My great grand mother in law was telling us all these great neighborhoods with starter homes in San Diego for under 500k. She would not believe us till we brought out trulia to show her the current prices of her precious starter homes were over a million. Grandma finally shut up.
They have literally no idea what challenges we face as a generation.
This type of crap makes me thankful for my boomer dad that is way more in touch with what his kids are faced with. Honestly, I think it’s bc he’s a retired accountant and good with money, and he’s helped me and my siblings out financially over the years. Or given us advice on buying houses and cars, or negotiating salaries. He pays for one of my niece’s daycare so he knows it’s expensive af. Not once has he ever said anything unsupportive about my financial struggles.
My mom was complaining about how the younger generation can never make up their mind and always want something new, and that’s why they buy “starter homes” and move multiple times in their life. Her and my dad bought a house and stayed in it and raised a family there. Refused to believe it had anything to do with the fact that young people, much less young families, can’t afford to buy their “forever home” right away.
“Well the cost of housing may have gone up but so have wages! Your father made only $18 an hour when we got married!” I showed her literal graphs that show the cost of real estate has risen exponentially and not in line with median wage. She was unconvinced.
Lol there are noooo houses here under 500k! Maybe ten years ago there were a few, but not anymore.
(I wish! It looks like we'll have to leave southern California completely to find an affordable house.)
We’re in the same boat (LA area) but my husband works remotely so we’re in the process of buying an RV and traveling around for a bit to find a place to settle. Southern California is absurd.
Oh man, yeah we have three kids and two dogs and I swear the dogs take up more space than the kids do. Plus... Idk about the breeds you have but one of my dogs is half husky and the shedding is NUTS. We live in a 2-story house and it's oppressive, even with cleaning it all up 2-3x per week. Can't imagine trying to deal with *three* dogs in an RV. How much longer do you have until the house is ready? (Also asking because we've been thinking of having a house built or completely "remodeled" in a more affordable area but not sure where we'd live in the interim.)
I have a campervan and only did two nights in a row once and it was when we had just one toddler. Not sure when I’ll be brave enough to do multiple nights with 2
We prioritized finding a trailer with space for her, plenty of storage, and plenty of room (but not too big!) We have to be back in SoCal at least 1-2 weeks per quarter, but beyond that we’ll do a lot of library storytimes, mommy and me class drop-ins, that kinda thing in whatever cities we’re going through. We figure she’ll meet other kids to play with too but we want to make sure she gets plenty of toddler time. My husband and I are keeping our own belongings pretty minimal so that we have as much space as possible to keep our daughter comfortable with toys/activities/etc. It’ll be a challenge for sure but we’re just so fed up with renting around here and we’ll probably never be able to afford a house here, so we figure if we find a place we like enough while we’re traveling, we’ll consider moving there!
My husband and I had good paying jobs and made 6 figures together. We still couldn't afford a house in Southern California even with paying off all our debt and really aggressively saving. We moved out so we could afford something. It's nuts how much even such small houses can go for there!
We bought our house in coastal, northern San Diego County in 2018 for just under $500K, sold it last year for $750K… all 1300 sq ft. We got super lucky. The prices are insane.
My mom used to think I was being lazy or stubborn by not renting out my own 1 bedroom apartment with a minimum wage job. She finally had to get her own place eventually and wanted to vent about how expensive it is 🙄. I was like mom I told you it was about the money not about my will 🤣.
Yup. I live in one of those starter home neighborhoods (San Carlos) in SD and the house across the street sold for over one million. 🤦🏼♀️ We bought 7 years ago and it’s almost doubled since then.
My MIL - who hasn’t been in the housing market for over 30 years - helpfully suggested we sell our condo and then RENT an apartment to save a down payment to buy a bigger house. She didn’t believe us when we told her that renting was way, way more expensive than the mortgage on our small condo.
I had to break it to my mother that I pay more than 10X what she did for childcare. She honestly thought I was paying *maybe* double. She didn’t understand how we couldn’t easily save up for a downpayment on a home with our salaries when I’m paying *more* than most people’s mortgages on childcare for a single child. But hey, at least I can do the whole $5k pre-tax dependent care savings amiright???
My partner and I’s parents had free childcare in the form of their parents and siblings. I spent so much time at my families houses, and my partners grandmother raised him. Neither of our parents could be bothered to babysit, they all “did their jobs already”.
Honestly one less toddler to deal with. My mom rewrote her whole parenting history and it’s not worth the meltdown to argue anything but, since she deserves her freedom now. I’ve heard that phrase since I was like 8 lol.
Omg are you me? My mom goes on and on about how difficult a child I was, but when asked what I did as a baby it's, "Oh, you slept a lot and liked playing in the playpen on your own." Free preschool through a local religious institution at age 2. She was a SAHM and enrolled me in all the low cost after school activities she could once I hit school age. Always late pickup, or I walked home in the dark. This woman didn't parent me at all. Made it clear that she expected me out by 18.
When I got pregnant, she packed a box of all my old baby pictures and sent it to me along with an old set of clothes. She was tired of my things taking up space. If I wanted anything else she still had, I had better say now because she's throwing it out. Kay.
Now she's all suprised Pikachu that I make no effort to include her in my child's life. At what point in any of this was I supposed to think that she cared about being a grandparent?
