How much for minimum household income before your wife becomes a housewife?
 

I have been wearing the title of "housewife" due to being out of work for a very long time. Part of this period was spent overseas so it wasn't so bad, I had the
excuse to take a break and not work because my visa didn't allow me to work in that country, but I have been back for over 18 months now and am still unable to find work.

My husband earns well but I still do not feel secure being a permanent homemaker. Reading the household income thread it seems none of the forumers have spouses who are homemakers.

How much would you need to earn before you and your spouse feels is enough for him/her to be a stay-home homemaker and parent? Or do you feel no matter how much you make, your household income can always be more in a place like Singapore?

Hypothetically, let's say you make $300k a year. Even if your spouse makes $60k a year, that is a boost of 20%. Would anybody turn down a "raise" of 20% of their salary from their boss?

Good for you then. We all agree that $$$ is not the be-all and end-all, but it is important not to be lacking it.

My wife too took a break of more than a year to accompany me for my overseas posting. At that time, I was given an allowance over and above my Singapore salary. To supplement that, we also rented out our home. So financially we did not suffer that much from her no-pay leave of more than a year. That period gave us a feel of what it was like to be living on one income. As we led a comfortable life with money left over for savings, we felt she could continue to be a housewife if she so chose to be when we got back.

Luckily she decided to continue working when we returned, greatly boosting our income and savings. I said luckily because with her working, our savings rate was higher allowing us to invest more. What happened was we were saving all of her income plus some of mine every year!

We are now aiming to generate a passive income that would cover her salary so that she could retire and enjoy doing the things she always wanted, but didn't have the time. We are quite near to that goal. Last year we hit $120k pa of passive income.

How could your allowance be "over and above my Singapore salary"? Was your Singapore salary that low?

My husband also got an overseas allowance for living expenses. It helped to "replace" my income, but it was a fraction of his Singapore salary.

Lol, what I meant was the company provided an allowance on top of my salary. And admittedly my salary was not that great.

Oh okay sorry for the misunderstanding. Got it now. :)

But your "income" when you were posted overseas, included the allowance, which would cease upon return. What made the both of you feel that without the allowance, it would be the same as when you had it?

Do you mind revealing what is the amount of your annual salary that you are comfortable with if/when you hit it, for your household to be single income and your wife to stop work?
Also, how do you get a passive income of 120k a year? That is totally out of the world for me! Wow. Even with a capital of $1 million in cash, you'll need a 10% profit to generate that type of passive income. I could never understand how anybody could make so much in passive income, it takes way too much effort and brain power to monitor and stress about, and actually takes away the bandwidth of energy that is needed for main career. My husband has always focused solely on his career as the main income generator.

How old are u? Do u have kids? How many and how old they are?

It really depends on ur expenses and liabilities and whether ur husband's salary is comfortable enough to provide for the whole family and there's still savings at the end of the day.

Both in early 30s, no kids but planning to have. Not much time to waste already.
We live in our own place that's fully paid up. Car was also bought in cash.

Assuming if you have no liabilities as well like me, what is the amount that you should earn before you are comfortable for your wife/yourself to stop work?

I would happily stay at home if my husband earns a stable 250k pa.

I earn $17K monthly and my wife stays at home to look after the kids. Having more income is nice but we prefer not to outsource to child care or a domestic helper. We are in our mid to late 30s.

I also get 1K in dividends monthly from a $250K stock portfolio and have $600K savings for rainy days.

I would be happy with 90k.
I am 30 year old.

Wow $17k a month is a lot. What are u working as?

How long have you been out of work? You've been back for 18 months, meaning you've been out of the workforce for even longer. You are 30 plus. What are your qualifications? Degree in? If you were in IT or your degree is in IT, you can stop looking, tech changes so fast that if you're away for more than a year or two, you'd be redundant by the time you come back. I dont think you actually need to work. But even if you want to, you might not even get a job. Depending on your expected income, say you ask for 5k/mth. Yes, you may have some experience, but your absence from work would worry me as an employer. I would like have to re-teach you most of the things from scratch. Whereas say if I employ a fresh grad, I dont have to teach him anything since his knowledge is current and up to date. Even if I have to teach him things, at least I know that he would have a longer shelf life than you. Moreover, if I as an employer, get to know that you have a rich husband to take care of you, I would be even more unlikely to hire. Reason being that I'm afraid you wont have the drive since you are already in a "comfort zone". On top of that, you have no reason to actually stay in my company if you can easily leave with no financial repercussions. Having a younger, more driven employee would serve me better.

Hmmm.. Hope u don't mind me saying this but ur comments speak of the mentality of a typical Asian employer esp the part u said u wouldn't hire someone if u know she has a rich husband and can easily leave with no financial repercussions. So this means that u would only hire people who are strapped to their jobs and slog for the sole sake of earning a living? That does not mean that such people make good employees.

Look at the Westerners who can easily take breaks from work to travel around the world and face little or no discrimination when they return to the workforce. I know that we are Asians but our mindset can be more open minded.

It is good that you asked these questions. It showed you have thought things through.

Think I will just highlight the following points. Hope they will help you in your plans and clear some misconceptions.

1. We would be comfortable with $150k pa living as we did then and now. We have 2 kids. We are definitely frugal in our lifestyle. But that is moot now, as things turn out, my wife went back to work when we returned. Now our combined income is above $400k. Our passive income boost it to above $500k annually. We are still living the same lifestyle as before, meaning our expense is still within $150k a year.

2. As you can see, we can save and have been saving around $300k per year for the last 5 - 6 years. This allowed us to build a substantial investment portfolio comprising stocks, property and other investment instruments. Contrary to what you perceive, we don't spend much time managing our investments. We bought stocks but never sold them. We just derive dividend income from them. The investment property - rental income.

3. We also realized it was risky to just depend on one income as we have seen a close friend who got into financial difficulties when the husband fell too ill to work as the sole bread winner.

Thanks, that's been informative!

May I ask how old you are, what's your annual salary and what line of work you are in?