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We have friends in central jersey that were paying 17k a year for their infant, I guess it goes down as they get older but we were shocked to say the least. So what is that? $300 a week?
Care providers are only licensed to care for a small number of children, especially under 3 years of age.
They have to charge the fees they do so they can make a decent take- home salary too. Sometimes I think we forget that this is a full time job with a lot of responsibility, not the 3 hrs of babysitting that we used to do when we were teenagers.
In my area (Upstate NY) it is roughly about $180-$280 per week for 5 full days for infant care. Infant care is REALLY expensive and it does go down as they transition to toddler then Pre-K. Often U-PreK is offered through your local elementary for free. Also I did not know this but I am learning a lot of centers do not offer half days for infant care.
I know daycare in NYC is A LOT more so I'd imagine in Philly a bigger metro area it will be as well. If you're truly curious for financial planning reasons a lot of daycares do list their pricing on their websites.
Here's an interesting article:
http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-much-youll-spend-on-childcare_1199776.bc
Topping the charts with costs over $10,000 a year for baby and toddler daycare are the following states, beginning with the most expensive: Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Illinois, Washington, and Wisconsin.
By contrast, the states with least expensive childcare are Mississippi ($4,650 a year on average for an infant or toddler), Kentucky ($6,500), and South Carolina ($5,850)
I'm paying a premium but my son's daycare has a 4:1 ratio in the infant class (usually reality is 3:1 between 9am and 3pm but 4:1 is guaranteed at all times) and it is a NAYEC certified school. For the infant tuition I am paying around $1,550 per month. That price includes all snacks and hot meals once he starts table food. Once he transitions to toddlers/walkers, the price goes down to around $1,150 a month (still including snacks and hot meals) but the ratio of child:caregivers goes up. There are plenty of schools around me that are more in the $900-$1,000 per month for the infant classes but they weren't the level of attention that I wanted.
I live NW of Boston, and my friend just had a baby and found out that all the centers around here are between $1600 and $1800/month. It's pretty crazy.
I'm in Northern California, and we pay between $800 - $900/month for full time care of an infant at an in-home daycare. It's one of the most expensive ones in town, but we feel we're getting better service, so we're willing to pay a higher price. Before we switched to daycare, we had a private nanny whom we paid $1800/month plus $200/month food allowance and all taxes.
In my area it is about $250/week for an infant and then goes down each year.
We have spent about $14,000 a year on child care for the past 3 years for my now 3 and 9 year old. I only worked part time. It makes me want to vommit when we get our statement at the end of the year for how much we have spent. I honestly don't think we could handle full time costs.
ETA: Our monthly bill for an infant and school ager for after school only was $1300/month. Summer months were more because she was there more often. 3 days a week.
I expect that our costs (in DC) will be about $400/week for a nanny share, $300+/week for a day care center. Completely insane.
We pay $990 a month for full time infant care in a center in Northern California. Don't forget to ask your employer if they offer a dependent care account. You can get up to $5000 pre-tax. Depending in your tax bracket or number of children it may work out better for you than claiming dependent care on your taxes.
I live in Vancouver, Canada, and our costs are insane - $1300-1500 per month!
i live in chicago, and when DS was an infant i paid $250 a week....and now he is in montessorri kindergarden so we pay $320 a month...actually not bad compared to some!
Hey! I would love some info regarding your thoughts on Montessori. My BIL put his 2 girls in a local Montessori program in GA. I'm looking into one near me (Upstate NY) for when the baby turns 18 months.
Please feel free to PM me. :)
Child care is crazy expensive, no matter where you are, especially for infants, so I'm not going to try to downplay that.
BUT, there are ways to cut down on the cost a bit. Shop around-- for one of those daycare center chain type places, it's $100 less a week in the town DH works than in the town where I work, even though it's essentially the same care, same program. If both you and your spouse are able to work 4-10s or even just tweak your schedules, you may be able to cut down daycare to 4 days a week or maybe even 3. If you have family who wants to watch kiddo regularly, if you pay them (in this instance, I don't know of any family members who have accepted payment), you may end up paying less than you would for daycare (and who better to watch your kid than family?). If you have friends young kids, you may be able to work out a nanny-share with them, which could be cheaper than daycare too. So there's room to be creative.
