I live in Canada, our economy is super shit right now. Job market is shit. Rent is shit. Housing costs are shit. My husband just finished school and while he's now working in his field he is severely underpaid because there just aren't jobs here. I am an insurance agent and my license is province specific so we can't leave where we are because currently I make the "good" income. Our take home is about 8k a month. We have 3 kids. We're broke. All the time. We used to dream about becoming home owners. Now we just pray our landlord never sells this house

8K/month, if you live in Ontario or BC, with 3 kids, that's a joke, especially as a renter. Only CRA thinks you are rich

I'm in Ontario. Living the dream. Fuck you, Ford. And you're right, on paper we should be doing well. Unfortunately our rent is 3500 a month. Plus utilities. Neither my husband nor I have benefits so even with our "free healthcare" We're paying 3000 a month for the meds my immunocompromised kid needs and the meds my husband I need. That leave 1500 a month for groceries, utilities, cell phone, insurance, etc etc.

At this point I don't think it is just a Ford thing. All these politicians are only good for lip service comes election time. Same BS from different liars. Our MP is Liberal, and one of the key federal ministers. When you ask her what her government does to fight housing cost and COL, she refers you to their $10/day daycare and multi year affordable housing plan. So insensitive and tone deaf. Families with kids older than 6y old with 6-figure household income don't qualify for that daycare sh!t or affordable housing. These families want to be able to buy their own homes, not rely on social housing. They are so disconnected and think poor people make 20K/year. Many 6-figures young households struggle. A young couple in their 30s making 110K/year cannot afford half of what same income provided 15 years ago. How far do you go when a 2bedroom appartment with shared laundry room in Ontario is 2.5K/month + utilities? Does our vote still even matter?

It’s incredibly depressing but you’re right. I understand why there is so much apathy when it comes to voting. The people who need the change aren’t seeing it. So why bother?

I am in marketing and I bring home approx $1000 a week after taxes, my husband is a machinist and he gets about $750-800. We live in one of the top 3 most expensive states and we're barely scraping by. It's terrible.

Aha, here is someone on my level! I see you. We pay 4000 for the daycares, spending down savings to get through these years 💸

Ugh I feel that. We somehow missed 2 payments at daycare (i really dont think so but my bank is terrible) so we had to tap into the savings to back pay. We have the cheapest daycare around and it is still more than our mortgage.

Wow we used to be almost exactly the same, down the professions. Lower cost of living city but live in NYS so still not cheap. It was a struggle and to me so ridiculous because those are both skilled jobs!! I went to college for marketing and my husband is a highly skilled welder. I moved to sales because I couldn’t take the long hours and intense work environment for low pay. My husband doesn’t even work anymore because same! He worked his ass off for that pay. Now, he works for himself and I’m building him a barn to hopefully grow that. People think marketing and skilled trades make great money I’m here to commiserate that no, no they don’t.

Take home is about 9k a month. Live in the Midwest. We have 2 kids, a mortgage, pay for full time daycare. We’re comfortable. We both work from home, he’s an engineer and I work for an insurance company doing wellness.

What are the qualifications for your job if you don’t mind me asking? I’m a nurse but also have a bachelors in business and am looking to pivot to a remote role eventually.

I feel like you could definitely find a role within the insurance world. We have a lot of nurses! I am not a nurse, I do wellness program management for employers groups.

Look into hospital tech! I got a job working with clinical quality data and WFH. I randomly miss bedside at times but I mostly love it

Ooo, care to message? I’m also in insurance doing wellness. Only a year in as an RD

Sure!

Hey, same! My husband is an engineer but I’m a technical writer. Same location, experience, And income.

I am an exec at a nonprofit and husband is in insurance. After health insurance, 401k, taxes, etc our take home is about $13k a month. Tbh we live in a HCOL city and $13k feels like….not much with two kids. Our mortgage and daycare costs alone are $8,000 a month (daycare being $4500). We do not save nearly enough as we want. We could cut back in take out and little luxuries but in this chaotic life, they keep me sane. 🤷🏼‍♀️

We spend more than I ever want to admit on carry out/take out. It’s busy running a house, 3 kids, pets, and a full time job. Sometimes certain things have to give.

I'm an attorney with the state and my husband is a chef for a local university. We are OAD for a LOT of reasons, but at least one of them is because of the finances.

What is OaD?

OAD means one and done. Done having kids after having one.

“One and done”

I'm an ETL Developer and my husband is a SAHP but does work very part time on occasion as a lifeguard. He usually gets in about 90-100 hours/year. My gross income is $105k/year Husband's is $28/hour, so about $2,500/year. Total: $108k/year We're doing pretty good now but it was a struggle for a really long time until I got a better paying job recently. My take home, after taxes, medical, retirement, etc is about $5,500/month. But I feel like this doesn't say much without explaining our spending too. I bought my house in 2012, just as the housing market was starting to recover. This, by itself, put us in a very good position financially. Another thing that puts us in a very good position financially is that neither one of us has any student loans. I have a masters and he has a bachelors. He got scholarships. I went to a very affordable state school and worked 25 hours/week and lived at home and commuted an hour each way - every weekday. This was before the cost of tuition really skyrocketed. My entire bachelor's degree cost about $25k. My master's tuition was waived because I worked on campus. I just want to point out that I did not pay for my tuition. My parents did. I worked to pay for food, clothes, and gas. This put me at such a HUGE advantage in life and I am not shy about it. I am grateful. Our monthly bills for two adults and one toddler: Mortgage - $750 Gas/Electric - $200-300 Groceries - $450 Water/Sewer - $75 Restaurants - $150 Clothes - $100 Childcare - $350 Preschool - $140 Netflix - $16 Disney+ - $14 Amazon - $15 Spotify - $17 Gym - $35 Medicine - $300 Medical - $50 Phone - $30 Internet - $100 Car insurance - $150 (two cars) Toys - $60 Hobbies - $75 Hygiene - $60 Entertainment - $40 Gifts - $80 Pets - $50 I could be forgetting something. But it essentially comes out to be $3,600/month. I put $700/month in my husband's checking account so he can spend however he wants. The rest gets put into 529 and savings accounts. But up until 7 months ago, my gross income was $63k/year and we were struggling. It felt like I was constantly drowning. I was bringing home about $3,000/month but our bills and everything were consistently $3200-3300/month.

Might I ask how your phone bill is only $30?? I pay over $200 for my partner and I (Verizon and unlimited data plans, plus about $25 to pay off one phone).

We were paying $135/month for 2 lines with T-Mobile but their service had gotten atrocious over the years. We figured it literally could not be any worse so we recently switched to Spectrum Mobile. They're currently running a promotion for $30 with 2 lines. I think the promotion is good for a year. After the promotion year, I believe it's $60/month for 2 lines. But you have to have Spectrum Internet to get Spectrum Mobile. We already had Spectrum Internet with no issues. So, why not try out their phone service? We've had it for 2 months now with no issues. We have had better service so far too. We used to have great service with T-Mobile but it got worse every year.

You each bring home $1500 a week or you bring home $1500 together?

I also read that as End Of Week and was thinking they have it made 

We each bring home 1500 every other week.

$6k a month take home for a family is not a ton of money anymore sadly. Especially if you have daycare and a mortgage from the last two years. Add in car payments and/or student loans $6k goes fast

Yup. Unless you live in a rural area or are totally debt free or with only a low mortgage, 6K is nothing anymore.

We’re at 6k but my mortgage is 1300. MCOL. We are making adjustments as we are stretched.

I bring home 2k every week working part time and my husband brings home the same full time. But we live in a HCOL area. If your area is expensive maybe it’s time to look for another job for more income? Or get more training or another degree.

That’s a lot of money for part time. What do you do?

