Is the Second Income Worth It?
A second wage is almost never a second wage. Childcare, tax and deductions, the fare or the fuel, the parking, the clothes, the bought lunches, the professional fees, the after-school club, and whatever help or subsidy quietly stops when the household income goes up — all of it comes out of the same pay packet, and households routinely find out two years in that the honest remainder was a fraction of the salary, or less than nothing. This works it out before the decision instead of after it. Enter the pay for the job you are considering and every cost that job creates, and it returns the net per year, per month, per paid hour, and per hour including the commute — because commuting time is genuinely spent — plus a full itemised breakdown that foots exactly, and the two break-even points: the hourly rate and the hours a week at which the year lands on zero. It does not answer the question in the title. It gives you the arithmetic and leaves the answer to you. No tax system and no benefit system is modelled here; every rate and every amount is one you type in yourself, because they vary by country, by year and by household, and a figure baked into this page would be confidently wrong for nearly everyone.
Try it now
Worked example
How it’s solved
Worked on the example above, step by step — follow along and you can do it on paper next time, no tool required.
- Start from gross pay for the job, converted to a yearly figure so everything is compared on the same basis.
- Subtract every cost the job creates that you would not otherwise have: childcare, the commute, tax and deductions, work clothing and food, other care, and anything you lose by earning more.
- What is left is the real gain. Divide it by the hours actually worked to get the true hourly figure.
- Then divide it again by the hours worked PLUS the hours commuting. That second number is usually the honest one, because commuting time is spent whether or not it is paid.
- Break-even runs the same arithmetic backwards: the hourly rate, or the number of hours, at which the gain reaches zero.
- This counts money only. Pension contributions, career progression, skills, sanity and time with a child are all real and none of them are in this arithmetic — which is why the tool gives you the figures and leaves the decision alone.
Learn the method
Inputs
- Pay for the job being considered $
32000 - …and that pay is
Per hour / Per week / Per month / Per year - Paid hours per week
37.5 - Working days per week
5 - Working weeks per year
46 - Children needing childcare
2 - Childcare cost, per child $
52 - …childcare cost is
Per working day / Per week / Per month / Per year - Childcare help you receive, total $
18 - Fare or fuel, per working day $
6.4 - Parking or tolls, per working day $
0 - Commute minutes per working day (both ways)
70 - Tax and deductions — enter
A percentage of gross / A fixed amount per year - …that percentage, or that amount
24 - Work costs — clothes, lunches, fees, kit $
45 - Other care — eldercare, pets, clubs $
0 - Benefits or subsidies lost by earning more $
0 - …those last three are
Per working day / Per week / Per month / Per year
Frequently asked
Why doesn't it know my tax rate?
Because there is no such thing as a rate this page could know. Tax, national insurance, social contributions, pension auto-enrolment and student-loan deductions differ by country, by year, by household and by the other income already in it. Rather than bake in a number that would be wrong for nearly everybody, the tool asks for the one figure you can get exactly: what actually comes off, either as a percentage or as a yearly amount. Take it from a payslip or an employer's estimate.
Why does it ask for childcare help as a number I enter?
Same reason. Employer schemes, government contributions, tax-free arrangements and funded-hours entitlements exist in different shapes in different places and change most years. This tool models none of them and claims to model none of them — it subtracts the amount you tell it you receive.
Why count commuting time in the hourly figure?
Because that time is spent whether or not it is paid. Showing only the per-paid-hour figure quietly hides an hour or two a day. The tool prints both and the gap between them, and the gap is often the most revealing number on the page.
Does the breakdown always add up?
Yes, and that is deliberate. Every annual line is rounded to the whole cent once, half away from zero, at the moment it is derived — and the total is the sum of exactly the lines printed, not a separately-computed figure. Tools that round the total independently of the lines are off by a cent often enough to make people distrust the whole page.
What is the break-even hourly rate?
The pay rate at which the year nets exactly zero, holding every cost at what you entered. Below it the job costs more than it pays; above it there is something left. It is rounded up to the next cent, because a rate rounded down would sit just under zero.
If I worked fewer hours, wouldn't childcare drop too?
Usually, yes — and the break-even hours figure does not assume it. It solves for hours at the rate you gave with every cost held fixed, which is the conservative reading. If shorter hours would genuinely cut your childcare or travel, run the tool again with the lower costs.
Does it tell me whether to take the job?
No, and it will not. It counts money, and only the money you entered. Pension contributions, career progression, skills, professional standing, the value of staying in the workforce, sanity, and time with a child are all real, and not one of them is in this arithmetic.
Are the starting numbers on this page realistic?
No. They are invented so the page can show a working calculation. They are not typical, benchmark or recommended figures, and this tool makes no claim about what any of them normally are.