> “so I stopped paying them”.
This was exactly what I got from a colleague about a decade ago. Day care was so expensive it was eating half of her salary, so she quit, stopped paying for day care and stayed at home instead.
A lot of couple do the math and end up in the same place, where working their ass off to earn more, just to pay more doesn't make sense.
> A lot of couple do the math and end up in the same place, where working their ass off to earn more, just to pay more doesn't make sense.
I think if you're breaking even on daycare and salary then you're still coming out economically ahead to keep working.
Daycare costs stop once you enroll the kid into school. Typically salaries scale with years of experience so you're forfeiting ~7-9 years of salary growth by stopping work.
That said, there are non-economic reasons to raise your kids ...
> I think if you're breaking even on daycare and salary then you're still coming out economically ahead to keep working.
That's the traditional wisdom, with the assumption that consecutive working years will result in a more lucrative career, which balances the child care costs on the long run.
That assumption breaks depending on how much you pay for day care (including meals, potentially an additional baby sitter etc) and how much you expect your career to last in that company, or if your skills don't devaluate so much you can get back to work some other place after a few years.
For more and more people, a 3-4+ years career gap isn't that big of a deal, "I raised my kid" is a fully accepted explaination, and their company won't value their continuous work that much either.
Exactly this. And those people never complain about daycare costs because they’re not paying them at all.
And for awhile the market looks good as the prices can rise as the “cheapest” leave.
But eventually it will collapse.