Make a big life decision for me, please!

[snafu]

I'm afraid my comments will sound negative and offer them only in hope of being helpful. In my opinion you post contradictory goals. While you are only 40 y/o, your post suggests you do not respond/adapt well to change which is unfortunate since change is demanded of us all whether in N. America, Europe or Asia. Employment is no longer guaranteed any more than employee loyalty all part of significant societal change that was taking place while you were a grad student. Perhaps those decisions made then to extend your stay is now part of your discontent. The 2008 - 2009 American recession reverberated around the globe. Spain now suffers 25% unemployment for example.

I'm guessing you are excellent at your job...I believe you've perfectionist tendencies which are working against what you want. Is it realistic to expect your 7 y/o ADHD son who 'barely remembers to take his brains with him when he leaves a place' to be a scholar? You don't trust him to do small tasks like set the table for the next meal. What are the consequences for failing to complete chores?

Why not have family come from the familial home to visit and help you cope? Alternately, host a foreign student for reduced rent to help with meals and coaching son. I was surprised to see $700. budgeted for groceries since you aren't in a high COLA. Organic foods [not yet proven to be to a specific standard] cook just as well in a crock pot. If the family dislike that outcome DH could supervise DS who will learn the benefits of team work to prepare some meals if you've prepped on weekends.

What is DH's view of your desire to leave the workforce? What is the possibility of your gaining work/consulting from home? Can you take an unpaid leave of absence to regain your equilibrium?

[Redraidernurse]

I applaud your dedication to trying to give your children the best education possible. Could you hire a tutor to come to your home a few days a week? I know you may think your son's ADHD would be a problem for a tutor, but with how often that diagnosis is given these days, I doubt tutors bat an eye at it anymore. If you are in a university town I would bet there are plenty of intelligent college students who would love to make a few bucks tutoring if you ran an ad in the local paper. This coupled with hiring someone to help you cook/clean could make a HUGE stress reduction and allow you to continue working full time.

From the sounds of it you'd like to do it all, but it's obviously not working. You've some to that realization. So which hat would you like to hand off? Would you rather someone else do the home schooling? Someone else do the cooking? Someone else do the organizing? What if a nanny could arrive at your house in the afternoon, have it all picked up and organized and dinner ready on the table when you walk in the door and then help with homeshcooling? There is a website called Babysitters, Nannies, Child Care and Senior Home Care - Care.com that my relative has used to find a "nanny" who will do all of the above. Even if you have to spend $1000 a month for someone to do all of these things for you, that is still enabling you to sock away 3k per month AND enjoy your life.
You wanted to know what I would do, and I think given your situation, this is exactly what I'd do. It would allow me more time to enjoy my children, and have them not remember me as the crazy stressed out mom who never has time or energy (not saying that's how you act, but you do appear quite anxious and stressed from your post).

[MakeAStash]

As stated, your choices are death or constant fear. Neither sounds great. Perhaps brainstorming other options would help.

[TBH]

I sympathize with your desire to quit your job. I really do. I hated working full time for someone else, and couldn't fathom it after I had my son. I now work for myself, from home, and I work very long hours but it feels better to me.

If you do want to quit, set clear savings goals that you must reach before you can quit, and then drop back to part time. For me, I think I would want 1 year's living expenses, and I'd wait til after you've bought a house, with a very big down payment this time so you avoid another short sale. Buy something as modest as you can in the school district you want, and try to put down more than 20 percent. If that means you work 5 more years, so be it. You want a big emergency fund and very low house payments to reduce your anxiety about your husband's job security.

In the short term, I think you need to eliminate some things from your plate. Here are some ideas:
* have your husband be responsible for dinner 2 nights a week. If he serves macaroni and cheese out of a box, that's fine.
* make a list of all the academic areas you want to supplement for your kids. Hire a tutor for one of them. Pick one you like for yourself. And assign another to your husband. Make him responsible for everything related to that subject--finding the text books, etc. Is he good at math? Ask him to tutor the kids in math. Was he an English major? He can do reading and grammar.
* You might need to visit your family only every other year. That may be hard to imagine, but it might be necessary. On the years you don't go to Europe, maybe you can fly one family member over to see you here? Skype with the grandparents weekly?

Good luck. I know it's hard.

[joshuaking]

If it were me...