Good luck when it does come time to TTC!
I am not pg either, but we have looked in to daycare costs here in South Florida, and they are so high that we can honestly get an in-home nanny to come 3-4 days per week for about the same thing(I work from home, and make my own schedule, so I think I could cram everything in to 3-4 days outside of the house for work, and then 1-2 office days).
It's very smart to research it now before you're pg for planning purposes, but it will also give you time to get used to the idea that it is very expensive. I freaked out a little at first, but since it's had a few months to sink in, I feel like that is just the price of someone taking fabulous care of my baby:) And I feel peaceful about it now!
Daycare here in NYC/Hoboken starts at $1800 a month for infants. Our nanny is slightly more than that. The cost is absurd.
Ugh, this makes me so sad. I dont know how we will ever afford kids. The average cost around here is equal to our monthly mortgage payment.
Trust me, you'll find room in the budget. The one I'm looking at now is more than our mortgage payment!
Sad reality of having kids!
@regberadaisy: I know, thats what everyone says. I guess I just cant see how its a possibilty.
We live in Chicago and pay TWICE our rent for daycare. There were cheaper options but we loved this place. The cost is slowly killing us though.
I'm just outside DC, and the centers I looked at were mainly in the $1600- $1800/month range.
@red_seattle : One problem with trying to cut down on costs by sending your kid to fewer days of daycare is that this isn't an option at many day care centers, particularly for infants. I would have gladly gone down to just 3 or 4 days in the office, but none of our "finalists" for care centers had the option of sending an infant for anything less than 5 days/week. A couple of ones we didn't like as much had the option of "splitting" a full-time spot with another family (i.e. one family gets MWF, the other gets TuTh), but you end up paying far more per day that way.
Our sitter babysits Mon-Friday and it is about 35 dollars a day which breaks down to 700 a month.
My 2.5 year old is in daycare full time (Suburb of Cleveland) and we pay $225/week or $11,700 a year.
I used to live in Philly, and that seems on par there.
My girlfriends who use childcare in Brooklyn pay any where from $175-$225 for one kid per week. And i think thats for the basic, meals, playing (but not any formal "teaching classes". In the city the price jumps.
@KellyV: Yep I know, my boss sent her son to this fabulous day care in Montclair, I mean this thing was like the Tiffany's of daycares. I freaking wanted to go there. 5+ years ago it was about $1,600 per month, so now I'm sure its $1,800 like you quoted.
I am in the same position as you. NOt pregnant, but starting to research costs to feel it out a little.
In NYC, the lowest price I was able to find for an infant in full time daycare is $2,400/month. None of them post prices online though so I had to email a few to find that out. Nanny services start at around $500/week although I think that data is a little old so it's probably even more now.
If DH and I were to have a baby now, we would literally have to use our savings to help pay for daycare costs. And we both make 6 figure salaries. There is DEF something wrong with this picture..
Yowza, it seems as though it might be cheaper in some circumstances to be a SAHM rather than pay for childcare.
fricking NYC prices. I am actually frightened by what this will mean for us. I just don't want to spend more than $1500. When I lived inBrooklyn, I think I could have found something for that price, but now I'm in Long Island City and it is all sooooooo expensive. Aaaarrggghh!
@MrsMcGyro: I feel you. I am very underpaid, so at the prices some have quoted, my ENTIRE paycheck would go to daycare. Even we managed to find quality care for HALF my check, why would we do that? After daycare, I'd be bringing home less than minimum wage - and is minimum wage worth being away from our baby all day, every day? It just sucks because I would want to go back to work eventually, and in my field the gap in my resume will crush my chances. But what else do you do, except try like hell to find a much higher earning job?
