<prompt> Human: Hi PF! My husband and I are trying to figure out whether I can really afford to stay home once our baby is born in June 2017. We have a lot of savings about 120K right now, but will be 130K by June which we saved up over the past 3-4 years in anticipation of me eventually staying home with a baby, which is something I have always wanted to do, and we also have a lot of my husbands med school debt left also about 130K, at interest rates of 5-7. We might be in a somewhat unique situation given that my husband is currently in the middle of his training in a well-paying medical subspecialty making only 4,500-5,000 per month, but in 3 years when he finishes he will make about 15,000 per month roughly 300K per year minus taxes or more if he decides to practice privately, so we have not thought much about long-term savings for retirement and the like because it will be a lot easier to do that in a few years than it is now. Here is a breakdown of our incomeexpenses:nbsp;Monthly Income Currently4900 husbands salary4100 my salary not in medicineTotal: 9000monthnbsp;Conservative Estimate of Monthly Expenses once baby is born in 6 months: 3500 rent utilities we live in a crazy expensive city2500 living expenses 300 eating out entertainment, 500 groceries, 800 for travel on average, remainder on healthpersonal stuff, home supplies, etc.300 med school loan repayment this is assuming that I stop working and we can move to an income-based repayment plan500 baby-related expenses divided over 3 years, I used to estimate this cost conservatively, averaging out various one-time costs over 3 years460 car payment insurancenbsp;Total: 7260nbsp;If I stop working this would mean my husbands income of 4,900 would be our only income, leading to a 4900-7260 2,360 monthly deficit for the remaining 3 years of his medical training, which comes to a total of 84,960. His income will increase slightly over the next 3 years of training but I did not add that in because I am assuming our rent will also drift upwards as has been the trend in our city for the past few years, so the two should cancel out.nbsp;Even though nearly 85K of a total 3-year deficit sounds like a lot, we will have about 130,000 saved up when the baby is born, which still leaves an emergency fund of about 45,000 of a buffer. Obviously if something major changes in our lives like my husband loses his job which is very unlikely or we have a very large unexpected expense, I can go back to work and we can put our baby in daycare, and we can downsize our apartment andor living expenses. But as things stand now, it seems to me like we can afford for me to stay home, and I really want to. An obvious downside to all of this is that we are letting his medical debt stay put for 3 years our monthly payments plus the REPAYE program would cover the interest every month, but we could pay it off in about 3 years after he finishes training by contributing 4Kmonth to his loans which with our 7K in monthly expenses would still leave about 4K per month for other savings. It would be nice to pay his loans back sooner but not doing so is a small price to pay compared to getting to spend the first years of babys life by hisher side. nbsp;Am I missing something major, PF, or do I have your blessing?  <response>: Just throwing this piece in here if you do go back to work depending on the area, daycare costs will probably eat up that last 2k you have from your income - expenses. Infant daycare is so expensive, I still pay about 14k a year for my two year old in a moderately priced daycare program. If you can stay home with your child and still pay your expenses even if its not comfortably I say go for it. My biggest peeve is that by the time we go to daycare work daycare and home you only have a few hours to spend quality time as a family together. I literally feel like Im paying to lose out on moments of my daughters life. We just need my little bit of extra income to survive. And you can always scale back on eating out and traveling. 