Valued Oriented ...err Grassroots Dad's - Learn Me Childcare Costs

In reply to pheller :

In the interests of full disclosure everybody's experience will differ.  Rural and southern costs will be cheaper than urban and Northern costs.  With Southern California costs being among the highest in the nation. 

The higher the income the greater the costs of raising your kid to 18.  After trying various child care arrangements We had a live in mother for our two kids  and gave her a car to use and paid all of her expenses.  

In the evening when my wife was home she took care of her two children and our two children when ever  the live in mother went to college.  

Having a large home allowed us that luxury but clearly it’s not for everyone.  We were some distance from any family member. They had their own children and lives to live so the least expensive option wasn’t available to us. 

In reply to pheller :

In the interests of full disclosure everybody's experience will differ.  Rural and southern costs will be cheaper than urban and Northern costs.  

The higher the income the greater the costs of raising your kid to 18.  After trying various child care arrangements We had a live in mother for our two kids  and gave her a car to use and paid all of her expenses.  

In the evening when my wife was home she took care of her two children and our two children when ever  the live in mother went to college.  

Having a large home allowed us that luxury but clearly it’s not for everyone.  

I disagree with SVrex in holding off on looking until your baby arrives. Look now and look hard. Even if you're not sure what you want to go with, the daycare centers where I live sometimes have multi-year waits. Sitters are hard to come by, especially good ones. Heck, the local YMCA daycare when we moved to town had a two year waiting list, no joke. 

In reply to Erich :

I think the better way to put this is to educate your self in the options out there.  Knowing your options is a huge part of problem solving. 

Yup, looking now for part time daycare for our three month old. Finding lots of 1-2 yr wait lists here in Milwaukee... Which isn't rural but also isn't NYC, etc.  The earlier you figure something out, the better.

I agree that you should educate yourself on all the options, and daycare isn't for everyone, just as staying at home isn't. But staying at home is always available, never a waitlist. If you're even considering a daycare, shopping early and getting on the wait lists is essential. Can always back out later if you decide it's not the right choice for your family. 

Thanks for the info on sitter costs. 

Next we'll investigate daycare. 

Erich said:

I disagree with SVrex in holding off on looking until your baby arrives. Look now and look hard. Even if you're not sure what you want to go with, the daycare centers where I live sometimes have multi-year waits. Sitters are hard to come by, especially good ones. Heck, the local YMCA daycare when we moved to town had a two year waiting list, no joke. 

You're right. 

I didn't mean to say hold off looking... it's never too early to research stuff like this. 

What I meant was to be open to the fact that things are gonna be different, and to make sure the biggest priorities are being met. 

Just inquired with a woman who runs a licensed daycare down the street from me. She's far cheaper than paying any single sitter even minimum wage. She doesn't have many kids she sits (so her house isn't packed full of kids), and has a few of her own. If all in-home daycares are as cheap as her, or even more expensive by a few hundred bucks, that'll definitely be the way to go. 

I'm a product of spending nearly my entire childhood being raised by babysitters and daycares, due to my parents both needing to work, and then divorcing when I was 10. I am far more close to my mother than my friends who had stay-at-home Moms, this despite my mom being 20 years older than all my friends parents. 

I've got no issues with day-care, in that regard. 

Some things I've found helpful in checking out daycares - what is the caregiver-per-child ratio that they follow for a given age group? What kind of certification do they have? What kind of curriculum do they use for pre-K? Do they have outdoor activities available and use them daily when appropriate? How do they handle special diet needs? How do they track and communicate your child's daily issues and activities?

frenchyd said:

In reply to pheller :

Congratulations you’re about to spend over $200,000 on raising a kid to 18. Good news? It doesn’t stop there.  Your kid will want college or something to get it ready for the workforce.  It will needs emergency loans and other financial help. Not to mention you will buy birthday presents etc the rest of your life.  

 As you approach retirement you’ll hope to hang onto things like your house and car etc with the money you set aside during your working life.  

The goal aside from paying for your funeral  and other final costs will be to leave something behind  for them

 

 

Amen to all the above. The financial reality is a big part of what kept us to one kid. To make you feel even worse, my Father in Law retired solely because he wanted to do the daycare. This involved 4 half hour drives to collect and drop off the little monster.

