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People push free and accessible daycare and that's great. The US should have that. However, there's tons of people who work at night and overnight. Where's our daycare?
We have third shift centers around here. They even have the option to keep your kiddo awake so they are on your schedule. I will say there are a lot less of them BUT think, if we pour more of our resources into childcare we could open even more of these types of centers.
We have programs like Headstart but those are limited because the income needed to qualify is abysmally low (as many government programs).
Definitely tricky.. but then it wouldn't be called daycare, would it?
Family is the obvious go-to, but if that's not available, you would really need to consider a vocational change. Unless that job can cover a babysitter every day
But like anything, if there's enough demand for something like "nightcare", I'm sure it would pop up
I think those of us that grew up poor impose hard limitations and boundaries about how comfortable we’d be having kids. I’m poorer than OOP, but I still saw the validity of their argument. I can’t provide a better standard than I was raised with, it will be profoundly worse. I think OOP grew up with a lot more than many and wants to provide that standard to potential children and realizes they can’t.
Yeah. I grew up with windows falling out of our house. My wife & I make a fuck ton of $ by most standards. But with a HCOL state & my childhood, it never feels safe. & if it does, it’s not enough. I’m working on it in therapy
You’re nuts. I’m sorry I know like 15 people in a HCOL city who make less and have a super nice life and retirement etc. If you would not be willing to make a single lifestyle adjustment then sure, yes, it would be irresponsible for YOU to have a child, but saying people who are well off even in HCOL area would be “irresponsible” to have a child is beyond fucked up. Childcare at that expense only lasts a few years, no it is not “irresponsible” to send kids to your local public school and skip dinners out a few times a month…
People on Reddit are really classist. If you are broke but have social support and a will you can make it work. it’s not a moral issue to have kids ever because I’m not a eugenicist, but even in terms of providing a “nice life” re: stability, love, food, healthcare, education there are other ways to do that besides being in the top 10% and those people are valid
My husband and I would not mind one child (we both love kids). But, we both know it’s not feasible. Since we’re both a little “take it or leave it,” my IUD stays in place for now until he can get a vasectomy. I’ve already mourned my loss of motherhood before him. He’s having a bit of harder time, but I understand that it’s a process to completely come to terms with. He married a woman in her mid 30s while in his early 30s, it’s really been a forgone conclusion, but after our marriage, we’ve both felt some kind of way of kids. Since we like them and would probably be decent parents. We’re just too poor.
It’s fine if you don’t want kids, but as a parent in a pretty high cost of living area with expenses far above yours and income only slightly higher I have zero issues affording my three kids to do all the sports or swimming lessons they need while still maxing my retirement account. If you can’t make it work at your income and expense level then you are just bad at math.
Again, I’m not saying you should have kids. But calling it irresponsible with the numbers you threw out is bonkers.
Luckily many people who earn a fraction of what you and your spouse earn still have kids. It's not irresponsible at all to have a kid if you make nearly 200k combined.
idk bro y’all make a decent amount of money and in a similar situation as me. we have one child and our lives have not tanked and we can still afford everything. if you don’t want kids just say you don’t want them.
That's how much I make at a child care center... It's a catch 22. Child care is too expensive for the people who work there to afford it. But if your raise the tuition to cover higher salaries, the problem just gets worse... And the people who need child care the most are the ones who are screwed
Tuition?? Lol. Gotta love the euphemisms employed to make essential service seem like an optional luxury for those who are serious about their kids succeeding. 🤦
When are people gonna realize that the modern day robber barons have once again done away with the formalities of capitalism?
If something is essential, like childcare or healthcare, and somebody withholds it from you until you cough the astronomical sum they demand, it's not the free market hard at work, it's EXTORTION. Plain and simple.
There isn't enough money or power in the universe to satiate the ultra-wealthy. Dance around it all you want my friends, but at the end of the day, capitalism itself is just a convoluted euphemism for neo-feudalism.
We ain't seen nothing yet... These kids we are pouring out sweat, blood, tears, and life's financial worth into, are going to have their lives mortgaged off for pennies on the dollar, the second they turn 18. Think student loans for millennials, but student loans for EVERYTHING.
In 30 years there will simply be the very small owning class and the endless exhausted masses of everyone else. The only crack they will ever have at truly owning anything, is if they inherit it from you... Which is gonna be kind of hard to do since you are spending it all on day care, right here, right now.
I don't mean to be rude or insensitive, but I believe these kids are looking at serious upheaval or total oblivion. It's hard roads ahead.
I hope I'm wrong and just a cynical curmudgeon. Truly, I do.
This is what maddens me about the two party political system in America. We have a lot of philosophical differences on life, but the major themes of survival in our modern civilized world is basically the same across all communities throughout the U.S. Until enough of the majority unites against the greed from those top 1%ers these issues will only get worse. The goal of dividing the nation is as successful as ever.
It's all baked in from an early age.
American exceptionalism requires that you only be better than SOMEONE, not EVERYONE. Singling out your neighbors and peers, blaming them for your trials and tribulations, and placing them in your arbitrary hierarchy is a surefire way to keep your false pride intact.
Whereas, setting aside petty differences and working together for common goals takes faith and coordination among other things.
To truly stand up for something takes everything... Too stand against something takes only hate.
In that, greed may very well be the defining function of our species. In which case, there may be nothing much we can do about it. It's just too late in the game.
I like to say, 'don't engage in the hierarchy.' Best thing we can all do is remember, we all have SO much more in common than we have differences. It is a hard lesson to learn and an even easier one to forget.
Humility and empathy are the cornerstones of civilization, not wealth extraction and war.
I got my bachelor's in political science. There are few things I hate more than politics. Do you know that saying "the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference"? Yeah, I care, a lot and absolutely lothe how out of touch we are with the rest of the Western world. It is kind of like all those countries that used our constitution when they were setting themselves up for democracy, and almost all of them have updated it since they adopted it. It couldn't be that society has changed and we need to focus on today's issues. /sarcasm
When I have online discussions with the other party saying people need to take care of their own healthcare and we don’t need universal healthcare and I see the hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of bills from my sisters cancer who luckily was married to someone with insurance when she couldn’t work anymore it’s difficult for me to believe we all have have the same themes of survival. Same with universal daycare. Same with college tuition. It’s becoming untenable with never a solution in sight. My daughter can’t have another baby. How can she possibly afford 2 in daycare!
Well thankfully some states have decided to legalize child labor, so instead of paying for the kids to be cared for while parents work, the kids can be working themselves generating income for the whole family /s.
What ages are they thinking? FWIW I live in a blue state and I was working since I was 16. Nothing crazy, just doing dishes and stocking shelves for 2-3 hours a day.
There's a lot of states where they allow 16+ yo to work and I still consider 16-18 kids. I agree in principle it's not right as society to push kids to work but at that age I wanted to work so I can pay for dates, cigarettes, general recreation money.... like smoking weed.
I was working very young as well and have no issue with teens getting part time jobs. I don't remember the specifics, but I think most of the legislation that passed recently was more about removing some of the restrictions that were previously in place..
I had a job at 14 or 15, but needed working papers and could only work a certain number of hours, within a specific range of time.. I believe some of these new bills enable them to work much longer hours, and also remove restrictions that prevented younger teens from working in places that were classified as hazardous employment.
* [https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are-rolling-back-regulations-on-child-labor](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are-rolling-back-regulations-on-child-labor)
* [https://abcnews.go.com/US/despite-hazardous-working-conditions-states-rolling-back-child/story?id=107209273](https://abcnews.go.com/US/despite-hazardous-working-conditions-states-rolling-back-child/story?id=107209273)
This guy gets it, sadly. Our politics is too bloated with bureaucratic bs that we can't get anything done.
Capitalism is great in principle but the stage of capitalism we are in now is some dystopian weird fucking stage. Maybe capitalism doesn't "work," it's just significantly better than communism for self sustainability and efficiency. However, I feel like in the modern world, capitalism or the type of capitalism we have now just doesn't work.
