It’s Tax Season, so hey kids… hubby… WHERE’S my W2?

Apr 11, 2011 by Sara

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Five years ago I became a stay-at-home mom and walked away, albeit a little slowly and begrudgingly, from a career in finance. I would now be 100% reliant on my husband and his income while I took care of our daughter.

For awhile, I tried to do both, I worked 3 days a week from home and then commuted to Manhattan for one day. It didn’t work, I was miserable. My brain could not be in two places at once and everyone suffered. So when I found out I was pregnant after only 6 months of giving birth to my daughter (yes you read that correctly), I quit, full stop and became a full-time stay at home (SAHM).

There are thousands of posts out there about the joys and tribulations of being a SAHM and I really don’t want to rehash them here.  Everything they say is true: it’s amazing, it’s lonely, it’s a gift and a privilege, it can be hell. Overall though, I’m grateful and I wouldn’t change one thing. Well maybe one: getting paid.

I used to care a lot about doing the taxes, like a good crossword I would look forward to getting them done and filing on time. Now… not so much.

As a SAHM with no income, I get depressed when the little green and white envelope from Social Security arrives and it tells me I’ve earned, a whopping $0.00 this year.

Awesome.

I miss my W2′s.

I like that piece of paper that tells me what my sweat equity was worth.

Some moms make a living out of “just”being moms and let’s face it, it can be a lucrative gig:

• Kate Gosselin will reportedly pocket $250,000 PER episode of the TLC Kate plus 8 show this season plus she got $600K for Dancing With the Stars. Add that to the fact that according to Reality Tea she’s made a cool $3.5 million in 2010.

 

• MTV’s Teen Mom stars supposedly get $60,000 – $65,000 per season and Amber now gets $280,000 per year (less the money she needs to keep bailing herself out of jail.)

But I don’t plan on having 10 more kids and I don’t even watch MTV anymore so my plan to capitalize via reality TV is a non-starter. Plus those 2 examples are morally questionable. Ok that’s a little unfair, but technically they are SAHM’s AND they get a W2 so I’m just bitter.

To top it off, every year, salary.com puts out a Mom Salary Survey which causes a major trouble between moms. The survey asks: what would be a Mom’s take home salary if she were actually paid?  The survey asks you to allocate your hourly assignment to the various jobs that a primary caregiver and homemaker would make.

It’s always insulting and pits SAHM against non-SAHMs (there’s a different calculation if you are a working mom).  You can expect to see the blog world lit up by this topic around mother’s day, when they will be publishing the results to their 11th annual survey.

I took it, and apparently I should be raking in at least $168,000.  Well, wouldn’t that be nice!

But alas, no such paycheck. Instead I will have to measure my W2 through my family’s accomplishments and performance against my job description, as CEO of my family:

 

Now that I look at this job description, I think that $168K sounds a little low…

Hold on, my daughter just handed me a note, it says:

“Mommy I love you.”

Ok, I’ll shut up now.