If one of your family incomes has as its sole purpose buying the extras, is it working?

Are you buying them? If not, you may want to take a hard look at whether both of your working is worth the cost and the stress. Balancing work life and family life is a challenge at best. It is not uncommon to hear a couple say, "We need a wife." In Kelley’s book, she talks at length about Job Related Expenses or JRE’s. She shows couples how to examine the cost of working beyond the obvious of childcare and make decisions about what is best for the family.

When couples keep close track of every expenditure, they sometimes find that the second income is costing them money. Second incomes, in fact, often have higher JRE’s than first incomes. Besides childcare and an extra wardrobe, second income tax rates are higher than the first income’s. And, often the tax credits add up to less than we imagine.

Some of the job related expenses Kelley suggests you consider when computing the money value of the second income are

• Personal upkeep such as clothing, accessories, shoes, dry cleaning, hairdos, manicures, facials, weight loss programs and even face lifts. To check out if it is job related, you may want to ask if the purchase is necessary to keep or advance on the job. You may think that it is unfair to assign all these items to the job, but for many, they spend less on them when they’re not working.
• Transportation and lunches includes the commute and the need for a second more reliable car. Lunches and coffee breaks at home may be leftovers, but at work we are more apt to eat out or eat on the go. This category may add up to as much as $150. a month
• Timesavers are not all job related, of course. Most people have a dishwasher. So it is a personal analysis which decides if you would do the task yourself if you didn’t work. Some people timesavers include accountants and tax preparers, sewing and alterations, painters and wallpaperers, window washers, carpet cleaners and pet groomers. Others include laundry services, maids and yard men, restaurants and deli workers and teachers and tutors.

• Rushed shopping often doesn’t allow for comparison shopping for items like banks and credit cards, cars, groceries, gifts, insurance and loans.

• Rewards and guilt buying includes things for the kids, because I’ve not been home much lately, gifts for the family bought on the business trip, the get away weekend because we’ve worked so hard and upgrades in activities and leisure because the job requires it.