Working Mom Archives – Corporettemoms.com

A Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Part-Time, Work-at-Home Attorney

07/27/2017 by Guest Poster 36 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader Mindy B., who lives in a suburb of Detroit and is a work-at-home attorney mom with a teenage daughter. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics about this Working Mom…

Name: Mindy B.
Lives: A Detroit suburb
Job: Work at home (part time) for a boutique law firm
Age: 49
Home Situation: I live in a Tudor home in a community-oriented small town with my husband who travels frequently for work, our 14-year-old daughter who’s in all honors classes (plus band) in 8th grade and swims competitively 20+ hours per week, and two 2-year-old CRAZY pups.
Childcare Situation: Because I work from home, I only need babysitters when we will be out past the time our daughter goes to sleep (i.e., theater, etc.) but I do need “chauffeurs” to drive our daughter to/from activities when I have afternoon or evening commitments and my husband is traveling/working late.

Mindy pointed out how her schedule may be different from other Week in the Life moms we feature:

(1) we only have one child (I have NO idea how parents juggle more than one child!), (2) she’s more responsible than most adults I know, and (3) my husband’s office is an hour away from home and he also travels out of town 1–2 nights a week, 2–3 weeks per month.

A Week in the Life of a Working Mom: Land Services Agent in Kentucky

07/13/2017 by Guest Poster 15 Comments

For this week’s installment of our Week in the Life of a Working Mom series, I’m happy to introduce CorporetteMoms reader Autumn, a working mom in Kentucky. She works as a land services agent for a public utilities company and is 37 years old with one child. Our usual caveat applies: Please remember that this is is a real person who has feelings and isn’t gaining anything from this, unlike your usual friendly (soul-deadened, thick-skinned, cold-hearted, money-grubbing) blogger — so please be kind with any comments. Thank you! – Kat

If you’d like to be featured (anonymously or otherwise), please fill out this form! You can see all posts in this series here.

First, Some Basics about this Working Mom…

Name: Autumn
Lives: Kentucky
Job: Land services agent for a public utilities company
Age: 37
Home Situation: I live in a 2500-square-foot home with my husband, who works in IT, and our 3-year-old daughter. We have four bedrooms; one is used as a playroom for our daughter and one is for my husband’s office/man-cave. We’ve lived in this house for almost seven years and we are slowly trying to declutter and renovate.
Childcare Situation: My daughter goes to preschool 8:30-4:30 Monday through Friday ($180/week). Every now and then I keep her home with me just for fun.

Last Week in My Life

How to Manage Up With Regard to Family Commitments

06/20/2017 by Kat 4 Comments

Here’s a suggestion for a topic we got from folks who took the survey a while back: how can working moms “manage up” with regard to family commitments? Along similar lines, “how to explain your new life choices to an employer who is used to you working long hours”? I can’t wait to hear what you guys say — what’s YOUR best advice on managing up once you become a working mom, ladies?

(Pictured: Hall & Oates women’s tshirt (I Can’t Go for That- No Can Do), available at Etsy through Exit343design’s shop.) (Affiliate link.)

Just to throw in my $.02 of tips, I think a lot of it comes back to general advice on how to manage up:

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Filed Under: Career, Work-Life Balance, Working Mom Tagged With: managing up, new working mom, posts

4 Apps That Help Working Moms Stay Connected to School or Daycare

04/25/2017 by Kate Antoniades 11 Comments

2017 Update: We still stand by this advice on our favorite apps to help you stay connected to school or daycare — but you may also want to check out some of our newer stories on tech for working moms.

Does your child’s daycare or school use any apps that help working moms stay connected to school (and dads, of course, and parents in general)? It’s helpful and reassuring to get regular updates when your kid is too young to tell you about his/her day, and when your kid is older, you can get around the “What did you do at school today?” non-answers. (My son’s favorite is “I forgot!” when I ask him about certain things that happened during his first-grade school day.) It’s especially nice if you don’t have time to volunteer at school and don’t ever get to see what goes on during a typical day. Today we’ve rounded up some parent communication apps that you can consider recommending to your child’s school if they don’t currently use one (before the year is out).

With various features and options (and prices), here are four apps that help working moms stay connected to school:

The Cost of Daycare: What Do You Spend?

11/16/2016 by Kate Antoniades 71 Comments

A couple of months ago on Corporette, we discussed how much you should spend on housing costs, and today we’re going to talk about something that often looms just as large in the minds of working moms: the cost of daycare. Lately, the news seems to be full of articles about the cost of daycare (e.g., “U.S. Parents Are Sweating And Hustling To Pay For Child Care,” NPR), so we thought this would be a great time for a discussion. How much are you spending on daycare? Is the cost of daycare more than you expected?

For a quick review, the recent Corporette post covered the 50/20/30 rule for budgeting, which recommends that you spend no more than 50% of your take-home pay on fixed costs, use at least 20% for saving money and reaching your financial goals, and spend no more than 30% of flexible costs. How does the cost of daycare fit into the ratio? In the comments on the post, several readers shared their childcare numbers, and their responses ranged from 10% of their take-home pay to 30% (for a child with special needs). The average childcare spending among readers who shared information was about 18%.

The Care.com 2016 Cost of Care survey found some striking statistics:

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Filed Under: Childcare, Money, Working Mom Tagged With: daycare, FSA, posts

How to Set Up the Best Home Office for Working Moms and Dads

10/19/2016 by Kat 5 Comments

2018 Update: We still stand by this advice on how to set up the best home office for working moms and dads — but you may want to check out our more recent discussion on mistakes to avoid when working from home.

It’s been a few years since we last discussed how to create the best office at home on Corporette — but a reader emailed me for an update, particularly for working moms, so I thought we’d discuss. For working moms campaigning for more flexible working arrangements, having a great home office can make everything easier; if you’re productive and get work done at home, it gives you confidence that you can work from home more often, which means saving time on your commute, offering flexibility when your kiddo is sick, and more. So — here is my $.02 for setting up a home office, but I can’t wait to hear your tips:

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Filed Under: Career, Working Mom Tagged With: home office, posts, remote work