One of new parents’ biggest financial decisions is how to budget for children. Not how much to spend on the kids but how much it will cost for day care and home upkeep while both parents keep working.

Or is it worth having one parent stay home?

It may not be a shock to cut one salary when you do the math and find that a stayat-home mom can be more cost-effective than a working mom. By having one parent stay home, you reduce expenses of day care, commuting, work clothes and a few minor costs — such as feeling pressured to buy co-workers’ raffle tickets. All that easily could add up to hundreds of dollars a week.

But the savings provided by a stay-at-home parent is a lot more than that, according to one survey.

Try $138,095.

Salary.com, a service that tallies average salaries by occupation, surveyed 40,000 mothers to determine the time they spend performing 10 typical job functions, such as day care teacher, cook, housekeeper and taxi driver. The average pay for those jobs, if someone else was hired for them, equaled $138,095 when you include overtime pay.

“Mom works multiple jobs and rarely gets a break from the action, working an average of 52 hours of overtime,” said Bill Coleman of Salary.com.

According to the Salary.com survey, stay-athome moms work a 92-hour “workweek” — more than half is overtime.

With Mother’s Day this Sunday, dads and kids have an opportunity to show stay-at-home mom how much she is valued. Visit http://mom.salary.com and create a “mom paycheck” with the Web site’s Mom Salary Wizard. The online tool lets you enter mom’s job functions and then it calculates the salary based on hours worked and averages for the city she lives in.

Then print out the pay stub and serve with breakfast in bed.

PROTECTING VALUE OF MOM

Now that you know the value of a stay-athome mom, protecting that value becomes more important.

The death of a stay-at-home mom is not only devastating emotionally but financially, causing hardship on the now-single parent who faces paying to replace the lost parenting duties.

An easy solution overlooked is life insurance. We think of it as replacing lost income when the breadwinner dies. But insurance on a stay-athome mom offers relief for the surviving dad by providing money to pay for day care and other skills mom had provided.

A simple term insurance policy would fill this void and is most affordable. A 35-year-old nonsmoking mom would pay about $300 a year for a 20-year policy. Make sure the length of the policy covers the time the children are in school or will need parental support.

While you’re at it, check the beneficiary designations on all family accounts, from banks to retirement. Making a spouse the primary beneficiary, and children contingents, will save time and hassle in transferring those funds to survivors.

Don’t overlook property titles. A house or car titled only in dad’s name at his death will go through probate (meaning the court could give it to someone else who makes a claim) instead of being automatically transferred to a surviving co-owner (mom) on the title.

Mom deserves relief beyond a day off this Mother’s Day, and that is accomplished with financial housekeeping.

Contact the writer: dan.serra@gazette.com