And that is what you asked, what would I do in your situation. If I had that income, I would save HALF, 50% of it after taxes for two years.The balance left over would be plenty for a family of 4 to live on. I would then take that saved money, plus the 70,000 already saved and buy a house. Pay Cash. That should be enough in most areas of the country to buy a decent home. Maybe not the newest, most expensive house, but something clean, and safe and decent. And it would be paid off in full. No loan, no payment.

And, if you bought something that had a guest house on the property, or an in-law apartment, or even a spare bedroom that you could rent out, now not only would you have no mortgage on your home, but you would be receiving income to help with the utilities and upkeep costs.

Imagine how great it would be to never have to worry about a mortgage again, no matter what happened to your husbands job.

THEN, I would quit my job, and look around and figure out what I absolutely LOVED to do. If that was stay at home with my family, that's what I would do. If it was make watercolor paintings of butterflies and sell them on ebay, I'd do that.

Ultimately, even though you stated you don't want to hear answers that state you have to make up your mind, and make your own decision about this, in the end it WILL be you who decides what to do. I imagine that this exercise is really designed to have some of us throw out ideas to spark your own creative imagination, and one or more of them will resonate within you as what you really want to do, and that will be your choice. Best of luck to you, and happy new year!

[syracusa]

I just wanted to say thank you so much for everyone's input - no one specific answer gave the ABSOLUTE solution, but all of them put together suggest an overall direction.

It is indeed very hard to prescribe a 100% suitable course of action when there are always so many unspecified yet highly relevant personal details to any one scenario. For example, the poster who mentioned that she/he would never "feel entitled to...a,b,c".

I just thought that was a little bit unnecessarily preachy, maybe even a tad hostile, as the reality is, nobody is "entitled" to anything, if you put it in such absolutist terms.
Not even to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". There are no such things as "human rights" or "entitlements" to anything.
After all, where is the "right to life" of those Sandy Hook kids? Not there, clearly.

However, people DO form certain expectations based on what they perceive to be extremely important in life to them. For us, family ties, children's education, NOT having my children start in life with a mountain of debt...those are extremely important things to us, so we form expectations around them. We arrange our lives in such ways, or make efforts, sometimes huge efforts, so that we can meet those expectations.

For example, the poster in question said she would not "feel entitled to yearly trips to Europe". The reason she doesn't is because she most probably (as in 99.999999% likelihood) she doesn't have aging parents in Europe to whom she is very close and whom she left behind when she immigrated strictly for economic reasons, so she wouldn't become a burden on them.
I do. As a result I EXPECT those yearly trips to Europe and I arrange my life in such ways for me to be able to have them, even if that means working myself to death. Hopefully, this won't be necessary as my husband and I are currently looking for other expenses to cut out, if I were to go part-time, or some services to buy (such as a cook, as some suggested) if I were to stay full-time.

Unfortunately, quitting my job would come with too much financial and security loss right now...but it might be possible in 3-4 years.

I will address other comments in more details soon - thank you so much again!

[syracusa]

You should look for a part time and relatively easier one with no over work and also providing attractive salary package.

This is sweet, but how would that work out?
When you find such a Heavenly opportunity in real life, let me know.

As for part-time, I NEVER mentioned quitting my profession altogether. Simply going part-time would be a huge stress relief. Unfortunately, my profession is the "all or nothing" type. Full-time can pay nicely (not great but nicely), plus great benefits package and the works. Part-time is a pittance and no benefits. Largely change.

[Decatur]

Hire help

If it were me, I would keep working and hire help. My wife and I were in a similar situation. One son with ADHD and both working full time. For a few years, we spent a lot of money of things like a nanny, house cleaner, etc. Even if you ended up paying others 75% of your take home, you would still have your career. If your husband ever gets laid off, you get rid of the help. Much easier then finding a job. But still gives you a break.

[bjl584]

I would greatly appreciate the input of anyone who might be interested in playing this game with me. After reading the context, you could say: "I would do x" or "I would do y".
Please don't tell me that it is up to me do decide, or that no one can make this decision for me. My question is "What would YOU do if you were in my place"?

I am a 40 yo married woman, with two small children, 4 and 7, and extremely exhausted.
I have tons of grad degrees, I have spent long years in school, not because I am a "career" type of woman, but mainly because I had no other choice for a long time as an immigrant on a grad student visa - so I eventually had to make the best of it.
We are finally at a point where many things sound well on paper. Except it's just on paper.

