The exact salary your partner needs to earn for you to be a stay-at-home parent: Our experts reveal every trick you need, how to side hustle your way to £13,570 tax-free – and the essential step to keep hold of your pension pot

It’s a question that crosses many parents’ minds as they consider missing out on their little ones’ milestones while sat in an office.

Can you really afford to leave work to spend time at home with your children?

For many families today, having a stay-at-home parent feels like a luxury, as high property prices and hefty bills mean two incomes are often needed to cover essentials alone.

Families spend £13,830 per child each year on average, according to data from investment platform Moneyfarm – amounting to a little over £1,150 a month. While this includes the cost of childcare, it also covers extra-curricular activities, clothing, pocket money and technology such as streaming memberships.

So it’s no wonder that the number of stay-at-home parents is at an all-time low of 1.5 million, having halved over the past three decades, according to official data.

Eight in ten mums who go back to work early from maternity leave say they couldn’t afford not to, according to a survey by charity Pregnant Then Screwed and Women In Data.

So, if you want to leave your job, how do you make it work? Money Mail has crunched the numbers to devise a savings plan to help you.

Can you afford it?

The average UK household spends £3,500 a month on all household bills including rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, transport and eating out, according to analysis of Office for National Statistics data by NimbleFins.

Taking this into account, a working parent in England, Wales or Northern Ireland would need to earn £62,000 a year pre-tax to pay for this. Assuming they pay 5 pc into their pension and are repaying a student loan (as many parents with young children are) this would leave them with a take-home annual pay of £42,000 a year – or £3,500 a month.

The amount you need to live comfortably on one person’s salary will of course depend on your lifestyle, including your rent or mortgage payments, weekly food shopping bill, the age of your children and how much you spend on holidays and other activities. Some parents are happy to forgo extras such as foreign holidays and days out to live on one income.

Where you live also makes a huge difference. A household salary of £62,000 will go much further in the North-East, for example, compared with London and the South-East, where housing costs are higher.

A recent post on social media website Reddit asking what income a family would need to afford a single earner, highlights how much the answer varies. One respondent said their husband earned £65,000 a year and it wouldn’t be enough to live on in the South-East with a £400,000 mortgage. Another said her husband earned the same amount and she was a stay-at-home mum living comfortably in south Lincolnshire.

Save on children

The eyewatering cost of childcare means that for some parents of young children, it can make financial sense to stay at home.

The average cost of a full-time nursery place for a child under two in the UK is £7,738 a year (£645 a month) for parents receiving 30 funded hours a week, according to the 2026 annual survey from children charity Coram. But in London and the South-East the price can come in above £20,000, even with Government funding.

Holidays can be expensive too. Parents face an average bill of £191 per child a week for care – or £1,145 for the six-week summer holiday, according to Coram.

Vineta, 46, who lives in outer London with her husband and children – twins, aged nine, and a one-year-old baby – is managing to make it work with some careful budgeting

Rajan Lakhani, a personal finance specialist at money management app Plum, says: ‘It may be less common today, but having one parent not working is still something many families consider. With the high cost of childcare, long and expensive commutes, and the personal sacrifice of spending less time with your children, you can see why sometimes it makes a lot of sense to avoid all of that with one parent staying at home full time.’

Keep things fair

It’s important the stay-at-home parent is treated as an equal financial partner, says Claire Walsh, a chartered financial planner at Midsummer Wealth. Too often, one person ends up with all the pensions and investments in their name, while the other is left financially vulnerable if the relationship breaks down or their partner dies suddenly.

‘Before making the decision, I’d encourage couples to think of it as a family financial plan rather than one person’s career choice,’ Walsh says. ‘Sit down together and look at what income you’ll have, what you’ll spend, how much you’ll save, and what happens if things change.

‘Make sure both partners have visibility over the household finances. That doesn’t have to mean joint accounts for everything, but each person should know where the money is held, how bills are paid and have access to emergency funds.

‘I always encourage the stay-at-home parent to have some money in an account in their own name.

‘Even in the happiest relationships, it’s sensible for both partners to retain some financial independence and confidence.’

Protect pensions

Your retirement savings will take a hit if you take time out of work, as you will lose your employer’s contributions into your workplace pension. But you can ensure your state pension record remains intact by claiming child benefit. For every year you claim, you receive National Insurance credits that build your entitlement to the state pension.

Families spend £13,830 per child each year on average, according to data from investment platform Moneyfarm – amounting to a little over £1,150 a month

You need 35 years of qualifying contributions to receive the full state pension, which is £12,548 a year from 66 (rising gradually to 68).

Anyone earning £60,000 a year or less can receive £1,407 a year for the oldest or only child and £933 for subsequent children, with the benefit tapering to zero on salaries up to £80,000 a year.

Make sure you register for child benefit so that you get the National Insurance credits – even if you are not going to receive the payments.

Hollee Vivian, a chartered financial planner and founder of Vivian Wealth, adds that a stay-at-home parent should also consider paying into a private pension. The partner who is working can pay into it.

Non-earners can pay £2,880 into a pension each tax year with tax relief bringing the total up to £3,600.

This is especially important if you are not married as you are unlikely to be entitled to any of your partner’s pension funds if you split up.