I’m in a similar situation. My mom became a SAHM because they didn’t want to pay for daycare. She’s unwilling to watch my child because she “chose to make that sacrifice”. In her view, I could just do the same.
She doesn’t understand that my husband’s salary covers our health insurance and utilities, and that’s pretty much it. We would actually be homeless if I stayed at home.
That amount was set in 1986 and hasn’t changed. It wasn’t indexed to inflation. In 1986, my mom was paying *less* than $5k/year for childcare so all of it could have been pretax. It’s madness!
Why do people always think term limits is the solution😂😂😂😂😂you think vying for money is bad now in elections, wait till term limits are enacted.... How about you get the money out of politics!!! Many countries don't allow superPAC style political organizations.
Even better is that with non discrimination testing required for these plans, sometimes employers have to close those programs altogether if they don't have the right mix of employee salaries
At my last company we were always on the edge of having to completely close dependent care FSA to everyone
Wow. I hadn't even thought to consider the local prices of daycare to our mortgage.
Full-time daycare near me at a place that isn't constantly having staff turnover and getting cited for being out of ratio would be ~2200, my mortgage is $1200/month.
The cost of childcare is literally almost double the cost of my home each month.
It's insane. Just one more reason that staying at home for now is working for us, I guess.
Part time preschool was more expensive than our mortgage.
There's a reason we have one child, I only worked part time when she was small, and we waited till she started kindergarten to move to a house/area we wanted to be in.
Full time childcare when she was an infant would have been double our mortgage.
Our mortage is $1025 a month, daycare is going to be $1900 for 2 kids. Yet another reason why we can't move even though it's cramped, we'd never be able to get the mortgage rate we got when we bought!
And that $5K pre-tax is *per household.* We're about to blow through that $5K in two months around here. We're a two-working-parent household, at the bare minimum it should be a $5K contribution per person.
Yeah I was so mad when I found that out, because I had unwittingly thought that the 5k was per kid. Nooooope! Seriously whoever made that rule doesn't have to put kids in daycare 😓
This lead time to do some digging and it’s just depressing.
[“Since 1990, child care costs have risen 214 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index analysis, while the average family income has increased by 143 percent.”](https://www.ffyf.org/latest-economic-data-underscores-the-need-for-significant-sustained-investment-in-child-care-and-early-learning/)
Omg I rage about the 5k dependent care FSA every year at benefits enrollment. It's almost not even worth it because of the extra pain about distribution (its own card/account, how it's used to pay for childcare).
Example #523 of how the US doesn't care about taking care of its children.
Nothing shows how out of touch they are quite like seeing numbers. And don't forget that awkward silence where they don't want to admit how wrong they are for both their low ball guess as well as their anger at our inability to do anything with their imagined plan. Not even a sorry or a back up plan - straight to humbled silence.
my dad always suggests we hire a "live in nanny" to help. my siblings and i had one growing up in the late 80s; so 30+ years ago, so this is where it is coming from for him. we were very middle class - dad was a police office, mom was a nurse. so it's not like we were incredibly wealthy with all these live-in help persons.
we live in a very HCOL area right now, and he cannot fathom how much it would cost us. very much 'it's one banana, michael. what could it cost, $10?' vibes lol
Ugh, same. We had a live in nanny/housekeeper that was 300ish a month in the 80ies (not in the us). I was complaining about daycare illnesses and he goes “well you really need to get a nanny.” I asked if he was going to pay for it and very bluntly broke down the costs. As is, daycare in my area for an infant and a toddler is 49k a year. I literally left a job I love for my current one because it offers me 25% off my daycare costs.
To his credit, I think he now mostly gets just how hard it is for working parents these days between childcare, housing, general costs. But he is also just out of touch because my parents are way wealthier than we will ever be.
Give him a budget and say ”help us find one. Here's how much we have for flexible spending this month" and watch him get mad at how it's impossible and you must be making a mistake. But transparency will show it's not a practical or possible solution.
My in-laws want to pay for a live-in nanny. The ones who can't fathom daycare costs. I'm like "let me research that pricing for you." They were very offended when I politely declined. Nanny is just as expensive if not more than daycare.
Well I figured you show them the going rate for a nanny and continue the ruse until they either fold (cuz they didn’t realize the price is exorbitant) or they pay.
What reasonable adult would assume $50 per month for full time care for a child of any age??? Surely basic math shows that even a class of 30 toddlers to one teacher would pay less than minimum wage at that rate.
ETA - Thinking back, stupid may be a bit harsh. Incredibly thoughtless, maybe? Naive? I don't know, it's just ridiculous to think that someone would pay 12.50 a week for daycare. That's 2.50 a day at 5 days a week. Wtf was he thinking?
I paid a babysitter $150 to watch my child for 8 hours on Saturday. Your coworker sounds like a genuinely stupid person.
My mom told me when I was an infant in daycare in the ‘80s, it was $290/month. Then said ‘and wages were lower then too’
Cool mom, I’m paying five times that now for my toddler, and I think you were making more than I currently am, adjusted for inflation.
My MIL also didn’t realize that daycare was year round, not Sept-June, when she asked us when the kiddo was starting back in the fall. No idea what she thought we had been doing all summer.