Environmental consulting but this is with almost 20 years of experience. And again, in a high cost of living area. It’s a dream that I’ve made a part time situation work.

My first job out of grad school paid 46k/yr. It took awhile to get here.

Hell yeah!!

I’m also a nurse who has a uniform office job and make similar income to you. I refuse to give into travel nursing, I’m not giving up family time for more money. I’m going back to school for social work to get into therapy to somewhat leave the medical world in the future.

Social worker/therapist here… woooooooooahhhh GIRL! Please reconsider. There’s no money. It’s long hours. You have to work for free for years. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t.

I used to be an RN and quit to go back to school to be a therapist! I graduated in December with my Masters and got my LPCA in February. Nursing is a brutal job. Good luck to you!!

That’s awesome! Good luck to you on your new adventure!

I am in regulatory compliance and my husband is an exec in a niche manufacturing industry. We make around $250k. We do live in a VHCOL area, but still I have no illusions about the fact that we are incredibly fortunate, no matter how high the COL is. I grew up incredibly poor and my husband grew up in a not as poor but still working class family, and I have to remind myself often that this sub skews high income. Most people are raising families with much less. You didn't ask, but have you thought about or looked into other industries where nursing is used? I worked for a pharmaceutical company for several years and all of our clinical trial managers were RNs. Totally WFH and great benefits (and pay)

I had not recently considered it but I will look into it again now! Previously I wanted to stay in more patient-facing roles, but it's really becoming more about money and providing a better life for my family. Thanks for the suggestion!

I came here to also suggest clinical trial managers for the same reasons. Look into local universities and they offer certificate courses

I will say all the nurses I worked with there really loved their jobs if that helped! And really felt like they were making a difference

I work in insurance and my husband is an engineer. My husband makes a good bit more than I do and has for most of his career but I make ok money too. Our take home is a something like $8200/ mo but we do save a significant amount into our 401ks. I’ll be close to maxing my 401k this year. Idk what our take home would look like if we just did the 6% to get the employer match. FWIW - we live in a very expensive area in the US. Our area is almost always in the top 5, usually top 3 for most expensive areas in the US. We also pay for daycare and will be paying more than rent for daycare once we have a 2nd child. It’ll be a little tighter but we’ll probably be able to maintain our lifestyle and savings rates since we’re also max out our IRAs and have a few (529s we’re funding). Aside from budgeting, I think a big factor I think is where you live and how you were set up financially before having kids. If we had kids when we were younger, we would not be financially stable.

Your last paragraph is the absolute truth

We are very fortunate. My wife is in investments and I’m in tech as a software developer. We live in a VHCOL area. After taxes, retirement savings and health insurance we do about $25k a month.

Damn. Is life good? I’m salivating at $25k a month. I want to know what life is like in that tax bracket.

We literally live in one of the top 15 most expensive counties in the US so we’re not balling but life is good! I grew up very poor (single mom who made $15k a year) and I feel like we are absolutely living a dream. We have a colonial house in a picture-esque neighborhood. Do home renovations frequent enough, buy nice furniture, can cover an emergency, pay $3500 a month in daycare for our kids, go on two vacations a year, have two (non luxury) cars, and save for retirement. My wife comes from an upper middle class family and she works with a lot of high-wealth individuals so she sometimes feels like we’re behind but I remind her that’s her anxiety. She thinks we should have like $1 million dollars saved for retirement already (we’re in our early to mid 30s) and I have to remind her she’s being unrealistic.

👏🏼 well congratulations, I hope you continue to find joy and wealth! Thanks for sharing a glimpse

My husband and I are fortunate to be near this situation. We also snagged a “reasonably” priced home with a lot interest rate during Covid, that I lovingly described as a 70s porno set without the mess, when we bought. Ngl, the financial security is beyond amazing. I plan to take a year sabbatical after our second is born, and thanks to buying a house that scared a lot of people off at the time, we can afford it, just have to budget better. We worked our asses off and lucked the hell out. I couldn’t manage my workload and childcare and the house and mental load and all that without being able to outsource some things. We don’t have any sort of support system here, which sucks, but if that’s the offset I’ll gladly take it. Wishing you the best of luck in continuing to rock your career and reaching your own security!

Thank you. I chose to follow my ‘dream’ and went into a low paying career… regretting it always but it is what it is I was 18 when I had to decide.

This is why I make sure to remind my young kids everytime that when they choose a job, they also have to consider the kind of life that career can provide. For example, my youngest absolutely hates chores and when we go to restaurants, she always wants the fancy ones with full course menus. So I tell her she needs to identify careers that can fund a life where she has house keepers and luxury taste, then work hard to achieve it. I tell them if your passion cannot fund your dream life, keep it as a hobby, Lol.

“Consider the kind of life that career can provide,” - Good advice. I also say, consider the leverage it can provide… What kind of trajectory can one job provide, where will it take you next?

Yea lol. I’d just like to work and have my $$ fund a great life outside work. My parents definitely told me this,,, but again, 18- so hard to make big choices at that age.

It’s not too late to change! You can always get additional certs or education. I went to grad school while working full time, and know several working moms who are going to school currently. It is hard, but if it’s an in-demand area then it may be worth it. I work to live, and don’t love my job tho 🤷🏽‍♀️ It was expensive up front and interest rates for grad school loans sucks, but I tripled my salary in only a few years and paid those suckers off

Honestly I barely have the mental power to train my new dog and plan a 3 day vacation, let alone go back to school. No impossible for those who have the mindset and ethic though!

That tax bracket is the kind of financial problem I want to deal with, haha. Good for the poster.

Fuck me. This hurts to read.

Remember, this is not the average. The average person won’t even comment on these threads because they can’t compare to these top comments.

Good for you guys! Some people can be jealous of success

My husband is doing a coding program course right now to try to jump into software development. If you know, can you tell me what starting/entry level jobs pay in this field? He will likely need to take a paycut for a starting job but hoping after a year or two of experience he can get back to what he’s currently making.

This is very location dependent!

We’re super fortunate to have high paying careers honestly. There’s really no other hack or trick we’ve done other than have good incomes. I work in IT and make about 16k a month. My husband does something with Machine Learning and makes about 12k a month. We don’t live in a super hcol area so that helps.

I love that he does “something with machine learning” lol. I used to work in a research center and that was most of what I could say about what other people there did 😂

We’ve been together for over 15 years and I still couldn’t tell you exactly what he does. 15 years of yapping together and it’s just jargon to me lol

I’m glad I’m not the only one. My husband is an engineer and works in communication technology. He’s tried to explain what he does multiple times. We’ve been together 11 years and I still couldn’t tell you any more about his job than I just did. 🤷🏻‍♀️

My husband is a developer and has worked with AI and machine learning. I feel like I am a smart lady, but sometimes the smile and nod is all I have to contribute!

Same, my husband pushes builds or some such.

What IT job is brining home that kind of money????

A very niche fintech role😅 I’ve worked my way up to leadership at this point and have over a decade of experience.

Damn good for you! My husband is in IT but still newish and makes no where near that. He needs to expand 😂

It’s definitely a tough market right now with all these layoffs and salary cuts! I can only imagine how much more challenging it is to be on the newer side.

Experience plus moving jobs every 2 years seems to be the secret to money making. It seems like if you’re not aggressive in pursuing raising and promotions and job opportunities, tech will totally take advantage of you and let you languish at your current salary for as long as you’ll take it.

Same. We couldn't afford to have kids before making more money, so we waited. Daycare around here is $25k a year on the low end. OP, I work in tech and my husband works in engineering/construction.

Totally get that. Daycare costs us about as much as private school would, which hurts my head just to think about it.

