How is it possible to be good parents when both must work? Right now I am really at a loss to answer this. We had a really bad night with our son who is ill, and I'm feeling really down about the whole situation. I keep having this though go through my head and the thought is how it is really not possible to maintain a middle-class, low-key, 40-hour work week lifestyle with one income in America. In order to live in a region where job prospects are good you need to have 2 incomes, or else one partner must work the equivalent of 2 jobs in order to maintain their lifestyle. I'm rambling here so I'll just get to the point: I want to support my family with the job (non-management position) that I currently have. Here's a list of things that I want:
- Enable my wife to stay at home with our son for his first few years
- Be able to keep our current lifestyle intact (I feel that our current lifestyle is somewhat frugal and not extreme as compared to my peers of similar age and occupation
- Our current lifestyle consists of:
- Keep our current home
- Put a grand into savings every month
- Have a couple hundred for
disposable income items
Is this REALLY too much to ask? Unfortunately, this idyllic Leave It To Beaver lifestyle isn't possible anymore. Maybe after this current economic 'crisis' things will revert back to the mid-seventies when homes were low-priced and wages were still on the rise. I think that having good wage increases fixes almost all of our problems. But that is another post.
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