The Best Decision I Ever Made
photo by @Chelsea.jean
Here is another blog post I wrote 5 years ago when my son Gianni was only 2 years old. Back in 2016. I wrote any updates of each section if needed in asterisks.
Ok, so I could have given this title to a few life events, but today I wanted to talk with you all about my decision to become a stay at home mom. It has truly been one of the best decisions I have ever made! I have learned so much about myself, have grown tremendously and have seen God bless us in ways I would have never imagined. For those of you who want to become a stay at home mom in the future, I hope these tips + resources can help you achieve this goal. And even if you don’t want to be a stay at home mom these tips can still be useful in helping you achieve some of your financial goals. First, let me tell you my backstory.
BACKSTORY:
Before having kids I had NO idea I wanted to be a stay at home mom. In fact I used to laugh thinking, “What in the world do they do all day? Stare at a baby!?” Boy was I wrong about that! Have you watched this video where they hold fake interviews called “the worlds toughest job?” Check it out! It’s not to discourage you from becoming a mom, but to encourage you and let you know how important your role is whether you stay at home or not. It’s definitely the hardest job I have ever had, but one of the most rewarding.
So here’s my story: After I had my first son I had a desire to stay at home, but my husband wasn’t too sure of that decision for me. lol I had an amazing job as a Physical Education teacher at a distinguished private school in Los Angeles. I loved it there! And we loved our lifestyle! We didn’t have to worry about anything. We went on so many fun vacations, were excited about the potential of maybe buying another bigger house, we had a really nice car, I was able to pretty much buy any and everything that I wanted. It’s such a shame, but I literally had amazon packages arriving to my house daily. We also had the best phone plan and phones (of course!) and we spent lots of money on food, because that was also very important to us. The positive in all that was that we were still being “responsible” and didn’t go into debt for that! Now, I am not saying this to toot our own horn. It’s just to share how we were living at the time. Also, having these things is not wrong at all when you can afford them. But I want to give you a different perspective and share with you my personal experience of what I learned. I can tell you that if I knew then what I know now I would have totally done things differently. So anyway, after my mother in law offered to help take care of Nico I decided I would go back to work and see how I felt about it. So for 2 more years I worked my butt off and was a full time working mama. Oh the memories of pumping at work, rushing home to see my baby, make dinner and then also serve in our youth and family ministry, and of course don’t forget all the money I spent because I felt like, “if I am working then I am going to reward myself!” It was a crazy schedule let me tell you. But I made it work! After having my second baby the desire to stay at home became even stronger, and that is when I began having talks again with my husband and many wise woman around me. We knew that it would be a sacrifice financially (especially living in California), that we may have to give up some of those “things” and “dreams,” for the time being, but we decided that it was going to be the best decision for our family. I really wanted to be there at home with them all day long, to see all of their stages, to not have to pump, to be able to instill and teach them principles and things that I wanted to, to not have to have crazy rushed mornings driving in traffic to get to work, to be home and take care of them if they were sick. So many reasons. So we made it happen and I officially made the decision to be a stay at home mom just a couple weeks before I was due to return to work from my maternity leave in 2013.
MY LIFE NOW:
I can’t believe it has been a little over 2 years (*6 years now!) since my second son was was born and I have been at home with my boys! Wow! Time sure does fly! I told you that I have learned SO much (like being more patient), but what I didn’t expect from staying at home was to grow SO much in the area of my finances. Hopefully this info will help you get to your goal of being a stay at home mom or at least be able to make some changes to your lifestyle to help you hit some financial goals.
My TOP 4 TIPS To Help You Become a Stay at Home Mom or Reach Your Financial Goals:
1. Take a Financial Class + Seek Advice!
If you have a humble attitude you can ALWAYS learn something!! We took this Dave Ramsey Financial Class called “Financial Peace University,” which was offered to us through our church many years ago. We loved the course and the book! It gave us a boost in the right direction and helped us create a better budget that we would stick to and also gave us the desire to become completely debt free. The debt we had was my student loan, car note, and house. I had just been paying the minimum on my student loan since it was such a low interest rate I didn’t feel the urgency to pay it off. Most people would probably say “that’s not debt! Everyone has that kind of debt. It’s the good debt to have.” But when we learned that we are “slaves to the lender” we changed our view and decided to pay it off right away. We also paid our car note off and have since sold that car and bought every other car (*even our Airstream) cash. It actually felt really great and am so happy we paid them off and were able to have $ saved to pay cash for another car! We have completed “baby steps” 1-5 in the Dave Ramsey plan and are currently working on 6 + 7 which is paying our home off early and building wealth and giving. Woo hoo! I encourage you to also seek advice from others who are good examples in the area of finances. We have been able to speak with and get help from several people we look up to in this area and it has been extremely helpful. Being humble and seeking advice pays off big time!
