Wow a whole year...

I make 120k and I could only afford my wife not being at work for 2 months. I don't live in a HCOL area. Nearly everyone I know that makes a household income of around 100k right now struggles, and that is with mortgage payments closer to the 1000k mark than my closer to 2000k mark. I'm in my 30's and just bought a home recently, like many my age.

We had to budget hard, food cost in general is high. Add a baby to that, it really hit home. Wife pumped, and it helped offset cost in the first few months. But luckily Wife was able to get back to work in only two months time. I would have loved 6-12 months for her to be at home. But America sucks, and I would need to pretty much make 180k to justify it.