Double the children, double the childcare costs?
March 7, 2017 9:37 AM   Subscribe

We're considering the idea of having a second child, but doubling our daycare costs is going to be tough on our budget. How do people handle this expense? Are there options we are not considering?

Right now, we share a nanny with another family, at $12.50/h/family. We're very intimidated by the thought of having to pay all $25/h ourselves or otherwise paying to have two kids in daycare / preschool at once. But I'm in my late 30s, so we don't really want to wait until one child is in kindergarten to have a second.

How do people handle this? Are there "economies of scale" of any sort? Is childcare cheaper outside of the San Francisco Bay Area? If you have two children, how do you handle this? If you're willing to share, how much do you pay, in what part of the US? (I assume the situation is totally different outside of the US.)

(We are thinking we would ask if this nanny could care for three children -- perhaps not out of the question, as she has three of her own? -- but we might move, so we should plan around what most nannies would consider, and other options that are generally available, instead of her specific abilities.)
posted by slidell to Work & Money (21 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
You could definitely ask the nanny for a multichild discount. Most daycare facilities have those, too (I think ours is 10 percent off second, 20 percent off third or more).
posted by Etrigan at 9:46 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


For us the costs were such that to support kiddo #2 we combined our lives with additional family members to reduce the cost and number of total hours needed. We also have our oldest in pre-school so that is cheaper than daycare. Now neither child is in child/nanny care.

It's wonderful, but this only works if you really like/love/respect and cohabitate well with said family.
posted by French Fry at 9:48 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


We pay 25k per year for one kid under 2 years full time at daycare and another part-time. It is pricey and we are going to add another there soon. We get a 10% discount off the second kid and 5% for the 3rd. This is in Milwaukee at a well regarded but known to be cheap for the area center. I think it probably makes more sense financially to have a nanny at 3 kid, but I really like the center and the social interaction.
posted by sulaine at 10:01 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


We currently pay 11% of 2 modest professional salaries in upstate NY for one toddler at a childcare center (this translates to about $5/hour). So, yes, childcare is cheaper elsewhere, but salaries will be lower.

They do have a discount for multiple children, so if we had an infant this would be around 21% of our salaries. We handle this expense by not having a second child... Sorry, that's flip. If a second child were in the cards, we'd just have to keep telling ourselves that the daycare costs are only temporary.
posted by Kriesa at 10:04 AM on March 7, 2017


How old is your first kid?
Here in Toronto, daycare rates tend to be most expensive for babies (under 18 mos) because the legal ratio is 3 infants to 1 adult. It's around $2k/month. It gets a little less expensive for toddlers (18 mos-2.5 yrs), then less expensive again for "preschoolers" 2.5 yrs to 4.
When I had my second kid, the cost differential between having a nanny vs paying for daycare for both kids was such that we went for a nanny. The going rate for a nanny in our area is about $15-18 net/hr.
For your situation, I'd be surprised if the nanny charged $25/hr for two kids from the same family... To me that rate sounds like she's getting paid a premium to deal with the extra complexity of two different families.
posted by dotparker at 10:10 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far! Our little one is just over 11 months old. (I also wanted to add that we would pay the nanny more if we added a child. This isn't a reply to any comment; I just wanted to make it clear in case some future reader thought I was hoping to add to her work without adding to her pay.)
posted by slidell at 10:28 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Because our kids have some special needs, I work full time, and my husband travels a lot, we have basically three full-time care situations for two kids. One attends a home daycare, the second attends a private preschool, and then we have an after-school nanny who picks them up mid-afternoon and takes care of them into the early evening. (We pay her 30 hours a week, though her core hours are closer to 20, in exchange for her being on call for sick days and evenings when we need someone. We had to do this so she could afford rent.)

It is heinously, god-awfully expensive, though we are lucky that the home daycare is quite inexpensive compared to the center daycares around. We have just had to hold our breath and accept that our costs would be through the everloving roof for a couple of years until we get one kid in public school (this fall!). Rent and childcare make up almost all of our monthly budget. We could stop eating food and it wouldn't make an appreciable difference. We are definitely looking forward to dropping one of those monthly payments.

More than one woman at my husband's job has quit work when the third child was born, as the childcare costs surpassed their salaries.