2. Live BELOW your means!
Did you know if you can live on 25% of your income and invest the rest you can retire in 7 years!? TRUTH! We began reading this awesome blog called Mr. Money Mustache. It is a really outside the box financial blog that gives you tips on how to retire early. The writer of the blog is actually a thirty something retiree living his dream and helping others reach theirs. I became addicted to this blog and stayed up many late nights taking it all in. Shaking my head at times wondering how in the world did he do it and WHY!? I have grown to really appreciate the advice given and to take it and apply some of those same principles he teaches. We currently have a goal to retire earlier then the norm, so God willing that will happen in about 15-17 years! We will be about 48! Now when we say “retire” it means having saved up enough money to not HAVE to work if we didn’t want to. Will we continue to work after we “retire?” Probably. But would we need the money? NO! So we can then use that money as we please. We can give more, travel more, and just be financially free to do as we please. We are excited about that, but we know that it will take sacrifice, focus and determination. A huge reason we are able to do this is because we cut down on a lot and are able to live on less. We never thought this was even possible living on one income, but when you prioritize things you may just surprise yourself on what you can do. In order to calculate how much you would need to have saved up in order to retire is to multiply 25 by how much you want to live on each year. Once you have done that you will know how much money you need to have saved to hit your goal. So depending on how much you are able to save will depend on how many years it will take you to retire. You can learn more about how to do all that HERE. When you are sacrificing and living on less you can invest the rest and just sit back, and be patient while it grows.
**It so cool to see how far we have come. Since writing this post we are on track for our financial independence goals and God willing it will actually happen even sooner than the time listed. Our current goal is 5 years. eek! It may take a little longer but we are going to try our hardest to reach it sooner.
3. Less is MORE
Living with this kind of mindset will naturally help you to save more money and also feel awesome in the process. I used to buy things without really giving it any thought. If I wanted it, then I bought it. This caused me to accumulate a lot of things because I saved EVERYTHING (even things I wasn’t using) thinking, “oh I can use it for this project or that.” I hate wasting anything! My husband would call me bag lady because I kept everything. lol Oh how the times have changed. I thought that if I stayed home I would struggle with wanting more things, but the opposite effect happened. All of these “things” started to drive me a little nuts! haha So I decided to declutter my life. I began going through my things, but got overwhelmed and didn’t know where to begin. I had a huge pile of boxes in the corner that I needed to go through that were from my office at school. I ended up hiring an awesome professional organizer to give me a jumpstart and learn the The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
After her visit that corner was all cleaned up, my closet looked great and it gave me the boost of confidence I needed to then continue to declutter on my own. It took me a LONG while to sift through everything, but in the end I was SO very happy I did it and it felt amazing!! I got rid of tons of jewlery, perfume, clothes, toys and went through paperwork that had been sitting there for ages! In the end this has taught me that I really don’t NEED many things and I really don’t NEED as much space as I think I do. So for those of you thinking you need a HUGE house, just go through your things and see how much space pops up! You don’t need to hire a professional organizer to do this (although they are very helpful), you can just get a couple friends who are good with organizing to come over and help you. It can be overwhelming so my suggestion is to just start off with one area of your house and go from there. You can even sell some of your “things” for some extra cash. For those that want to stay home and would like to buy a bigger house, maybe you can hold off and sacrifice that for now until the kids are in school and you can work a bit. If you already own a large home you may consider renting it out or selling and downsizing if you need to and it is truly your desire to stay at home, get out of debt, retire early, or hit other financial goals.
4. Prioritze + Stop Buying Stuff You Don’t Need
So I just talked about decluttering so the next step will be to Prioritize and STOP buying things you don’t need! You really don’t need 15 different perfumes or whatever else you have a ton of! Once you have minimized down, how about sell or trade those things for something you can really use? I have heard many great stories of people who paid off tons of debt just by going through their things and selling them! When I went through my things I got rid of about 10 perfumes (mostly unused lol) and traded them in for organic frozen fruit in a trade group I am a part of. True story. lol People got perfume they wanted and I got to save money by not having to buy a gazillion bags of frozen fruit to make smoothies with. I also did the same with most of my items. And I donated a ton too! Once my place was cleared I really began to think more carefully about what I let into my home and realized I could really do without a lot of it. We also don’t NEED manicures and pedicures every week, a designer handbag, $300 pair of shoes, etc. These are things we WANT. Not NEED. Trust me. You will be ok without them. lol Once we were able to really prioritize what was important to us we were able to take that hard earned money and not only use it on the things that truly mattered to us, but also invest the extra money and have a complete mindshift.
These are just a few steps that helped me make the decision to stay at home and reach our financial goals. It may look different for you. If you would like to dig deeper and see how we prioritize our finances check out this post.
If you do stay at home what kinds of things did you have to sacrifice to do so? Any tips to help other mamas that want to be a stay at home mom? Please share in the comments below!