Since you're not going to get much but "my job went to India" - I'd take a look and see what you NEED. Do you have a family? $40-45K would be good ($20-22.50 per hour), especially if your spouse works. Take the highest you can get. Resume' experience and skills pay off.
I make $45K in LA, and let me tell you, supporting a family on that in SoCal is hard. We pay almost $1000 for a one bedroom apartment in a safe (but not luxurious) neighborhood, where my wife and I live with our toddler and our infant. Things are tight out here; I had to move from San Diego to get this job, and one of my co-workers moved from Silicon Valley. The salary range actually topped out at $40K but the wanted the skillset I was bringing to the table badly enough to come up the extra five. Asking
Think about this for a second. $45K is pre-tax. Take away social "security" tax, state tax, federal tax and with luck $30K remains. Now take away $12K for rent, that leaves 18K. Per month, that is $1500. Now take away food, clothes, medical bill, and maybe a car payment and gas, and there isn't a lot of wiggle room.
The taxes aren't quite that bad, if only because the upside of not making a lot is that the dependent deductions you get with two adults and two children living on $45K help cut your taxes a good bit. When our kids are old enough to be in school my wife will probably go back to work and that will give us a lot of wiggle room because we will save and invest all of her salary, or nearly all. Right now it wouldn't be terribly cost effective to have her work only to pour the majority of her income straight into daycare, while losing a lot of our tax advantage - even if we wanted to do that to our kids, which we don't.
Our 17-month old can read and write some of the alphabet already, has a vocabulary like kids at least six months older than she is, and has memorized and can sing a few children's songs already. Somehow, I don't think she would be at that level if she were going to daycare instead of being with her mother all day. When she's old enough for pre-school, we may send her there. On the other hand, my wife teaches her so well that it may not be worth it. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
I don't know a good rate... (Score:5, Funny)
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Our 17-month old can read and write some of the alphabet already, has a vocabulary like kids at least six months older than she is, and has memorized and can sing a few children's songs already. Somehow, I don't think she would be at that level if she were going to daycare instead of being with her mother all day. When she's old enough for pre-school, we may send her there. On the other hand, my wife teaches her so well that it may not be worth it. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.