<prompt> Human: I have a good problem. Gorgeous wife, baby. Healthy people. Healthy income, albeit in a high-cost area of the US. After a small raise, it became quite clear hat my marginal tax rate is about 40. So lets say my wife wants to work. Day care runs 2,000month, realistically. Like I said high cost area. So she needs to make 2000 to pay for it. Actually she needs to make 3300month pre tax. 40k year. Which means its really not worth it unless she can earn 60k so we would get some benefit out of it. Granted there are some benefits that reduce the net cost. Still the second income to pay for child care makes no sense for us unless she can walk into a 60k year job tomorrow, which nets us 1000month in spending money savings. ETA: Just to be clear, Im not a 1 percenter looking to complain. Excellent middle class salary in a high cost area of a high cost state, federalstatesocial security taxes take up about 40 cents of each extra dollar I earn.  <response>: You have to also look at lost opportunity costs though.If your wife stays home for 4-6 years til the kid is going to school full time, what are her career prospects going to be like after being out of the game for that long?If she was in a good job before, all of her experience, knowledge, skills is going to be 5 years out of date. Employers may not want to hire someone whos been out of the field for that long. Or theyll be treating her as a newbie fresh out of school and if she was already up some corporate ladder, shell be starting way down on the bottom again. 