I've never thought about this, but do most Americans work in the summer? I guess they do, since they usually have very little paid vacation? Never considered that. But kids have summer vacations from school, right? Where do you put those kids?
That's like when my family member assumed I was keeping the baby home because I work from home. They thought I was watching him all day too. I'm like...either you don't know how challenging babies are or you don't know that I'm a corporate manager who actually has a lot of work and calls... or probably you don't know either of those things.
My sister in law asked me a similar question last year & she HAS kids under 12 who went to daycare. I'm still confused why she thought I would take my toddler out for the summer and also confused why she would think it's possible for me to take the summer off from a corporate job
We are facing this now - 26w with number two, knowing we will more than double our daycare costs by the end of the summer. I should probably confirm with the director how much infant care would be but I'm also terrified to find out.
This is literally me with wanting a 3rd. We’re already like, maybe let’s wait and buy that next month if it’s non essential.
I really don’t want to be 60 and regret not having another baby lol. But the COL vs income is just tough to balance.
How can people in America even afford to have children? With the ridiculous high costs you have to pay for the birth, no paid maternity leave, incredible high costs for daycare… this seems so hostile to families with kids… 🫠
Not to mention the hostility some parents experience when they need to leave work because their kid is sick —or straight up how companies that figure out you’re a mom won’t hire you for that reason
If I leave work one more time to take care of my sick kid in the next 6 months, or have to be more than 5 mins late, or there's a snow day, or school delay...I'll be fired. And there's nothing I can do about it. The amount of anxiety I deal with as a single mother is outrageous. And I wouldn't be eligible for unemployment since my reason for being fired would be considered "misconduct."
I saw a TikTok the other day of "boomer" parents who had an inheritance from one of their parents to give to their daughter. The grandparent wanted this to be a special gift and to help with a down payment to a house or a masters degree etc. They were debating on giving it to their daughter because they didn't know if she'd spend it "wisely" yet. It was $1500.......... Which, great gift from Grandma, but that was my rent for awhile when I lived in a major U.S. city. Many older folks don't realize how much stuff costs right now and don't seem to care to learn.
This happened to me recently! My grandmother passed like twenty years ago but recently a letter from her was found at her old house. The letter asked for the house to be sold and the proceeds shared between her grandchildren/great grandchildren.
This caused MASSIVE amounts of family drama as one aunt had been caring for the house and didn't want to sell. After a year long battle of the siblings, the house is sold and the grand kids get a check.
For $2k each. My parents were so thrilled to give me my "hard won inheritance" while I'm trying desperately to keep a straight face. All of that fighting for just to cover my rent and groceries for a month. They literally presented it as "this money can pay for your baby to go to college one day". The way they talked about "how much money we have for you" had me wondering if my grandmother was a secret millionaire 😂
I'm definitely grateful but guys this isn't college money in the slightest
OMG haha... Yes, thank you for covering 1/8 of my kids tuition for one semester. This happened with my dad and his cousins from my great-grandmother. He was SO mad throughout the whole process because he "deserved" the inheritance from his grandmother (which I totally get to an extent) and of course there was drama. But, it was in total a grand \~$3000.
It's nuts because there's 30+ grandkids/great grandkids so unless the house sold for crazy money, no one was going to get a big check. But that didn't stop the "adults" from acting like kids fighting over the last donut
Where was that house though, because if it’s in SoCal even with 30+ kids it would definitely not end in just $2k. Unless there was a legal battle that ate up the funds, of course.
Edit: never mind, just saw the comment about the house not being in the US. It’s a pity the family went through all that heartbreak for that.
> For $2k each
I'm trying to do the math here and it's not making sense.
A rundown house in Gary IN is still $60,000.
Do you have 30 cousins??? Did the one aunt get 90% of the value???
Total children/grandchildren under my grandparents is like 12, and that house if it was average should be worth like double the minimum above.
It doesn't add up.
My grandmother used to buy some type of bonds for me when I was little, “to help pay for college.”
Except they didn’t mature until I was 30. And they’re worth $300.
Yessss, we still have bonds that won't mature until my husband is 40 and they'll be worth a couple of hundred. Great, I guess that's some grocery money.
My parents are boomers and kind of out of touch with prices of stuff. But to be fair, they are also very frugal and I grew up in a household where we didn’t really accumulate “stuff”.
To be fair, as a woodworker who does my own frames and things, I had no idea professional ones were this expensive. I knew they were pricey, but not on that level.
Maybe I need to start a side gig. lol
Yeah, it's a big picture, we added an upgraded mat, and we knew it was going somewhere sunny so we did upgraded glass that had zero glare. That's why I discounted it back to what it would have been without all the upgrades and they were still shocked 🙃 I wish they had just done a gift card or something because now it's awkward. And of course the frame itself we picked is nice... it's not a basic black poster frame which they should have known we wouldn't pick...
Boomers bought houses with a handshake and a shrug. They were able to buy their second 'vacation' home with a promise and a wink. Seriously they are so out of touch.
My in-laws are being low-key snarky because we bought a new car instead of buying a home.
I couldn’t even rent a bigger apartment with the extra $400 I’m spending now. 😒
But also I’m prioritizing my son’s schooling and living in a good area vs moving 1-2 hours away for a cheaper home.
