What's your Mom worth?

Did you ever stop to think what a hard-working stay-at-home Mom should be earning if she were paid for her labors? Salary.com did, and they tallied the regular pay and overtime to come up with a figure of $131,471. To arrive at that number, they looked at the various roles a Mom plays and the cost of those tasks if they were purchased on the open market. They took an average of seven job responsbibilites, from day-care teacher and cook to CEO and nurse, to arrive at a 40-hour base-pay of $43,461. Add another $88,009 for 60-hours of overtime and voila. But this doesn't factor in the 24-hour-a-day on-call nature of the work, either.

The market value of a stay-at-home Mom? $132,000, or thereabouts. The real value of a woman who raises seven kids with no pay? Priceless - thanks, Mom!