When I left full-time employment to stay home with my son years ago, I often thought about the value of my time to our family. I used to joke with my husband that every time I managed to save a little extra at the grocery store because I had the time to gather coupons and shop the sales, he could add that savings to my “salary.”
Parenting obviously isn’t just babysitting. Parents, particularly those who stay home full-time, are also cooks, housekeepers, tutors and personal drivers. I knew my time and effort was worth something, but I would have loved to quantify it. Now, I can.
This calculator from Funky Pigeon answers the question, “If you were to be paid for every job you do as a parent, how much would you earn?”
Enter your home city or state, plus how many hours you spend every week performing each of the following “jobs”:
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Cooking
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Cleaning
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Driving
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Teaching
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Personal assistant
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Laundry
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Nurse
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Psychologist
The tool calculates the total you’d make over the course of the year for each job, based on averages wages in your area, and then adds it all together for one annual “salary.”
Is anyone going to actually pay you that salary? No, they are not. (Well, unless you structure things the way this couple does, that is.) But it can be helpful in clarifying how labour is—or should be—divided in the household. And, if nothing else, it’s nice to put a monetary value on all the hard work you know you’re doing.
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