Cornhill Direct Is Counting The Cost Of Household Family Chores

Nov. 24, 2008 - PRLog -- Are you overworked and underpaid? And that’s before you even get out of the house?
The average British family spends 56 hours, or the equivalent of over two days, every week doing household chores, according to the results of a survey conducted by Cornhill Direct Family Home Insurance.   And the cost of that work, if we were paid at market rates to do it, amounts to an average of £19,300 per family, per year or over £400billion for the UK ‘household economy’ as a whole.

The survey of 1000 families was carried out to mark the launch of a new e-book from Cornhill Direct, who offer 5 star home insurance, which provides financial advice on how to manage the family budget.  And using official wage data from the Office for National Statistics, it’s been possible to prove just how much all that free hard work is actually worth.  Families with kids have the greatest load, carrying out an average of 73 hours of household tasks per week; that’s over 65% of waking hours spent on domestic jobs with an equivalent salary of £25,000 per year.  

Commenting on the survey, personal finance expert and TV presenter Jasmine Birtles, from moneymagpie.com, said, “There is a huge hidden economy out there that is largely unacknowledged.  Every time someone does the washing up, helps out a family member with a bit of babysitting, or picks up someone's dirty socks from the bathroom floor – they're contributing to their family's household economy.  If we didn't do it we'd have to pay someone else to and by placing a monetary value on the work it’s possible to demonstrate more clearly how much work we all do for our families for free.”

According to the survey, our most hated chore is ironing with four in ten saying that this is the job they dislike the most, but perhaps surprisingly, as a nation we prefer vacuuming to gardening.  And fuelling the age old argument about who does the most around the house, 74% of the women reckon they alone contributed most to the household tasks but only 48% of their male partners agreed.  

So that you can work out who is the most valuable member of your family, Cornhill Direct has created a ‘household economy’ calculator found at http://www.cornhilldirect.co.uk/home-economy-calculator.asp. Cornhill Direct’s online marketing controller, Marie Doherty explains how it works, “We thought it would be fun to help people calculate the true value of all the domestic jobs they do.  If you need some ammunition to get some other family members to pull their weight or if you just want to see how much all your hard work is worth, the calculator will reveal all.”

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About Cornhill Direct Insurance: Cornhill Direct is part of Allianz Insurance plc, one of the largest general insurers in the UK. Cornhill Direct is a well established and experienced UK insurance brand providing quality car and home insurance products.