My husband and I pull together a family income of about 170,000 dollars a year (NOT in a very high COL area like NY). We also have no debts of any sort.
We currently rent in an area that is pretty expensive due to top schools (1800 rent) but plan on buying a house in about a year from now.
So zero debts, 20,000 in kids' college account, 40,000 in my retirement account, 120,000 in husband's retirement account (he's 48),70,000 in liquid savings, mostly destined for a downpayment on the house.
Not impressive at our age, with 2 kids...but at least, not in debt.
We've had this family income for almost a year now.

The dilemma comes from the fact that I simply want to quit working full-time.

The reason why I currently work full-time is ONLY because I feel that I need to act as a safety net, second provider to my husband's largely vulnerable job. Not for fancy cars, granite counter tops or what not.
My husband has a job working exclusively from home now. He makes 98,000, I make the rest.
A few years ago, during the Recession, he lost his office job and we were forced to move cross country in a place we didn't want to go and where we hated it so much that we returned to our original city as soon as this became a crazy possibility (the company somehow allowed him to get back home and telecommute from here).

Having had this terrible experience in the past and having seen first hand that companies will throw you out in the middle of the street, small children and all, without blinking an eye......I swore to myself I would never let this happen to us again and fought to get a full-time position in my field, which is usually hard to get and pretty coveted, mainly because of the long-term promise for extremely high security.

I did - but now this is killing me.

As my job is pretty flexible (in that you can work a lot from home, without a set schedule, most of the times) yet it is very demanding, with large and difficult workloads... I ended up basically doing three big jobs at once:
- career (heavy as sh*t).
- household (including cooking from scratch and taking care of children's needs in every conceivable way, which includes volunteering at their "oh-so-great" school full of SAHM-s with way too much time on their hands).
- supplementary homeschooling - because, based on what I have seen, even the best of public schools don't teach crap, yet they test on A LOT, and then they use the results for placement, tracking children into "gifted" and "everyone else" aka plebeians.

In addition, one of my kids has ADHD and he is that type of extremely exhausting child that you need to stay on top of every step of the way.

My husband does help with housework (dishes, laundry, etc) but this is simply not enough. He doesn't know how to handle children's curriculum, neither does he know how to cook and just generally organize and stay on top of the household.
Besides, he is always stuck in our home office 8-5 as his job requires him to be "on station"; so I am always the one who ends up "on household duty" every time there is an interruption (do groceries, pick up children, give them lunch/snacks, volunteer at children's school, etc).
So my workload (just as full-time if not more than his) piles up... and I am increasintly left behind.

So I am torn between:

1. quitting and going part-time (with miserable pay and no benefits) and regaining some sense of sanity
2. continuing to do this triple job for the sake of providing the safety net I promised myself I will provide, given my hudsband's vulnerable job...(and given how much I hate these companies who lay off employees whenever it suits them because that's the "free market" way).

My husband has this job today, but tomorrow he might not - and it will always be like this.
Job security today is pathetic but in his field, it is 100 times worse than in most other white collar careers. In fact I have days when I am convinced this is not going to last much longer and another lay off is going to happen sooner or later.
It is extremely hard for him to find another job in his industry in our area which is the very reason why we had to move cross country in the first place.

At the same time, I absolutely refuse to move again and uproot the kids for a miserable job that will force us to live in the middle of nowhere again, surrounded by a mass of strangers.
I have been told that this is "the American way" and that my aversion to risk is too high and that this is how all these "provider/stay-at-home mother" families live: with the assumption that if husband loses the job, they are always ready to move to wherever the next job is".

In all honesty, this "American way" is 100% NOT my cup of tea. Just because I ended up marrying in this country does not mean I can change my ways and my identity to match the way people with a nomadic and uber-individualistic mindset live.
I am extremely close to my sister (who also lives in the area), we also have all of my husband's family here, children are used to their school here - and I care a lot about STAYING IN PLACE and being close to family, which to me is more than husband, kids and a pet (thankfully we don't have the latter).

I do not believe in people moving for jobs, I believe in people being able to find jobs where they are, and where they have good friends, family and some actual meaning and sense of belonging (yes, the European way).