Kid is 24 and graduated from University now...but to this day, when the Wife-unit ask me what we should get her dad for his birthday, I tell her "Porsche and a Mistress " The man has earned it and thanks to him we could afford it."

My daughter will not be surprised to read a will that declares: " Being of sound mind and body...I spent it all on car parts and beer"

I was going to be perfectly happy with a child count of zero. Purely selfish reasons along with the  cliche "nobody who likes kids would ever want to bring one into this E36 M3-show we call society"   The wife had the bio-clock thing going and admits that it played a big part in her thought process.  I advocate skipping the delivery bit, but once I got over the shock of standing in front of my house with a baby carrier in my hand and thinking "What the berkeley am I going to do now", I can not imagine life without a child. My observation is that the first two or three years are the formative years, after that,the mold is cast and  you are pretty much along for the ride.

Pete

For those with one kid: did your kids turn out horribly? Were they selfish nightmares who continue to think only about themselves, are socially inept, and so loud and obnoxious they don't have any friends? 

(I'm an only child)

pheller said:

For those with one kid: did your kids turn out horribly? Were they selfish nightmares who continue to think only about themselves, are socially inept, and so loud and obnoxious they don't have any friends? 

 

(I'm an only child)

Quite the opposite. Self confident, even tempered woman-child who appreciates the joys and ironies of the world as they come at her.She neither dispenses not tolerates drama unless it is me and the car projects!

Pete

pheller said:

For those with one kid: did your kids turn out horribly? Were they selfish nightmares who continue to think only about themselves, are socially inept, and so loud and obnoxious they don't have any friends? 

 

(I'm an only child)

I firmly believe nature is the predominant force in a child, with nurture just there to round off the sharp edges.  I have two girls raised pretty much the same, four years apart, now 23 and 27.  Both intelligent, hard working, self sufficient, but other than that, their characters are completely different.

One or six kids, as long as they learn what you consider to be proper behavior by the time they are eight or so, they should be reasonably ok. Any parenting done after that age is just keeping them alive until their brains start to function and their hormones stabilize.  I am also a proponent of "Lead by example".  If you want a certain behavior out of your kid, do that behavior yourself.

I was also a daycare kid, no problems with it.  In fact, I think I got to do a lot more than I would have been able to if I had a stay at home parent.  I feel the same about my son (currently 2) 

Erich said:

Some things I've found helpful in checking out daycares - what is the caregiver-per-child ratio that they follow for a given age group? What kind of certification do they have? What kind of curriculum do they use for pre-K? Do they have outdoor activities available and use them daily when appropriate? How do they handle special diet needs? How do they track and communicate your child's daily issues and activities?

+1 to all of this.  Also, scheduling.  How much screen time is allowed?  How much turnover do they have?

In reply to NOHOME :

I freely admit to this day I don’t know if I raised my kids right.  

I felt it was my duty to provide as well as possible for them and I did so by putting my nose to the grindstone and shoulder to the wheel.  14-18 hours days were normal for me and I never screwed around.   I was frugal and tried very hard not to waste anything.  

While I had weekends with them, during the week  I was always on the road before they woke up and only rarely got home before they got in bed. 

NOHOME said:

I advocate skipping the delivery bit...

Personally, I wouldn't have missed it for the world...Not that I would have lived to tell about it if I had.

Back on the topic of child care costs... It's simply ridiculous.  If you don't have retired family nearby, there is no genuinely affordable way to do it...Especially in this two-incomes-to-be-middle-class world we live in. It's just something you have to accept, unfortunately.  We experienced a friendly acquaintance bringing their kid with them to our house for 'cheap', and a daycare center for 'not-cheap'.  Ultimately we found ourselves splitting the difference with an in-home daycare, that kind of blends the attributes (pros and cons) between the two extremes.

Facing the same things myself, expecting our first mid-summer.

Trouble we have is that we both commute to the same office that is about an hour and fifteen minutes from home. We both made decent livings, though wife has low satisfaction as its not her chosen field. 

Not sure if we could make finances work if she decided to be stay at home.  

Need to get looking at daycares like yesterday, but have been sidetracked with recovering from a health problem myself (herniated disc which required surgery)

The mother in law (who teaches daycare at a YMCA) seems to be advocating for one of the "in someones home" types over the more mainstream ones as they actually have stricter requirements it seems.  

much more research to do. 