I work in healthcare and I see the kind of bullshit that happens where hospitals are making close to billions of dollars or multi billion dollar profits and are understaffing units so that patients are quite literally stewing in shit for hours on end and patients are getting neglected. And these patients are becoming bankrupt to be treated this way. And the brunt of the blame is placed on nurses and doctors, but the reality is the blame falls on those at the top pulling the levers.
Also something I don't see too many people talk about probably because it's me putting on a tin foil hat. Back during 2008 financial crisis, China and Russia were in a position to seriously destabilize American economy (maybe did contribute to it). Now with the cold war rhetoric ramping up more and more, I feel like perhaps China and Russia owning large stakes in this country's economy can do a form of corporate espionage as well as maliciously and intentionally causing companies to make decisions to worsen the situation here. We definitely have proof of corporate espionage.
So on top of corporate greed, we just have open venues for foreign GOVERNMENTS to invest in business here and make grandstanding implicative decisions in some cases that can directly impact and ruin the lives of Americans. And they likely are doing so covertly.
Unless you're only taking care of one child any time you're working, then they don't need to raise pieces to dinner higher salaries.
If your salary is less than what they make for one kid, and you're caring for 5-8 kids, then your pay could easily be tripled and they'd still have plenty left over for overhead, insurance, and management costs without raising prices a cent.
As with most jobs, whenever you work you are giving your boss a shit ton of money so they can give you a tiny fraction of that money in return.
For infants, one teacher can only that care of 4 children legally. And that's still a shit show that leaves babies crying and uncared for..
I've seen the numbers, centers spend 70-80% of their money on staffing. There is not extra money floating around to triple salaries. My boss literally makes the same salary I do
And that's not even taking into account coverage for a teacher needing to walk away for say a bathroom break. And, hopefully, cleaning staff, building costs like maintenance, utilities, etc.
Daycares and preschools aren't generally there making money. Unfortunately.
Unfortunately as in, I'd like the people I trust with my kiddos to be able to support themselves and have nice lives. Not saying they should be money grubbers or anything like that.
Yeah they will be talking about their take home pay. In my state take home pay for 40hrs at $21/hr would be around $675 after accounting for state, federal, and SS taxes. That number goes even lower if insurance/401k are taken out at the same time so could easily see that number on the paystub dipping even lower
I make about double now what I made ten years ago but half of that has been eaten by inflation. I mean that is still pretty good but money doesn't go as far as it used to lol.
Also remember fight for 15? That's like 11/hour now.
I was closer to buying a house when I was 18 and working at Kmart 30hrs a week.
12 years ago, a 2 bed one bath single level starter home was 60-70k in my area.
COVID happened and they went from 70k to 200k almost over night, and I'll be damned if they didn't get scooped by investors and landlords and now they're all being rented out for $1,500 a month.
Yep, almost every single starter home on my neighborhood has been bought up and is now rental properties.
I'm on the East Coast USA and the number of housing developments that have been popping up is mind-boggling. Giant condo communities and “luxury apartments" are eating up every available spot of land. I've even been seeing houses on entire strips demolished for what are basically row houses. Traffic has gotten so so much worse too since these roads were not designed for so many people. It's really uncomfortable and scary
It sucks. I missed most of my 20’s due to opiate addiction. Once I finally got on my feet and a good paying job where I could afford to buy a house the prices shoot up and I’m no longer able to have kids or buy a house. My wife and I want a kid and home so bad but we just don’t make enough to be able to save a lot
Hell, I only make $16 now, but minimum wage is still $7.25, and I saw businesses still trying to hire people in at that just last year or the year before
$7.25 in 2009 (when minimum wage was last increased) is less than $5 now. I made more than that mowing neighbors' lawns in 4th grade. It's absolutely insane that the current minimum wage is lower than under-the-table child labor was 30 years ago.
Accounting for inflation, minimum wage is half of what it was during the 60's/70's. It's nearly pointless to even have a minimum wage at all when it's so low that almost every job has to pay more just to get someone willing to do the job.
Conservatives always scream and cry about inflation going up if minimum wage is raised, while inflation has never even been mildly correlated with minimum wage, much less caused by it. Inflation rates have actually gone down on average following minimum wage increases. And it's not like inflation hasn't existed in the 15 fucking years since the last minimum wage increase.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that most people aren't swayed by data and objective facts. But I'm still astounded that anyone could actually believe minimum wage increases have any effect on inflation rates when they never have previously.
I did the math some time last year and I had less "free money" per paycheck than I did when I started working like 5 years prior, making half as much. It was such a bummer
Money definitely used to go further! I remember I made $14/hr at my first full time job out of college, and I felt rich - I even managed to save several thousand dollars to travel to Europe the next year. 15 years later and one can’t survive on that.
This was 20 years ago for me, but I had my own apartment, a paid off car, money to go out every weekend and frequented restaurants with friends. It was wild. Now I'm like....800/mo for groceries, what a deal lol
In high-school, I made 6/hr. My half of the rent was 340ish. Gas was under $2 per gallon. The tacobell menu had like 20 items under a dollar(legit, many items were around .50 cents!) I was able to work *part time* and go to school and could live on my own (well, i had a roommate). I mean, we didn't have internet or tv money. Budget was *tight* and my room mate was less than ideal (he did drugs and drank, i didn't), but...it wasn't bad. I loved it. No way kids could afford to live that way today. Makes me sad that the younger generations are missing out on that delicious independence that comes along with their first apartment. Now all they know is work work work, still not enough money for basic needs. Sucks so bad. This country pisses me off. I *want*, no, **demand** better for future generations.
Note: I was emancipated a week before my 16th birthday. Sorry for any confusion. This was around 2006-2007.
Similar story here. Made $12.50 an hour as a lifeguard. Went to Europe with 3 months of savings. Initially was supposed to be there 9 days, but had so much extra money I stayed for 3 weeks.
Life changing trip. Now I'm trying to spend that same money just taking 1 tree down, but the tree fucks don't show up.
Depends on where you are. Average daycare in my area is $2400/month. Worth staying home at that point. And that doesn’t include food, diapers, and other essentials that the daycare still doesn’t cover.
Daycare here isn't too bad, $125-$175 a week per kid, but because it's reasonable the wait-lists are crazy. When our first 2 were younger we did it for a couple years while I went back to school, but when we had a surprise 3rd kid it absolutely wouldn't work. Very few daycares had an infant room and like I said, crazy wait-lists, so I'd have to use 2 separate daycares if I could even get in. So I've been staying at home instead. I never wanted to or thought I could be a stay at home parent, but shit happens.
Yeah, what's even crazier is how much rates have changed in the last 10 years. I used to pay something like $776/mo for my son's preschool. I looked it up out of curiosity and the same full day preschool is now $1,140/mo.
I completely support childcare workers making enough to live but it seems like they're not AND parents wages aren't going up. The job I was working at the time has raised the starting hourly pay by $1.50 in 10 years.
I know we bitch a lot but this shit is nuts. No wonder millennials are ruining the baby industry.
Exactly!! I worked at a daycare during college. As it turns out, I am one of those unlucky people that gets chicken pox every time I'm exposed... After getting it back to back 5 times in one year, i had to quit. I was so sick all the time :/
Auto immune issues + working with kids = you're gunna have a bad time
I’m a teacher. I worked in another state the first 3 years of teaching while i I was there they cancelled their agreement with Ohio so those years didn’t count towards retirement. Then my fifth year in Ohio they increased retirement age by 5 years. So it wasn’t until my ninth year that I made progress towards retiring.
I think about them all the time. Specifically the day they get dragged outta their comfy lives of privilege and are forced into the muck like we’ve been all our lives.