Yet, without my job, we will place ourselves exactly in the kind of situation where we will have to move again if husband loses his current job.

You might ask whether we are saving enough from these 170,000 dollars we are currently making. We are doing our best, but all is going towards a down payment on the house.
I drive a beater, I virtually never buy any clothes or any luxuries, and our house is old, not updated, yet still high rent because of the schools. We also spend what I consider to be a tremendous amount on almost yearly trips to Europe - so I can see my family. The lattter is not negotiable.

Overall, we save about 3000-4000 dollars a month currently but this cannot continue unless I choose to put myself in an early grave from exhaustion.

So kindly tell me: should I quit or not?

1. If I quit - some sanity and a slightly slower pace of life will be regained (if you can even talk about such a thing in the US), but we will be pretty tight, given my needs to travel overseas; so we will have to forget about retirement, children's college, etc... plus, worst of all, I wil leave in CONSTANT FEAR that my husband will lose his work-from-home, too-good-to-be-true job, which, in all honesty, I can't see lasting for many years. At the same time, if I quit, I can't go back later because in my line of work, this would simply be a career killer - FOREVER.

2. If I don't quit - I will soon kill myself from overwork, which pretty much says it all.
Or if not myself, any resemblance of quality of life - FOR SURE.

Thank you for your input.

I wouldn't quit working if it were me. You don't have enough assets to quit working fulltime. Now is the time to play catchup and save, save, save for retirement.

[Gailete]

With only having read your post, I would be hiring a nanny/housekeepr kind of person. Even if it runs you $2000 a month you are since within what you are saving. Killing yourself to both save for a house (that with your hubbies job you may have to sell two weeks after you buy it) doesn't make sense to me. However I do hear the exhaustion and understand it as I too have always been a working wife and had to carry the full responsiblity fo the housework and kids (including an autistic one) on my shoulders as well. Even now that I am on disability with days that I can barely walk or stand due to pain, I'm haunted by the piles of dishes in the sink, no meal being prepared and dust bunnies that are reproducing at the same rate, if not faster than rabbits. I'm hoping to hire someone a couple of hours a week to help me. You are saving more than what we have to live on and so I see no reason not to hire in help for you. I don't think you will be comfortable quiting your job because the stress of your husband losing his will always be with you. Walk away from the nonsense of helping out at the school. If the SAHMs won't help then maybe they should cancel some of those activities. A nanny should be able to help coach your kids to better schoolwork and grades. If a SAHM or even a working woman can watch kids, clean house, do dishes, cook food, I don't see any reason why a hired person can't do that as well--for that matter they are getting paid for what we always have had to for free. Not talking cleaning the windows weekly but enough cleaning to keep you all from getting sick and depressed.

[syracusa]

I just thought I would add an extra question while I am at it .

Given the finances presented above, given my goal for a possible exit strategy towards a part-time job in the future (which would not bring more than 1000 dollars a month net)...and given no more than 100,000 dollars to put down on a house, what would be the maximum house price you would go for?

Current financial situation presented in the beginning of this thread...but I might as well re-summarize it here for convenience purposes. Thank you so much!

No debts, currently renting.
Current family income: 170,000$ a year (husband 100,000, myself the rest), medium COL area (suburban area of big metro in the South)*
22,000 in kids' college account
45,000 in my retirement account (I am 40)
110,000 in husband's retirement account (he's 48),
70,000 in liquid savings, mostly destined for a down-payment on the house, but also includes an emergency fund. We are currently adding more, up to a maximum of 100,000 dollars for down payment on the house by the time we buy.

* Note: have not had this income for a long time, both husband and I have been forever in grad schools, we have been through a short sale, have paid for relocation cross-country back and forth out of pocket - just in case you wonder why so few assets at this income level. This is relatively new.

[sandrark]

A mortgage amount no more than 2.5x you and your DH's combined gross income, once you're PT (without kids, I could see stretching that to 3x, but with kids, 2.5 is the max I'd feel confy with).

So if DH's net is $100K, assume gross of $130K.

Your net: $12K, assume gross of $15K.

Total income: $145K. So 2.5 x $145K = $362,500 mortgage. $100K downpayment. Total house cost: $462,500.

Also? This should be a 15 year mortgage, NOT 30, IMO. If you absolutely cannot do 15, then find a mortgage broker that writes 20 year loans. The total interest paid on a 30 year mortgage is INSANE. A 15 or 20 year mortgage does great things to your overall net worth, ability to retire with dignity, and your long term financial health.