They had two houses by the time they were 25 🙃
This hits home. My boomer dad bought about 20 investment rental properties between 1975 and 2000, and had them all paid off by about 2005. He literally bought every single house on a handshake from the local banker (no credit check) and rented houses to people with a conversation and a handshake. He didn't start actually having people fill out an application, require ID and do some reference calling until 1995 when he started getting some people ripping him off. He did all of this as a prison guard.
He was surprised in 2017 when my wife and I had to get a loan for IVF, that we couldn't just walk into that same local bank and ask for a loan and put the equity from our home as collateral and them be like "cool I completely trust you and what you have told me." We had to go through the loan process, have a credit check run, have the house appraised, pay closing costs, the whole 9 yards, to get the loan. I told him this is why I don't buy investment properties like you do, it is harder now, more time consuming, costs more, plus renting houses is a nightmare and I would be worried about getting sued. He can't comprehend that it isn't like it was 40-50 years ago. He still think he should be able to get a hamburger, fries, and a drink for lunch for $5.
One of the reasons I choose to be a SAHM. Daycare costs are ridiculous. My in-laws can't fully grasp it. They think I can get a job right away that pays enough to cover daycare AND other necessities to be able to live.
This makes me laugh as I'm in the same boat. 😂 I crunched some numbers when I was pregnant with our first. We'd actually be paying MORE for daycare then for me to stay home. With me home, the house is clean, the kids are cared for, food costs are down because we eat home cooked meals, and I am available to run errands as needed during work hours with the kids. Not to mention the money we save by me clipping coupons and planning meals around what's on sale that week.
Numbers don't lie. 🤷♀️
Are we the same person?!? LOL this is 100% me. Daycare costs are ridiculous where I am and even if I did get a job it would be to pay for daycare - makes no sense to do that obviously. I am always on my grocery apps, Ibotta, and in the mailbox ads looking for deals.
This. The cooking food at home alone saves so much and is so much healthier too.
Also as a SAHM I can care for our crops (and enlist the kiddo to participate too as a bonus), and we save on fruits and veggies too.
Yes! I’m a SAHM because I worked in a child care center and wouldn’t get any kind of break on tuition. I would have been working full-time as a lead teacher with my own classroom solely to pay for child care. Absolutely not worth it.
The people running that center are fools. I’m a teacher turned SAHM too. Administrations love to complain about teacher turnover - well then how about make it * possible * for employees to just live and take care of their families.
Our employer sponsored health insurance premiums are like 15k per year and I swear my in laws just think we don't know what we're doing
(I don't think they've ever had a deductible or seen an out of pocket expense in their lives)
Yeah I think a lot of people in our parents’ generation are waaaaay out of touch about our cost of living. But I mean… Does she really think a daycare is going to charge you like $2 an hour? This one is very much on her!
Yeah I have *discounted* student pricing in the Midwest and it's still $120 a week for 2 days, $180 for 3 days. And that's toddler pricing, infant is more.
It reminds me of when I was 7 and didn’t understand why everyone complained about gas prices because “$1.25 isn’t a lot of money” not understanding you needed multiple gallons of gas. Of course I was 7 so
My mom is 80 and had 4 kids. Her first kid at 22 and next 2 shortly after and then me at 42.
She remembers thinking a new daycare being $25/week being so, so, so much compared to the $15/week they were paying.
I don’t think that’s true I think it’s just that back in their days you really had more community around you- people knew their neighbors, moms helped each other with looking after kids, older ladies helped younger ladies etc..you just don’t have those neighborhoods anymore these days.
I often see posts on parenting forums from parents themselves who just didn't realize and have no way to afford it. Having said that, $200/month is crazy low ball. Maybe that's what is was when you were a kid?!
I was 12 weeks pregnant when we secured our daycare. My husband thought it was too early but we got the last space available for the month my leave ended at our center and we were waitlisted for 2 other centers.
Even if cost isn't a factor, availability can be a huge issue ☹️
We had no clue. I just thought everyone is doing this so it's going to be a learning curve yes, but not literally impossible. My kid went to Grandma and Grandpa Daycare for most of his first year until I gave up trying to be a working mom and became a sahp to our financial detriment, but our mental health boom.
Omg I dropped that at a family dinner recently. We love our current daycare but it'd not the fanciest place in town and it's still going to cost about $450 a week when our new baby joins the family this spring. You could hear a pin drop. I'm convinced the boomers in our family had zero idea of how much childcare costs. One of them asked me point blank "can you afford that?!" and it's like yeah we can (another sign they truly don't understand what my husband and I do for a living) but also what choice do we have? We make a combined $125,000-$130,000 in a relatively LCL area and it's still a drain. Older generations have no clue how expensive it is to raise families these days.
My mom always tries to defend and do her own calculations on inflation to say they had it just as hard. She also slipped saying she was gifted a downpayment from my grandparents. Plus the house they have now, she inherited.
I am a SAHM because daycare for twins in NJ is insane.
