Do you consider "homemaker" to be a job? - Page 9 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

Locke · 10-20-2021, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chedder

I think there are real and tangible benefits with the stay at home parent route while kids are young (before grade 1) if you can swing it. That's what we were able to do and it worked really well. And I do believe it's a job in that circumstance.

Now with older kids I couldn't imagine my spouse being home full time. She works half to three quarter time in healthcare and that's busy and draining enough for her and us with busy teenagers. We don't have a house cleaner but the thought has crossed our minds.

Funny on this thread people talking about the extravagance of a $4200/year cleaner and on the watch thread guys are buying multiple $75,000 watches.

This is the thing, everyone's circumstances are different.

You have to determine the value of child care, time with the kids and your employment circumstances.

Our kids are older now, we are a household with 2 people working full-time which allows us to provide our kids with various different benefits.

Cecil Terwilliger · 10-20-2021, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kevman

That's funny, I calculate my free time in the exact opposite fashion. The few hours I have at the end of a day after work and getting our daughter to bed are priceless.

Extremes aside, if you really want to assign a value to it, your time after work still has an opportunity cost to it. You could argue that if a house cleaner is $50/hr and an auto mechanic is $130/hr, you're far better off changing your oil and hiring a cleaner than you are scrubbing a toilet and taking your car in.

How much you value your free time and how much it is literally worth as a monetary value are very different things so this discussion is comparing apples to oranges. These two ideas seem to be getting mixed up a lot as the discussion goes on. Your free time may be extremely valuable to you but it’s literal value is $0/hour. It’s your evaluation of cost vs free time that helps make the decision.

Also, cleaning and changing your oil are a poor comparison. Cleaning involves almost no knowledge, equipment or skills. Not true of changing oil.

Locke · 10-20-2021, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

How much you value your free time and how much it is literally worth as a monetary value are very different things so this discussion is comparing apples to oranges. These two ideas seem to be getting mixed up a lot as the discussion goes on. Your free time may be extremely valuable to you but it’s literal value is $0/hour. It’s your evaluation of cost vs free time that helps make the decision.

Also, cleaning and changing your oil are a poor comparison. Cleaning involves almost no knowledge, equipment or skills. Not true of changing oil.

I'm obviously not the target demographic then...

I can practically change oil with my eyes closed...do I know how to get wine stains out of drapes? Nope.

TorqueDog · 10-20-2021, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

I'm obviously not the target demographic then...

I can practically change oil with my eyes closed...do I know how to get wine stains out of drapes? Nope.

I guess you could always switch to drinking white wine.

Locke · 10-20-2021, 04:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I guess you could always switch to drinking white wine.

Like some kind of savage?? No sir! That simply wont do!

Cecil Terwilliger · 10-20-2021, 04:17 PM

If your standard weekly cleaning involves wine stains on the drapes, you likely have a drinking problem. Probably from being a bored homemaker with nothing to do. Like Marge in Cypress Creek.

Locke · 10-20-2021, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

If your standard weekly cleaning involves wine stains on the drapes, you likely have a drinking problem. Probably from being a bored homemaker with nothing to do. Like Marge in Cypress Creek.

Like nobody else lives in my home that drinks wine.

Assumptions like that are baseless!

DoubleF · 10-20-2021, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I guess you could always switch to drinking white wine.

... ?

I thought white wine is for cleaning red wine stains...

TorqueDog · 10-20-2021, 04:29 PM

Perfect, Locke can just stain his drapes with white wine until the red wine stain is gone, then change back to red.

Locke · 10-20-2021, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Perfect, Locke can just stain his drapes with white wine until the red wine stain is gone, then change back to red.

No...we've been over this. I employ a cleaner.

DoubleF · 10-20-2021, 04:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

No...we've been over this. I employ a cleaner.

So the cleaner gets drunk on white wine, then cleans the red wine stains?

dino7c · 10-20-2021, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by undercoverbrother

Simplistic view of a complex situation.

Not really, you are going to die one day

If your job is so stressful and you hate it quit. Find something you like. Can't take it with you.