[syracusa]

A mortgage amount no more than 2.5x you and your DH's combined gross income, once you're PT (without kids, I could see stretching that to 3x, but with kids, 2.5 is the max I'd feel confy with).

So if DH's net is $100K, assume gross of $130K.

Your net: $12K, assume gross of $15K.

Total income: $145K. So 2.5 x $145K = $362,500 mortgage. $100K downpayment. Total house cost: $462,500.

Also? This should be a 15 year mortgage, NOT 30, IMO. If you absolutely cannot do 15, then find a mortgage broker that writes 20 year loans. The total interest paid on a 30 year mortgage is INSANE. A 15 or 20 year mortgage does great things to your overall net worth, ability to retire with dignity, and your long term financial health.

Thank you so much. In fact if I were to go part time, our total gross family income would become about 120,000, not 145,000. Husband's net is not 100,000. That's his gross. Oh, well - could be worse.

So 120,000 x 2.5 = 300,000.

Unfortunately, we could not do a 15 year mortgage (it would be nice) - but we do plan on paying extra every year so we can get rid of the debt faster.

With our current 170,000 income we could apparently qualify for a 800,000 or so dollar house. What an insanity. We do not plan on buying anything more expensive than 300,000.
I would go for much less if if I wasn't so fixated on top school district.

In the meantime, looks like I will have to continue my crazy full-time-job-kids-cooking-tutoring life so we can build that hefty down payment come October.

Talk about modern slavery. Yey.

Thank you so much again for everyone's help.

[syracusa]

The total interest paid on a 30 year mortgage is INSANE. A 15 or 20 year mortgage does great things to your overall net worth, ability to retire with dignity, and your long term financial health.

Oh...I was just talking to my husband and he says he's not quite sure why you see the difference in interest rate as such a disaster given interest rates are very low right now anyway.
Of course, it IS better NOT TO pay interest at all than pay interest...but my husband says the difference is small enough not to have such a terrible impact on long-term net worth.
And then it also depends on the amount borrowed and whether you can make some extra payments on the mortgage here and there.

Regardless of interest, we would try to pay off the house as fast as humanly possible so that I can get closer to my ideal world, which I will never reach anyway - but it's still nice to think about. Hey, that's why I am watching Downton Abbey.

In my ideal world, I would have no debts of any sort, not even mortgage, and I would not have to work for pay at all. I know I am uttering the biggest blasphemy you can utter in the developed world (hating work) but...oh, boy...in my previous life I must have been an aristocrat or something. I never have envied anyone for houses, cars, clothes or any sort of fancy stuff as they all qualify as trinkets to me. I do get green with envy when I see people who have total control over their time and who do not have to sell their hours on this Earth in exchange of a pay check.
Some of these people are the kind who live on welfare, or off of their parents, or somehow; yet others are simply very rich.
Time is the only commodity that cannot be made back no matter how hard you work. This is why I never ever understood the "industrious" mentality of those who bust their backs their entire lives and save like nuts for the goal of FINALLY becoming a millionaire in old age.
All this after you sold your entire life away.

At the risk of offending the industrious and civilized society's core beliefs...the best money in the world is money you step into via inheritance, marriage (this applies especially to women) or lottery and which allow you to enjoy your ENTIRE life, not just a few miserable old-age years, after you had enough time to develop the back and the mentality of a slave.
Millionaire in old age - too late then.

OK, done with the philosophy and back on Earth.

[bjl584]

Oh...I was just talking to my husband and he says he's not quite sure why you see the difference in interest rate as such a disaster given interest rates are very low right now anyway.
Of course, it IS better NOT TO pay interest at all than pay interest...but my husband says the difference is small enough not to have such a terrible impact on long-term net worth.
And then it also depends on the amount borrowed and whether you can make some extra payments on the mortgage here and there.

Here is what you would pay on a loan of $300,000 assuming it takes the full term of the loan to pay off.

30 year fixed loan at 3.68% (current average rate)

Total interest paid = $195,884.71

15 year fixed at 2.97% (current average rate)

Total interest paid = $72,135.45

That is pretty signifigant.

You can play with the numbers here:

Mortgage Amortization Calculator