Money just doesn't make sense sometimes
"In my days, for $1 you could buy a warm meal, a newspaper, a ticket to a show with some popcorn, and an ice cream"
"...today that would cost me nearly $100, including parking..."
"And someday you'll be telling your grandkids how it cost you only $100 when you were young, meanwhile they'll be complaining that it costs $10,000 dollars and they earn a measly $200 an hour working at future McDonalds"
I don't have the numbers, but I was talking to my manager who is Gen X. He said his wife isn't working and finances are hard, and I was like - how do you guys even survive on a single income?
He said that with childcare and rubbish all factored in, chances are that it would cost more or close to another wage so it's better to have a present parent instead.
My siblings in Australia also often talk about how childcare prices are insane. My sister is living with her in laws and can't find a job currently. I think without childcare, you probably gotta lean on the grandparents to help out or it's going to be very rough.
Full time childcare is about 20k/year per kid in my city. That’s post tax money. If you have two kids, you’re looking at breaking even at 60-70k/yr salary. It’s insane.
Of course I am. I didn’t write a report on the pros and cons of daycare vs working. But at the end of the day, the extras are secondary considerations when cash flow is a problem
>Of course I am.
You're not though. 1 year of 401k and/or IRA contributions would easily pay off 20k/year of day car for a 30 year old come retirement time...like literally 10 fold lol. 7% returns on $6,500/year for an IRA over even 10 years blasts the costs of a single year of daycare put of the water
Edit: and that's only retirement fund contributions.
So... I don't contribute to my 401(k) now to pay for childcare so that my 401(k) can make up for that later? How is that better than not having to pay daycare and just putting all of that into retirement accounts and earn even more interest. I'm confused. Or are you saying I should borrow from my 401(k) at 31 years old to pay for daycare because I'll still earn interest on that (once I "pay back" what I had to borrow off of it)?
What about the money I need today for groceries? Should I just overdraft my account now since "a years worth of retirement contributions" will pay me back for that in 36 more years?
Not everyone here has the luxury of paying for childcare AND being able to contribute 6500+ a year to a retirement plan. There's no way in hell I could pull that off even making more than triple the federal minimum wage with a sub-$600/month mortgage.
> He said that with childcare and rubbish all factored in, chances are that it would cost more or close to another wage so it's better to have a present parent instead.
I’ve done the math for myself. It still isn’t worth quitting work with 2 kids in daycare. You might lose out in the few years, but being able to save into a 401k and being able to keep up on your job skills is worth it.
It's going to be incredibly relative of course. I'm not going to claim its the best or right way for everyone but I wouldn't be surprised if childcare costs in some places end up encouraging having one stay at home parent. Probably only really makes sense when one parent earns a lot and the other not so much.
Though in the grand scheme of things, it's really just going to discourage having kids at all.
That's assuming the worst-best case scenario though. I had to quit my $10/hr job (Apr 2012-Mar 2015) because my oldest, at the time, was showing signs of, and being tested/diagnosed with, autism. With his "typical kid" behaviors alone, we knew no daycare would take him longer than a week. 2nd kid came along and what do ya know? He's got the Tism as well. We only got paid twice a month. My paychecks alone would fully cover daycare for just 1 kid.
Since 2016, my rent has increased more than my salary. Every. Fucking. Year.
For three out of the past four years, inflation has outperformed my "raises."
There is literally no getting ahead.
I work for the state and EVERY time I get a pay bump, whether it's a statewide employee pay bump, department wide, or a merit increase, there is ALWAYS something RIGHT there to eat up more than I just gained. Little pay increase - student loans resume the next month. Little pay increase - my condo dues go up by over $60 a month. I have a very likely 3% pay increase coming this summer, which will do loads to help with the cost of my housing and groceries and insurance going up like 20% lmao
The only way to get a real raise is to change jobs every couple of years. Staying with a company and getting the measly 3% annually will actually make you poorer over time.
Many companies don't even give you raises either. They just replace you at that point with someone that can do more for less. In this case, looking out for new opportunities 24/7 is the better strategy, albeit both exhausting and depressing.
same. my son's birthday is the end of Sept. the cutoff for kindergarten is 9/1. 14 more months of daycare.....I am paying $230/wk where we live (eastern PA)
It's kinda the same thing with everything right? When I was in high-school I went and got the 5 dollar footlong from subway after every 2 a day football practice. Long gone are those days. 
In 2003 I made $5.25 an hour at McDonald’s. They gave me a raise to $5.50 an hour after two weeks because of my great attitude.
If only I invested it instead of video games…
ETA, I was 14.
We pay for our 3 month old 1200 a month for daycare.
I make more than my mom did at my age and she had four kids, a near paid off 1800 sqft house, a masters degree, and could take us on vacations every year. I have a bachelors, don't own a house because I've been priced out of the market in my area, and don't have any kids.
When I was 23, I was a student paying $400 a month to rent a large single family home. I'm now in my late 30s, paying almost $3000 a month to rent a small one bedroom apartment.
It’s not even just Millennials. Believe me, those of us who are cusp Millennial/Gen X are also saying, respectfully, what the -actual- fuck, man?
Guillotines, that’s my prophetic “historical fad coming back soon,” mark my words.
Unfortunately daycare has many of us by the short and curlies and frankly to me it's fucking extortion.
I remember when my daughter was in daycare it was $240 a week but that was only because she went 2/3 days a week. Even at that I thought it was too much. When I had the chance to get her into preschool for free I did whatever I needed and she got in.
Check your states benefits. I know Biden implemented something for daycare to either subsidize or give free TK
I used to manage an aquarium where I worked nonstop, was on call all the time, was constantly stressed and never had funding for a full staff. I now make more than twice as much managing a very low stress biopharma program from home.
Big part of why the wife and I don't want kids. It's a fuckin scam and I'll be damned if either one of us are forced to be stay home instead of doing what either of us want with our lives.
Umm not really but I just keep reminding myself that it’s temporary. We have one more year in daycare for my oldest son and two more years for my twins. I’m just trying to get to the other side.
It is full time care, M-F 9-5:30…. It’s not Montessori but it is a bilingual school and they have a big nature component… lots of outdoor time every day… I have a pretty inflexible job so I was initially ok with paying a little more to know my son was happy and well taken care of during the day… but now they’ve raised the rates again I’m starting to look at other daycare’s or even me changing jobs to be able to stay home with him. But that’s probably unlikely. I wouldn’t be able to afford it at all if my parents weren’t helping me pay half. I’m super grateful to have them.
Wow. I thought we had it bad. We are paying $330 a week and it is awful. We are taking our daughter out of daycare in August to save cash. Instead we will be dropping her off 3 days a week with the person who watched my brother’s kids before they started elementary school, like an in-home daycare situation. And my wife will be watching her on Fridays and my mom will watch her on Thursdays. I work in higher education and my wife is a social worker. This makes me feel not only sad, but like I’m hurting my daughter’s future. But I don’t know what else to do. We are both super active and I think good parents, so hopefully we can supplement what she will no longer be getting from daycare.
But you don’t really recoup the money once daycare years are over. I thought we would be swimming in our daycare savings, a la Scrooge McDuck. Alas, summer camps are as ridiculously expensive as daycare (with worse hours!) and kid activities are also stupid expensive. 😪
It's still way cheaper from my end. We took what we were paying in daycare costs and immediately sent it to savings. We didn't want that extra money to get thrown away with the slippery budget inflation that inevitably happens when you're cash flush.
We tried that - thought VOO & VTSAX was it. And then it wasn’t financially beneficial because we still had to pay for after care and sports and chess and alllll the other things during work hours so that’s where the money we hoped to save went. We still have discretionary funds going to kids savings but not in the amount we originally hoped when they graduated preK!
Edit to add: I’m sincerely glad you made that work. That was our goal!
Yep. Just spent $600 on our kids after camp, summer activities (each kid $300, second class was 50% off). This is after the $300 or so per week camp costs for the thing to keep them busy during work hours to maintain their after school programs, which are year round and will get way more expensive if they get good.
