COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — One of new parents' biggest financial decisions is how to budget for children. Not how much to spend on the kids but how much it will cost for day care and home upkeep while both parents keep working.

Or is it worth having one parent stay home?

It may not be a shock to cut one salary when you do the math and find that a stay-at-home mom can be more cost-effective than a working mom. By having one parent stay home, you reduce expenses of day care, commuting, work clothes and a few minor costs — such as feeling pressured to buy a co-workers' raffle tickets. All that easily could add up to hundreds of dollars a week.

But the savings provided by a stay-at-home parent is a lot more than that, according to one survey.

Try $138,095.

Salary.com, a service that tallies average salaries by occupation, surveyed 40,000 mothers to determine the time they spend performing 10 typical job functions, such as day care teacher, cook, housekeeper and taxi driver. The average pay for those jobs, if someone else was hired for them, equaled $138,095 when you include overtime pay.