In 2013, my husband left me and I became a single stay at home mom. This wasn’t by choice with any stretch of the imagination. I was a stay-at-home mom when the subject of divorce came up and it was a hard transition. But, I did the single stay-at-home mom thing for a while, and tried to make money from home. But the only way I could survive was living with my parents, and that wasn’t a lifestyle I wanted to keep. So, I got a job full-time and then I got a better job. Now, I’m at a place where I barely see my daughter and I’m working too many hours. This is a pretty common thing for single moms. We do what we have to do to survive. We kill ourselves at work every day just to make sure our kids have a roof over their head and food on the table. But this year, as I mentioned in my 2015 Review & Goals post, I plan on getting out of the rat race again. I plan on staying home with my daughter, and this is how I plan to do it with the same lifestyle I have now.
Cut That Budget Down
Finally having a stable full-time job has actually made me change my spending habits. I told myself it wouldn’t but it did. This is called “lifestyle inflation”. I took on the debt that I normally wouldn’t. I spend a little more than I normally would here-and-there on little things. I’m a little less frugal then I used to be. So the biggest thing is to get back to the money mentality that I had when I was broke.
If you always live like you don’t have much- you will be a lot safer, financially, when you have more.
The funny thing is that this entire blog is about saving money and making more money. So I’ve succeeded in the making more, but I spent more. It’s time to get back to those basics. I’m going to be cutting my budget as much as I can and paying off debt. This will make my monthly bills lower and allow me to make less money, and still have the same type of lifestyle.
I’m going to share with you some ways to cut your budget and make money from home so that maybe you too can quit your typical 9-to-5 boring job and become a stay at home mom too!
Create a Budget
The very first step in doing any financial planning is creating a budget. Look at you bank statements, and write down everything you spent money on. Here are some free printable budget worksheets you can use.
My starting budget looks a little like this:
- Mortgage – 540
- Taxes & Insurance – 200
- Car Payment – 377
- Auto Insurance – 98
- Fuel – 120
- Phone – 70
- Electric – 80
- Water – 20
- Daycare – 260
- Netflix – 9
- Internet – 70
- Groceries & Supplies – 250
- Spending Money – 300
- Health Insurance/Co-pays – 50
- Retirement – 1000
- Other Debt – 200
Total – $3644
Determine How Your Budget Will Change
Take a look at your current budget, and determine what costs you are incurring by just going to work. I know most people have specific work uniforms, dry cleaning, tolls, parking fees, etc. I get my uniforms free from work but have to drive 60 miles round trip for work. That means I can reduce my budget in the gas section when I quit working outside of the home. I also wont be paying for daycare anymore because I will be a stay at home mom. My spending money will go down because I currently work 24 hours shifts and end up buying in on dinner with my shift crew.
I can reduce my budget by $385 every month just by quitting my job!
Find Ways to Reduce Your Bills
Once you have an idea of what your budget will look like when you aren’t working, lets work on reducing it a bit more. Remember, the more you cut – the less you have to make from home.
The first thing you should do is call the companies that you pay regularly every month. This includes: cable, internet, auto insurance, electric, cell phone, etc. Find out if you are missing out on any incentives or discounts. The first thing I did was call my internet and act like I was cancelling because I couldn’t afford it. They quickly, and easily dropped my bill by $15. Then they told me that if I signed up for auto pay, I would save another $10 every month. Companies like this want to keep you service and will practically give you stuff for free to do it.
Take a look at your budget line by line and call each one to find out if there is a smaller package, or anything that would help reduce your bill.
Create Your Stay at Home Mom Budget
So, you have your original budget done, now you need a second one. This will be your “stay-at-home-mom” budget.
Mine looks like this:
- Mortgage – 540
- Taxes & Insurance – 200
- Car Payment – 377
- Auto Insurance – 98
- Fuel – 80
- Phone – 70
- Electric – 80
- Water – 20
- Netflix – 9
- Internet – 45
- Groceries & Supplies – 250
- Spending Money – 250
- Health Insurance/Co-pays – 50
- Retirement – 365
Total – $2,434
As you can see, I only included the expenses I would have as a stay at home mom. I also reduced my retirement contribution to 15% of my total budget.
You can also see that the “other debt” category is gone. This is because I don’t plan on becoming a stay at home mom until the end of 2016. This gives me enough time to pay off that debt, saving me $200/month once I quit my job. If I can pull it off, I will also be cutting my car payment out of this budget as well. But, that one will take a ton of more work.
Make Money From Home
Now that you know exactly home much money you need to stay afloat as a stay at home mom, you can start planning how you will make this money. A good idea is to have daily goals of how much you want to make and then do whatever you need to each day to reach that mark. Just take the total of the second budget you created and divide it by 30. Using my total of 2434, I would need to set a goal of making $81 per day from home. This is manageable!
I’m actually creating an “earn money from home” resources page that will list all of the different things that I’ve tried to make money from home. You can check that out and try some of them, and as I try new projects, I’ll update the page.
Let me know what ways you use to make money from home and maybe I will test it out and let everyone know.