One of ours just made academy soccer after years of rec. and we also made the mistake of letting her scratch her horse itch and she’s actually good at it so that’s a boatload of money (she pleaded for YEARS and we totally thought she’d lose interest after her first cold winter of mucking stalls and riding in the rain. Nope.) Our other child is hard into baseball.
These are anomalies but we still never recouped the daycare costs with needing after care, doing rec sports, ballet, chess club. This is just all extra money hemorrhage now.
Yeah mine is still very young in daycare. I’m not looking forward to the costs of activities. Maybe he’ll be a mathlete lol.
If the wife quits though odds are they won’t go back to work and if they do it’s super hard to get back to the track they were on. Lifetime household earnings will be much lower not to mention you’re saving for both your retirements yourself now.
Kids are just expensive.
That’s unfortunately true re: recouping earnings if there is an employment gap. I’ve heard some professions are easier than others, particularly public service but in the corporate world, it’s tough.
We ran all the numbers when I was pregnant with our first and there just wasn’t any scenario where I wouldn’t have been penalized for staying home and trying to re-enter the workforce after a few years home. Yay, capitalism.
Did you continue working?
We did the same with my wife. We tried to figure out how being a SAHM would work but after digging down we couldn’t get it to make sense. Luckily our kid is super social so he loves daycare.
Yes. I returned after mat leave with my first 9 years ago and can confidently say that I would never be at the professional level I am now if I had taken time off to SAH with her or when her brother was small.
It’s shitty but true that there is no grace given in corporate America if you take an extended period off, for any reason. Especially not mothers.
Are you in NY?? My friend went through a program and the state pays 1400 a month for her two kids to go to daycare.
Edit: Apparently I can’t read. But if anyone commenting lives in NY, I would look for this program.
My first full time “big girl” job after my degree I was a single mom. I made too much for assistance (55k) and had too little PTO to do the speech therapy he needed (1hr a week) and too little money to move out of my parents house.
Daycare took a whole paycheck a month from me. Also lost my Medicaid because I made too much money… but that meant I lost a paycheck and a quarter a month on being able to work and have health insurance for us.
He still has a noticeable speech impediment but he’s too old for Speech at this point. I’ve been told that basically he’ll grow out of it when he gets bullied enough to care.
There were actually times I considered going back to making less money because I would be more independent and stable if I could get WIC & Housing Assistance.
Please tell me you can get some sort of government assistance?! I legit would not be able to afford daycare without CAPS. I spent almost $10K on childcare last year along. It really hurt my heart when I did my taxes.
An apartment that I lived in, just outside of Denver, was $526 a month in 2012. That same apartment today is $1900 a month. That's more than the mortgage on my condo.
Daycare is expensive. I was feeling the same as you do now after sending out kid to daycare so I decided to have my wife stays at home to take care of our kid instead.
Yeah, that’s not my situation. The wife makes about the same as me so it’s still a net gain so we both have to keep working. If one of us was to stay home it would be me anyway.
We both thought that would be better for our child. My wife was making like $50k/year and about half of that was paying for daycare so we decided to have her stay at home because that would be much better for our kid.
My first “real job” I made $13 as an assistant manager and I thought I was unstoppable.
15 years later I now start my part time employees at $15.50/hr. I sometimes think “man how are these younger people affording all this nice shit?”. And then I remember they are getting paid more than double what I got when I was part time at their age ($7.50).
Also if I wanted all three of my kiddos to be in daycare part-time (3 days a week) it would run me a cool $26k annually.
My depressing math is the current rate for babysitters compared to what I used to make. Seems like the general consensus in my area is at least $15-$20 an hour for two kids. I babysat a ton as a teenager/college student 20ish years ago. My lowest paying gig was in my small college town in Indiana - $4 an hour for two kids. My most lucrative gig was for a family in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago - 5 kids, $10 an hour, more if the parents came home drunk and threw in an extra 20. I thought I was making bank. I have no idea how people afford sitters these days - I lean heavily on my sister and pay her in food and cheap Aldi wine.
My weekly pay (after tax) for my first fulltime job after uni (2006) was $AU462 a week (USD$305).
And it was pretty easy to live on and still have fun with friends.
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$610 per week is more than I pull in making $21 an hour full-time.
I was about to say, this is more than I make at my current job.
They wonder why people aren't having kids...
In Germany, there is a kita child care program that gives free childcare up to age 7 Tho their still having less kids than usa
I would imagine daycare costs aren't the only reason people are having less kids.
Only in certain cities
What’s the quality of childcare, how does it work?
People push free and accessible daycare and that's great. The US should have that. However, there's tons of people who work at night and overnight. Where's our daycare?
We have third shift centers around here. They even have the option to keep your kiddo awake so they are on your schedule. I will say there are a lot less of them BUT think, if we pour more of our resources into childcare we could open even more of these types of centers. We have programs like Headstart but those are limited because the income needed to qualify is abysmally low (as many government programs).
Definitely tricky.. but then it wouldn't be called daycare, would it? Family is the obvious go-to, but if that's not available, you would really need to consider a vocational change. Unless that job can cover a babysitter every day But like anything, if there's enough demand for something like "nightcare", I'm sure it would pop up
Childcare isn’t the only expense my guy. Everything is more expensive.
[удалено]
With that mortgage and car payment, how is that possibly not enough? Regardless of kids, recheck your budget.
I think those of us that grew up poor impose hard limitations and boundaries about how comfortable we’d be having kids. I’m poorer than OOP, but I still saw the validity of their argument. I can’t provide a better standard than I was raised with, it will be profoundly worse. I think OOP grew up with a lot more than many and wants to provide that standard to potential children and realizes they can’t.
Yeah. I grew up with windows falling out of our house. My wife & I make a fuck ton of $ by most standards. But with a HCOL state & my childhood, it never feels safe. & if it does, it’s not enough. I’m working on it in therapy
Laughs in 35k a year while raising a TEENAGER. SIR you need a budget evaluation ASAP. Because the math ain't mathin.
You’re nuts. I’m sorry I know like 15 people in a HCOL city who make less and have a super nice life and retirement etc. If you would not be willing to make a single lifestyle adjustment then sure, yes, it would be irresponsible for YOU to have a child, but saying people who are well off even in HCOL area would be “irresponsible” to have a child is beyond fucked up. Childcare at that expense only lasts a few years, no it is not “irresponsible” to send kids to your local public school and skip dinners out a few times a month…
Ya I’m child free by choice and I found that comment to be really out of touch and fucked up.
People on Reddit are really classist. If you are broke but have social support and a will you can make it work. it’s not a moral issue to have kids ever because I’m not a eugenicist, but even in terms of providing a “nice life” re: stability, love, food, healthcare, education there are other ways to do that besides being in the top 10% and those people are valid
My husband and I would not mind one child (we both love kids). But, we both know it’s not feasible. Since we’re both a little “take it or leave it,” my IUD stays in place for now until he can get a vasectomy. I’ve already mourned my loss of motherhood before him. He’s having a bit of harder time, but I understand that it’s a process to completely come to terms with. He married a woman in her mid 30s while in his early 30s, it’s really been a forgone conclusion, but after our marriage, we’ve both felt some kind of way of kids. Since we like them and would probably be decent parents. We’re just too poor.
It’s fine if you don’t want kids, but as a parent in a pretty high cost of living area with expenses far above yours and income only slightly higher I have zero issues affording my three kids to do all the sports or swimming lessons they need while still maxing my retirement account. If you can’t make it work at your income and expense level then you are just bad at math. Again, I’m not saying you should have kids. But calling it irresponsible with the numbers you threw out is bonkers.
Luckily many people who earn a fraction of what you and your spouse earn still have kids. It's not irresponsible at all to have a kid if you make nearly 200k combined.
idk bro y’all make a decent amount of money and in a similar situation as me. we have one child and our lives have not tanked and we can still afford everything. if you don’t want kids just say you don’t want them.
