Over the years, the role of a father in family life has changed considerably. Traditionally, dads went to work while moms stayed home with the kids. Now, however, stay at home dads have become more common, and more accepted. Have you ever wondered what those dads would earn if you accounted for all the work they do at home?
Life insurance is designed to give your family some financial assistance after you have passed away. People understand that their life insurance policy needs to be enough to cover the salary of the spouse that the policy is for. Most people realize that it should also be enough to cover whatever is left of their mortgage, and to enable their family to continue the lifestyle that they were used to. Life insurance also pays for funeral costs, which makes a difficult and emotional time a little bit easier on your family.
Stay at home dads don’t go to work at an office, but they still are doing a tremendous amount of work around the home. Think about how much money it would cost you to hire people to do all the tasks that a stay at home dad is currently doing for your family. Most people forget to take that calculation into account when they purchase a life insurance policy. This can lead to problems later on, when the life insurance pay-out is less than what your family really needs.
Salary.com did a survey called the “Annual Dad Salary Survey”. They calculated what the salary would be for a stay at home dad based on the individual jobs that these dads do all day, every day. These jobs included: day care center teacher, and psychologist. I am assuming that these job titles related to the child care aspects of what a stay at home dad does. The salary also included cook, groundskeeper, laundry machine operator, computer operator, facilities manager, maintenance worker, and van driver. The website also included the job of CEO, but I am uncertain as to exactly why they chose that title.
The survey found that stay at home fathers are working around 52.9 hours a week, (on average). They figured out base pay and overtime, and came to the conclusion that the work that stay at home dads do equals $60,128 a year. That dollar amount may be higher than you might have expected.
What about dads that work and also do some of the chores that a stay at home father does? The survey noted that these dads are probably working an average of 44 hours a week at their “day jobs”. After that, these dads spend around 30.6 hours a week on parenting duties. The survey placed the financial value of the contribution these dads make at home at around $33,853 a year.
Image by Big D2112 on Flickr