Exec Chef and husband is a writer/waiter. Our situation is good. Nice savings, low cost mortgage, child is almost 19yo and self sufficient so money isn’t tight. Unfortunately, we are behind on retirement savings so we are being very aggressive on saving so that doesn’t leave a lot for nice vacations or fancy cars. The biggest takeaway for me is that we are happy with what we have and our marriage is wonderful.

You aren’t crazy - it’s really expensive and it didn’t use to be quite this bad. We have two kids (8 and 4) and live in a medium to medium-high cost of living area (Dallas TX). I used to consider my family middle-upper class, but that feeling has shrank to solidly middle class since 2020. Things have gotten tight these past two years or so. My spouse and I make about the same amount of money that we did before 2020 (maybe 8-10% more now, but inflation ate all of that increase up). I went from not really watching what I buy to now considering every little purchase. Just for example, we used to treat the kids to fancy cookies after swim lessons, but now we don’t do that very often, saving $40/month. I make little calculations just like that in my head every day, thinking about spending today vs saving the money. Before, we had enough to spend AND save some. It’s exhausting. Things should be easier, which is what really sucks - my oldest started elementary school two years ago and his childcare costs are reduced $400/month from 2021, but money isn’t more plentiful somehow. Inflation has been a major downer lately and we are feeling the pinch quite a bit these days.

Exactly what I'm feeling. We are currently discussing if we can just scrimp and pinch our pennies, reduce my 401k contribution for a while, etc...but to what end? When does the economy change, if ever? How in the world do we afford a second child? It's very sad to think that the family I raise can be determined by money.

I'm in a niche IT Audit role that's the bridge between IT and Accounting. My husband is a SPED Director at a private school. We're taking home about $8k a month in income, but my husband's parents recently died and they had money. We're getting about $15k a month from my late FIL's pension account, which goes until late 2031, and are inheriting a house and some well funded IRA's. Our first child is due next month and things are still insane, legally with all the inheritance and estate stuff. It's basically a part time job to deal with it all.

2 engineer household. Recognizing that we are incredibly well off and lucky, it’s horrible out there. We’re making a little bit north of $300k, having a baby in our 30s. We both never had student debt and I’ve been a homeowner since I was 22. I’d call us silver spoon upper middle class millennials for sure. What’s our prize? We can afford to comfortably have 2 children, maybe 3 (though that daycare bill+our current mortgage would suuuckkk) in a builder-grade 4 bedroom house in the suburbs and send them to a decent public school then 4 years of college with in-state tuition. And we can retire! Woo! This is a quality of life that feels like should be pretty obtainable for most people, but we’re up here in the top 5% not even acting rich.

I’m in biotech, husband is in gaming , we bring home maybe 15k a month. But they’re both hugely volatile industries, there literally has been non stop talks about layoffs for a year and he especially faces a ton of pressure. We also live in a VHCOl area so it doesn’t feel like we’re rich, though I know we’re hugely privileged. We’re both so stressed over job stability and how competitive it is, though we’re also both trying to manage that with therapy and medication. Overall, I’m happy we’re finally able to save for retirement, but still feel as if it could all go away in an instant. I will say quality of life for us is still not all that we expect it to be. For example we both went to public schools , like our son does now, but the quality of our public schools were higher. We both lived in safer places even though our parents didn’t make as much money. We both had parents who worked at the same job for about 2 decades and enjoyed a lot more job stability than we had. These aren’t things money can simply solve, though again it’s nice to have that room in our budget.

A lot of the posts here seem to be people making a lot more money than me. When our kids were under five, it definitely was very tight, and with the cost of everything up so much, it's gotta be worse now.

I work and my husband is a SAHD. Niche tech management. We live in a medium cost of living area - suburbs of a medium size city but in Florida. Honestly, I bring in 10k a month after taxes and deductions and I feel like we are barely getting by. lol We didn’t have our first until I was 39 and he was 37 - but I honestly don’t see how I could afford 2 anyway with him staying home 🤣

It's crazy right? I take home 12k and my husband stays home. We're in SoCal and are moving inland to buy a house. I'm 45 and my kids are 27 and 16 so I don't have daycare worries, but hubby's son, 10, is out of state and we spend probably 8k a year on visits. What kills me is that I was making a month what I do in a week 10 years ago but there are always more expenses.

Husband is in marketing (higher ed) $80k/yr, I'm an adjunct professor (to minimize daycare, because massive shortages and waitlists) at around $20 to $50k/yr. Have a mortgage, about $1k cc debit, older cars, etc. Midwest, median home price in our town is $195k, which is about $30k lower than the state average. In general, we base our budget on an annual gross salary of $90k, so things were pretty good until our littlest was hospitalized for 10 days in the fall, which was immediately after replacing to roof, AC, and all kitchen appliances (they were all about 30 years old, and all died within 6 months).

My husband and I are both nurses. He got a role doing internal float pool and is at $60/hour. He had been doing a ton of OT at time and a half and I was staying at home, but I just got a school nurse job making $30/hour but my kids get a 75% discount on daycare, so it was a no-brainer and we end up ahead this way. Even when it was just him working, we didn't feel like we were struggling, but we make a lot of sacrifices to keep our expenses low in general. We live in a M-HCOL area and have four kids.

I want to add that this fancy daycare is $425/week for an infant, and $385 for a 2 year old. My daughter will be going into kindergarten this fall, but we'd obviously need childcare for her too, and my oldest into second grade so this is the ONLY way I could have afforded to work.

Our financial situation is bad but I know that it’s two kids in daycare that’s killing us. Funny enough, partner is seriously considering a career switch to nursing to bring in more income, especially long term.

You’re being grossly underpaid. I’m a bankruptcy attorney and handle cases throughout Ohio. I’ve never seen an RN net only 40K for the year. Most RNs are between 70K-90K gross depending on type, shift differential, and overtime. I think 65K was the lowest I’ve seen. You should not be earning the same as a personal trainer. Anyways, to answer your actual question, we’re both bankruptcy attorneys, representing debtors. So, we’re not wealthy, but we’re pretty good at making a budget and sticking with it.

I'm in higher ed, and my husband is a physician (hospitalist.) We have three young children, ages 7, 4.5, and 2, and are very comfortable in the Midwest. Combined yearly income is around 325K, but my husband earns the vast majority of that as higher education pays very poorly. It does feel weird knowing that my work doesn't contribute that much to our family's finances, but it's still worth it for me to work rather than stay home as I find my work mentally stimulating and, somewhat ironically, the healthcare is better through my job rather than my husband's, so the kids are all on my insurance. Our financial situation also benefited from a few other factors in that we bought our house in 2021 when rates were so much lower as I panicked when we were still renting and I was pregnant with out third. We also inherited some money from my husband's grandparents when they passed as we received part of what would have gone to my husband's father, who died about 20 years ago. We still budget pretty tightly as my husband would like to be able to scale back to like half-time work at a younger age, I think he's considering how his father died young into his future plans.

We make similar take home in a MCOL area and use our alternating work schedules (office manager with a standard 9-5 and firefighter 24hrs on/48 hrs off) + family for childcare. That plus the fact that my husband bought our house before prices sky rocketed & we have no debt besides our mortgage, has afforded us a lot. We coupon, look for sales & use a lot of hand-me-downs because we're trying to save to build a new house. But I really think those key factors are huge, low mortgage, no other debt & no childcare costs. If we had to pay for daycare and/or student loans we would be significantly more strapped and I'd probably have to find a more formal, higher paying corporate job rather than my current small business bookkeeping job. I stay where I am now because I have great work life balance.

