One of the hard parts about being a stay at home mom is that you aren’t making money on your own. You rely on what your husband brings home. Sure, you say the money belongs to both of you, but there’s often that feeling on both sides that it isn’t quite true.

How do you cope?

1. Talk over your feelings.

Communication is important in any marriage. If you’re feeling as though you’re less important because the things you do raising your family at home doesn’t bring in money it can build resentment.

It can be a help to realize that you do make a financial contribution. You’re saving money on child care by being home with your kids. You’re probably shopping for bargains more. You’re probably cooking more meals at home and thereby saving on your family’s food bill.

It’s important that the partnership that is a good marriage recognizes both earning money and helping to keep the family’s spending under control are both important contributions. It can be hard to do that if your husband acts in any way as though you’re using “his” money, and if that’s the case his feelings need to be discussed also.

2. Decide if you want to earn money from home.

Some stay at home moms decide that they need a work at home job or home business so that they can bring in more money for their family. Sometimes it’s also necessary to the family’s overall budget.

Stay at home moms today are lucky in that they have so many ways to earn money from home, some of which are extremely flexible. It’s not just the traditional jobs such as running a daycare or joining a direct sales opportunity. There are customer service work at home jobs, online home businesses and much more.

There are a lot of risks to getting started working from home, and generally laws to be aware of. Make sure you learn about the common scams and don’t fall for hype when you’re picking an opportunity. Too good to be true usually is.

3. Be yourself and enjoy what you have.

Just because you’re suddenly such-and-so’s mom and you’re home all day doesn’t mean you lose your identity. Make time to be yourself.

Keep up your hobbies. You might even be able to get one or more of your kids interested in it. But don’t drop the hobby just because you don’t think you have the time or shouldn’t spend the money. Unless it’s really expensive or your budget is that tight you can probably find a way to enjoy your hobby while being with your kids.

Also read the kinds of books you enjoy. The Cat in the Hat is a great book, but reading any children’s book over and over will get to you eventually. Read something you enjoy. Let your kids see it. It’s a part of encouraging them to love reading too.

And remember that even when staying at home with the kids makes for a tight budget you’re lucky to have what you do. Many parents would love to do what you’re doing but just can’t afford to. It’s one of those jobs that even on a bad day, it’s pretty good when you think about it.

Finally, remember that being married, especially with children, does a lot to your finances no matter whether you work outside the home or stay at home. You most likely won’t have the freedom you once did no matter what you do. The needs of your family come first in most cases.

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Ok, hopefully I haven’t scared too many of you off with the LOLcat picture and title. I’ll behave now. Maybe.

Parenting is a tough job. We all know that. Everyone’s an expert and no one knows what they’re doing. Maybe that’s a contradiction, but I think it describes parenthood rather well. Especially motherhood. I think it safe to say I know rather less about fatherhood.

Moms working outside the home are criticized for not spending enough time raising their own kids.

Stay at home moms are criticized for being lazy.

Work at home moms are criticized for not maintaining the exact right balance of work and parenting.

Now, I’m a big fan of having at least one parent home with the kids. I say parent because I know some fathers who do quite well at it. I don’t care which parent is at home, which is the breadwinner or if the parent at home also works.

I also really don’t worry about it when both parents work. That’s often necessary, either for financial reasons or personal ones.

For the most part, no matter which way you parent, you’re getting it right.

It doesn’t matter if you breastfeed or formula feed. It doesn’t matter if you vaccinate or not. It doesn’t matter if you put your kids in a good daycare or stay home with them yourself.

What does matter is that you love your children and do your best by them. That you give them consistency. That your children are not abused. That you encourage them to be independent in appropriate ways at appropriate ages.

Yes, all parents make mistakes. We’re human. We get tired, stressed, impatient, angry, frustrated, etc. We make decisions for the wrong reasons sometimes.

But most of the things we do that seem like they will traumatize our kids forever probably won’t.

Whether you’ve been a stay at home mom for a while or are just starting out, this is one of those questions that can really hit you hard. Going down to a single income as a family is quite a tough choice in most cases. And in the current uncertain economy it can be even easier to feel guilty about not contributing to the family’s finances.

Directly, that is. As in earning money.

Indirectly, there’s plenty a stay at home mom can do. She is often the one to handle all the shopping and keeping track of all the bills. If you don’t think that has an impact on the family finances, think again.

Your first consideration is always how the family will manage to get by with one income rather than two. Sometimes the answer is quite surprising. Depending on what you earn, by the time taxes and the costs of wardrobe, eating out, childcare and so forth come out, you aren’t bringing that much home. Sometimes it can easily be made up for; other times it will take more planning.

If having one parent stay at home is going to be a huge sacrifice for your family, take a look at what can be cut. Don’t start with the grocery bill. Just because you have to buy food every week doesn’t mean it’s the most important bill.

Instead, start with your regular bills and figure out what can be cut. Cutting your cable plan down to basic can save you a nice chunk of money every month, and you probably won’t even miss most of the channels you drop. Decide if you really need both a landline telephone and a cell phone. Then decide if one or the other should be dropped.

Cutting those monthly expenses makes a lot of sense. It’s savings you won’t have to think about every time you go shopping.

But the biggest savings of all can be in paying down credit card debt.

Credit card debt, as a rule, is expensive. Much worse than paying for a mortgage. If you can get it paid down, your budget will have far more leeway, and that’s vital if you have only one income coming in.

You should also take some time to think about the things you spend money on, but really shouldn’t. A lot of people, for example, get new cell phones regularly, even though the old one is perfectly good. Same goes for televisions when they decide it’s time for a big screen unit. The list goes on and the numbers add up.

Get those other expenses in control as well as thinking about how you spend money at the grocery store. The broader your efforts the more you will save.

But What If You Want to Earn Money?

Of course, there’s nothing saying you absolutely cannot earn money as a stay at home mom. Many do, and despite how it can seem at times, not all work at home opportunities are scams. It’s just that there are so many scams out there it’s easy to get caught by one.

The trick to working at home is balancing that with the reasons you choose to be a stay at home mom in the first place. That is, as a rule, the kids.

I won’t lie to you. Working at home is tough, and sometimes it does limit what you can do. But what you don’t want is something that takes you from them every bit as much as working outside the home does. Kind of takes away the point of being a stay at home mom, after all.

Look for flexibility, and look for something you can love doing. Those two elements are key.

There are many factors to consider when looking at work at home opportunities. Job or business. How much do you want to be dealing with other people? Face to face, over the phone or over the internet?

Handling the “What Ifs”

There are a lot of what ifs that you should face if you want to be a stay at home mom. The biggest one is “What if the situation changes?”

“What if your husband loses his job?”

“What if the two of you separate or divorce?”

“What if a medical issue comes up?”

You do need to have a backup plan in case anything happens. Obviously you hope that none do, but life happens. Better to plan ahead than to be caught unawares.

This means keeping up your own job skills, whether or not you work at home. Having savings. Talking about how potential problems will be handled. Not panicking if something does happen.

You may never need your backup plans. But if you do, you will be very grateful to have some idea what to do to keep your family going. The middle of a crisis is a rotten time to have to figure all this out.

Being a stay at home mom has its own challenges. Just due to personality differences it’s not for everyone. But many learn to love it, and soon have trouble imagining doing anything else.