In your situation, I think the first thing to do is talk to your nanny, find out if she could take 3 kids, and what the incremental cost would be.
posted by telepanda at 10:34 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


My nannyshare involved 3 babies/toddlers and it worked pretty well. This was in DC over 5 years ago, but as I recall, it was about $25/hour plus benefits for nanny when all 3 kids were there.

But yeah, I have no idea how people have multiple kids when one is expensive already. But somehow people do it. They probably do a lot of cutting back on things to make it work. But I'd like to also suggest that one thing to consider is that by having 2 kids closer together, you're financially maximizing on a lot of things.

Childcare: They'll often be in the same childcare situation and/or justify having a nanny when they're both little, which you might not do when they are older. And when they are older, having them closer together means that you'll be able to enroll them in the same aftercare programs or same summer/school break camps more often. And those things almost always have a sibling discount.

Logistics: Similarly, once your kids are older and you're transporting them around to activities, you'll maximize on being in one place at one time (they're both in the 4-6 year old karate class) or will be back-to-back (the 5 year old swim class is always right after the 4 year old swim class).

Stuff: Car seats expire, storing potential hand-me-down clothes and toys takes up space. Having 2 kids closer together means that you are much more likely to immediately use all of the stuff that you've already invested in. Even having kids 3 or 4 years apart reduces your hand-me-down abilities, especially if you're really city living and don't have a huge basement full of big tupperwares of clothes. And closer in age children are probably, more or less, playing with the same toys and reading the same books after they're out of the baby stage.

I'm sure that it is not pleasant to have 2 toddlers or be pregnant with a toddler running around, however, as the parent of an elementary aged child, I see those that have kids less than 2 years apart really making it work. Plus their kids play together.
posted by k8t at 10:36 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


And, FWIW, I've always lived in very expensive places while I've had a child - Southern California, DC, and Seattle. Childcare is super expensive in these places. I am under the impression that in non-city areas that childcare is much cheaper because cost of living is far cheaper. Also, at least in my experience, nannies generally do not live in the same area of the city as their employers, so you have the added transport cost.

I'm under the impression as well that home-based childcare provides are a nice middle ground between a nanny and a formal childcare center. Yet, in larger cities, they may not be as common because few people have room to do this.
posted by k8t at 10:39 AM on March 7, 2017


We're in the bay area as well-- I would suggest looking at in-home day care, as they're generally the cheapest option (that's what we're going with right now). And they seem to be more common in California than other states.

We pay about 18K a year, or for a direct comparison to your number, around $8/hr. But the hours are stricter than with a nanny.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 10:48 AM on March 7, 2017


If my son had been born 29 days earlier, then he could start kindergarten 11 months sooner. Obviously there are developmental/readiness issues to consider, too, but I'm not thrilled about having to pay for an entire extra year of preschool. You obviously can't always plan this perfectly especially if you have fertility issues, but this is something I wish I had considered when planning our first pregnancy.

Also, does your area do free/subsidized preschool the year just prior to kindergarten? Here in Florida the state pays for a half-day of VPK (voluntary pre-kindergarten), but nearly all the preschools around me offer a full day where you just pay the balance out of pocket, so your last year of daycare before public school starts ends up being half-price.
posted by gatorae at 11:11 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


I meant to add, neither of my suggestions help with young babies - basically those first few years are excruciating budget-wise - but I'm pointing out a dim light a couple years into the tunnel.
posted by gatorae at 11:13 AM on March 7, 2017


We are in a smallish city on the east coast and for our area, nannies are much more expensive than daycare. Our 2 children are 3 years apart. Because of some scheduling issues, we used a nanny share for our youngest for a few months until a daycare spot opened up. The nanny share was much more expensive (even with the nanny reducing her usual hourly fee).

Infant rates at daycare are the most expensive. Most daycares reduce the rate as the children get older and the teacher/child ratios go up.

Our oldest child currently attends a preschool where the tuition is partially subsidized by a church and by individual and corporate donations. The school is primarily geared towards low-income and special needs but is open to all. We feel extraordinarily lucky to be here, and really appreciate not having childcare be bigger of a financial burden. For us, full time infant and preschool care is costing $300 a week.

