I stayed home when my 5 kids were little. Now that they are older, I'm wondering whether I made the right choice.
I have five kids ranging in age from teens to elementary schoolers.
My husband is a public-school teacher, and I'm a freelancer.
I didn't know my kids were going to get more expensive as they got older.
The unfortunate truth about my life as a mom of five kids, ranging in age from teens to elementary schoolers, is that I've been living outside my means for a very long time.
My husband is a public-school teacher in a rural area, and I'm a freelancer, so our income is modest. But with five children — and two teenagers at that — I just don't know how to make it all work.
I knew having kids would be expensive, but I didn't expect or plan for how much more expensive kids would get as they got older.
Our cost of living has gone up
Between groceries, electricity and heating bills, car insurance, health insurance, homeowners and property insurance, car bills, life insurance, dental insurance, and unexpected expenses, we've seen our cost of living explode over the past three years. Our bills have quite literally tripled in some instances, but our income hasn't risen.
To give you a little peek at my finances, this month alone, the following bills have all come due:
Travel sports: $1,000
Car insurance six-month policy for two adults and a teen driver: $2,800
Homeowners' insurance: $4,000
Winter property taxes: $2,200
Braces: $4,000
New tires for winter: $2,000
I guess I should have expected how widely expensive life would be as a parent, but I can honestly say I didn't expect how dramatically more expensive my kids would be as they got older.
Teenagers are so expensive
Teenagers come with an entirely new onslaught of expenses that I didn't prepare myself for — everything costs more with teens. Aside from the "big" expenses such as more expensive car insurance, technology for college, and gas, even the little things cost more. For instance, whereas I could once run to the store and buy my kids $5 shirts for the school year, outfitting them now costs much more than that. Everything including socks, shoes, toiletries, sports, and school costs keeps rising, with no end in sight.
Outside the arguable extravagance of a travel sport, my husband and I do everything possible to make our lives work. I shop at Aldi for our groceries, our kids wear hand-me-downs and Walmart clothes, I thrift whenever possible, we rarely go out to eat, my kids have jobs, and my husband works two other jobs outside his full-time job as a schoolteacher. My work pays for our limited streaming services and phones, and our entertainment is primarily spent at home (or watching siblings' games, of course.)
I wonder whether I shouldn't have stayed home when they were little
The frustration of feeling like our expenses are out of control has led me to reflect on the choices I've made as a mom. I've always prided myself on being primarily at home with my kids. After I became a mom unexpectedly during my senior year of college, I did my best to do what I thought "good" moms should do and worked extremely hard to always be home as much as possible with my kids — I worked the night shift and built a career freelancing so that I could be the consistent at-home parental presence. And I've been proud of that.
But now that I have two teenagers and am about to usher in a third, I'm wondering whether I did the right thing after all. Should I have spent more time working back then and saving money for this time in my life when my kids still need me in very tangible and albeit more expensive ways? Did I really consider the trade-off of my earning potential and how much we could need that money in these teen stages?
My experience so far is that the teen years are just as time intensive as the early baby and toddler years. They don't have the same level of physical exhaustion and sleep deprivation, of course, but they're incredibly mentally and emotionally taxing. Add in the stress of trying to pay for everything and work more because you think the kids are "more independent," and it can be a recipe for disaster. I feel stretched so thin right now trying to afford our lives when the truth is that my teens need me to be emotionally and physically present more than ever.
Read the original article on Business Insider