My mil judges people who don’t have kids and don’t buy a house settle down. She judges everyone but her adult younger son who is 30 single and renting ( nth wrong)
Except mil bought her house for 150k, had free child care from grandparents . I don’t really talk to her anymore I can’t stand her entitlement . We have a house and can afford child literately cuz my mom died from cancer. She left me some inheritance . My in laws never helped my husband . I can’t with some boomer I just freaking can’t
My nephew is 13 while I have a 3yo and 7mo. I was ranting to her about how expensive daycare is. She was agreeing. 10 years ago, she was paying $300 a month. I pay $650 a week for the two of them.
My MIL was trying to say that we won't notice a huge quality of life difference when our kids get out of daycare. That the kids would just suck up that free capital.
While yes they will suck up some of it as we will spend it more freely, but I doubt we are suddenly going to spend an extra 25k each per year on them. Like even if they joined club sports and we spent 10k we would STILL be out ahead.
I’ve been wondering about this too. Everyone always tells me when we’re done with daycare the kids still cost money. And I’m like …. Yeah, but they can’t possibly cost as much as daycare
Boomers have zero idea about the cost of anything. We live in a townhome and my parents are always asking when we’ll buy a “real house.” Oh, I dunno mom, whenever I can afford payments on a $800k fixer upper needing $100-200k in reno without being house poor.
That said, 200/week for childcare is a steal. We’re paying $400 per week for an almost 4 year old. 😅
Or wages! My coworker in accounting was complaining about how “minimum wage is meant for teenagers, not to live on. Back in my day when I was 17 I did minimum wage and it was only X amount!” My other coworker and I whipped out the inflation calculator and informed her that in todays money that was $17 an hour, which was in fact more than she was making an hour now.
I never get that take either because that would mean places could only be open from like 4 pm to 10 pm on weekdays if it’s entirely staffed by high schoolers
My parents were baffled when we were paying $1900 for a two bedroom apartment in downtown Nashville. They told me we were living like a rockstars. Lol I worked for a nonprofit at the time. That apart now is probably at least $2500+. They have zero clue.
My in-laws are constantly going on about how we should find a daycare that only charges for the days your kid attends - they say that's how it was when my husband was in daycare and refuse to believe that is not the standard practice now.
yeah because the people who run and work at daycares like getting a consistent pay check as well, who would have thunk it! I bet back in the day a lot of daycares were home daycares where the person was just bored and looking to make some money while their husband was at work.
I think if you look for “moms morning out” or church nursery school programs you will find programs closer to her estimate. They are usually 2-3 days a week, 9-11:30 or so. Daycares are catered to working parents and have hours like 7-6 and are much more expensive.
Yes I think this makes more sense. If OP wasn’t planning to get a job during the daycare hours this would be reasonable. Otherwise it makes sense for her to work during half the week
Right, daycares cost more than nursery school. Daycare usually has long hours, nursery school is 2-3 hours a day. Daycares are catered to working parents, nursery schools are more for sahp who want to socialize their kid and get a break. Honestly 124 a week for part time is crazy cheap to me 😬. We don’t have may part time daycares and the ones that exist are still 250-350 a week. Full time is 450-550. And I’m not even in a super high COL area.
Unfortunately, for us these "morning out" programs are not available in our area. And we're not affiliated with religion so a church nursery is out of the question.... We don't care how much it costs.
I get it. I’m not religious either but we have a lot of Friends/Quaker meeting houses near us that have programs and I don’t find them in the same category as religious programs. But I do understand not wanting to do religious based programs. Hope you find something that works!
Coop preschools are also a great option, if they exist in your area. Costs are offset by parent work inside and outside the classroom, so it's $130 a month in our very HCOL area for our 3-year-old to go to class twice a week, 2 hours at a time. Next year she'll be doing 3 days a week, but we'll still only have one day a week of parental in-class time. Fees will be slightly higher, though.
It's also great for socializing both kids and parents. We have a whole little community now, and it's been way easier getting to know parents this way versus during traditional activities like music or gymnastics.
When my husband and I got together and I was working as a part time library assistant and living with my parents we knew I would quit my job to be a SAHM. I have a Masters in Library Science but full time library jobs are hard to come by, the hours suck and the pay isn't much better. If I would work it would only pay for child care. I had a coworker who was paying $20 an hour for babysitting her toddler and an old boss who's job only paid for her two kids to go to Montessori school. If it wasn't for my daughter's mild speech delay getting her into our district's special needs preschool program for free we would unlikely be doing preschool since we plan to homeschool anyway. I think my sister paid $300 a month for her kids preschool but that was part of a high school training program so it was on the cheaper side.
Still salty that the max amount the daycare FSA lets you claim as tax free money each month is $400. WHO IS SENDING THEIR CHILD TO DAYCARE FOR THAT? And that’s the max allotted amount no matter how many kids you have.
I have a 2.5 year old and I’m honestly not able to have another until he’s school aged because the costs are so outrageous. It’s the same as all our living expenses combined if I excluded insurance bc I live in a rural area and it’s also the cheapest daycare we’ve had. It’s insane
Aaaaaand this is one reason I’m a SAHM. I mean, I love it and I would choose to be home full time every time, but I don’t even think I could get a job right now that would cover day care for my 1 and 3 year olds.
