Wow! I'm underpaid.

Every mother's day, there comes out a study on how much 'moms' make (this year they even included working moms - smart since most moms do work these days). MSNBC ran the article for mother's day and quoted their source from salary.com. Mom's make $138,000 a year if they stay at home. Working moms make an additional $86k a year on top of their job. Somehow I get the feeling my mother would have gone on strike at that salary while raising me.

What really got my attention was that the calculator used at salary.com also included one for dad! It will be interesting if any news outlets run a fluff story about how much dads make for Father's Day. Not counting on it, I ran a calculation for myself and discovered that I make $170,000 if I were to stay at home. I was even conservative on those hourly numbers.

I work 40 hours a week, come home and do chores like cleaning up misc items, emptying the sink, watering the plants and feeding the fish. Then I spend about an hour to an hour and a half cooking dinner. By that time my wife is home and she does dishes and feeds the cats. On weekends we do yard chores together, or I do them after work during the week. I do all the maintenance on our cars, fix things around the house, and occasionally unload the laundry dryer. I also handle of all our finances, bills, and paperwork, while she keeps track of our schedule. So after estimating all this time I spend around the house, I ended up making $170,000.

Wow! I should just quit and stay at home. The problem is, if I'm doing my own laundry, cooking my own food, mowing my own lawn, and changing my own automotive oil, who's supposed to give me my pay check? I guess wishful thinking can be fun sometimes.

PS: The "average hours" listed on the calculator for dads was ridiculously low for just about every category. If this is accurate, let's step up and do some more work, dads!