New Journey, Big Decisions

My husband and I have recently made the decision for me to stay at home with our daughter and focus on her development and our home. I am so excited to be on this new journey as a full time stay at home mom and I am so thankful for the support of my hard working husband to have this opportunity.

After working non stop since I was 16, I never thought this would actually be a reality. That’s not to say I am not working, trust me, I am working my butt off to raise an independent, strong, kind, supportive daughter but this is the first time since I was a kid that I am dependent on another person for my income. It is a thought I am still getting used to and I am constantly reminding myself that what I am doing for our family, is amazing! We’ve worked hard for our financial freedom to make this a possibility!

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I have so much respect for all moms, SAHM and working moms, after becoming one myself. The work we do on a constant basis to keep these little humans alive is more than we could ever be compensated for. Both scenarios are hard in a different way but I hope to bring you along on this new journey and give some advice and tips I learn along the way.

For starters, we came to this BIG decision after much discussion and planning. With something like this, I recommend a pro’s and con’s list, just like you made in school all those years ago. That is a good starting point to get you thinking about why you are really thinking about this big decision. Once you have the pro’s and con’s listed for each item, you can begin to do more research for anything that might have monetary or a time value to it. For us, childcare, healthcare and car gas and maintenance costs were some of the items we had to research and account for. The time piece was a given in our situation since the decision to stay home would free up my time to spend with our daughter, learning new things, experiences she wouldn’t have at a day care and all the household chores I set aside due to work.

Once you have gotten through those lists, sitting down and having a thorough discussion with whoever else is affected by the outcome is essential. You want to make sure everyone is on the same page and any expectations are hashed out now. Again, for us, this had more to do with my day to day time management to optimize the goals I was setting for our family and myself. Since I am now relying on my own schedule (well, my daughters too), I knew that I needed to keep on top of it all from the beginning. Read all about our daily schedule here.

I hope the next time you have a BIG decision to make, you can follow our model to get you to the right choice for your situation. In the meantime, come follow along on my new journey!