Geraldsh · 10-20-2021, 04:45 PM

Some lifestyles are not a matter of choice! I have a brother-in-law who would starve to death sitting at the kitchen table if his wife didn’t bring him a plate of food.

puckedoff · 10-20-2021, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Locke

No...we've been over this. I employ a cleaner.

Spoiler!

flamesfever · 10-20-2021, 04:47 PM

Homemaker is definitely a job, and I don't know whether anyone has mentioned it or not, but I believe staying home to look after the kids before they attain school age qualifies as such for purposes of calculating your or your wife's CPP on retirement. I think it's also a great investment, if you can afford it, which is probably a big "if" for many nowadays.

As for house cleaning, if you have a lab, they shed their hair like crazy in the Spring and Fall, and paying someone to clean it up is money well spent. Besides, if most of your wealth is tied up in your house, it pays to look after it.

metallicat · 10-20-2021, 06:18 PM

I think the one thing everyone has glossed over is that sliver is considering getting a cat again. The same sliver that borderline abused his old cat by keeping it in the garage and then getting rid of it because it "was a dud".

Sliver · 10-20-2021, 06:38 PM

A. I'm not considering getting a cat; my family is.
B. Yeah some cats can be duds. This is a known fact everywhere on earth except for in the minds of people on CP.

Enoch Root · 10-20-2021, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stone hands

This is flawed thinking though. Unless you are taking time off work to clean your house it is absolutely costing you money to get a cleaner instead of doing it yourself. You really cant apply your hourly rate to something completely unrelated to your day job and say your time is worth x, your free time is worth 0$ an hour

It may be worth zero dollars per hour, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have value. I consider my free time to be extremely valuable. So if I can pay someone to take some chores off my hands and free up some more time, that is a massive win.

They are also faster, more efficient, and better at it than I am.

I also don't want my spouse doing it either. Neither of us are fond of housecleaning, so the cost of having it done creates value in other ways as well.

Enoch Root · 10-20-2021, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

But you said evaluating the cost as extravagant isn’t accurate. It is.

No matter how much you value your time over money, you can’t make that trade off of you can’t afford it. There is no greater luxury in life than paying people to do things that you don’t feel like doing.

I can’t cut my own hair, I could change my tires but don’t have the equipment or the space to do so, I can cook but I also don’t eat out for every meal. Most things we pay people to do, we need them to. Or at the very least, we lack much of the resources to do.

Not cleaning your own house is, without question, the ultimate luxury. Other than not wiping your own ass or dressing yourself, I can’t even think of a more unnecessary luxury item.

That’s not to say it is bad or that I don’t understand why you think it’s good value. But it pretty much defines an extravagant expense.

I strongly disagree with this. Of all the ways I can afford luxuries, getting out of housecleaning is among the least extravagant IMO, because I don't like doing it. Also, it directly frees up my time, on a more than one to one basis (the housecleaners do it in less time than I would).

An example of extravagant would be having a driver. I am going to be spending the time in the car anyway, so having a driver does little to free my time. Sure, I could read or work or whatever, but it isn't creating more time for me.

TorqueDog · 10-20-2021, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flamesfever

Homemaker is definitely a job, and I don't know whether anyone has mentioned it or not, but I believe staying home to look after the kids before they attain school age qualifies as such for purposes of calculating your or your wife's CPP on retirement. I think it's also a great investment, if you can afford it, which is probably a big "if" for many nowadays.

As for house cleaning, if you have a lab, they shed their hair like crazy in the Spring and Fall, and paying someone to clean it up is money well spent. Besides, if most of your wealth is tied up in your house, it pays to look after it.

You're referring to the "Child-rearing provision".

Only qualifies during the time that you're the primary caregiver for children under the age of 7.

"We’ll give you pension credits for the months you had lower or no income during the period you were raising your young children when calculating the enhanced component of your CPP benefit, if the credits are higher than your actual earnings. The pension credits are based on your average earnings in the 5 years before the birth or adoption of your child. These 2 provisions protect the value of your CPP benefits during the period that you earned less or no income while caring for your children."