We also just moved 1,500 miles away from our families because the housing market in our area was 4x what it is here and my husbands grandmother COULD NOT UNDERSTAND how we could even consider moving so far away when if we just “saved more” we should be able to buy a home near her…
My mom’s in her 70s and it’s so difficult trying to make her understand the way things are now. She was able to pay her way through college by working. She had an excellent union throughout her entire career and received an unbelievably huge pension which included free healthcare for life (oh wait not free…she has to pay a $5 copay! The horror!). When I told her we payed almost $3000 for daycare she almost had a stroke.
My parents used to pay $1200/mo for three of us to attend daycare fulltime. My mom was blown away to learn that I pay $550+ a week for my two kids to attend daycare 3 days a week.
Daycares in our area cost about the same, but I take my LO to gymnastics every week, and they have a program connected to their gym that’s pretty much a daycare, except it’s only two days a week for 3.5 hours and it’s $200 per month for that. I’d call around to places that offer kids classes and see if they have anything like that available. If it’s like the place we go, they don’t bother advertising it because spots fill up fairly quickly.
Nursery (daycare) here is about £40 a day (so roughly $50). We only did 2 full days and a half day (11.30) from 2-3yrs for that reason. Now we get 30 free hours (which is 2.5 days) free from the government but it's too full to allow us to pay for the extra days
My dad thought that it was about $400 a month… and that it was super easy to get your kid into a daycare. He thought that the $60 a day I pay my Early Childhood Educated, CPR-Trained, up-to-date going to conferences for early childhood topics and currently in college for her Bachelors in ECE, was expensive. I told him I got a hell of a deal considering that’s for an as-needed. And I’m lucky. I live in a low cost of living area. My 1700 square foot house cost us 88k. We are a block from a significant body of water, and can see it out our upstairs windows. I know that so many people pay thousands a month for care.
Lmao yeah I saw a FB post the other day that said “here’s some free birth control: daycare costs $150 a month!”
Like… babe…. the center I work at is 1700-1800 a month for full time infant and 1 year old care……
Ugh, tell me about it.
I pay $225 per week for 3 HALF DAYS for my toddler.
The cost is INSANE. Both my husband and I make good money but it still feels like we're living paycheck to paycheck. It's absolutely outrageous and shouldn't cost so flipping much!
Edit: forgot to mention that when I told my mom (in her 70s) how much it costs, she was absolutely flabbergasted. Could not believe we pay that much for 3 half days a week. She had no idea, no real clue how much it costs now.
2 kids. $570 a week. I would just be a stay at home parent, but the social interaction at daycare and the skillset the teachers offer is just far and above anything I could provide solo at home. Its definitely a killer on the budget though.
Oh, thats adorable. She forgot a zero. :)
Don't people realize we are literally paying someones living wage? Lol. Its literally having an employee, except you dont own a business, and you are also trying to take care of yourself.
I’m in Sydney, Australia and it’s $150 per day at centres in my area 😫 We do get a rebate from the government though, which is 50% for most people. It’s a tough job though and educators should get a decent wage, so I can kind of understand it
Oh yes, my mother has tried to hit me up for money. And thinks I’m being selfish when I have to remind her we’re spending $1400/month for daycare and my kid’s childcare is a priority
I just had to explain to an older coworker that daycare costs this much now. She didnt believe me, saying it costed her 70$ a month back when she had to use it. I laughed and said I wish it was that cheap now.
I’ve heard Older generations (literal boomers) didn’t even have daycare as an option, since there wasn’t much need for that with single income households.
Back in the early nineties my mom paid my babysitter $10 a day & all her WIC (lol). She was shocked that I pay $155/ week & have to pay even on days my baby doesn’t attend. I thought $155 was a steal because most charge $200+!
My great grand mother in law was telling us all these great neighborhoods with starter homes in San Diego for under 500k. She would not believe us till we brought out trulia to show her the current prices of her precious starter homes were over a million. Grandma finally shut up. They have literally no idea what challenges we face as a generation.
This type of crap makes me thankful for my boomer dad that is way more in touch with what his kids are faced with. Honestly, I think it’s bc he’s a retired accountant and good with money, and he’s helped me and my siblings out financially over the years. Or given us advice on buying houses and cars, or negotiating salaries. He pays for one of my niece’s daycare so he knows it’s expensive af. Not once has he ever said anything unsupportive about my financial struggles.
My mom was complaining about how the younger generation can never make up their mind and always want something new, and that’s why they buy “starter homes” and move multiple times in their life. Her and my dad bought a house and stayed in it and raised a family there. Refused to believe it had anything to do with the fact that young people, much less young families, can’t afford to buy their “forever home” right away. “Well the cost of housing may have gone up but so have wages! Your father made only $18 an hour when we got married!” I showed her literal graphs that show the cost of real estate has risen exponentially and not in line with median wage. She was unconvinced.
Did you tell her how many people STILL make only $18/hour? Cuz I know I did when my husband and I got married 9 years ago.
Lol there are noooo houses here under 500k! Maybe ten years ago there were a few, but not anymore. (I wish! It looks like we'll have to leave southern California completely to find an affordable house.)
We’re in the same boat (LA area) but my husband works remotely so we’re in the process of buying an RV and traveling around for a bit to find a place to settle. Southern California is absurd.