Trying to get over the "not thinking about it because it will just freak me out" thing.

Make sure that daycare places you are considering are licensed and that the staff has the appropriate certifications. Thinks like cpr and basic first aid. Questions that can be uncomfortable to ask especially to the nice lady taking care of kids in her home. 

My daughter took cpr, basic first aid and a couple courses in child care when she was in her teens in highschool. All certificate courses. When the word got around she was in high demand and charged accordingly.  

Apexcarver said:

Facing the same things myself, expecting our first mid-summer.

Trouble we have is that we both commute to the same office that is about an hour and fifteen minutes from home. We both made decent livings, though wife has low satisfaction as its not her chosen field. 

 

Not sure if we could make finances work if she decided to be stay at home.  

Honestly, I'm not sure how most people in the DC area do it.  The cost is crippling, and when combined with a tough commute, it just raises your daily stress to 11.  Ever seen what a daycare charges for late pickup?  That + Metro issues or DC traffic = heart attack.

I know this post isn't all that helpful, and the last think you probably want to hear as a suggestion is "move to a new area".

I'm so thankful we aren't dealing with that.  A 15-20 minute commute is enough of a pain.  Although if things got bad, its certainly affordable to buy a place within walking distance of my wife's work and the kids daycare... I just have to give up anything resembling a garage. 

The crazy late fees are because parents would start being later and later taking advantage of the service. The daycare in my former town was something like $5 for every minute you were late. 

I asked about it and before they started that policy parents were slowly being 30 or even 45 min late on a regular basis. The parents were taking advantage of the childcare workers. The child care people could not just leave at closing and just leave the kids. So being it was a rather affluent town they made the fee for being late crazy high now. But with people that make well in to the 200k income you have to get there attention somehow. 

Yep, IIRC the fee for being late beyond closing time at my place is $2/ minute paid in cash on the spot to the worker stuck with your kid.  Not positive, never even close to having to pay it.

Here's what we did:

My wife had never made more than $15/hour at the time my daughter was born (was still in grad school).  So babysitter made no sense financially, it would have been a loss.  She was (and wanted to be) a stay at home mom for the first 3 years.  Just after my daughter turned 3, we started sending her to half-day pre-school 5 days a week largely so mom remained sane.  $100/week and the kid LOVED it.  At this point my wife went back to school for an accelerated masters program.  When she transitioned to student teaching full time to complete the degree, we shifted our daughter to full day pre-school at age 5 (her birthday just missed the kindergarten cutoff) which is now about $800 a month and that hurt a bit on one income.  Now my wife has just started working a real salaried position, and next fall the $800/mo preschool nut will be replaced by public school kindergarten.

A few things worked in our favor, a few did not.  We have no local non-senile grandparents to help at all.  Money isn't great, though it is largely because we elected to not give up things like autocross and horses.  But my job is 15 minutes from home and preschool is 2 minutes from work.  I also have the flexibility to do the preschool dropoffs, pickups, deal with snow days, illnesses, after school activities, etc.  Or, in the early days, to bail and take a half-day because my wife needed a day off from baby 24/7.  The flexibility of my job also accommodated my wife's school schedule and now her rigid work schedule.  Today I'm taking a short lunch to leave early and bring the kid to ballet practice that starts at 5.

DC area:  My brother-in-law lives there with his wife and now 4 kids.  They picked up a full time nanny with the arrival of kid #2.  The nanny has 2 kids of her own, and there's an entire support network/community of those nannies in that area.  When we all go on a massive family vacation to the outer banks every other year, the nanny, her husband, and two nanny in-laws and the kids THEY nanny come also because it's one massive family at that point.  Kinda cool...but when you live in a million dollar house you can afford to pay someone $50k/year to pretty much live in that house 12 hours a day.

We tryed family but that only worked so long. We ended up using a legal in home daycare for our kids for a few years. My best advice is find one were there active with the kids, alot of the options we looked at were basically women who planted your kid in front of a tv and did nothing educational or outdoors. My wife and I are now on seperate shifts so aside from overlap in school delays we no longer deal with this and its alot easier.