And am I right in calculations for public and private kindergartens, that if both parents works or even one with more than average salary, than the prices are almost the same in both?
You must have a really really good salary to pay for twins, i.e. double, for 5 days in kindergarten, not counting after school help. So good for you! I have one year old twins, so I am counting what it woulddbe and what my salary should be at least. At least to cover it, I even don't asume they will be much left.
It depends on how much the subsidies are for you in Geneva, as well as whether or not you're taxed at source or pay regular taxes. In our case, we pay significantly less than 2x for two kids (both husband and wife work full time) and we got a substantial tax break since we could deduct (much of) the cost of day care from our income.
Without these two factors, it would not have been financially beneficial for me to work (taxes and day care would have taken my entire salary, plus some).
I think this is a point that a lot of women who give up there career don't take into account. What happens if your husband/partner becomes ill or incapacitated and cannot work anymore or if your husband trades you in for a younger model or dies? What are you going to do then? I've actually had a couple of my friends confess to me that they are stuck in a love less marriage because they are financially dependent on their husbands.
You have to take out all the insurances that are going to cover every eventually ... at another huge expense. It's what we've done with bells on - because having a child with special needs means that there must always be a pretty much full time parent available - and this will continue to be the case until we are in our dotage and unable to care for him anymore.
But there is no insurance against falling out of love with your partner. How sad to be so trapped.
We also took out insurance on each other, with the expectation that the surviving parent would be working part time in order to care for the children (who are still very young-and we're not the youngest parents )
Honestly, once you've got kids, finances are not the only reason people might feel trapped in a marriage.
I agree. At the same time, I do not believe that those for whom staying home with the kids is important should be deterred by the fear of disaster alone - there is much that can be done to mitigate the risks. At a minimum, the choice to stay at home with one's children (for a man or a woman) should include a good hard look at the marriage or partnership, assets and finances, insurance coverage, long term goals/plans and so forth. One cannot completely plan for any eventuality of course, but having confidence in the above makes taking a break from career a little less fraught with worry.
I agree with you, I just think it is the whole picture that needs to be looked at when deciding to stay home to raise kids or not. What I highlighted is an aspect that too many people don't think about so don't have a plan b should the worst happen. Unfortunately putting your head in the sand about finances does not keep roofs over heads or put food on the table.
the discussion is so close to my heart...my mom is a recent divorcee (she is almost 70) and only worked the last 10 years or so - the marriage itself was horrible, and I'm happy for her to be 'free'. and we will of course help when she needs it, but she hates to ask and i wonder how much we really know of what she needs...
i always find it difficult to explain why i work, especially in the land of yogurt and chocolate where the prejudice is HUGE...it feels so unbelievably selfish to say - i work because i'm scared that i would be alone and helpless when i'm old, i work because the interaction with other people really helps me, i work because i don't want my whole world to revolve around my hb or my son...
my marriage is surprisingly strong (touch wood, never say never etc etc) and my son is as happy as any teenager could be (i.e. when you are with him he tries to get rid of you and when he is alone he misses you).
juggling everything becomes a bit much from time to time, especially when work is either crappy (or great) and you need to spend more time on it and when school needs more attention at the same time.
the other downside is that your leisure time disappears into family time and i'll admit that we would be much better integrated if i had the time to make friends in our town - that is a consequence i never thought of...in my house of shy people i'm the one that connects us, but as i'm at work, our connections are few and far between.
but you win some you loose some...good luck with your decisions!
One thing I always wonder about in these discussions is why nobody ever mentions pensions. I can understand couples managing to muddle through the day-to-day on one salary, but isn't it really difficult to provide for 2 peoples' retirement from only one salary? Isn't an employer-contributed pension a major incentive to go back to work, even if childcare eats up most of the salary?
Well yes and no
Many pension plans will by no means provide what they are promising today, so may end up as an "investement" which is not as lucrative as it is.
And at least in Zurich, unless you earn a really good salary, if you consider childcare costs and addedd taxes you may end up paying to work, which is obviously not ideal (for reference, a full time place for a baby is around 2700 CHF/month, for older child, 2300 CHF/month). So for 2 children, you would need to make at least 5000 CHF after additional tax etc. And even then you would be at 0 earning.
So it really depends on personal situation IMHO.
K
Just want to point out that Zurich has excllent subsidies available for childcare and most of us do not pay full price for our spots (nowhere near, in fact). There are also very favorable tax breaks for childcare users. You do not need to make 5000 CHF in order to make it worth it to work!
Yes! Part of the standard deductions are for pension, and employers often contribute. Take home salary doesn't reflect this extra money.
I agree that if you end up actually paying to work, then any pension benefits are cancelled out. However, if you are taking home nothing, if your employer is contributing to your pension, that is a financial benefit that is worth taking into account when making a decision.
I personally find it surprising that people don't mention things like pension, continuity of employment, progressive professional experience, the fact that the extremely high childcare costs of the early years don't last forever (even if it doesn't feel that way at the time!) etc. in these discussions. Particularly employer-contributed pension, which is a measurable financial benefit.
Lucky you, many people I know do pay the full when you go over the limit of subsidies with 2 working people (which is about 120000 taxable if I am not mistaken?). I do not know the official stats though.
Can you expand on the "very favourable" tax breaks? I only know I can deduct about 6000 per child when my costs are waaay over but maybe I missed out on something.
K
The irony of the high childcare costs when a child is young is that this is actually the time when childcare is at its easiest to come by! Creche is always open, there is always cover when someone is sick and it never shuts over the holidays.
Fast forward to both kids in primary school and you have an erratic holiday timetable that is not even identical even though both children are at school in the same Canton (but different districts), add on top of that erratic ad hoc days off for teacher training/altered hours (and notice given not even 24 hours previously) because eg. the swimming pool is being cleaned so we have to go one hour early and no teacher cover for illness meaning that when she is ill, your kid sits on the front step until you can extricate yourself from work.
Organising seamless childcare, particularly without family support, is far far harder the older the kids get! I look back with a certain envy at those days (now some 10 years ago for me) when "all" I had to was throw money at the problem and it was solved ..
One of the women who worked at my daughters' Krippe actually had to quit once her sons started school-exactly because she wasn't able to organize childcare for them. I worry a lot about this-and I hope that the initiatives that city of Zurich is starting now (expanding the school lunch program) along with the ones they've started (integrating more after school type programs into the schools, like music and sports and holiday horns) will help us when we start this whole mess!
Lucky me? Two full time parents working and we don't make it to the subsidy limit? Okay, if you say so.
(Genuine question from a clueless non-parent Auslander...)
They just send children home if the teacher is ill?
Doesn't the public school system have substitute teachers to take over in case of illness?
Depends on the canton. It's forbidden here to send young children back home. Substitutes must be found.
My son had a half day off recently because all the teacher had a formation, but we were warned one month before and they organized a supervised group for parents who had no other possibilities.
That being said, I was extremely lucky to get a place in our local subsidized daycare for school children (well, I applied for a place a year in advance and begged the person in charge to get us a place!). And it's a complicated affair where my son has to take unsupervised school buses to go there...
Strange, I thought it was standard for the Canton. So will make enquiries when I find the time and will get back to you. Very few children do stay for school lunch and after school activities though- rightly or wrongly, or for whatever reasons, parents actually do prefer to come home together and all have their main meal together at lunchtime, as has always been the tradition here. But the Council organised it at the request of those few parents, who got together to put pressure on the school board and the Council to organise it- so it can be done. It was only provided due to demand and parents being well organised to make their needs known and ask for support.