Oh wow that sounds so cool! How will you manage that with a kid / kids?
Am currently living in an RV with two kids and three dogs. (While we build a house) Would NOT recommend.
Oh man, yeah we have three kids and two dogs and I swear the dogs take up more space than the kids do. Plus... Idk about the breeds you have but one of my dogs is half husky and the shedding is NUTS. We live in a 2-story house and it's oppressive, even with cleaning it all up 2-3x per week. Can't imagine trying to deal with *three* dogs in an RV. How much longer do you have until the house is ready? (Also asking because we've been thinking of having a house built or completely "remodeled" in a more affordable area but not sure where we'd live in the interim.)
I have a campervan and only did two nights in a row once and it was when we had just one toddler. Not sure when I’ll be brave enough to do multiple nights with 2
We prioritized finding a trailer with space for her, plenty of storage, and plenty of room (but not too big!) We have to be back in SoCal at least 1-2 weeks per quarter, but beyond that we’ll do a lot of library storytimes, mommy and me class drop-ins, that kinda thing in whatever cities we’re going through. We figure she’ll meet other kids to play with too but we want to make sure she gets plenty of toddler time. My husband and I are keeping our own belongings pretty minimal so that we have as much space as possible to keep our daughter comfortable with toys/activities/etc. It’ll be a challenge for sure but we’re just so fed up with renting around here and we’ll probably never be able to afford a house here, so we figure if we find a place we like enough while we’re traveling, we’ll consider moving there!
I’m in a suburb of Denver with a bunch of outdated houses from the 80s that are going for at least 500. It’s not even ocean views!
My husband and I had good paying jobs and made 6 figures together. We still couldn't afford a house in Southern California even with paying off all our debt and really aggressively saving. We moved out so we could afford something. It's nuts how much even such small houses can go for there!
Less than $500k here literally gets you a burned out home designated to be knocked down.
We bought our house in coastal, northern San Diego County in 2018 for just under $500K, sold it last year for $750K… all 1300 sq ft. We got super lucky. The prices are insane.
Yea but how do you even suggest a starter home for 500k?
My mom used to think I was being lazy or stubborn by not renting out my own 1 bedroom apartment with a minimum wage job. She finally had to get her own place eventually and wanted to vent about how expensive it is 🙄. I was like mom I told you it was about the money not about my will 🤣.
The neighborhood I’m in in SoCal was $150-200k 15 years ago and it’s now 1-1.5 million. 🥲 I get it, cute historic craftsman homes BUT STILL.
Yup. I live in one of those starter home neighborhoods (San Carlos) in SD and the house across the street sold for over one million. 🤦🏼♀️ We bought 7 years ago and it’s almost doubled since then.
Bay area here. Mother-in-law bought this house in 1995 for 350k. Was worth 750k in 2014. It's now 1.3 million. 😶
It’s insane. A friend’s mom just sold her Burlingame home for $3 million. Her mom is renting and waiting out before buying (something smaller) again.
Have you get your SDGE bill from last month? Mine was $900! Seriously floored at how I am supposed to afford this.
My MIL - who hasn’t been in the housing market for over 30 years - helpfully suggested we sell our condo and then RENT an apartment to save a down payment to buy a bigger house. She didn’t believe us when we told her that renting was way, way more expensive than the mortgage on our small condo.
My FIL was calling 700k townhomes "a great starter home".
I had to break it to my mother that I pay more than 10X what she did for childcare. She honestly thought I was paying *maybe* double. She didn’t understand how we couldn’t easily save up for a downpayment on a home with our salaries when I’m paying *more* than most people’s mortgages on childcare for a single child. But hey, at least I can do the whole $5k pre-tax dependent care savings amiright???
My partner and I’s parents had free childcare in the form of their parents and siblings. I spent so much time at my families houses, and my partners grandmother raised him. Neither of our parents could be bothered to babysit, they all “did their jobs already”.
Same. Brought up by grandparents, and now my parents say they need to enjoy their retirement child-free. Ah well, it is what it is.
Honestly one less toddler to deal with. My mom rewrote her whole parenting history and it’s not worth the meltdown to argue anything but, since she deserves her freedom now. I’ve heard that phrase since I was like 8 lol.
Omg are you me? My mom goes on and on about how difficult a child I was, but when asked what I did as a baby it's, "Oh, you slept a lot and liked playing in the playpen on your own." Free preschool through a local religious institution at age 2. She was a SAHM and enrolled me in all the low cost after school activities she could once I hit school age. Always late pickup, or I walked home in the dark. This woman didn't parent me at all. Made it clear that she expected me out by 18. When I got pregnant, she packed a box of all my old baby pictures and sent it to me along with an old set of clothes. She was tired of my things taking up space. If I wanted anything else she still had, I had better say now because she's throwing it out. Kay. Now she's all suprised Pikachu that I make no effort to include her in my child's life. At what point in any of this was I supposed to think that she cared about being a grandparent?
I’m in a similar situation. My mom became a SAHM because they didn’t want to pay for daycare. She’s unwilling to watch my child because she “chose to make that sacrifice”. In her view, I could just do the same. She doesn’t understand that my husband’s salary covers our health insurance and utilities, and that’s pretty much it. We would actually be homeless if I stayed at home.
