Posted on 01/30/2012 1:58:58 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The life of a homemaker is one that includes an endless amount of demands and to-dos. Depending on the size of the home and family, the position of homemaker can go well beyond the usual nine to five. We examined some of the tasks that a homemaker might do to find out how much his or her services would net as individual professional careers. We only take into consideration tasks which have monetary values and use the lowest value for each calculation.
Private Chef
Meal preparation is one of the major tasks of most homemakers. From breakfast to dinner, there is plenty of meal planning and cooking to be done. The American Personal Chef Association reports that its personal chefs make $200 to $500 a day. Grocery shopping is another chore that needs to be factored in. A homemaker must drive to the supermarket, purchase the food and deliver it to the home. Grocery delivery services charge a delivery fee of $5 to $10.
Total cost for services: $1,005 per five day work week x 52 weeks = $52,260 per year.
House Cleaner
A clean and tidy home is the foundation of an efficient household. Typical cleaning duties include vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing sinks as well as loading the dishwasher and making beds. Professional maids or house cleaning service providers will charge by the hour, number of rooms or square footage of the home. For example, bi-weekly cleaning of a 900-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment with five rooms, costs $59-$124. A 1,300 square-foot, single-story home with seven rooms runs $79-$150. A 2,200 two-story, three-bedroom home with nine rooms averages $104-$180. Additional tasks such as oven or refrigerator cleaning and dusting mini blinds can run an extra $20-$25.
Total cost for services: $118 per week X 52 Weeks = $6,136 per year.
Child Care
Homemakers provide full-time, live-in child care. This type of service from a professional provider would usually come with a host of perks including health insurance, paid vacation and sick days, federal holidays off, dental and vision coverage, and bonuses. The International Nanny Association's 2011 survey found that nannies make $600 to $950 per week in gross wages, on average.
Total cost for services: $600 a week plus perks/benefits x 52 Weeks = $31,200 per year.
Driver
A private car service might seem like a high-end luxury to most, but the beneficiaries of a homemaker get this service on a daily basis. Companies like Red Cap, which provides personal drivers that use the client's own car as the means of transportation, offer a glimpse into the cost of this homemaker task. An elite membership which includes 365 days of unlimited, round-trip service is $1,000 a year plus 33 cents - $2.03 per minute.
Total cost for services: $1,000 per year + [(estimated miles driven 8000 miles / 50 MPH) x 60 min/hr x $0.33 per minute] = $4,168 total per year.
Laundry Service
Clean clothes come at a cost when you have to pay for the service that most homemakers do for free. Professional laundry services charge by the pound. For instance, Susie's Suds Home Laundry Service, Inc. in Texas charges 90 cents to $1.00 a pound to wash, dry, fold, hang and steam your clothes. Items that take longer to dry such as comforters, blankets, rugs and winter clothes are assessed at a price of $12-$15 each.
Total cost for services: $0.90 per pound x 4 pounds of clothes per day x 5 days per weeks x 52 weeks = $936 total per year.
Lawn Maintenance
Basic maintenance of the exterior property is a less common, but possible duty of a homemaker. This could include things such as mowing, debris removal, edging and trimming the lawn. These services cost about $30 a week on average.
Total cost for services: $30 per week x 52 weeks = $1,560 total per year.
The Bottom Line
Total for a year of all services is: $52,260 + $6,137 + $31,200 + $4,168 + $936 + $1,560 = $96,261 per year.
The daily work of a homemaker can sometimes be taken for granted by his or her family members. However, these services could earn a homemaker a considerable wage if he or she took those skills to the marketplace. Homemakers in general contribute a lot more to the home in addition to these tasks, and no amount of money can fill those needs.
That was probably the purpose of the study.
Just like, back in the days of Clinton, they took a run at trying to tax the “imputed value” of your house. The “imputed value” was the rent you were NOT paying because you lived in your own home. The b@st@rds wanted to tax us on that!
I agree, it’s a ridiculous comparison. A professional chef does a little bit more than making beef stroganoff with Hamburger Helper or pouring canned soup into a saucepan and heating it up. (Not that I mind getting this at home.)
The rest of the comparisons are off kilter as well. Comparing driving a kid to soccer practice in a minivan is not equivalent to a chauffeur driving around in a limousine.
I agree, it’s a ridiculous comparison. A professional chef does a little bit more than making beef stroganoff with Hamburger Helper or pouring canned soup into a saucepan and heating it up. (Not that I mind getting this at home.)
The rest of the comparisons are off kilter as well. Comparing driving a kid to soccer practice in a minivan is not equivalent to a chauffeur driving around in a limousine.
The problem with this stupidity, like this article, is that they have no employer, they work for themselves..... they should be paying themselves and usually do when they take hubbies paycheck every week.
That's when Chef Ramsey goes in and kicks their butts! /sarc
The compasny I work for charges $160 hr per worker for lawn care...
On a lighter note, I had my college freshman offspring, who sees the entire world through his black and white asperger patented nuance blocking glasses, and he said exactly the same thing. Well, without the cereal and bologna comments. Even he knows better than that.
Fun list. Reminds me of the joke where the wife lays down a similar list to the husband and says “So what are you doing to do about it?” and the husband says “Well, the first thing we’re gonna do is fire the chef.”