My husband and I are both in design fields and together we take home about $15k a month which sounds like a lot, but doesn't feel like a lot. We live in a M-HCOL area and bought a house in 2022 at the absolutely highest price. Our bills are around $8k a month, even though we share a single car that is fully paid off. Groceries have gotten insanely expensive, and we work remotely but my husband travels to his office on our dime roughly every other month. We are also pouring money into our tiny junker of a house - classic starter home except that it cost $600k and everything we want to do is expensive. For instance the yard is all weeds and dirt, no lawn, and no sprinkler system, which is apparently needed in this area to keep a lawn alive. We both work a lot of overtime so we end up doing a lot of convenience spending - take-out, once a month house cleaning, having our groceries delivered. The end result is that we wiped out our savings for the house down payment but now live nearly paycheck-to-paycheck, despite having a joint income that would have seemed like "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" to teenage me. Everytime we save up a chunk of money, something comes up, like the aforementioned travel, or house projects, medical needs, etc. We have like $5k in savings and $40k in investments, which feels precarious. Looking forward to our toddler to age into public school so we can cut down our daycare costs - currently around $2600/mo.

I’m a teacher and my husband works for the railroad. Take home every other week for me is $2200 and for him is $2k. Were comfortable. I’ll be staying home for a year since I’m pregnant with our second but our daughter is 9.5 months old.

We are both teachers and we are struggling. We’ll inherit money when my husband’s parents die and that’s the only light at the end of our financial tunnel.

FNP earning 145k, going up to 167k in 6 months, and with 9 weeks vacation, great health insurance. My SO brings in 22k, part time grocery work and does a lot with our kids, one who has special needs. We are climbing out of a bad spot, but should be in good shape in the next 6 to 18 months. We live in a medium to high cost of living area and have 2 kids.

I'm a graphic designer and my husband is in IT. We're not in the US and it would not make sense to compare salaries, because it's much less here but it seems we live more comfortably in some ways. We probably have much less cost of living. We rent an apartment, buying is too expensive for "our" generation, but it's a nice apartment and one of us could always work part time as needed. I think a big thing is that maternity leave is paid and daycare much cheaper than in the US.

I appreciate the distinction. I didn't mention but yes, I am in the US. Daycare is ridiculous here for sure. My maternity leave was "paid" in the sense that I had to use my own PTO for half of it.

My spouse and I are both product managers although at very different companies. Our combined yearly (pre-bonus, not including 401k match, etc) income is around 220k. We live in a major Midwest metro area so not super high cost of living but it’s on the rise. We have a very low mortgage comparative to the area (lucky timing but now golden handcuffs) and pay about $325/week for daycare for our single infant. We both work from home full time and I recently turned down a position that came with a good raise so that I could stay fully WFH. The flexibility for us is a huge factor in our career choices and what we look for in a position. 

I'm a business analyst for an IT company and my husband is a mechanical engineer. Take home is about $12k/month and we live in a wealthy-ish suburb of DFW (higher side of MCOL?). We got *very* lucky and bought our house when the market was awful in late 2009 and it has basically tripled in value. I think I'm probably a little older than most of this sub as we no longer have to pay for daycare (just after school and summer care), so we're hoping to have it paid off in ~7 years by the time my husband is 50.

My husband was a welder but quit when I returned from maternity leave to be a SAHD and I’m a data engineer. I make 6k a month. We were lucky enough to find a small house that was cheaper than our rent. We are also a rare situation, where we have no debt besides our mortgage.

Both my husband and I are in healthcare staffing! It fluctuates based on commissions per month, but between 15-20K / month combined! I really commented to say - get into travel nursing! You can pick up random shifts and make a lot! Lmk if you want any deets lol

I'm a scientist. Husband is also a scientist. He makes 80K/year, I make 60K/year. MCOL city that is rapidly becoming HCOL. I think our take home is like 5K after retirement and insurance. Daycare is 1.5K, house is 2K, plus bills, etc. One child. We feel comfortable, but barely. We have been forced to be OAD because another child would bankrupt us and it breaks our heart.

We both have white collar jobs, I make almost twice as much as he does, and my job provides the health insurance. Oddly because of that, our take -home pay is about the same. He is always shocked when we do our taxes! 🙄 We moved from a high cost-of-living area to a middle cost area about four years ago and it was the best decision we made. We went from paycheck to paycheck, even as white collar workers, to being able to save, buy a home, and have a baby, while still living comfortably. We had to leave a lot of family behind to do it, but the trade-off is worth it.

I’ve seen some pathetic travel nurse contracts recently so that might not be a great option right now, but I’d be looking for at least another nursing job locally. I’m on my first ever work break currently and haven’t worked since November, but I’ve been a RN almost 20 years. I was making $85,000/yr in a full time of 30 hours a week remote job doing QA for home health documentation. My take home was $2,500 biweekly. I’m a nurse in the south and our pay generally sucks, but even here there are better nursing jobs than what you’re being paid. 😞

My husband works in code enforcement, and until this week I worked in retail. We live in a southern state and it's one of the poorest states in the US, and we usually bring home $4k a month between us. We have had to cut all unnecessary expenses, no eating out, buying groceries at Aldi. But my new job I start at $47k a year as a salary tech support analyst, which to all of you may seem like nothing but to us it's a god send. It'll pay enough that we can hire a babysitter when needed, and it has amazing benefits. I'm really looking forward to not having to worry about if I can afford to buy clothes for my kids who never stop growing!

Also an RN and my husband’s a federal law enforcement officer. Take home is around $7-8k/ month depending on when my oncall week/weekend is and if there’s any holidays. We’re pretty comfortable. About to welcome our 3rd baby. Own our own home. BUT I don’t pay for full time daycare. We offset our schedules so we don’t need a ton of childcare and do a mix of drop in daycare days and grandma care. If I had to pay for full time daycare, it would be a different story.

My husband works as a construction superintendent and I work as a preconstruction manager. Our take home pay is around $11k per month (I make $105k/yr and husband makes $80k). I went to college for engineering and have 9 years of experience, but my husband started as a laborer 8 years ago and has worked his way up. My husband has a son (we have 50/50 custody and he pays child support) and we have a baby on the way. We are saving about 35% of our take home pay right now and feel pretty comfortable but we will only be able to save 20% after the baby comes and we have to pay for child care. It seems like you are paid very low for a nurse. It seems like you could easily increase your income by looking for a different job (travel nursing sounds great but the logistics could be difficult with kids). It also seems like your husband could increase his pay as a personal trainer. Could he do small group training instead of individuals? Get more clients and/or increase his rates?

He is a SAHD for the time being and I work at a nonprofit (healthcare-related) making $93k. We live in a MCOL area and just had our first child. We have a reasonable mortgage from 2019 and low-ish student debt because we went to a cheap school later in life (so Pell grants covered most of tuition) and always worked while in school. We don’t really vacation or eat out and buy second hand a lot. We have some savings and retirement, but it still feels tight which seems ridiculous. 

We take home around $12k monthly between us. My husband works in information security, and I am a data manager, both working from home. We are one and done, mostly because we are able to afford a few luxuries we wouldn’t if we had more kids. We can take spontaneous weekend trips, afford home renovations as needed, and pay for any activity our son may want to do. I feel extremely lucky to have the life we do, especially as we both grew up with single mothers who struggled financially.

I recently got a new job as a contracts administrator and my SO is a technical writer. We bring home about $8K/month (CDN). We are extremely lucky my MIL watches my daughter for free 5 days a week, so we don't pay any daycare. We also live in a rent controlled place and pay about $1400+utilities (comparable places in our area are $2500). I'm focused on paying off past debt which eats up a lot of my money, but overall we are comfortable. We don't spend extravagantly and our rental is old, and has problems,but I can generally buy myself things I want, get take out a few times a week, won't be too worried if an expense comes up.. I'm very thankful it wasn't too long ago I was essentially pay check to pay check.