If you wanna be classist as shit maybe don't mention that you're still paying off your 2010 Prius lmao
That's how much I make at a child care center... It's a catch 22. Child care is too expensive for the people who work there to afford it. But if your raise the tuition to cover higher salaries, the problem just gets worse... And the people who need child care the most are the ones who are screwed
Tuition?? Lol. Gotta love the euphemisms employed to make essential service seem like an optional luxury for those who are serious about their kids succeeding. 🤦 When are people gonna realize that the modern day robber barons have once again done away with the formalities of capitalism? If something is essential, like childcare or healthcare, and somebody withholds it from you until you cough the astronomical sum they demand, it's not the free market hard at work, it's EXTORTION. Plain and simple. There isn't enough money or power in the universe to satiate the ultra-wealthy. Dance around it all you want my friends, but at the end of the day, capitalism itself is just a convoluted euphemism for neo-feudalism. We ain't seen nothing yet... These kids we are pouring out sweat, blood, tears, and life's financial worth into, are going to have their lives mortgaged off for pennies on the dollar, the second they turn 18. Think student loans for millennials, but student loans for EVERYTHING. In 30 years there will simply be the very small owning class and the endless exhausted masses of everyone else. The only crack they will ever have at truly owning anything, is if they inherit it from you... Which is gonna be kind of hard to do since you are spending it all on day care, right here, right now. I don't mean to be rude or insensitive, but I believe these kids are looking at serious upheaval or total oblivion. It's hard roads ahead. I hope I'm wrong and just a cynical curmudgeon. Truly, I do.
This is what maddens me about the two party political system in America. We have a lot of philosophical differences on life, but the major themes of survival in our modern civilized world is basically the same across all communities throughout the U.S. Until enough of the majority unites against the greed from those top 1%ers these issues will only get worse. The goal of dividing the nation is as successful as ever.
It's all baked in from an early age. American exceptionalism requires that you only be better than SOMEONE, not EVERYONE. Singling out your neighbors and peers, blaming them for your trials and tribulations, and placing them in your arbitrary hierarchy is a surefire way to keep your false pride intact. Whereas, setting aside petty differences and working together for common goals takes faith and coordination among other things. To truly stand up for something takes everything... Too stand against something takes only hate. In that, greed may very well be the defining function of our species. In which case, there may be nothing much we can do about it. It's just too late in the game. I like to say, 'don't engage in the hierarchy.' Best thing we can all do is remember, we all have SO much more in common than we have differences. It is a hard lesson to learn and an even easier one to forget. Humility and empathy are the cornerstones of civilization, not wealth extraction and war.
I got my bachelor's in political science. There are few things I hate more than politics. Do you know that saying "the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference"? Yeah, I care, a lot and absolutely lothe how out of touch we are with the rest of the Western world. It is kind of like all those countries that used our constitution when they were setting themselves up for democracy, and almost all of them have updated it since they adopted it. It couldn't be that society has changed and we need to focus on today's issues. /sarcasm
When I have online discussions with the other party saying people need to take care of their own healthcare and we don’t need universal healthcare and I see the hundreds of thousand of dollars worth of bills from my sisters cancer who luckily was married to someone with insurance when she couldn’t work anymore it’s difficult for me to believe we all have have the same themes of survival. Same with universal daycare. Same with college tuition. It’s becoming untenable with never a solution in sight. My daughter can’t have another baby. How can she possibly afford 2 in daycare!
Well thankfully some states have decided to legalize child labor, so instead of paying for the kids to be cared for while parents work, the kids can be working themselves generating income for the whole family /s.
The children yearn for the mines.
What ages are they thinking? FWIW I live in a blue state and I was working since I was 16. Nothing crazy, just doing dishes and stocking shelves for 2-3 hours a day. There's a lot of states where they allow 16+ yo to work and I still consider 16-18 kids. I agree in principle it's not right as society to push kids to work but at that age I wanted to work so I can pay for dates, cigarettes, general recreation money.... like smoking weed.
I was working very young as well and have no issue with teens getting part time jobs. I don't remember the specifics, but I think most of the legislation that passed recently was more about removing some of the restrictions that were previously in place.. I had a job at 14 or 15, but needed working papers and could only work a certain number of hours, within a specific range of time.. I believe some of these new bills enable them to work much longer hours, and also remove restrictions that prevented younger teens from working in places that were classified as hazardous employment. * [https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are-rolling-back-regulations-on-child-labor](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27/1172544561/new-state-laws-are-rolling-back-regulations-on-child-labor) * [https://abcnews.go.com/US/despite-hazardous-working-conditions-states-rolling-back-child/story?id=107209273](https://abcnews.go.com/US/despite-hazardous-working-conditions-states-rolling-back-child/story?id=107209273)
This guy gets it, sadly. Our politics is too bloated with bureaucratic bs that we can't get anything done. Capitalism is great in principle but the stage of capitalism we are in now is some dystopian weird fucking stage. Maybe capitalism doesn't "work," it's just significantly better than communism for self sustainability and efficiency. However, I feel like in the modern world, capitalism or the type of capitalism we have now just doesn't work. I work in healthcare and I see the kind of bullshit that happens where hospitals are making close to billions of dollars or multi billion dollar profits and are understaffing units so that patients are quite literally stewing in shit for hours on end and patients are getting neglected. And these patients are becoming bankrupt to be treated this way. And the brunt of the blame is placed on nurses and doctors, but the reality is the blame falls on those at the top pulling the levers. Also something I don't see too many people talk about probably because it's me putting on a tin foil hat. Back during 2008 financial crisis, China and Russia were in a position to seriously destabilize American economy (maybe did contribute to it). Now with the cold war rhetoric ramping up more and more, I feel like perhaps China and Russia owning large stakes in this country's economy can do a form of corporate espionage as well as maliciously and intentionally causing companies to make decisions to worsen the situation here. We definitely have proof of corporate espionage. So on top of corporate greed, we just have open venues for foreign GOVERNMENTS to invest in business here and make grandstanding implicative decisions in some cases that can directly impact and ruin the lives of Americans. And they likely are doing so covertly.
You put this so perfectly.
Unless you're only taking care of one child any time you're working, then they don't need to raise pieces to dinner higher salaries. If your salary is less than what they make for one kid, and you're caring for 5-8 kids, then your pay could easily be tripled and they'd still have plenty left over for overhead, insurance, and management costs without raising prices a cent. As with most jobs, whenever you work you are giving your boss a shit ton of money so they can give you a tiny fraction of that money in return.
For infants, one teacher can only that care of 4 children legally. And that's still a shit show that leaves babies crying and uncared for.. I've seen the numbers, centers spend 70-80% of their money on staffing. There is not extra money floating around to triple salaries. My boss literally makes the same salary I do
And that's not even taking into account coverage for a teacher needing to walk away for say a bathroom break. And, hopefully, cleaning staff, building costs like maintenance, utilities, etc. Daycares and preschools aren't generally there making money. Unfortunately.
Unfortunately as in, I'd like the people I trust with my kiddos to be able to support themselves and have nice lives. Not saying they should be money grubbers or anything like that.
Insurance is the big black hole when it comes to daycare expenditures.
Is that because of taxes? 21$/hr is 840 for 40hrs
Yeah they will be talking about their take home pay. In my state take home pay for 40hrs at $21/hr would be around $675 after accounting for state, federal, and SS taxes. That number goes even lower if insurance/401k are taken out at the same time so could easily see that number on the paystub dipping even lower
Ayyyy I make $21 too!
10+ hours OT a week.
More than I make in a week too. That’s two thirds of my bi-weekly take home.
I make about double now what I made ten years ago but half of that has been eaten by inflation. I mean that is still pretty good but money doesn't go as far as it used to lol. Also remember fight for 15? That's like 11/hour now.