If that's the reality someone needs to get a job. The whole point of a full time homemaker is that you don't eat hamburger helper for dinner, and chores don't go undone. That's how two working spouses live.
It is the left that devalues homemakers, us old fashion types know that they are the most important people on Earth.
The reason male and female roles in chores and routines are different is of course sometimes related to strength and so on, the obvious stuff, but something that is overlooked, is the difference between male and female energy.
Women prefer light work and all day energy, men prefer heavy work, of short duration, they want to go in and kill a job, not marry it for the rest of their lives, men don't really like doing routine chores in the home on a daily basis, but they will go out and wrestle with the tractor, move a pile of hay, dig a ditch, rebuild the well house.
A man doesn't mind moving the heavy couch for you but he wants to do it once, and then he wants to lay on it for 30 minutes resting, he doesn't want to move it around as a visual aid while the woman visualizes different perspectives.
Damn! I’m sick of seeing this crap come up every couple of years. For the many of us who share housework and child-rearing while still working fulltime how about giving me my percentage of the calculations. I learned how to take care of myself and my brothers when my mother died and father was on the road and he assumed all of these duties when I left for the military. I learned to cook and clean as a restaurant cook, I learned self-sufficiency and discipline as an enlisted Marine and how to efficiently organize my time and efforts as an AF officer. I could out housekeep many of my wife’s friends in my spare time and many asked my wife how she got me to do these things. Over the years I have cared for the kids, taking time from my fulltime job and in the evenings, paying for babysitters where required and otherwise took care of my kids to include me feeding them, bathing them, changing diapers etc and that was when I was fulltime active military. I did and still do a large part of the housework and that includes shopping and cooking while my wife has become proficient in chores like plumbing, yard work and general maintenance. This is not the 50s and 60s I grew up in where the man was helpless around the house. A man who cannot take care of himself and a household in the absence of a spouse, girlfriend, or mother is pathetic. My wife of almost 40 years and I still share the duties and fill in where required although we both work fulltime. This perennial “calculation of worth” is the most absurd piece of BS anyone has ever come up with. For you ladies who wave this dumb-ass calculation around because you don’t think your husband does enough, think about what you would do if he dropped dead today; the cash cow would be gone and it’s ALL on you. </end rant>
My wife was a stay at home mother, and there is no way I could pay her what she is worth.
She was there for me and the kids whenever we needed her.
49 years and not a bad day between us in all those years.
I recently went back to work after ten years, and my husband is having a rude awakening. He is learning house does not clean itself, the laundry doesn’t just show up clean and folded, the food doesn't just appear in the refrigerator, and dinner doesn't just magically appear cooked on the table.
I have no intention of doing more than half of the work around the house now that I am working full time too.
I would love to just come home and have all those things done for me, but I still have to do my half of the work.
He had it pretty good for 10 years, but those days are over.
If you're the bread winner, and your spouse is a homemaker, you should mind getting that home. It shouldn't be happening unless you really, really like Hamburger Helper.
I'm starting to question two things in this thread:
1)Why am I the only one who realized that these numbers weren't meant to be taken seriously, as though the author expected breadwinner to fork over $100K?
2)What kind of screwed up families have all of you seen where families with full time homemakers live just like families with two working spouses? When mom and dad both work, you eat hamburger helper, cold cereal for breakfast, and chores go undone for days. That doesn't happen when someone makes it their job to stay at home and take care of the family.
In those families, breakfast is cookedevery morning. The chores are caught up, every day. Dinner prep starts in the early afternoon and the family sits down to nice home cooked meal every night, unless they go out to eat. It's a job. If someone is a homemaker and not doing it that way, time for them to pack it up and find a job where they can be productive.
Great points. Also, it fails to mention all the goods and services that are provided to the homemaker by the working husband.
Rent $12 to $50K per year or more.
Food $5K per year or more
Health insurance $10K per year or more
Car, gas, insurance, maintenance $5K per year or more.
Telephone, internet, cable, cell phones,etc.
Clothing, beauty salons, gym memberships, etc.
From a purely financial standpoint, most homemakers get FAR more compensation for their work, than housecleaners, chefs, childcare workers, etc.
To be clear, I greatly value the work of stay at home moms (the ones who really take pride in at work hard at the role, that is), but trying to put these dollar values on it is not realistic and is insulting to both the husband and wife, IMHO.
WHat do you do after a 10 year layoff period?
The math is way off. Let’s figure the value based on (at most) a 60-hour workweek. There are 16 hours a day built in to the formula used just for the chef and child care duties, but no one could do both or should get paid for both at the same time. Then factor in the hours when working as the chauffer (8 per week?) and housecleaner (8 per week?) You’ll come up with a much more sensible value.
Maybe a 60-hour workweek is not enough when there are small children, but the hours go down some as the kids get older. My SIL has kids in HS. If she puts in a 16-hour workweek around the house, I’d be surprised.
Calling BS on much of this. Most “mom’s” are not chefs, they are cooks. Most cooks make 7 to 10 per hour, most meals take less than one hour to make. So 10 times 3 meals is $30 per day, times 5 day work week, $150 per week or $7,800 per year. Even if you add in two more hours per week for grocery shopping, and a couple of meals during the weekend, it is less than $200 / week. $10,000 per year is a far better estimate.
How much is putting up with her BS worth?
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