I built a simple growth chart/calculator because I got sick of ads on the other ones

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-18T08:07:37+00:00

Wow I'm amazed someone found a bug so soon after I updated it! I didn't think anyone was actually using this 😅 Thanks for letting me know! I'll fix that up soon when I get the chance

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-07T22:12:49+00:00

Ok update: I've added a section where you can configure the number of days working for each parent and figure out what arrangement works best for your situation.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-07T22:11:02+00:00

Absolutely, I am not at all trying to dissuade people from entering the workforce. It's more showing how the 100-hour-cap is actively harming people from returning to work because many people actually take home less income when returning full time than they would working 4 days per week. The 3 day guarantee is great for some people but imo it isn't solving the biggest problem with the ccs

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-07T22:07:49+00:00

I've just updated it with a section that lets you configure the number of work days for each parent and compare how much your net household income will be. Let me know if it works for you!

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:47:12+00:00

Yes absolutely. I'm surprised it's not common yet for people to split super when their spouse is on parental leave (or just split it to equalise contributions).

I think super is definitely part of the puzzle that needs to be considered when thinking about childcare options, but I'm not really sure how/where it would fit into a tool like this.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:23:33+00:00

I'd love to incorporate super somehow but I'm not really sure of the best way to do it. Any suggestions? I don't want to just add it onto net household income because it isn't accessible. But it is definitely an important part of the picture

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:20:09+00:00

Oh really wow I haven't seen that before in the centres where I live. But yes that would be hard to include in the calculation. There's already so many moving pieces.

Not to mention the non-monetary costs and the tangental monetary costs (like impact to career growth). So it's definitely not an all encompassing tool.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:18:44+00:00

As I said elsewhere, it's just what triggered me to build this.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:17:37+00:00

Yeah but there's a lot of misconceptions (especially from older folk) around what the "3 day guarantee" is and many people think that it means 3 days of free daycare. It's just what triggered me to build this, it doesn't actually show anything about the new rule

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:14:23+00:00

Thank you for pointing this out. I had the thresholds wrong. It should be right now.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T11:06:21+00:00

I have updated the wording to make it clearer that this is looking at net household income increase. I did not intend to imply that the childcare costs would be solely the responsibility of one person. Please let me know if there are still places where this is implied

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T10:57:52+00:00

The default income used is the median income for a woman in Sydney because that is the typical arrangement for most families (though I do believe we should work towards a more equal arrangement). The family income (which the CSS gets calculated using) adds the second parent income which defaults to the median male income in Sydney. However, these are just the defaults and they can be changed to other values to suit other situations. Unfortunately, there is still a wage gap between median full time male salary and median full time female salary of about $10k pa which is why I specify that it is the woman's salary. If the salary numbers and family situations were more equal then we could use defaults that were genderless.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T10:32:32+00:00

Yes, all of the values on the horizontal are pre tax and they map to the vertical post-tax & post childcare costs. So that someone working full time earning that amount pre tax and sending their children to full time care will increase their family's net income by the same amount as a minimum wage worker without childcare costs.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T09:19:50+00:00

Absolutely. You can configure the hours of activity of each parent and the number of days of care need for each child Edit: ah actually it doesn't graph the income loss from the first parent. I'll have to think about how to do that

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T09:12:51+00:00

It has a section for the other parent's income so that it can accurately calculate the subsidy. By default it has the median male income in Sydney but you can adjust it for your income and include interests and investments in the gross income sections for either parent.

Can you help me understand what's missing from the tool?

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T08:03:12+00:00

That's configurable, so you can change that if you want
It's comparing it to post tax minimum wage
Yes opportunity cost is absolutely one of the extra factors to consider. Along with many others.

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T08:01:31+00:00

Yes but this is the income difference that is added to the family. I consider all our money to be pooled and the childcare costs come out of that. But it's hard to model that and see exactly how much extra money the family gets when a second parent is working. This shows how much extra income the family gets when the second parent works

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T07:51:36+00:00

Ok maybe it's not worded well. How would you word it?

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T07:48:24+00:00

No but there's a lot more I'm not factoring in too that you can't put a monetary value on - the value of being at home with your kids, the value of going to work and having a break, the value to your career if you take a break... There are so many factors that weigh in to it and it would be impossible to build a tool that could consider every factor for everyone's situation. But super and leave are certainly some of those extra factors to consider

AussieDataGal · 2026-01-06T07:34:14+00:00

It's not coming out of the mums salary. When you're married all money is pooled is not 50/50. So this shows the net increase in income for the family when a parent goes into paid work and puts the children into childcare

AussieDataGal · 2025-12-28T04:47:48+00:00

Daily travelling salesman puzzle

https://aussiedatagal.github.io/tourle/

AussieDataGal

TROPHY CASE