You Can Afford to Stay Home With Your Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide for Converting Your Family from Two Incomes to One [Paperback]

Malia McCawley Wyckoff (Author), Mary Snyder (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

Have you ever considered tossing your Daytimer and staying home full time? We thought about it for years and, finally, we each took the leap from two incomes to one. We were certain that we would miss all the extra money, but in fact, we didn't. Once we got home it became clear that most of that second income was eaten up by the cost of working. And this included not only daycare, traveling expense, but the small hidden costs such as, lunches out, convenience foods, and take-out meals. We were shocked to realize that all the while we had been slaving away at our jobs, we were only adding a small dollar amount to the family budget.

We wrote this book because we want to help let people in on a little secret -- it costs money to work and sometimes it is cheaper to stay home with the kids. You can write to us at [e-mail]

Product Details

• Paperback: 189 pages
• Publisher: Career Pr Inc (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564144089
• ISBN-13: 978-1564144089
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #870,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You'll find excellent money saving advice in this book!, September 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: You Can Afford to Stay Home With Your Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide for Converting Your Family from Two Incomes to One (Paperback)

You Can Afford To Stay Home With Your Kids is a book packed with no-nonsense advice for getting by on a smaller income - the idea being for one parent to stay home and manage the household while the other parent works full-time. It is written in a direct, non-apologetic, and entertaining style. You won't be bored while reading it, but you might get your feelings hurt just a little bit (when you're chastised for buying aubergine towels or some other frivolous item, for example). Which you won't mind if you're serious about converting from two incomes to one. Along with money-saving techniques (which are great even if you aren't planning on trying to stay home), you'll find some terrific tips on what to do with bored kids, neat birthday party ideas, even some recipes for novice cooks. I recommend this book for any mom or dad who is trying to stay home full or part-time - even if you think it would surely be impossible, You Can Afford To Stay Home With The Kids will give you hope. I read it with no such plan in mind - and I've been inspired to think about trying to stay home and see what it's all about!

77 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Nothing new - save your money, February 28, 2002

By 

Keetha D. Reed (McCarley, MS USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: You Can Afford to Stay Home With Your Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide for Converting Your Family from Two Incomes to One (Paperback)

The title of this book caused me to snatch it off the shelf. I'm just glad it was a library shelf rather than a bookstore shelf.
I found the information extremely obvious and learned very little.
Basically, if you want to stay home, cut the extras. If you buy a... coffee, pastry, eat out and shop every day, well, then, cut it out. And if you normally buy convenience foods at the grocery, get a manicure every week and buy expensive clothes, then stop. That's the basic summary of the book.
I have already made these obvious cuts, as well as counting in work-related costs such as transporation, dry cleaning, etc., so it taught me absolutely nothing new...

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended in conjunction with Miserly Moms, February 24, 2004

By 

DNP "waterlily525" (Framingham, MA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: You Can Afford to Stay Home With Your Kids: A Step-By-Step Guide for Converting Your Family from Two Incomes to One (Paperback)

What I liked best about this book:

1. The chapter on contingency plans. Yes, it's obvious that it's a good idea to have a backup-plan in case the working parent gets laid off, there's a large unexpected expense, etc. Nevertheless, I found it helpful to read the authors' experiences regarding such emergencies which happened in their families and to consider the various ideas and options presented. My own contingency plan was that I worked fifteen months longer than I wanted to and progressively worked up to putting my entire paycheck in savings; by the time I quit, we had enough money set aside to pay our living expenses for an entire year, if that became necessary.

2. The chapter on stay-at-home blues. I appreciated the authors' candor in describing the pros and cons of staying home. A humorous (but true) example they give is that you won't necessarily fall in love with cleaning the bathroom and once home, you may do it more often than you did before. Most importantly, they're honest about the feeling of isolation that can creep up on a stay-at-home parent and how one can deal with it.

3. They "tell it like it is". As they say, unless one of the parents' incomes is completely disposable, it is going to be necessary to make some sacrifices somewhere. Something will have to go in order to keep the family's financial boat afloat. My family experienced this period of adjustment while saving for our emergency fund; by the time I left work, we were already used to managing on one income and it wasn't so difficult.

I address the chapters on the "cons" of staying home specifically because if most people pick up a book like this in the first place, it's probably because they already want to be home with their child(ren). What they want to know is how to achieve that goal and what to expect along the way. I found this book a terrific primer on how to get off the fast track in the smoothest possible manner.

The reason I recommended this book in conjunction with Miserly Moms by Jonni McCoy is that I feel the latter book presents a larger share of nuts-and-bolts information on how to reduce expenses. Jonni McCoy once worked as a senior buyer for Apple Computers, among other firms, and you can see this real-world experience in how she analyzes and approaches the issue of frugality.