You Can't Afford Your Stay At Home Wife

[BCSpace]

Steve Nelms, of Plano, is a working father and his wife, Glory, is a stay-at-home mom to the couple’s 2-year-old son, Ezra.

In a March 20 blog post, Nelms set out to find the cost of all the duties his wife fills on a given day. What he found was alarming and gave him a new appreciation of his working wife.

“My wife stays home and takes care of our son every single day,” Nelms said in a blog post he wrote as a letter to his wife that has since gone viral. “She changes his diapers, feeds him, plays with him, puts him down for his nap, and comforts him when he’s upset. And that’s just the bare minimum.”

Nelms figured since every service in our life is now hireable, he’d calculate if he could afford his stay-at-home wife.

With just four services researched, Nelms had already racked up a $67,860 total. Adding minor services like finances and laundry brought the total up to $73,690 per year.

The blog post went viral, with over 1,200 comments, and turned into a feature by ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday morning.

He found that the national average weekly salary for a full-time nanny is $705. That’s $36,660 a year. According to the 2014 tax brackets, the family falls “nicely” in the second tier, right in the $12,951-$49,400 tax range.

Nelms’ research showed that a cleaning service would cost him $100 a week, or $5,200 a year. Shopping services to run errands for the family would cost him $13,520 a year. For someone to cook a few meals a week it would cost him $12,480 a year.

Of course, Nelms realized he could never afford this total. But he clarified that his exploration was not to put a price tag on his wife’s role as a mother, but instead to show how much she does for the family and the little recognition countless other moms receive.

The truth is, I’m ashamed of any time I’ve ever made (my wife) feel guilty or humored when she’s purchased something for herself,” Nelms writes in the blog. “I’m ashamed that she has ever felt like she doesn’t have just as much right to our income as I do.

“The fact of the matter is that our income doesn’t even come close to covering what she does for our family. I would have to make over 100K to even begin to be able to cover my living expenses as well as employ my wife as a Stay-At-Home Mom!”

Nelms recognizes that there is no paycheck involved but that his stay-at-home mom would make double his current income.

“She loves me, loves our son, and loves our family, so obviously she isn’t doing any of those things for a paycheck or even for recognition,” Nelms said. “But it certainly doesn’t hurt to know that as a Stay-At-Home Mom her appraised salary is nearly double my actual income. So in a very weird way, this is my way of saying how much I value my wife as the mother of my child and the one who always has my back no matter what. You are more precious than rubies. And I can’t afford you.”

The couple appeared on Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning as well to tell their story.

 

http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2015/04/plano-father-does-the-math-realizes-he-cant-afford-his-stay-at-home-wife.html/

 

 

 

Good little news clip to go with it. They appear to have only one child (not that there's anything wrong with that) so the cost of a stay at home mom in this case is at the low end of the spectrum.

 

Makes one feel like an unprofitable servant....

[strappinglad]

My wife was the stay-at-home mom of 5 kids. She wasn't just the CEO but management, sales, mailroom, and janitor, a lot of janitor. It cost her a lot physically and mentally. She would willingly do it all over again. Mind you, she might tweek a few things , like choice of husband. That said, any man who works 9 to 5 and comes home to be waited on hand and foot and not participate in the home chores, is not doing his duty and is not worth his salt.

[Rain]

I'm a SAHM. While I appreciate the thought behind this and am grateful that my husband has always treated me as a partner, I don't really like how things like this are done. If you line itemed things my husband does at work then the company would be unlikely to hire him. He is an engineer, but in his job he has recruited, repaired copy machines, answered the phones, written patents, bought coffee and tea for visitors, marketed his company, taken people to lunch as well as his main design computer chips role. At one time or another all of that and more has been part of his job.

So if we are going to put a price on SAHMs then we have to look at the job as a whole just as we do with most every other job. When you get hired as a SAHM then your duties include all those things.

And you can't count 24 hours a day either. When DH comes home from work he doesn't do a second "job". He parents. Personally, I feel I parent all the time, but just for comparison sake like for this article the "job" as SAHM can only be for as many hours a day as dad is at work unless you also say something of the costs of dad's second "job".

I think the major problem is when people think that SAHMs do nothing at all or nothing of importance when everyone else is at work. Somehow they miss that while they are busy being a banker, construction worker, lawyer etc that a SAHM is being the day care worker etc they hired. If they really felt the day care worker did nothing with their children would they hire them? So why I often hear, "I do everything a SAHM does plus work" is beyond me.

Anyway, I appreciate the fact that articles like this help some to see that those who stay at home are doing much more than nothing. I just wish that it wouldn't inflate the numbers.

[Rain]

I'm a SAHM. While I appreciate the thought behind this and am grateful that my husband has always treated me as a partner, I don't really like how things like this are done. If you line itemed things my husband does at work then the company would be unlikely to hire him. He is an engineer, but in his job he has recruited, repaired copy machines, answered the phones, written patents, bought coffee and tea for visitors, marketed his company, taken people to lunch as well as his main design computer chips role. At one time or another all of that and more has been part of his job.

So if we are going to put a price on SAHMs then we have to look at the job as a whole just as we do with most every other job. When you get hired as a SAHM then your duties include all those things.

And you can't count 24 hours a day either. When DH comes home from work he doesn't do a second "job". He parents. Personally, I feel I parent all the time, but just for comparison sake like for this article the "job" as SAHM can only be for as many hours a day as dad is at work unless you also say something of the costs of dad's second "job".

I think the major problem (and part of what the author said was his intention) is when people think that SAHMs do nothing at all or nothing of importance when everyone else is at work. Somehow they miss that while they are busy being a banker, construction worker, lawyer etc that a SAHM is being the day care worker etc they hired. If they really felt the day care worker did nothing with their children would they hire them? So why I often hear, "I do everything a SAHM does plus work" is beyond me.

Anyway, I appreciate the fact that articles like this help some to see that those who stay at home are doing much more than nothing. I just wish that it wouldn't inflate the numbers.

[The Nehor]

Yeah, this accounting is fun but it disguises the fact that much of what we do in our lives is done because it is our life. If I itemized the cost of getting someone to go to the bank for me, buy food, do my callings, maintain my car, clean my home, and babysit my sibling's children instead of me it would be quite expensive even though I am single and my responsibilities more limited but I do these things because it is my life. It does not make me a super valuable member of society.