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In San Francisco, full time day care can run about $2k a month - here's a link to the costs for the day care for faculty and staff at UC Berkeley ($1600-$2125, depending on the age of the child). Let's go with $1700 for the calcs, to keep it conservative. http://ece.berkeley.edu/facstaff so, ($3,400 * 12) / .15 = $272,000 a year. There may be cheaper options, but seriously, fifteen percent sounds very low even for two income well paid families. And of course, at such an ultra wealthy income bracket, tax breaks have phased out far lower in the income scale. Another way to look at it is $3,400 * 12 = $40,800. Let's assume a 20% tax bracket (assuming one spouse makes a good income and intends to keep working), so it costs you $51,000 to go to work vs staying home. Even if you don't strictly lose money by working, that second income has to go way up before it's really worth it. There is one other factor, of course, which is career continuity. It may make sense to work essentially for 20% of your pay if it means that in 5-6 years, when the kiddos are older, you can rejoin the workforce at a higher income level, rather than trying to break in after an extended absence. Also, my numbers are a worst case scenario, where you have two small children in daycare at the same time, though of course spacing it out comes with a different set of problems. Add in the sky high cost of housing, and you can see how hard it is to raise a family in the bay area now. The best bet is actually to have one very high earning spouse (medical or nursing specialist, higher echelons of law or finance, some upper tech or managerial positions). $200k+ a year is a very different picture if it is all earned by a single spouse. Alternatively, for two very high earners (again in that 200k+ range), the percentage spent on childcare and basic housing starts to diminish to acceptable ranges. This is also why, ahem, I don't take claims of a labor shortage in SF seriously at "six figure" salaries if the salaries are barely above 100k. |