Starting a new family is one of the most exciting things you can do, and especially so if you’re in a position to do it with a view to becoming a full-time, stay-at-home parent. Being a mum is an incomparable experience, the privilege of a lifetime, and something that will ultimately change you in hitherto unexpected ways; getting to experience all this without the added pressure of holding a career.
As joyous as it can be to have front-row seats to every moment of your newborn’s new life, it can also bring stresses of its own. For one, you might not necessarily be a stay-at-home parent completely out of choice; it may be in order that your partner can maintain a difficult, demanding career to provide for you all. Even then, it can be tough to trust that ends will meet. How can you work to assuage these doubts, particularly in a time when ends are famously difficult to make meet?
Understanding Your Family’s Income and Expenses
First, you’ll need to take some steps to understand your household situation as it stands. This means getting to grips with the various aspects of your household’s monetary comings and goings: the size of your partner’s take-home pay, the value of any part-time or side-hustle work you may be doing yourself, and the value of any benefits you might be receiving, against your average monthly expenses.
If you don’t have a proper idea of what it is you spend in a month, this is your sign to start tracking everything. Create a spreadsheet, and put your monthly income in it (as well as the present state of your bank accounts, and the existence of any debts). For outgoings, note down your monthly expenditure on bills, and create a separate area for tracking changeable costs like grocery and leisure. These figures will be your benchmark for charting a path forward.
Financial Advice, and Caution
If you are in a difficult position with respect to debt, or have some specific wishes for your family finances, you may be tempted to spend a little money on a third-party financial adviser. This can be a good move, especially for more complex financial wants, but can also introduce risk. A poor selection of financial advisor could lead you to become the victim of professional negligence, where incorrect or illegal advice place you in further financial hot water.
Prioritising Needs vs. Wants in Your Budget
Luckily, for most financial cases, the creation of a budget is a simple matter of separating wants from needs. Your family’s needs will already be obvious to you – from unavoidable utility bill costs to the inevitable expenditure on nappies, baby powder and various cleaning products for removing baby-vomit from your furniture. Wants are harder to justify, and will eventually require some restraint to avoid as you start to increase the gap between outgoings and income.
Leaning into this will enable you to build a budget that works for the income your household receives, and gives you complete control over how much you save each month. Some months may feel more frugal than others, but the end result will be long-term security for your single-income family.
