The Hidden Costs of Working Moms

The objective of "Makin It Simple" is to do just that! To make life simpler through our responsibilities as wife, mother, worker, homemaker, chef, housecleaner, chief errand-runner (did I miss anything?)

It was on my heart today to share this information with you. It has been so near to my heart over the past several weeks as my husband and I have prayed and struggled with the decision of whether or not I should stay home with our son. Here are some of the thoughts that have run through my mind and God has revealed to me.

For years we believed that my income was essential for us to run our household budget. But, was it really? Some of these are obvious, but perhaps some not so obvious.

The Hidden Costs of Working Moms

1. Childcare Costs (including any type of after school care and other programs they might be participating in, like a Spanish class or computer class)
2. Cost of time to make two daily trips to and from childcare center to place of employment
3. Cost of gas and wear and tear of automobile
4. Cost of a 2nd automobile
5. Cost of clothing at place of employment (clothing and dry cleaning costs)
6. Cost of time needed to prepare daily meals for children and/or self due to being out of the home
7. Cost of lost time and money at work when you must take off with sick children
8. Two income families typically see an increase in monthly expenses for:

• Housecleaning Services
• Meal Service (increase in money spent on prepared or pre-packaged foods)
• Other 'convenience services' (Starbucks for morning breakfast / coffee, drive-up dry cleaners, healthy prepared foods, laundry drop off/ pickup, childcare transportation services, manicure/pedicure, etc.)

9. Other "Hidden" Expenses:

• Paying more hidden fees to banks, other service providers (including overdraft fees, late charges, other banking fees) due to lack of time needed to properly stay on top of monthly finances
• Less time for planning typically means more money spent on various household items (for example we have to run into the grocery store, but lack of planning means we are at the store without a plan or armed with our coupons!)

10. Emotional Expense

• Husband receives lack of attention from us because we are too exhausted from work and kids to give him any time
• Kids receive lack of attention from us as we are busy running around the kitchen preparing dinner, cleaning, etc. (I'll talk more about this later)
• We ourselves are exhausted and without the time to take care of ourselves, and that is expressed in various ways including being overweight, stress-related illness, depression, fogginess, low blood-sugar
• As wives and moms, we start to wonder what our priorities really are and end up feeling completely hopeless in the process.

I have not found a lot of information on exact numbers regarding this, though I did find a similar article to mine just now. Check it out here.

These decisions are not easy, ladies. I'm only sharing with you some things that I'm starting to tally in my mind. Many of you might be single mothers who must work to provide the only source of income for your family. Many of you married moms out there are just like me, struggling each day to balance all of our responsibilities! There are COUNTLESS resources out there that have been created to help us women through all of this.

I want us to take a different approach! I want Making It Simple to be just that. Making things simpler! Removing some of the stress, craziness and redundancy from us so we can truly do a few things well!

Take-aways:
1. Let's challenge ourselves to sit down with a pencil, paper and bank statements (or Quicken, whatever your preferred system) and honestly find out how much money your household spends each month. I might get up the guts in another post to tell you what I just realized yesterday our household was spending on food, but the number was so shocking to me that I am not even ready to reveal it! I am still thinking that Quicken must have made a mathmatical error!
2. Please post your comments here on what you've found. I want to know a) were you surprised? b) do you think there are areas that need attention?
3. Ask yourself if there are any emotional "payments" your family is making and ways you can reduce or eliminate that.

I look forward to hearing from you.