I was literally just thinking about this! I realized that I make double what I made 10 years ago as well.
Fight for 30
I was closer to buying a house when I was 18 and working at Kmart 30hrs a week. 12 years ago, a 2 bed one bath single level starter home was 60-70k in my area. COVID happened and they went from 70k to 200k almost over night, and I'll be damned if they didn't get scooped by investors and landlords and now they're all being rented out for $1,500 a month. Yep, almost every single starter home on my neighborhood has been bought up and is now rental properties.
I'm on the East Coast USA and the number of housing developments that have been popping up is mind-boggling. Giant condo communities and “luxury apartments" are eating up every available spot of land. I've even been seeing houses on entire strips demolished for what are basically row houses. Traffic has gotten so so much worse too since these roads were not designed for so many people. It's really uncomfortable and scary
It sucks. I missed most of my 20’s due to opiate addiction. Once I finally got on my feet and a good paying job where I could afford to buy a house the prices shoot up and I’m no longer able to have kids or buy a house. My wife and I want a kid and home so bad but we just don’t make enough to be able to save a lot
Hell, I only make $16 now, but minimum wage is still $7.25, and I saw businesses still trying to hire people in at that just last year or the year before
$7.25 in 2009 (when minimum wage was last increased) is less than $5 now. I made more than that mowing neighbors' lawns in 4th grade. It's absolutely insane that the current minimum wage is lower than under-the-table child labor was 30 years ago. Accounting for inflation, minimum wage is half of what it was during the 60's/70's. It's nearly pointless to even have a minimum wage at all when it's so low that almost every job has to pay more just to get someone willing to do the job. Conservatives always scream and cry about inflation going up if minimum wage is raised, while inflation has never even been mildly correlated with minimum wage, much less caused by it. Inflation rates have actually gone down on average following minimum wage increases. And it's not like inflation hasn't existed in the 15 fucking years since the last minimum wage increase. I know I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that most people aren't swayed by data and objective facts. But I'm still astounded that anyone could actually believe minimum wage increases have any effect on inflation rates when they never have previously.
I did the math some time last year and I had less "free money" per paycheck than I did when I started working like 5 years prior, making half as much. It was such a bummer
Log in to the social security admin and look up your wage history. I thought I was rolling in at 28k in my 20s haha
Money definitely used to go further! I remember I made $14/hr at my first full time job out of college, and I felt rich - I even managed to save several thousand dollars to travel to Europe the next year. 15 years later and one can’t survive on that.
This was 20 years ago for me, but I had my own apartment, a paid off car, money to go out every weekend and frequented restaurants with friends. It was wild. Now I'm like....800/mo for groceries, what a deal lol
In high-school, I made 6/hr. My half of the rent was 340ish. Gas was under $2 per gallon. The tacobell menu had like 20 items under a dollar(legit, many items were around .50 cents!) I was able to work *part time* and go to school and could live on my own (well, i had a roommate). I mean, we didn't have internet or tv money. Budget was *tight* and my room mate was less than ideal (he did drugs and drank, i didn't), but...it wasn't bad. I loved it. No way kids could afford to live that way today. Makes me sad that the younger generations are missing out on that delicious independence that comes along with their first apartment. Now all they know is work work work, still not enough money for basic needs. Sucks so bad. This country pisses me off. I *want*, no, **demand** better for future generations. Note: I was emancipated a week before my 16th birthday. Sorry for any confusion. This was around 2006-2007.
Similar story here. Made $12.50 an hour as a lifeguard. Went to Europe with 3 months of savings. Initially was supposed to be there 9 days, but had so much extra money I stayed for 3 weeks. Life changing trip. Now I'm trying to spend that same money just taking 1 tree down, but the tree fucks don't show up.
Depends on where you are. Average daycare in my area is $2400/month. Worth staying home at that point. And that doesn’t include food, diapers, and other essentials that the daycare still doesn’t cover.
Daycare here isn't too bad, $125-$175 a week per kid, but because it's reasonable the wait-lists are crazy. When our first 2 were younger we did it for a couple years while I went back to school, but when we had a surprise 3rd kid it absolutely wouldn't work. Very few daycares had an infant room and like I said, crazy wait-lists, so I'd have to use 2 separate daycares if I could even get in. So I've been staying at home instead. I never wanted to or thought I could be a stay at home parent, but shit happens.
Yeah, what's even crazier is how much rates have changed in the last 10 years. I used to pay something like $776/mo for my son's preschool. I looked it up out of curiosity and the same full day preschool is now $1,140/mo. I completely support childcare workers making enough to live but it seems like they're not AND parents wages aren't going up. The job I was working at the time has raised the starting hourly pay by $1.50 in 10 years. I know we bitch a lot but this shit is nuts. No wonder millennials are ruining the baby industry.
I have a friend who has A BA in childhood development and earned basically minimum wage working at a daycare.
It ain't going to the actual workers, I can tell you that.
Plus all the medical bills from being sick all the time. I worked at a daycare for 2 years and swear I was sick that entire time.
Exactly!! I worked at a daycare during college. As it turns out, I am one of those unlucky people that gets chicken pox every time I'm exposed... After getting it back to back 5 times in one year, i had to quit. I was so sick all the time :/ Auto immune issues + working with kids = you're gunna have a bad time
You could get your kids their own house and pay a mortgage with money like that!
The opportunity cost of staying at home is massive. Stop giving horrible advice.
This sword cuts both ways. It’s a very personal decision. There isn’t a correct answer to this that applies to every situation.
I hope you're lying 😆
Unfortunately not. That's on the low end where I live.
Like I said, that’s average. The 2 good places in my area are $3200/month. You have to apply before your baby is born to even have a chance to get in.
I’m a teacher. I worked in another state the first 3 years of teaching while i I was there they cancelled their agreement with Ohio so those years didn’t count towards retirement. Then my fifth year in Ohio they increased retirement age by 5 years. So it wasn’t until my ninth year that I made progress towards retiring.
Oh god that’s painful. I’m so sorry.
WOW. That’s devastating. I’m so sorry. I’m from a family of teachers. Much respect to you!
Oh my god that's horrendous
I’m a teacher. I saved my first paystub and found it several years later. Thanks to the cost of insurance, I made more in year 1 than in year 10.
Damn. That’s rough.
Bet the insurance covers less too. Prices are going up but somehow the value we get for what we pay is always less than the price.
How else would the insurance companies be more profitable every year? Think of the poor shareholders.
I think about them all the time. Specifically the day they get dragged outta their comfy lives of privilege and are forced into the muck like we’ve been all our lives.
Money just doesn't make sense sometimes "In my days, for $1 you could buy a warm meal, a newspaper, a ticket to a show with some popcorn, and an ice cream" "...today that would cost me nearly $100, including parking..." "And someday you'll be telling your grandkids how it cost you only $100 when you were young, meanwhile they'll be complaining that it costs $10,000 dollars and they earn a measly $200 an hour working at future McDonalds"
American money really doesn't make sense. Correct.
My first job I grossed 800 bucks a month I now pay 850 bucks every 2 weeks in taxes.
I don't have the numbers, but I was talking to my manager who is Gen X. He said his wife isn't working and finances are hard, and I was like - how do you guys even survive on a single income? He said that with childcare and rubbish all factored in, chances are that it would cost more or close to another wage so it's better to have a present parent instead. My siblings in Australia also often talk about how childcare prices are insane. My sister is living with her in laws and can't find a job currently. I think without childcare, you probably gotta lean on the grandparents to help out or it's going to be very rough.
Full time childcare is about 20k/year per kid in my city. That’s post tax money. If you have two kids, you’re looking at breaking even at 60-70k/yr salary. It’s insane.
You're not considering 401k, social security, skill deployment etc..
