Finance Smiths

My wife will start going into the office to work twice a week. It’s her choice as the default work arrangement at her bank is still full-time work from home. But she prefers being in the office when her workload picks up. The LAN connection is faster so it’s easier to access large documents as it can be frustrating trying to open them at home only to cause the laptop to hang. It’s also easier to conduct conference calls and face-to-face meetings to facilitate co-operation. More importantly, she can catch up with her colleagues socially at work, during lunch and after work. She can even schedule in a gym session to have a work-out and exercise on the days she is in the office.

For my wife to be able to maintain this flexible work arrangement, I need to be on full-time work from home to take care of our boy with the helper. As he grows up, gets more active and requires ever increasing amounts of attention, this is proving to be a bigger challenge with each week. I have also been informed that I may be heading into the office every alternate week from next month onwards. So I will only be on a 50% work from home arrangement after that. And that’s not enough because on the full week I’m in the office working, I don’t think she can handle our boy with the helper at home with her workload. Plus she would still want to go into the office to work then. It’s possible to scrape by through overloading the helper but it will go out of balance eventually.

So we are considering 2 options. Option 1 – we put our boy at my parents-in-law’s place for half a day to a full day with the helper there to assist. It’s less than 10 mins drive and has more space for him to run around. There’s more flexibility in terms of drop-off & pick-up, less financial costs and he will be looked after by family. Option 2 – we put our boy at an infant care centre in the area for half a day to a full day. It’s about 10 mins drive and is even more catered to his development. But there’s less flexibility in terms of drop-off & pick-up, more financial costs and he will be looked after by strangers.

We weighed the pros and cons of both options yesterday evening during dinner outside after visiting the infant care centre. It’s a tough call because the benefits and costs are so even when you look at it from a short-term perspective. After all, our boy will be headed to child care in less than 6 months’ time so whatever arrangement we arrive at now has to hold until then and transition him into it. We could keep him with us at home, try to make it work and not use either option. But things will just get more difficult as we are already struggling to maintain the balance at home. Something has to give and I don’t want the cracks in our relationships that are starting to surface just from trying to manage everything become fractures that will take longer to heal.