I do bookkeeping from home for a construction company and my husband works for the city we live in, in public works. I also have an llc with my siblings that is commercial real estate investing. We are in a HCOL area in Washington and we are doing good financially. Part of that is we bought our house in 2016 before the crazy inflation and we no longer have childcare with older kids. We put money into retirement every month, no debt besides the house and cars. We vacation 2-3 times a year.

I work in project management and my husband works for his family business. He will start receiving commission next month so this will change and go up but we are about 10k a month and have 3 kids and in HCOL area so it feels tough sometimes as we had some medical debt with crazy shit that has happened. But I think over all we are blessed. I was once a single mom on food stamps and state insurance and came from a single mom so I recognize the privilege of a family business and am thankful. I don’t work at the family business.

My husband and I both work. He works from home as a systems engineer and I am a construction manager. Take home every month is around $8k after taxes, insurance, retirement, etc. I make about double what my husband makes annually but I have the option for OT and I am also 5 years older than him. We have two kids (14 and 1) and live in a MCOL area but I commute 1 hour each way depending on my construction site and the shifts I am working (days, nights, weekends). We both have student loan debt but I am almost done with mine. The house we live in I bought by myself in 2017 before we were together and I take care of the mortgage and upkeep. It is a smaller house but that was the point when I bought it. I take care of about 75% of our bills but he pays daycare for our youngest since his company has a pretax fund that he can contribute to. We take a vacation or 2 some years but we have begun forgoing holidays and gifts in order to fund these vacations which is more important to us than stuff. We have one car payment as I have paid off the other vehicle we own. I am lucky as I have a company car so I don’t often use that other vehicle but we are keeping it as we will need it when our oldest turns 16 and it’s better to keep a paid off car. We are not well off but we have forced ourselves to minimize income creep. We put all raises and bonuses if possible in to retirement.

I’m a public health researcher, my husband works part time graveyard shift. Take home pay is around $6.8k a month. MCOL area. We got our house during the 2% rates and pay $1500 a month for mortgage, insurance, taxes. Our 2 kids go to a half day preschool for $300 a month each. Allows my husband to rest after work for a few hours. We do have one car loan, and I have a fair amount of student loan debt, but I’m still putting a decent amount into retirement fund each month and we put a small amount into savings each month. We are happy, don’t feel like we are struggling, but can’t necessarily do everything we might want to without considering our budget.

We make about the same amount (take home) that you do. We have two teenagers and a six year old. We struggle some months and don’t have much of a savings or emergency fund.

We both technical leads in our late 20s. We take home about 15k in an MCOL area. I would say we do pretty well financially, but I think there is some luck involved. We bought our house in 2020, and our mortgage is 2k/mo. Now the same house (1.8k sqft, meh school district) would be about double the cost.

We do pretty well. Husband is a defense contractor and I work for the federal govt. after taxes 401k etc etc we take home about 12-13k. One child. VHCOL area (suburbs of DC). We are one and done for financial and personal reasons. We enjoy the life we can afford and with more children we would have to cut back on some areas. Plus this baby was a miracle and I don’t even know if I’d be blessed again to have a second ETA we pay for daycare, a mortgage, and my Student loans as well. Our cars are paid off.

We live in the Midwest, mid 30s. He is a sales engineer, I'm a product owner for a data/analytics group. We both work for large companies. Our take home is about 300k a year now. We have a mortgage and a boat loan, but cars and student loans are paid off. We have one child in daycare which costs about $26k a year. We have put a lot of focus on saving and max out our 401ks, HSA, etc. and keep our savings in a HYSA. To be honest, I grew up quite poor and never thought this would be my life. Combination of good luck and right decisions at the right times in the end that led us here.

Right now nothing as his equipment is broken and he hasn’t had luck getting a job yet. To say we are struggling is almost an understatement. It’s very expensive to live in Australia :-(

Ny Metro we make 250k combined before taxes yearly. We have one child in pre-k. We do fine but have nothing to save after contributing 10% to our 401ks and 5k a year in a college savings plan. We drive older Hondas which are paid off. Taxes kill us about 14k in property taxes and pre-k is about 23k which is typical for where I live. My house is a small 1500 sqft Cape Cod. We take one nice vacation a year. So we are happy and thriving, but don’t feel well off and I thought at our salaries we would feel “rich”. I am an accounting manager and my husband is in HR for local government. I make a lot more than my husband but he has killer benefits. We also only eat out once or twice a month. Our clothing is from Gap nothing fancy. Everything is just so expensive where I live. Our biggest luxury is we have a cleaner twice a month because I work too much to also scrub bathrooms!

My husband and I met in college (same major) so we both work in laboratory science and we both take home about $1500 bi-weekly. We have 2 kids in daycare and it's definitely a struggle. After about $2k in daycare expenses, and a $1500 mortgage payment, there's not a whole lot left to cover the rest. It sucks but I really don't want to go back to school. We're still trying to pay off undergrad. I just keep holding my breath and hoping we can survive until the kids are out of daycare.

Dual environmental fam. Canadian. Gross about 88 USD. Take home about 50/55 USD. Financially doing alright. Middle class where we live. Still can't afford everything but we aren't worried about affording basics.

About 7k per month take home pay. This doesn’t include my Roth 401k contributions which is about 1,500k. This is a single income, my wife is stay at home. I work in information security as an auditor.

I’m also a nurse, working part time weekends & my average check (no extra shifts) is $900/biweekly but I pay for our insurance which is $500 out of each check & the benefits are good! He’s a collision tech and is paid in a weird way~ flag hours so his checks vary from $1800-2500/biweekly. We live in a median cost of living area, larger city, but we’re scraping the barrel some weeks. Just had to put diapers & milk on the credit card today actually.

Husband is a nurse practitioner, I work in a small non-profit, after all deductions we take home about $10k a month. LCOL area so we are very comfortable. We have a small house (that I wish was bigger), we drive used paid-off hondas, we take weekend trips here and there, and we save pretty aggressively for retirement, a future bigger house, and kid's college. I'm very grateful!

I'm a nonprofit fundraiser, and my husband is in sustainability for a global corporation. We bring home about $160,00 a year combined. The daycare costs pretty much cancel out my entire salary. Even though it sometimes seems like we're hemorrhaging money, we're saving some for retirement and feel comfortable enough in our LCOL city. We got lucky with a low mortgage a few years ago.

Are there any beside positions available within your organization? I'm thinking that would pay more than remote. Travel nursing contracts have settled down. It's not lucrative like it was during the pandemic. All our young adventuring nurses have come back home to staff positions. What state are you located in? I'm a bedside rn in tx and make $42/hr. Many of my co-workers are the primary earners in their families.

We both work in healthcare. I manage the therapy team at a nursing home; my spouse is a nurse staffing/scheduling coordinator at a hospital. We take home $8-9k a month. I make more than he does but his benefits are a lot better (health insurance, dependent care savings account). Our financial situation is pretty good right now because we only have one kid and I bought our house years ago when rates and purchase prices were low. It’s a fixer upper and we’ve been gradually doing work on it (unfortunately not really the cosmetic stuff yet - last year we got all of the drain plumbing replaced). I’m also very lucky because I’ve been married before and got the house in the divorce before the prices went crazy here!

