Much has been written about offering more support and empathy for the stay at home parent who gives up his or her job to take care of a child full-time. Being a full-time parent is one of the hardest jobs in the world because so much is at stake. Full-time parents deserve all the respect in the world.

However, little attention is paid to the plight of the sole income earning parent. The sole income earning parent seems to have it relatively easy because s/he doesn’t have to be on call 24/7. S/he can slack off at work with no devastating consequences. S/he can even attend the occasional company boondoggle and have stimulating conversations with adults over copious amounts of free alcohol.

However, any emotionally competent sole income providing parent faces the following difficulties:

• The constant stress of knowing they have to provide for the family with no financial backup
• The constant guilt for being away from their child because of work
• Not being able to find support because a day job is considered the easier job
• The expectation of having to do an equal amount of parenting after a long day’s work

Many couples fight over this division of labor. The sole income provider often wants to come home, have a drink, eat dinner, and maybe watch some TV and relax, before jumping into parenting duties, especially after a rough day.

But the stay at home parent, who has been going non-stop since not-at-home spouse left the house, resents this expectation because nothing is as energy sapping as caring for an infant. The sole income provider is resentful for not being allowed to take even half an hour to unwind. Problems ensue!

Let’s see if we can help the sole income providing parent get him or her get to a happier place. 

Despite all the hassle, you’re thinking about traveling or living abroad with kids. Exciting! This post will give you some food for thought as I’ve been thinking about doing just that for the past year.

I loved growing up overseas. It was always a treat to meet new people, eat new food, and learn about new cultures. My parents worked for the US Foreign Service and were stationed in Manila, Lusaka, Kobe, Taipei, and Kuala Lumpur before finally arriving in McLean, Virginia for my high school years. McLean is 20 minutes away from the US State Department in Washington D.C.

Because I attended international schools for 13 years, I felt like I had a much richer childhood compared to many of my high school peers who mostly spent elementary school, middle school, and high school in the Northern Virginia region. Every summer I’d go back to see my friends in Taipei and KL, which was an absolute blast.

Living abroad helped me understand and embrace different cultures. For example, because roughly 61% of the Malaysian population was Muslim, I had several close Muslim friends who shared with me their traditions. I’m certain there would be much more love and harmony around the globe if more folks traveled.

Now that I’m a 41-year-old father, I’ve been reflecting on whether the financial goals I set in my 20s were necessary in order to have children. I have a couple of friends whose families were ruined because they were always under monetary stress.

We all know that children are expensive. The budget route for each child is ~$250,000 for 18 years. The expensive coastal city route is closer to $1,000,000. If your kid goes to college for four years, add on another $100,000 – $400,000. Further, if your kid expects you to pay for their BMW and starter home as an adult, you’ve got to add yet another $200,000 – $2,000,000!

Here were my goals before having children:

• Have a $1 million net worth
• Own a three bedroom, two bathroom house in a safe neighborhood
• Be in a stable career by age 30 or at least be on the right track

I clearly remember having these goals because a buddy at my first job told me about his $1 million net worth goal before having kids. He was an old 24-year-old first-year analyst at Goldman Sachs because his parents had held him back one year. He’d gone to an expensive prep school and then attended Yale.

To him, he needed at least $1 million before feeling ready to be a dad because he wanted his kids to go the same educational route as he – prep school, private university. As for me, I didn’t know what I wanted. All I knew at the time was that I had a chance to make a good amount of money through  my career if I survived.

As an impressionable young man who lived in Manhattan, a net worth goal of $1 million sounded good to me, so I went with it.