Vivian says: ‘Many people think setting up a pension is too much hassle. But doing it online can be quick and easy – and year-on-year contributions can really add up.’

Consider life insurance to ensure the mortgage, bills and childcare can be paid in the unexpected death of either parent.

Your retirement savings will take a hit if you take time out of work but you can ensure that your state pension record remains intact by claiming child benefit 

Making it work

Vineta Senberga, a stay-at-home mother of three, has taken the leap and resigned from her job as an area manager for a retail company.

Vineta, 46, who lives in Greater London with her husband and children – twins, aged nine, and one-year-old – is managing to make it work with careful budgeting. She has been at home since her latest maternity leave started last summer. She resigned from her job a couple of months ago.

She had spent 13 years in retail, working her way up to become an area manager responsible for several stores, saying: ‘I really enjoyed my job and expected to return after maternity leave. But once we worked through the numbers, it didn’t make financial sense. By the time we’d paid for nursery for the baby, breakfast club and after-school club for the twins, commuting and everything else that comes with working, I’d have been working full-time while bringing home very little extra money.’

To make it work, the family lives on the income of Vineta’s husband. She doesn’t reveal how much he earns, but they receive child benefit as it is below £80,000 a year.

Their biggest expense is rent of just over £2,000 a month. Other bills include council tax of £291 a month, gas and electricity at £164, water at £75, £140 a month on petrol and £860 on food. This adds up to a total £3,530 of monthly expenses.

Then there’s the cost of clubs and activities for the children and other expenses such as internet, TV subscriptions and phone bills.

‘We have cut our expenses drastically. We keep things longer, question every purchase, and try to be happy with what we already have,’ says Vineta. ‘We treat my husband’s income as family money rather than “his” money. We make financial decisions together and I have full access to our finances.’

Vineta’s plan is to stay at home for the foreseeable future, but she wants to build a flexible income that fits around family life. She now documents life as a stay-at-home mum to over 21,000 Instagram followers on her @vineta.life account. As she signed up for child benefit, she’s building National Insurance credits to receive a full state pension.

She says: ‘What I like best about being a stay-at-home mum is the time. I’m grateful I get to spend these early years with our baby while still being there for our older children before and after school.

‘Those are years I can’t get back, so I am really trying to enjoy myself.

‘What I like least is the financial uncertainty. Going from having my own salary to relying on one income has been a huge adjustment. It can make you feel quite vulnerable.’

Top up your income

Many stay-at-home parents will earn a small income somewhere – whether it’s through freelance work, selling clothes on platforms such as Vinted or starting a business.

This can be done flexibly and around looking after children. You can earn up to £12,570 a year without having to pay any tax. There is also a further £1,000 ‘trading allowance’, which means you could earn £13,570 tax-free.

Rachel Buckmaster, a 32-year-old scientist, is due to have her first baby next month and hopes to cut her working hours in the long run to spend time with her new daughter.

Rachel plans to take a year’s maternity leave, then return part-time to her job. She’s a single parent, unexpectedly, so does not have the security of a partner’s income to help with household costs.

Rachel, from Cambridgeshire, says her annual salary of £50,000 when working will not provide the security she wants for her and her child. She fears it will not be enough to allow the pair to live a comfortable life with rent at £1,000 a month and childcare costs expected to be about £1,000 a month. So she hopes to grow her business, a luxury dress rental service called SlayBae.

She says: ‘If the business does as well as I hope then I can stay at home more and hopefully reduce my hours in my job.’

Get a grip on tax

when working out how much one working parent would need to earn to match the income of both parents, it may be tempting to assume they have to earn the equivalent of their own and the forgone salary. But due to the way taxes work, it’s not that simple.

The UK tax system does not favour single-earner families. In the UK, every adult is taxed individually and each person gets a personal allowance of £12,570 a year before paying tax. When two people are working, both benefit from this allowance. However, when just is working, the household effectively receives just one allowance.

Lakhani says: ‘If the aim is to cover the stay-at-home parent’s salary, the working parent will usually need to earn much more than double the other parent’s take home pay, due to income tax and National Insurance payments being deducted from a single higher salary rather than across two allowances.’

For example, if both parents currently earn £35,000, their combined take home pay is £54,130. But even if one of the two could secure a job paying £70,000, their take home pay would be lower at £46,188.

Once you earn more than £100,000 you start losing the personal allowance and it is completely withdrawn once your earnings hit £125,000.

Above the £100,000 threshold you also lose valuable childcare support from the Government, including the 30 hours of funded childcare. This means parents can miss out on up to £20,000 a year of free childcare.

A single earner on £130,000 a year would have take-home pay of £70,428 a year after tax, student loans and 5pc pension contributions, or £5,869 a month.

By comparison, a couple on a combined income of £130,000 – perhaps with one earning £50,000 a year and the other earning £80,000 – would take home a combined £87,010 annually or £7,251 monthly – that is £1,382 a month more than a single earner.

They would also benefit from 30 hours a week of funded childcare, which could be worth up to £20,000 a year in London.

Are you a stay-at-home parent? Tell us how you manage the household finances. Email moneymail@dailymail.co.uk