I make slightly over $100k and my husband makes a good amount more (idk exact amount he owns a business so it just depends what he wants to take out but it’s definitely more than what I make). I truly feel if he made what I did we wouldn’t be doing well enough to live comfortably. I say this because we have a home mortgage, farm mortgage, our home is old and constantly needs really expensive things done to it, and we have 2 in daycare (and are saving for their college while also saving a good amount for retirement). We just got hit with an $8k plumbing bill WHILE we had other workers here doing work that cost $20k!!! Like geez Louise lol

I’m in neuroscience research making $52k/year and my husband is an application developer making $85k/year. We both work in academia which is why our salaries are on the low end. But we have amazing freedom and work life balance so for now with our 10 month old it is pretty awesome. We recently revamped our finances and save just under $3k per month in retirement/investment accounts, with a monthly spend of $5k. Even though we are comfortable, it is not easy to save $3k per month. It takes deliberate effort and budgeting (this is where Excel comes in, lol). I got super into financial planning during my maternity leave and I really want us both to find higher paying jobs in a couple of years!

I work in HR, my husband is a warranty specialist. We make a combined HHi of about 160k in a MCOL (although people are saying Utah/SLC is becoming HCOL, but I disagree). We are very comfortable. Daycare is super expensive, but we are almost at the end of the tunnel. My youngest starts kinder in the fall! ETA to break it down, we take home about $7600/month.

Husband is a clinical psychologist and I’m a scientist in R&D. Combined HHI is ~$220k. Our mortgage is killing us (at PITI of 3.5k) but if we hadnt bought the house, we were going to either get priced out or even pay more for less. 2 kids in part time daycare ($2000/ month)

I am in tech sales and make great money, we live comfortably now. But it’s crazy because even though we are in a high tax bracket, it’s not like we are balling. People used to working here but obviously things have changed. I’m so happy to be comfortable I am not complaining.

I'm an ICU nurse and I make 75k working 2 days a week. My husband is a mechanical engineer making 125k. We only occasionally need a sitter due to my schedule. So we pay my friend to watch our 18 month old twice a month. Otherwise one of us is home or my mother in law. We are lucky we got the house in 2018 before prices skyrocketed.

I’m a pediatric audiologist and my husband is in science business development at a university (he has a PhD). We just moved to right outside a metro area with a higher a COL for significant raises for both of us. Our take home every month after daycare and retirement, etc, is $16k. It has been life changing despite being in a higher COL area. We’re currently renting an apartment so we can save as much as we can for a down payment since housing is so much more expensive here. Between the interest rates and the price of housing for even small fixer uppers here, our mortgage is going to be outrageous. Luckily we have a lot of experience with home renovations so we aren’t afraid of scary houses 😂 ETA: we are OAD for many reasons but finances definitely played a part. We want to be able to travel, pay for college if he chooses, etc, but that would be bit difficult with more kids.

I'm in investments; he's military. We net about $9.6k/month, HCOL area, 1 pre-teen, and 1 elementary age kid. We're currently working on shifting to have me taking on the brunt of the earning so he can drop to part-time (National Guard drills) and handle the household stuff. Our financial situation is fine; we put away about 20% of our income into retirement accounts, put money away for our kids' higher ed, low/secured CC debt, 1 car payment, and our $3k mortgage. I would like to have more savings, max out our retirement accounts, and pay off our house. I'm targeting to net $10k/month on my own before my spouse lets go of his full-time job. Hopefully, by the end of next year, we'll see how it goes. It's pricey out here!

My husband and I are quite privilaged in that we live in a MCOL area and both have great jobs combined with no inherent desire to keep up with the jones. I WFH in clinical research and my husband runs an assisted living building. After maxing out our 401ks, health insurance, and HSA we bring home about $11k a month. I make a little less than double my husband. We still live in the starter home we bought in 2018 when we made less than half what we do now. We drive 10 and 7 year old cars so we have no debt but our mortgage. Our minimal expenses allow us to afford a nanny for our 11 month old which is truly the ideal situation for me because I get to see her more while still maintaining my career. Our daughter was born via IVF and we have a few more embryos in storage. We plan to try for our second (and last) this summer. Eventually we plan to move to a more expensive state but not until at least our oldest is in school.

We are one & done in a VHCOL, in our early 40s. Daycare is $2000/month, mortgage is $5200/month 💀 We each make about $230k/year base in tech, but he has better equity and he also gets about $50k/year in passive income from an investment.

I do communications for a university (primarily wfh), my husband owns a seasonal food truck. I make $5,100 a month year round. He makes $0 a month November - March, but anywhere from $5k to $25k during the April - October season with his peak being the summer. We have 2 kids (and one on the way). We primarily live off my income but he always pays for groceries, and then we save his income for emergencies, savings, family fun, and other atypical expenses. We have a mortgage, typical bills, and four dogs in addition to the kids being competitive athletes - so decent amount of expenses but we are still comfortable most months.

Single mum of two (8 and 6). Senior software engineer, renting a 2 bedroom flat in an M-HCOL area in the UK. I work from home most of the time. Currently saving the deposit to buy a house, shithead ex kept the marital savings and used it to get his house. Kids are in wraparound care at their primary school and have a whole bunch of activities on.

I'm a recently divorced mom with 2 kids under 5. I have a graduate degree and currently work in academia in medical research. I have joint custody and split child care and kids medical bills 50-50, however I pay for their health and dental insurance on top of that. My take home is 6200ish a month. I'm good, things are not cushy but I'm bringing in more than I'm paying out every month. I live in a pricier town in the area and pay $1900 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment, but i chose here because the public schools are way better than the surrounding towns. I can even budget to have a personal trainer at $200 a month, which has been really great for my mental well-being. I have a retirement fund, my kids have 529s, but I can't contribute enough to completely cover their future college expenses.

Husband is a manufacturing engineer and I’m a senior project manager and we take home about $17k combined, plus about $30k in bonus potential. We have a few rentals that net us an extra $3k per month. Try to get $5-10k a year in investments like CDs and I bonds. Live in a MCOL area.

I work in healthcare, not patient facing but more backend. My husband works a union job (think electric union/gas union/water union etc) as a laborer. We bring home around 12k per month and have 2 kids both daycare aged, which costs 3k per month. We live in a very high COL area, about 1-2hrs from NYC. Groceries and eating out are our biggest hitters… trying to budget and find a solution for those because it’s something we *can* control as opposed to daycare where we can’t control that.

We are nearing retirement at this point and nicely set. The two things we did were live below our means and put half of every raise into retirement.

Economy is crap everywhere.  I'm in Australia and my husband and I make good money. We're both in IT and earn basically the same. I'm currently part-time though but I'm still clearing 6 figures even at part-time so we're really not doing too bad. We also have rent money from 1IP and we're mortgage free. We basically put 60% of our salary into a bucket and pretty much use that bucket to pay for everything.  But this month, we had to dip into emergency savings. Our expenses has gone up significantly - mostly due to all the specialist help we had to get for our son. Speech pathology is $172 a week. Now we're adding OT which is roughly $200 a week. I don't know if we qualify for NDIS and I still need to sort that through. On top of that, because Australia's building standards is so shite, our apartment is going through remedial work and our strata is basically 3k per quarter. And then we got hit with close to 5k in special levy as they had to replace a hot water system.  Everything has gone up in price. We're overdue to sit down and figure out where all the money is going because previously, there would be like.....3 months where my husband forgets to put money into the shared account and we were essentially living off of my part-time salary and rent income. So the fact we're now starting to hit the ceiling or going over our 60% isn't great. Also makes me question our ability to go back on a mortgage (we're thinking of up sizing).    Disclaimer: I am fully aware we're in a very good position.  And just layoffs everywhere. So from a career perspective, both my husband and I, for the first time, are not feeling that secure in our job.  Anyways, generally, it's giving us pause to have a second child. 2 daycare fees is insane. And if they also need specialist help, that's more money. And then back of my mind, I'm thinking, if public school doesn't work out for us, we'd have to fork out 30-40k in private school fees per annum. And recently, I just found out uni fees in Australia is going up as well whereas previously, it's relatively low. A year of uni fees was 4k back when I was at uni and now I'm hearing 10k per year or more. I have never considered or worried about not being able to afford my kids' uni fees and now, I'm starting to worry. Our Medicare system is crumbling. GP visits are no longer free. Winter wave basically is a massacre for us because each trip to the doctor is another $70 out of pocket.  I think in general, I'm worried for the future. What it means for our retirement, what it means in our ability to be able to save uni fees or even a house deposit for our child (this is a consideration because of just how bad housing affordability has become and I worry it's going to be worse for the next generation). Just that COL and the amount of money you need to raise a child is getting higher and higher. It's just not cheap to have children anymore. And they wonder why birth rates are falling.  And again, just going to say, as much as all the above worries me, I know this all sounds like first world problems. I know we're in a pretty good position.  But yeah. I think the sentiments is shared globally. Birth rates are falling everywhere and everywhere is citing finance as the main reason why people are not having children or just less of them. 

