daycare-vs-stay-home
GitHub计算父母离职带娃与支付托儿费的经济账，涵盖边际税后净收入、长期职业轨迹成本及再就业折损。提供年度账目、长期视野对比及多种中间方案，辅助家庭决策。
Trigger Scenarios
Install
npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill daycare-vs-stay-home -g -y
SKILL.md
Frontmatter
{
"name": "daycare-vs-stay-home",
"description": "Run the real math on a parent leaving work versus paying for childcare — the second income net of daycare, marginal taxes, and work costs, AND the career-trajectory cost of years out, over horizons instead of one brutal year. Use when asked does it make sense for me to keep working, daycare costs my whole salary, stay-home vs daycare math, or what does leaving work for 5 years really cost. Produces both sides of the ledger from the script, the horizon comparison, and the decision sheet that lets the non-financials vote."
}
Daycare vs Stay-Home Skill
"Daycare eats my whole salary" is usually computed wrong twice: it compares childcare against gross pay (marginal taxes were eating part of that anyway), and it prices exactly one year of a decision whose costs live in the following decade — the raises not compounded, the re-entry discount, the retirement match not collected. This skill runs both sides honestly: what working nets this year, and what stepping out costs over the horizon. Then it hands the decision back, because the spreadsheet gets a vote, not a veto.
What This Skill Produces
- This year's ledger — second income minus marginal tax, childcare, and work costs, plus the match: the real net, from the script
- The horizon view — earnings forgone over the years out, and the re-entry salary vs. the never-left trajectory
- The middle options — part-time, one-parent-flex, cheaper-care mixes — sketched against the same ledger
- The decision sheet — money on both sides plus the non-financials, with their explicit permission to win
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The second earner's income — and which parent's leaving is actually on the table (the framing "second income" is doing work; make it explicit)
- Childcare cost — per child per month, the real local quote; number of kids and their ages (the cost cliff at school age is the model's built-in expiry date)
- The marginal tax rate — marginal, not average; flag it as verify-yours, and note childcare tax credits/subsidies are jurisdiction-specific and often large
- Career shape — expected raises, how re-entry works in their field (the default penalty is a placeholder; fields differ wildly), and the years-out being considered
Programmatic Helper
python3 scripts/daycare_vs_stay_home.py --income 62000 --daycare 1600
python3 scripts/daycare_vs_stay_home.py --income 62000 --daycare 1600 --kids 2 --marginal-tax 28 --years-out 4 --json
Deterministic. The re-entry penalty default (10%) is a labeled placeholder — research varies widely; set it to the field's reality or treat it as a sensitivity axis.
Framework: The Honest-Ledger Rules
- Marginal, not average, not gross — the second income is taxed at the household's marginal rate, so childcare compares against take-home-at-the-margin; both directions of error are common and both flip decisions
- Childcare is temporary; trajectory is compounding — the brutal net-$1,200-a-month year ends at kindergarten, but the missed raises and match keep compounding; horizons are the honest unit, and the artifact must show both timescales
- Work costs count, both ways — commuting, wardrobe, convenience meals are real subtractions; so is what a staying parent's unpaid labor replaces (nanny-share, aftercare, summer camps in the alternative) — the ledger cuts both directions
- The middle is underrated — part-time, staggered schedules, and family care mixes often dominate both pure options on the ledger; sketch at least one
- The spreadsheet votes, the family decides — wanting to be home, or wanting to work, is a legitimate deciding input; the skill's job is making sure it decides with the numbers visible, not instead of them
Output Format
Daycare vs Stay-Home: [household]
This Year's Ledger
[Script output: gross → net after tax/care/costs+match, effective hourly]
The Horizon View
[Script output: forgone earnings, re-entry vs never-left salary, the compounding gap — read against when childcare costs end]
The Middle Options
[1–2 sketched: part-time at X hours → the same ledger recomputed roughly]
Decision Sheet
Money says: [one honest sentence, both timescales] · Not modeled and often decisive: childcare credits/subsidies (check yours — often large), job-tied benefits, and what each parent actually wants — which is allowed to win.
Educational model, not financial or career advice — tax treatment and re-entry realities vary; verify the load-bearing numbers.
Quality Checks
- The comparison uses marginal tax and net income — never gross vs. daycare
- Both timescales appear: the temporary childcare years and the compounding trajectory
- The re-entry penalty is labeled a placeholder and treated as a sensitivity, not a fact
- Childcare tax credits/subsidies are flagged as jurisdiction-specific and often large
- At least one middle option is sketched
- The non-financials get explicit permission to decide
Anti-Patterns
- Do not run gross-salary-vs-daycare — it's the error this skill exists to correct
- Do not price only year one — the decision's cost curve is a decade long and mostly later
- Do not gender the framing — "the second earner" is whoever the household says it is
- Do not let the model moralize either choice — working and staying home both survive honest math
- Do not present the re-entry penalty as settled science — it's a field-dependent range wearing a default
Version History
- 54fad50 Current 2026-07-19 13:23
