rest do. My college-educated sister and brother-in-law (great people), both work. My sister is having a baby in Feb. 2010, and she claims she’s going back to work a few weeks after the baby is born. They already make more than me…
So, I decided to go out to the website: money.com to use their calculator for net worth and see what the median (the median, mind you) net worth would be for someone in our conservatively theoretical income range! The number came out to be $644,100.
Missed Income
And that is the median! Both my wife and I are very frugal and based on our frugality habits, I recalculated the number… I figured for us it would be somewhere in the $800,000 to $900,000 range, Grrrr!
Who is to blame for this? Well, unfortunately, me! My wife and I discussed whether she would work or stay home raising the kids years before we had our first child. I told her once I make over a certain amount, she could stay home. Ironically, I accomplished that number more quickly then I imagined, and so she stayed at home after my son was born. In hindsight, I don’t think this was the most prudent move on our part. It especially hits home seeing my 20 something sister start to pass me already with respect to net worth, did I mention that both she and my brother-in-law are both studying for their MBAs? In a future post, I’ll have to tell the story about how my sister won a free house. So now that I know I’m behind compared to our theoretical income group’s class, what can I do? I’m thinking it’s time to start some side hustling (frugaldad.com’s coined-phrase).
How do I feel about my discovery?
Sad, but not too disappointed. My kids are doing very well in all aspects of their development. It’s a hefty price to pay though, especially when we’re practically the only ones doing it these days in a world of the two-income earner households. Shoot, If we had that money now, I could go into a semi-retirement state if I wanted to (I’m not old enough to think about that now though)… Oh well, the moral of the story is, think twice before and your significant other decide to quit work to raise your kids.