When my wife and I got married, we talked about having kids and what we would do.  I would always say, “I think you should go back to work after we have a child” and she would always say, “Maybe I should be a stay at home mom”.  We would talk about it every now and then but we pretty much kept the same points of view.

Well, about three years ago, we had our first child.  It was a no brainer that my wife would stay home with our daughter for at least a couple years.  We both agreed that, since we had no debt (other than our mortgage) and had a nice solid cash flow each month, that it just made sense to live off of one income.  It helped that we were able to continue to aggressively fund my 401k and also fund a roth each year.  All in all, we definitely have no regrets.

Now some opportunities are starting to come up so that my wife could potentially get a job at my company.  It’s a large company and is very family friendly.  We would undoubtedly use the child care offered by my company (it has a VERY good reputation and is a bit more expensive but we feel it’s worth it).  The financial benefits for her going back to work are quite good:

-Matching 401K (75% match up to 8 percent)

-Fully funded pension

-Annual bonuses (so we’d double the yearly bonuses)

-Great salary

-Flexible hours and less than 20 minutes from our house

I’ll confess, I find myself drooling over the potential increase in our income/investments.  This would really be a decision more about increasing our net worth than about more cash flow.  Doubling all the benefits is huge.  I’ve run the numbers and we’d still be waaaaay ahead even with daycare figured in.

But alas, it’s not that easy.  There are all the non-financial considerations.  How would this impact our daughter?  How would it impact our relationship with her?  Would it help or hinder her early education?  Would it be a positive social impact for her?  And countless other things to think about.

So, here we sit.  Mulling over the options.  My wife has applied for a couple positions just to see what happens.  If she gets called and get’s a job offer, obviously we’ll have to have some pretty intense conversations about whether she should do it or not, but we’ve decided to cross that bridge when we come to it.  I have to admit, it’s a little hard thinking about someone else watching my daughter every day, but at the same time, it will only be a few more years before she is off to school anyway.  Maybe starting her in a structured program now will give her a good head start.