My mom found this news report on Fox 6. I know I have certainly been having this problem especially since my family grew from just the one child to now having three children. When I just had the one child he was the first grandchild on both sides of the family and his father and I were not together so there were no shortages of people who wanted to keep him, have him spend the night and even the weekend. I practically did not even need to worry about child care. Since my second child was born I found that people were more reluctant to keep the two children. If I wanted to go back to work I was gonna have to arrange child care. Now that I have three children people don't even want to come visit much less want to run the risk of possibly being asked to be left alone with all of these kids. (Ha ha)
My personal situation is a little different than many peoples would be. I home school my oldest son. If I went back to work now I would have to put him into public school. I am not even sure that there is a child care solution for him at the age of 9 years old, other than hiring some one to come to my home to baby sit him. I have thought many times that hiring a baby sitter to sit with my children at home would be one of my better options. Either way I slice it, hiring one sitter for three kids or putting the oldest in public school and the younger ones in day care, would be expensive. Even with a full time job at my education level earning minimum wage, I basically could not afford to pay child care expense and afford to drive back and forth to work and especially not have my own place with bills and possibly a car payment and forget car insurance. Even adding another job does not help because that adds more child care.
So there you have it. A single working mother can not afford to work. I have also done this math with several income levels and it still does not work. It is not just a minimum wage. You could technically have a high enough level of income to afford child care and the basic necessities. I have not done the math higher than two times minimum wage because even if I went to college to attain a degree you would be very lucky to start out making double minimum wage. Many careers top out at about double minimum wage. One more thing to add to this topic is that even if I attend an online college course the only way I am going to have time to get in good studying would be to have child care. Student loans, grants, even scholarships don't dish out enough money to start and complete college for a single mom.
I have even further come to learn on this topic, after years of living it my self, a penny saved truly is a penny earned. By being a stay at home mom I save more money than I could earn going to work. It saves gas money like you would not believe. I prefer to have a car for emergencies and for running errands and some times we like to do something fun or have a field trip. With our current emergency system and my small town I do not need a car. Which means if and when we can not afford for me to have a car it is inconvenient but not the end of the world. Obviously I save money on child care by being at home. I have time to home school my oldest son and even though the initial expenses of home school enrollment and curriculum can be expensive it is still less expensive than public school. I make our meals at home. That has many advantages but is less expensive and more healthy than going out to eat more often because of time restraint of having the super busy schedule. I am able to grocery shop more effectively and that helps the grocery budget. I don't clip coupons because I believe they are part of the reason for increased grocery prices. I do shop to find a good price and usually surprise my self. I have time to grocery shop every week so I can get a greater variety of food to eat at the good prices as apposed to buying a month worth of what is on sell on my one shopping day. I make things home made that I might not have time to make other wise, like baby wipes and laundry detergent that really make an impact on our budget. I have found that there are always money saving things that I can find to do to help make they money we have to work with do what it needs to do. Where as when you are earning a living it seems like you can almost never earn enough money to make it.
There is so much more on the topic of ways that you save. It is hard for me to cut my self off at this point but I think I have made the point. Maybe I will write another blog about ways to save money in your home.
Here's the link!
http://www.myfoxal.com/story/17545413/many-moms-say-having-a-job-outside-the-home-doesnt-pay#.T5Mo82AudqI.facebook
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