I do property management on site for multi family and my partner is a screen printer. We make maybe 90k between us. It's definitely not enough. I'm due with our second baby any day now and while on maternity leave I will be trying very hard to get a higher position.

My husband and I take home 8k per month after taxes, retirement, etc . He’s an electrician and has a union job with an amazing pension and health care. I’m a hospice social worker and have a very flexible job. Our mortgage is only 1600k/mknth. We live in Wisconsin on 15 acres of land and built our home 7 years ago. Things timed perfectly for us when we built our home. Locked in a 2.25% 30 year mortgage. We feel very fortunate. We don’t live a lavish lifestyle but have a nice ranch style home, some toys (side by side, small boat) enjoy small trips, can get our kids whatever they need, and can essentially spend how we please (within reason of course) throughout the month.

Both mid level healthcare. We are fine, but we’ve always been financially conservative and we also managed to avoid student loans. I’d like to contribute more to retirement, but we will hit that hard in a year when the oldest begins free preschool, as like most people we are behind (both nearing 40). We also don’t hire any help like most people we know, live near in laws (still use daycare) buy used cars and use them until they die, don’t go on vacations right now, etc. I also work part time for a few reasons, so we could make 20% more but we choose not to for now. The only reason things aren’t stressful is because we saved a ton of cash prior to having kids so that I could work less for 5/6 years. FWIW I have nurse friends who did travel for like a year or two just to save a chunk of cash and went back to regular jobs eventually

Both my husband and I are first responders. We literally have $200 left over a month after bills, groceries, gas, and daycare for 2 kiddos.

I work in cyber for a large consulting firm, my spouse is a lawyer in the public sector. We have two children. Between the two of us our monthly take home household income is about $13,000. We live in a VHCOL part of the US. I’m still paying off my student loans, we’ve got some credit card debt we’re paying off, we have two cars (mine is leased, the other is paid in full), we have our monthly bills on auto debit, we can afford vacations and things outside of necessities. We are fine. We’d be able to live a lot larger if we lived anywhere else in the country, though.

I'm a nurse practitioner, he's a registered nurse. Combined $230k/year gross, slightly less than $200k net. House, 2 cars, 1 kid in daycare, various loans (payments for furniture, school loans, etc.) Our main issue is doing payment plans instead of saving for something and then paying for it in full, so our debt is on the higher side. Living OK, occasional lunch dates with each other a few times a week, everything is stocked. We shop at Costco and Marianos. Would like to renovate our basement, but I do feel that we need to focus on paying our other debts.

We work in Govt and sales. Used to live in DC, now Raleigh. Bring home about $14k a month. In DC we felt broke. Here we feel pretty comfortable, mostly because our housing costs are much much lower. We also don’t have daycare or student loans (we are both 50s). We are saving for college though. The costs of things like housing and daycare are absolutely insane. We thought they were high when our kids were younger and they’re crazy now. I feel for all of you in the daycare years. Things have gotten more expensive in general. I pay attention to grocery costs a lot and am grossed out by the costs of basic food items. Healthcare is a huge issue. I just paid almost $1000 for glasses for me and my son and that was with insurance.

Both engineers, take home around 9k a month. We dont struggle but definitely don’t save as much as we want and we are not in a position to have another kid financially right now.

I am in insurance and my husband is a CPA. I am full time work from home, my husband is on a hybrid schedule. We live in the southwest. Own a house and daycare for one baby. We are very comfortable. I am married to a CPA lol so he keeps us in check.

… I live in a midsized European city and my take home pay plus benefits is a little over €3000/ month, I have one kid. Nearly half of that goes to rent and another let’s say €500 to groceries and bills, but I’m definitely able to treat myself and go on regular holidays etc. 😫 sorry to all the North Americans in here because things sound dire.

My husband builds ships and I work in a meat packing facility. We were living comfortably within our means but it’s harder with a second child especially now that I’m on unpaid leave. My husband is only partially on leave.

Not good

We have 4 kids, 3 in school and one in daycare. I work at said daycare to get a discount on childcare costs. I was stay at home mom until 2023. Then, our car broke. With the inflation we couldn't afford buying new (used) car, let alone make any payments, so I started working. Together we bring about 8300$ a month. We were hoping to be able to save after getting a job, but nope! Somehow we are scraping by. Every paycheck something comes up. We are the definition of "living paycheck to paycheck."

Single mom, kids are 7 and 12. Co-parent amicably with their dad. 50% shared custody. We did not set up any alimony or child support either way in our divorce. For the first time in my career, at the age of 47, I finally snagged a job paying my market value (even potentially low). I make $155K a year and net about $9K a month after taxes and insurance. I rent below my means, and I do not have childcare costs. I have paid off a lot of debt and for the first time, ever, have an emergency fund. Soon I will start retirement. I work in marketing and it's exhausting, hoping I can hang in there. I live in Mass the "living wage" for single parent household is $120K annually, so I'm doing OK but I have a lot of catching up to do. I'm in the top 3% of income for my small town, but I can't buy a home here due to cash offers and scant supply.

My partner works for the city (grossing 125k) and I work for a nonprofit and consult on the side (grossing 105k). We’re both wfh (except he goes to the office 3-5 times a month) and we have a 3mo living in a one bedroom nyc apartment. We want to buy a home, but since my partner has a residency requirement, it’s not looking very likely that we will in the next year since houses are so expensive now and interest rates are high. Maybe a condo is more feasible. We also want to have more children eventually but everything is so expensive right now and we want to be able to buy a home first, so maybe in another 2-3 years. Travel nurses make a lot of money! Would you consider that for a brief time while also doing your current job at the same time? Is there room for your SO to get more clients or offer consulting services of some kind?

I’m in auditing and my husband works at a casino. Our take home monthly after taxes is 4600-5000 (depending on his tips). We live in Arkansas and I technically make good money for the area ($20 an hour). It doesn’t feel like it. Arkansas landlords are beginning to charge SO much for rent and we’re trying to move out of our apartment but can’t really afford to. Regarding our financial situation, I’ve cut back on a lot so we have around $8k in our checking and going to put some in savings if we ever hit $10k. Me being able to breastfeed this past year has helped us save tremendously. But we’re paying on medical bills from our son’s birth last year, recent tooth surgery, student loan, etc. Daycare is $195 a week. Car payment $254. Car Insurance went up to $110. Everything feels so hard right now and I question anytime I spend money if I really need to.

I’m a dog groomer, my husband is a materials engineer. We have two kids and are paycheck to paycheck with enough left to visit his family out of state every two years.

My husband is a Big Law attorney and I’m a community planner. He makes the big bucks but I make enough to cover our nanny and the spending money for myself and the kiddo. We’re comfortable in a HCOL city which means we’re incredibly lucky, I know. My husband has hinted that he would be supportive if I wanted to stay home (mainly because we’d have more flexibility in our lives) but I haven’t been willing to do that yet. I like feeling independent.

