Last night I finally submitted all our forms for various and sundry child subsidies we are entitled to now that we have procreated. I don't know how it works, but here we get one subsidy, a pittance (or maybe more accurately a royalty?) for having produced a future tax payer. Also because both OH and I pay income taxes - aka we work - and we have to send the munchkin to daycare, we get a childcare subsidy. Not really sure why it works this way rather than just subsidizing the childcare facilities themselves, but anyways, it is all based on a complex combination of factors including our pay and how much we work.
To give you an idea: baby daycare is regulated by the government (pretty much everything is here!) price as well as qualifications of the employees. Probably a bunch of other stuff too I don't know about. We send munchkin three times a week for a full day. For the month we pay about 900 EUR. If you have two children, you would pay 1800... and so on. So it's a big expense on top of all our glorious income tax. We are lucky, we are foreigners who both have a tax break- not eternally but for now it makes it that I pay roughly what I paid in the US for taxes.
I know, probably too much detail but I'm recording it as much for your general benefit as for my records should I want to know all this crap in the future. You are probably thinking, why have there been no baby pictures all week? Well my friends, there is a photo drought until our local photographer beats his current addiction, a video game (sadly not the one I gifted him for Xmas). I enjoy watching video games to a degree but this game is a bit repetitive. Also it is very difficult and involves a lot of dying. And then repeating the level unless you die again. Then doing the level again until you die, then repeating it again... You get the idea. On top of this, as one would naturally naturally expect, after about the 7th time of getting killed the player gets a bit annoyed. This at least varies things up a bit in terms of user-provided sound track, which increases with swearing as the number of times dead increases.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed he beats the game tonight.*
*to be fair, he is totally enjoying the game! In that sense this is probably one of the best value-for-plays we have ever bought so I should stop my complaining
To give you an idea: baby daycare is regulated by the government (pretty much everything is here!) price as well as qualifications of the employees. Probably a bunch of other stuff too I don't know about. We send munchkin three times a week for a full day. For the month we pay about 900 EUR. If you have two children, you would pay 1800... and so on. So it's a big expense on top of all our glorious income tax. We are lucky, we are foreigners who both have a tax break- not eternally but for now it makes it that I pay roughly what I paid in the US for taxes.
I know, probably too much detail but I'm recording it as much for your general benefit as for my records should I want to know all this crap in the future. You are probably thinking, why have there been no baby pictures all week? Well my friends, there is a photo drought until our local photographer beats his current addiction, a video game (sadly not the one I gifted him for Xmas). I enjoy watching video games to a degree but this game is a bit repetitive. Also it is very difficult and involves a lot of dying. And then repeating the level unless you die again. Then doing the level again until you die, then repeating it again... You get the idea. On top of this, as one would naturally naturally expect, after about the 7th time of getting killed the player gets a bit annoyed. This at least varies things up a bit in terms of user-provided sound track, which increases with swearing as the number of times dead increases.
Let's all keep our fingers crossed he beats the game tonight.*
*to be fair, he is totally enjoying the game! In that sense this is probably one of the best value-for-plays we have ever bought so I should stop my complaining
2 comments:
I beat it :)
Good for you Rob!! Games are so addicting to me....I don't even have a gaming system and probably should never get one.
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