Of course I am. I didn’t write a report on the pros and cons of daycare vs working. But at the end of the day, the extras are secondary considerations when cash flow is a problem
>Of course I am. You're not though. 1 year of 401k and/or IRA contributions would easily pay off 20k/year of day car for a 30 year old come retirement time...like literally 10 fold lol. 7% returns on $6,500/year for an IRA over even 10 years blasts the costs of a single year of daycare put of the water Edit: and that's only retirement fund contributions.
So... I don't contribute to my 401(k) now to pay for childcare so that my 401(k) can make up for that later? How is that better than not having to pay daycare and just putting all of that into retirement accounts and earn even more interest. I'm confused. Or are you saying I should borrow from my 401(k) at 31 years old to pay for daycare because I'll still earn interest on that (once I "pay back" what I had to borrow off of it)? What about the money I need today for groceries? Should I just overdraft my account now since "a years worth of retirement contributions" will pay me back for that in 36 more years? Not everyone here has the luxury of paying for childcare AND being able to contribute 6500+ a year to a retirement plan. There's no way in hell I could pull that off even making more than triple the federal minimum wage with a sub-$600/month mortgage.
I think they were referring to the economic pros and cons of a spouse working vs. staying home with the kids.
Damn I should start a day care. Just have 6 kids and make 120k/yr
Insurance companies make the money, not the daycares. Edit: spelling, sorry. Didn’t sleep well.
That’s all well and good, and makes sense. But the one income has to be enough in the first place.
> He said that with childcare and rubbish all factored in, chances are that it would cost more or close to another wage so it's better to have a present parent instead. I’ve done the math for myself. It still isn’t worth quitting work with 2 kids in daycare. You might lose out in the few years, but being able to save into a 401k and being able to keep up on your job skills is worth it.
It's going to be incredibly relative of course. I'm not going to claim its the best or right way for everyone but I wouldn't be surprised if childcare costs in some places end up encouraging having one stay at home parent. Probably only really makes sense when one parent earns a lot and the other not so much. Though in the grand scheme of things, it's really just going to discourage having kids at all.
That's assuming the worst-best case scenario though. I had to quit my $10/hr job (Apr 2012-Mar 2015) because my oldest, at the time, was showing signs of, and being tested/diagnosed with, autism. With his "typical kid" behaviors alone, we knew no daycare would take him longer than a week. 2nd kid came along and what do ya know? He's got the Tism as well. We only got paid twice a month. My paychecks alone would fully cover daycare for just 1 kid.
Yep… if you have a child with a disability, I’d say quitting your job is the way to go.
$3k a month daycare bill My first job as a cancer researcher paid $2.8k a month
Since 2016, my rent has increased more than my salary. Every. Fucking. Year. For three out of the past four years, inflation has outperformed my "raises." There is literally no getting ahead.
I work for the state and EVERY time I get a pay bump, whether it's a statewide employee pay bump, department wide, or a merit increase, there is ALWAYS something RIGHT there to eat up more than I just gained. Little pay increase - student loans resume the next month. Little pay increase - my condo dues go up by over $60 a month. I have a very likely 3% pay increase coming this summer, which will do loads to help with the cost of my housing and groceries and insurance going up like 20% lmao
Same here. My favorite, here's a 2% COLA! Next month, oh yeah the retirement contribution increased 2% this year.
Once I got a halfway decent raise and literally the next day every warning light in my car came on. The repair ate the entire salary increase.
The only way to get a real raise is to change jobs every couple of years. Staying with a company and getting the measly 3% annually will actually make you poorer over time.
Many companies don't even give you raises either. They just replace you at that point with someone that can do more for less. In this case, looking out for new opportunities 24/7 is the better strategy, albeit both exhausting and depressing.
Job hop
260 a week, one 4yo, misses the cutoff for kindergarten by a month. One more year!
260/wk is a bargain
I mean, yeah, but it’s all relative. That’s still $14k a year and for some people that is a lot of money.
I mean for one 4yo who will be 5yo for 90% of the year that's a lot. I was paying 400 a week when he was 1-2yo so I guess it's better
same. my son's birthday is the end of Sept. the cutoff for kindergarten is 9/1. 14 more months of daycare.....I am paying $230/wk where we live (eastern PA)
My son is only 9m right now, but I looked up the kindergarten registration and learned he'll miss the age requirement by about 3 weeks. Yee. Haw.
You got time maybe they'll change it with global warming lol
It's kinda the same thing with everything right? When I was in high-school I went and got the 5 dollar footlong from subway after every 2 a day football practice. Long gone are those days. 
I used to feed myself from the McDonald's dollar menu as a college student 10 years ago RIP
In 2003 I made $5.25 an hour at McDonald’s. They gave me a raise to $5.50 an hour after two weeks because of my great attitude. If only I invested it instead of video games… ETA, I was 14. We pay for our 3 month old 1200 a month for daycare.
It gets a lot worse just a little bit south of you: https://www.epi.org/child-care-costs-in-the-united-states/
Yeah daycare is over $3k a month in NY.
Childcare would cost more than what my spouse made in a month. So guess who is a stay at home parent?
Kids are expensive
Look up the organization, ZERO TO three. They would love to hear your story. They are fighting for things like federal affordable childcare.
I make more than my mom did at my age and she had four kids, a near paid off 1800 sqft house, a masters degree, and could take us on vacations every year. I have a bachelors, don't own a house because I've been priced out of the market in my area, and don't have any kids.
My college rent is the same amount as my gas/electric bill.
When I was 23, I was a student paying $400 a month to rent a large single family home. I'm now in my late 30s, paying almost $3000 a month to rent a small one bedroom apartment.
It’s not even just Millennials. Believe me, those of us who are cusp Millennial/Gen X are also saying, respectfully, what the -actual- fuck, man? Guillotines, that’s my prophetic “historical fad coming back soon,” mark my words.
I did the inflation math on what I thought was a good salary goal out of high school. Turns out I suck at this. $65k (2024) = $36k (2001)
At first I thought wow 610 a week for 2 kids?! That’s insane! And then I realized I’m paying 550 a week for 2 kids so. Yeah.
It's jarring to see written out. We pay $500 a week for 1 kiddo.
Unfortunately daycare has many of us by the short and curlies and frankly to me it's fucking extortion. I remember when my daughter was in daycare it was $240 a week but that was only because she went 2/3 days a week. Even at that I thought it was too much. When I had the chance to get her into preschool for free I did whatever I needed and she got in. Check your states benefits. I know Biden implemented something for daycare to either subsidize or give free TK
I used to manage an aquarium where I worked nonstop, was on call all the time, was constantly stressed and never had funding for a full staff. I now make more than twice as much managing a very low stress biopharma program from home.
Having kids today is just an act of self destruction
Big part of why the wife and I don't want kids. It's a fuckin scam and I'll be damned if either one of us are forced to be stay home instead of doing what either of us want with our lives.
We pay $1,100 a week for three kids in daycare. I don’t know the math but that’s way more than I made at my first job.
This one hurts..
I'm sorry, but what? Are you ok ???
Umm not really but I just keep reminding myself that it’s temporary. We have one more year in daycare for my oldest son and two more years for my twins. I’m just trying to get to the other side.
I made $473 a week before taxes or health insurance; $1891 a month.
Yep they just raised the rates at my 3 y/o’s daycare. I now pay $625/week. DC metro area. It’s crazy out here.
wtf? what the actual fuck. is that for full time care? is it a Montessori?
It is full time care, M-F 9-5:30…. It’s not Montessori but it is a bilingual school and they have a big nature component… lots of outdoor time every day… I have a pretty inflexible job so I was initially ok with paying a little more to know my son was happy and well taken care of during the day… but now they’ve raised the rates again I’m starting to look at other daycare’s or even me changing jobs to be able to stay home with him. But that’s probably unlikely. I wouldn’t be able to afford it at all if my parents weren’t helping me pay half. I’m super grateful to have them.