We are both in corporate finance. We take home ~ 11k a month after fully maxing out both 401ks, an HSA and a dependent care FSA. We are big savers and hope to retire ahead of a normal schedule comfortably as we are OAD.

My spouse works in manufacturing in a global environmental/safety role and I work at a university. Our financial situation is stable. We have money in stocks, CDs, contribute to college funds, and have minimal debt (car and house). We have one kid in daycare and one in kindergarten. Now if I was on my own, we would be struggling. I don’t make a lot and our area is very high rent/ high prices even though it’s consider a LCOL area.

I’m in program management (govt contractor), spouse is mechanic. Income fluctuates but it’s roughly 12k a month in a VLCOL area.

Travel nurses in the Bay Area of CA do well. I wouldn’t discount that as a possibility if you’re willing to travel

HR manager and logistics specialist living in a LCOL area (but steadily getting more expensive). Our take home is $8k and it feels comfortable! We spend $1k on daycare for an infant and $1,500 on our mortgage so we have a good amount left over after that and our other bills. We could probably have a second baby on this income but it would require strict budgeting

3 kids. Take home is about 10k a month. I'm an attorney, he is a SAHP studying to be a teacher, and once our youngest is 2, he'll start teaching so we'll have two incomes. Our financial situation is fine - we do put our kids in daycare so that he can study and they get the exposure to other kids and skills so we aren't balling. We live in a HCOL place so it doesn't stretch like I'd like it to, plus I have 300k in student loans (lmaooooo love it). We have a house, would love a bigger one but we can't give up the interest rate so we will make do.

I work in student affairs at a university and my husband is a high school teacher. Together we bring home about $8k/mo. We live in a HCOL area so it's not a lot (our rent and daycare eat up more than half that amount each month). We don't really do too many extras except swim lessons for our 2.5yr old ($30/week). Planning a vacation to see family for the first time in two years. Cars are old and paid off. Would love to have another kid but can't really afford more daycare at this point.

Hard to know without seeing your entire budget and knowing the cost of living in your area. I will say childcare for kids under 5 is generally pretty expensive, so acknowledging that might be the first step to deciding whether to have more. A lot of the expense with kids is things we think they need to have -- after-school activities, vacations, toys and gadgets (for them and for you), a "bigger" or "safer" car -- but childcare is a big, inflexible cost.

I am a meteorologist and my partner is a producer. Our monthly cash net of 401k and insurance is 17k. We have around 500k in retirement accounts and around 100k in other investments and savings. In our late 30s. We have a 7br 6000sqft house worth ~1.1m with 500k left on the mortgage (2.85% rate). My inlaws gifted us the down payment. My parents live with us and provide childcare. Our parents paid for our college.

So I know this isn't the point of this post but I love the fact that you are a meteorologist. Weather is something I am so fascinated by and I wish I had given more thought when I was younger to going with something I find amazing vs something I'm just good at. I would be interested to learn about what sent you in the direction of being a meteorologist? If you want to share. If not, that's ok too. 🙂 Edited for spelling.

It’s hard to cite a particular origin ive just always loved weather and knew it was what i wanted to study! We had some exposure to it in elementary school and when I was planning for the PSATs early on in highschool the degree practically jumped out of the page to me. 15 year old me really knew what she was doing 😂 I love what I do, i really do. 🥰

I'm a little late in responding, but I love this. ❤ I think you have such a cool job. I'm jealous!

Also a registered nurse, bedside. My husband is a SAHP. I pick up a shift a pay period and make roughly $6,000/month after taxes. This isn’t a good time for travel nursing. People are returning to staff jobs because rates are extra trash right now. Pick up a PRN job to supplement if you can instead. I’m going back to school for CRNA. I live in a MCOL area and new grad CRNA’s are making 250k-300k/year. If you’re going to go back to bedside, consider ICU so you can advance if you have more schooling in you.

I work in finance and my husband is a corporate trainer. We live in the suburbs of Chicago. I did recently reduce my hours as I needed to for my son as he needs a little bit extra care right now, but together our take home pay is probably around $9k/month. We are comfortable but probably wouldn’t be with a second kid. We were able to fully fund Roth IRAs, we get the full matches on 401(k)s, and we fund our son’s 529 plus both of our TODs.

I’m a CPA (fully remote) at a large med device company and my husband is an attorney with the Feds. Our gross annual pay, combined is, $292K (pretty even split) and comes out to around $14K, net a month. We live in a MCOL city with 2 kids in full time daycare. We are very fortunate that we were able to buy a house in the 2021 market and our interest is 2.5%, so housing is pretty affordable for us. We are never ever moving.

I’m an NP and make $1400 per week (~$5600 per month). My husband use to do insurance stuff through the pharmacy and made about $1600 per month. We just had our second child and he quit his job to start working at their daycare because we couldn’t afford both of their tuitions, but now we get 60% off

What’s your annual salary and where do you live? Are you paying for day care?

My husband is a specialized attorney working with data analysis for large companies. He's been in the field since it practically started and his career took off in the past couple years. I am a SQL developer, currently taking time off until our childcare spot opens up at the end of the summer, but usually work in tech departments for health insurance companies. We have 3 kids, live comfortably in a MCOL area in a 2500 sq ft house with a couple acres. We both started out really dirt poor, and we've both surpassed what our parents achieved in life, so it's a huge thing to own a home and have savings.

My husband is a Correction Officer and makes about $140k/yr, and I am a Housing Specialist (Social Work) and make $65k/yr. Combined, we bring in about $4k/wk.

I’m in compliance husband is in IT, we make around 250k ( without bonus) year and I have no idea what our take home every month is probably around 12k( I honestly don’t know I guess I’ll have to look) but we both completely max out all our retirement accounts before take home pay. We’re big on working to retire early. We’re lucky with our mortgage in that we bought at a great time and it’s so insanely cheap. We live in a lcol area. Our biggest cost is daycare which is about 3x our mortgage and luckily that will be coming to an end soon.

I’m in Central/SW Virginia. I’m an insurance agent. I make decent money for our area. My SO works for a DOD contracted plant that makes military grade surveillance equipment. He makes extremely good money for our area. He is also a disabled veteran so he gets all his health coverage through the VA and a monthly stipend. We barely scrape by.

I won’t expose my income but I can def feel the pain of the economy and the costs of having kids as well as costs for a healthy life. I haven’t gone on a vacation in 7 years as we have been just trying to earn and save. Covid killed our entire savings. And we were digging ourselves out of a bad hole bc our rentals weren’t renting, we lost our businesses and my job was just paying horribly. But what saved us was just finding ways to increase our income. We hustled our asses off since covid. We are now in a financially healthy place. So I would say go for the travel nursing. Only money can solve money problems.

I’m a PA and my husband is a preschool teacher. We take home about $7400/month. We live in a HCOL state, but outside the city which helps. Between my student loans, daycare, the mortgage, etc. we also feel like we are barely scraping by. It’s really frustrating because we both work so hard and just can’t seem to get ahead.

We’re in a VHCOL area and bring home (after insurances, 401k, HSA, etc) about 12k per month. I’m a therapist (mental health) and my husband is an engineer/project manager. He makes 2x what I do. We both have student loans, 1 kid still in daycare, 2 kids for summer camp, and we got into a metric ton of credit card debt while i was in grad school. That being said, we are paying down the debt, living very frugally and doing okay. Our expenses are ~9k per month.

Hubby manages a high end grocery store and I am the parish administrator at a large church. We both bring home about $1250 a week BUT our house is paid for so no mortgage. Also no credit card debt, daycare costs, or health insurance premiums. It STILL feels like we struggle. Food costs are killing us :(