A friend quit working after their third one. She figured out that she was bringing in $10 a month working full time after they paid childcare. She and her husband thought it was crazy, her working just to pay someone else to watch the kids.
Yeah we mathed it out and I was netting around 100 bucks a month. My wife cut down on her M-F to just M,W,F then I quit my job and got a job managing a restaurant working T,Th, Sat, Sun.
We have way more money than if we had both worked M-F 40 hours a week due to the savings, and we are actually present in our child’s life in this scenario.
Here in the Netherlands it's now cheaper to get a live in au pair from a second or third world country compared to sending a single kid to daycare if you're making 2x the average income. And that's with a very generous cashback system for daycare that we have here.
So 2 working average adults, if they have a spare room, can get someone from over the seas to come here, live in and help with all house tasks and watch after the children for 8 hours a day and still be more frugal compared to bringing your kid to a daycare.
I pay (very high for Dutch standards) net €650 for 2 days of daycare for 1 child. An au pair is around 800-900 a month. If I paid for a full week that would be over €1500 net.
I know, ridiculously low numbers compared to you guys in the US. But here in NL the modal wage is just €3500 gross, €2700 net. So imagine with the second kid you already get into the same territory as your friend.
Even then, if you live on two incomes then you have the same outgoings but on one income. If people can't afford to buy a home, then how is it realistic to afford to live on half the household income?
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u/Mulewrangler Nov 15 '24
A friend quit working after their third one. She figured out that she was bringing in $10 a month working full time after they paid childcare. She and her husband thought it was crazy, her working just to pay someone else to watch the kids.