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Originally Posted by Traum
IMO, the more important question is -- how is the little guy going to be cared for if your wife returns to work?
If you are relying on grandparents, that comes with the usual pros and cons, and only you and your wife can decide how good or bad the arrangement is.
If you are sending the little person out for daycare, first of all, do you already have a place arranged? Childcare for those under 2.5 yrs old was exceedingly difficult to find pre-pandemic. It could be a lot easier now, but it is still going to cost a pretty penny. The question would then become:
1) does your wife's salary justify the cost of daycare?
2) does your wife's salary justify the loss of their bonding time and watching the little person grow?
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Both our parents are retired and they have both expressed interest to look after our little guy. So it will likely be some sort of split between the two grand parents. We are extremely fortunate to be in that situation. The only issue my wife has is the cultural/generational differences of raising children that our parents have.
The main issue is the wife doesn't want to give up taking care of our son because she loves being with him, watching him grow/develop. She says she can't imagine not being with him =(
My wife makes about $80k gross a year. So her contribution to the family finances is significant.
I've crunched the numbers and we could survive on my income, it's just that our financial goals and retirement will be pushed back. We were planning on buying an investment condo and if she doesn't go back to work, we will have to dip into the savings for the down payment for that and the investment condo would definitely not happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Liquid_o2
How does mat leave pay work? I know my wife said she gets a certain % from her work during the first 3 months. Then what? Does she transition to EI from the government after that?
With the cost of housing and the general cost of living continuing to go up, I get scared shitless of thinking about how we would manage.
We want to upgrade from our 1 bedroom + den in the next few years, but may have a kid first and wait it out in our place. Everyone tells me you can make do until they are about 2 years old and then they need their own bedroom.
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For most people, mat leave pay is the same as EI pay. We get the max amount which is like $515/week. You can spread that out over 12 months or 18 months.
My wifes company "tops up" her mat leave/ei pay because of a company benefit. I can't remember the exact amounts, but for the first three months of mat leave, they topped up her pay 100% and it decreased to about 60% until six months (something like that). After six months, we only get the EI pay, which is ~$515/week. I don't know a lot of people who get the "top up", but we were so lucky her company did that.