I'm starting to look around for daycare now, and it looks like we'll wind up paying somewhere between $1000 and $1500 per month for good infant daycare. Unfortunately we don't have any family in the area so 5 days per week of daycare is a necessity for us. We could hire a nanny, but that would be an even greater financial burden. (We're in the San Francisco Bay Area.)
I hear ya. We have no close family nearby to watch the baby either. I'm seriously considering asking for 4 days in office and 1 day work at home. My husband has one day off during the week that way we can do a MWF day care routine. I just really really do not want to put our baby in daycare full time! We'll have to see.
That's crazy cheap for NYC in general! Brooklyn or not! My co-worker here in small town upstate NY is paying ~$280+ per week.
Erm, any chance you feel like providing deets on where in BK this daycare is etc? That price is incredible!!!
If I had to put my son in day care then I wouldnt work. I wouldnt make enough to make me being at work worth it. right now i work 3-4 days a week. I work around FI schedule and my mom is a big plus. but just seeing the prices and even looking at the fact I would be away from my son for so long in the week I personally could not do it, espicelly if he was an infant. that would be too hard for me....
You're absolutely right. I'm struggling with this right now. Unfortunately I do make more than childcare costs. So if I quit my job we would not be able to financially survive, so I have to work. Thankfully my husband's schedule allows him one day off a week. I'm hoping my work will allow me to work from home one day a week. That way we will only have to put baby in day care M,W,F. Unfortunately both sets of parents do not live nearby. :(
I'm So going to be bawling the first day I drop baby off at day care. :*(
I live in North NJ, and the lowest I have found is $1800, and that was no meals. And also drop off is at 7 and pick up is at 5:30, anythning after you pay every 30 mins your late in picking up the baby. DH and I both work in the NYC with a 2 hour commute. It's INSANE, DH and I are in SHOCK and have no idea what we are going to do. I asked my boss if I could do PT and he still hasn't given me an answer.
Um &*@#!!! Seriously WOW I had no idea! I mean I went to College for Child care and adult with disabilities and I worked in Childcare like 7-8 years ago. Man prices have gone UP! I worked at a pretty "nice" child care place that people fought to get into. It was expensive then but nothing near the prices you ladies are throwing out! GOOD GRIEF!!!! Umm wow....I feel really guilty. DH is military and I recently looked up the rates to have childcare through their program and I thought $590 (they go off total family income and with us both working and him fairly senior we are in one of the higher brackets to pay) a month was bad. Guess the prices really have gone up! Def not going to complain about that now! YIKES!!!!
We started researching costs and immediately gave up deciding it wasn't worth it for us. We found several cost levels, but none will work in a budget to make it worthwhile to go back to work full time.
I've worked it out with my job so I can offer them 1 full day a week (thank goodness for my husband's 4-10 hour shifts) and flexible time working from home the rest of the week on needed projects- I got very lucky. I have been through 3 bosses in this pregnancy, and luckily all have been ok with it (and I still have 8 weeks to go until maternity leave starts at 36 weeks).
I worked with a girl in Colorado who after daycare/afterschool care for her two kids made $7 per paycheck after taxes/benefits taken out. She truly loved her job, but that still makes me sad.
Wow. I'm not even close to TTC but this is insane! How much are the workers at the daycare making!? (Or the owners I suppose.) When I was in daycare, I went to a large daycare with tons of kids a few adults, and most of the adults were college students majoring in education. These costs are coming to $10-11 per hour for a child, and they have a lot more kids than adults... and as a college student I'm making minimum wage. It would be a lot cheaper just to find a trustworthy babysitter than send a kid to daycare, apparently.
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First off: I am not pregnant!
But, Mr. S and I have been discussing kids a LOT lately. Today, I was talking to a co-worker who has a baby and she told me how much her daycare costs. I couldn't BELIEVE how much it was, and what's worse is that she told me that she was getting a great deal and that most daycares are almost twice what she pays.
I suppose I was just really naive.
But I'm curious: what is the average weekly or monthly cost of childcare in your area?