By the time we have a 3rd child, the oldest will be in free public school and the middle will have aged out of infant care so we'd only be paying for 1 kid in infant care.
posted by FamilyBand at 11:28 AM on March 7, 2017


We're in LA. For fulltime daycare for my child over two it's about $800/mo. For my under 2yo it's about $1200/mo, and I think that includes the sibling discount of 10%.

How do people do this? My MIL helped for each child's first year, that saved us some dough. If you can't get free help from family, some people hire a retired lady in the neighborhood, or pay a SAHM to do an unlicensed in-home daycare (generally legal at a capped number of kids, in our area 4 kids above the number of kids that belong to the family providing care). Some people become the SAH parent themselves and do daycare for other families. Some people trade shifts, one parent working during the day and the other parent working at night, while the child stays home. Or some variation of this where one parent works weekends. Some people work from home and keep the kid home, or work parttime and have a nanny come in a few hours per day. Some people just decide to have one parent stay home fulltime.

We tried a nanny share and it didn't work for us, we tried working with a retired lady and it didn't work for us. We tried dropping our kid with a SAHM friend (for pay) and that didn't really work for us. Mostly it came down to personalties. Our longterm financial goals (including contributions to SS and retirement funds) preclude either of us from being SAH parents. We interviewed a lot of daycares, some much more expensive (due to lower teacher to child ratios) and some that were much cheaper but where we didn't like the program they were offering. In the end we found one we like and having the routine and structure works well for everyone in our family, so we budget for it and give up a few other things. You have to be willing to think outside the box a little bit, but you can find something that works.
posted by vignettist at 11:48 AM on March 7, 2017


Yes, quality home-based childcare is ideal. Our nanny also takes care of three children (and she does it well), making it much more affordable in our big city area than daycare.
posted by EtTuHealy at 11:50 AM on March 7, 2017


So the savings from multiple children don't come near daycare costs for one, although each bit helps. A car seat is $250, my kids' daycare for full-time was $1100-1600/month /each/.

My kids are 5 yrs apart though so that helped. For the period of time from my mat leave (1 yr) to 18 mos for my younger, we had a nanny and that cost $2800/mo, and then my elder was in public school so daycare + aftercare was $2100. Most people I know had more churchy daycare and less Montessori so our costs were pretty premium.

You know this already but remember that if you commute, your nanny hours are >40, although my husband and I managed to swing our "shifts" a bit.

We saved up, is how we managed the high watermark years as my job -retirement contributions and insurance and things, -commuting costs, -nanny was coming in at -200/mo. But I stayed on the salary grid. We also haven't had a whole lot of vacations, artisanal anything, or renovated anything. But it's almost done now, my youngest starts public school in the fall.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:33 PM on March 7, 2017


Oh and I'm in Toronto.
posted by warriorqueen at 12:34 PM on March 7, 2017


An au pair costs between $20-25K per year depending on how you work it, and that definitely seems to be in the ballpark of what you're paying if you use 30+ hours weekly. Of course, you have to have the space to house a person, but it's childcare in your own home and it's extremely flexible (and can be pretty awesome). Before I had an au pair, I paid $15/hr to a nanny in the suburban northeast and gave her a raise to $17/hr when I had a second child.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 6:26 PM on March 7, 2017


Double the kids does not equal double the pay for a nanny. Maybe it should, but the reality is that it doesn't. We paid our nanny $15-16 per hour for two plus time and a half overtime for 50 hours per week (and also taxes, unemployment insurance, etc). It was a little more expensive than the good daycare center, equivalent to the really good daycare center, and way more than an in-house daycare, but the flexibility it bought us was worth it. Having a nanny has incremental costs that daycare doesn't have (outings, extra carseats, raises) whereas daycare costs go down over time, so that should be factored in.

We are in Minneapolis which is frequently decried as being extra expensive for daycare.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:57 PM on March 7, 2017


Response by poster: Thanks, everyone! There is a lot to absorb here. I really appreciate hearing everyone's experiences and perspectives. Thank you very much for taking the time to share them.
posted by slidell at 7:57 PM on March 7, 2017


My kids' dad and I both reduced and flexed our work hours so we worked opposite shifts. It sucked, but eventually it ended. You may not want or be able to pull that off completely, but you might be able to do it to the extent that you have to pay for fewer days of day care, etc.
posted by metasarah at 8:23 AM on March 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


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