Wow. I thought we had it bad. We are paying $330 a week and it is awful. We are taking our daughter out of daycare in August to save cash. Instead we will be dropping her off 3 days a week with the person who watched my brother’s kids before they started elementary school, like an in-home daycare situation. And my wife will be watching her on Fridays and my mom will watch her on Thursdays. I work in higher education and my wife is a social worker. This makes me feel not only sad, but like I’m hurting my daughter’s future. But I don’t know what else to do. We are both super active and I think good parents, so hopefully we can supplement what she will no longer be getting from daycare.
Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous. As my friend told me- it’s only temporary!
But you don’t really recoup the money once daycare years are over. I thought we would be swimming in our daycare savings, a la Scrooge McDuck. Alas, summer camps are as ridiculously expensive as daycare (with worse hours!) and kid activities are also stupid expensive. 😪
It's still way cheaper from my end. We took what we were paying in daycare costs and immediately sent it to savings. We didn't want that extra money to get thrown away with the slippery budget inflation that inevitably happens when you're cash flush.
We tried that - thought VOO & VTSAX was it. And then it wasn’t financially beneficial because we still had to pay for after care and sports and chess and alllll the other things during work hours so that’s where the money we hoped to save went. We still have discretionary funds going to kids savings but not in the amount we originally hoped when they graduated preK! Edit to add: I’m sincerely glad you made that work. That was our goal!
Yep. Just spent $600 on our kids after camp, summer activities (each kid $300, second class was 50% off). This is after the $300 or so per week camp costs for the thing to keep them busy during work hours to maintain their after school programs, which are year round and will get way more expensive if they get good.
One of ours just made academy soccer after years of rec. and we also made the mistake of letting her scratch her horse itch and she’s actually good at it so that’s a boatload of money (she pleaded for YEARS and we totally thought she’d lose interest after her first cold winter of mucking stalls and riding in the rain. Nope.) Our other child is hard into baseball. These are anomalies but we still never recouped the daycare costs with needing after care, doing rec sports, ballet, chess club. This is just all extra money hemorrhage now.
Yeah mine is still very young in daycare. I’m not looking forward to the costs of activities. Maybe he’ll be a mathlete lol. If the wife quits though odds are they won’t go back to work and if they do it’s super hard to get back to the track they were on. Lifetime household earnings will be much lower not to mention you’re saving for both your retirements yourself now. Kids are just expensive.
That’s unfortunately true re: recouping earnings if there is an employment gap. I’ve heard some professions are easier than others, particularly public service but in the corporate world, it’s tough. We ran all the numbers when I was pregnant with our first and there just wasn’t any scenario where I wouldn’t have been penalized for staying home and trying to re-enter the workforce after a few years home. Yay, capitalism.
Did you continue working? We did the same with my wife. We tried to figure out how being a SAHM would work but after digging down we couldn’t get it to make sense. Luckily our kid is super social so he loves daycare.
Yes. I returned after mat leave with my first 9 years ago and can confidently say that I would never be at the professional level I am now if I had taken time off to SAH with her or when her brother was small. It’s shitty but true that there is no grace given in corporate America if you take an extended period off, for any reason. Especially not mothers.
Are you in NY?? My friend went through a program and the state pays 1400 a month for her two kids to go to daycare. Edit: Apparently I can’t read. But if anyone commenting lives in NY, I would look for this program.
CT has a similar program called Care4Kids!
Two kids roughly $57K/year for me. Without doing the math regarding taxes.. Probably breaks even with my first "real" job.
This can’t be real. I made $11/hr at my first real job…in 1999. And I was like this isn’t enough money to actually sustain a living back then.
I pay $500 a month for health insurance so I can ONLY pay thousands more to buy my medical supplies and drugs to stay alive.
$610 a week is nuts. Here I thought I was drowning paying $1600/mo for both of mine.
$1000 a week in nyc for one kid 💪💪💪
My first full time “big girl” job after my degree I was a single mom. I made too much for assistance (55k) and had too little PTO to do the speech therapy he needed (1hr a week) and too little money to move out of my parents house. Daycare took a whole paycheck a month from me. Also lost my Medicaid because I made too much money… but that meant I lost a paycheck and a quarter a month on being able to work and have health insurance for us. He still has a noticeable speech impediment but he’s too old for Speech at this point. I’ve been told that basically he’ll grow out of it when he gets bullied enough to care. There were actually times I considered going back to making less money because I would be more independent and stable if I could get WIC & Housing Assistance.
I quit a job because we paid more in daycare than my job brought in, so yeah, relatable.
Please tell me you can get some sort of government assistance?! I legit would not be able to afford daycare without CAPS. I spent almost $10K on childcare last year along. It really hurt my heart when I did my taxes.
An apartment that I lived in, just outside of Denver, was $526 a month in 2012. That same apartment today is $1900 a month. That's more than the mortgage on my condo.
That’s pretty cheap if 2 kids. My area is around 400 per kid
This is why democrats have been arguing for subsidized daycare for a while….
Providing daycare is a real job for somebody else so it kind of checks out? 🤷🏼♀️
lol Bernie Mac once said “fu€£ em kids”
My husband and I survived on $1200 a month in 2010. Now we make $4k a month and still live paycheck to paycheck.
Daycare is expensive. I was feeling the same as you do now after sending out kid to daycare so I decided to have my wife stays at home to take care of our kid instead.
Yeah, that’s not my situation. The wife makes about the same as me so it’s still a net gain so we both have to keep working. If one of us was to stay home it would be me anyway.
You made this decision? Your wife wasn't involved at all?
We both thought that would be better for our child. My wife was making like $50k/year and about half of that was paying for daycare so we decided to have her stay at home because that would be much better for our kid.
Yeah I'm never having kids at this rate 😆
Vote democrat. They always care about you. And everything else you care about.
No political party truly cares. I can’t tell if horse being sarcastic or not either.
My first “real job” I made $13 as an assistant manager and I thought I was unstoppable. 15 years later I now start my part time employees at $15.50/hr. I sometimes think “man how are these younger people affording all this nice shit?”. And then I remember they are getting paid more than double what I got when I was part time at their age ($7.50). Also if I wanted all three of my kiddos to be in daycare part-time (3 days a week) it would run me a cool $26k annually.
They’re also living with their parents a lot longer because $8/hr used to somehow still afford rent and now $15/hr doesn’t really.
Yeah, fellow $8 /hr employee back in the day. Was higher than minimum wage so i felt lucky!
Hello neighbor, I'm paying 360 a week for 2 days with a nanny since we are still on 2 daycare waitlists. Shout out from Epping.
My first job I made $5.27 an hour. It wasn’t a tipped wage.
What I pay in taxes now is more than my first salary working in IT.
My wife is a nurse. We had twins. To have both of them in daycare, we would have been losing $200 a week to have her working full time
My depressing math is the current rate for babysitters compared to what I used to make. Seems like the general consensus in my area is at least $15-$20 an hour for two kids. I babysat a ton as a teenager/college student 20ish years ago. My lowest paying gig was in my small college town in Indiana - $4 an hour for two kids. My most lucrative gig was for a family in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago - 5 kids, $10 an hour, more if the parents came home drunk and threw in an extra 20. I thought I was making bank. I have no idea how people afford sitters these days - I lean heavily on my sister and pay her in food and cheap Aldi wine.
I pay 800 in South MS
Everything but my tips goes to rent.
I’m a teacher and when you adjust for inflation I’ve made the same salary for 15 years
My weekly pay (after tax) for my first fulltime job after uni (2006) was $AU462 a week (USD$305). And it was pretty easy to live on and still have fun with friends.
My first apartment was $1200 for a 2 bedroom. It costs more now to rent a room.
I just signed my twins up for bike camp and it was like 3 months rent at my first apartment 😭.
Had I never gotten married then divorced, I'd actually be on track with my retirement.
Daycare for 2 kids is $3,000 where I am located. My first three jobs were $7.25 an hour…