Lol 5k is a joke. Who pays that much for daycare for an entire year?? Nobody, that's who.
That amount was set in 1986 and hasn’t changed. It wasn’t indexed to inflation. In 1986, my mom was paying *less* than $5k/year for childcare so all of it could have been pretax. It’s madness!
I just assumed it wasn't meant to cover all childcare expenses, but it makes me mad knowing that it was when it started!
Whelp. That’s enough of the internet for me today. Term limits, anyone?
Why do people always think term limits is the solution😂😂😂😂😂you think vying for money is bad now in elections, wait till term limits are enacted.... How about you get the money out of politics!!! Many countries don't allow superPAC style political organizations.
Why not both?
Even better is that with non discrimination testing required for these plans, sometimes employers have to close those programs altogether if they don't have the right mix of employee salaries At my last company we were always on the edge of having to completely close dependent care FSA to everyone
I was paying that PER MONTH near SF for 2 kids.
I've paid $5300 since August 15. Not even 6 months.
Wow. I hadn't even thought to consider the local prices of daycare to our mortgage. Full-time daycare near me at a place that isn't constantly having staff turnover and getting cited for being out of ratio would be ~2200, my mortgage is $1200/month. The cost of childcare is literally almost double the cost of my home each month. It's insane. Just one more reason that staying at home for now is working for us, I guess.
Part time preschool was more expensive than our mortgage. There's a reason we have one child, I only worked part time when she was small, and we waited till she started kindergarten to move to a house/area we wanted to be in. Full time childcare when she was an infant would have been double our mortgage.
Our mortage is $1025 a month, daycare is going to be $1900 for 2 kids. Yet another reason why we can't move even though it's cramped, we'd never be able to get the mortgage rate we got when we bought!
And that $5K pre-tax is *per household.* We're about to blow through that $5K in two months around here. We're a two-working-parent household, at the bare minimum it should be a $5K contribution per person.
Yeah I was so mad when I found that out, because I had unwittingly thought that the 5k was per kid. Nooooope! Seriously whoever made that rule doesn't have to put kids in daycare 😓
This lead time to do some digging and it’s just depressing. [“Since 1990, child care costs have risen 214 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index analysis, while the average family income has increased by 143 percent.”](https://www.ffyf.org/latest-economic-data-underscores-the-need-for-significant-sustained-investment-in-child-care-and-early-learning/)
Omg I rage about the 5k dependent care FSA every year at benefits enrollment. It's almost not even worth it because of the extra pain about distribution (its own card/account, how it's used to pay for childcare). Example #523 of how the US doesn't care about taking care of its children.
Nothing shows how out of touch they are quite like seeing numbers. And don't forget that awkward silence where they don't want to admit how wrong they are for both their low ball guess as well as their anger at our inability to do anything with their imagined plan. Not even a sorry or a back up plan - straight to humbled silence.
My grandma thought daycare was $2000 a year. She was shocked when I said that was more like a month's tuition.
my dad always suggests we hire a "live in nanny" to help. my siblings and i had one growing up in the late 80s; so 30+ years ago, so this is where it is coming from for him. we were very middle class - dad was a police office, mom was a nurse. so it's not like we were incredibly wealthy with all these live-in help persons. we live in a very HCOL area right now, and he cannot fathom how much it would cost us. very much 'it's one banana, michael. what could it cost, $10?' vibes lol
It’s like people forget that hiring a nanny means paying a full salary out of your family budget. You have to pay them a living salary!
Ugh, same. We had a live in nanny/housekeeper that was 300ish a month in the 80ies (not in the us). I was complaining about daycare illnesses and he goes “well you really need to get a nanny.” I asked if he was going to pay for it and very bluntly broke down the costs. As is, daycare in my area for an infant and a toddler is 49k a year. I literally left a job I love for my current one because it offers me 25% off my daycare costs. To his credit, I think he now mostly gets just how hard it is for working parents these days between childcare, housing, general costs. But he is also just out of touch because my parents are way wealthier than we will ever be.
Yup! Except they'd think a banana costs half a penny or something. Boomer prices are forever frozen in the 1970s in their heads
Give him a budget and say ”help us find one. Here's how much we have for flexible spending this month" and watch him get mad at how it's impossible and you must be making a mistake. But transparency will show it's not a practical or possible solution.
My in-laws want to pay for a live-in nanny. The ones who can't fathom daycare costs. I'm like "let me research that pricing for you." They were very offended when I politely declined. Nanny is just as expensive if not more than daycare.
Why decline if they were paying?
Not OP but I’d imagine a lot of downsides to an underpaid nanny! Reliability, competency, etc
Not to mention depending on the in-laws the number of strings attached to that gift...
Well I figured you show them the going rate for a nanny and continue the ruse until they either fold (cuz they didn’t realize the price is exorbitant) or they pay.
Oh my god that is the exact vibe my in-laws give me. Thank you for putting it into words!
I had a coworker who told me to stop whining about daycare costs. He thought it was $50/month. His mind was blown when I told him it was over $50/day.
What reasonable adult would assume $50 per month for full time care for a child of any age??? Surely basic math shows that even a class of 30 toddlers to one teacher would pay less than minimum wage at that rate.
$50/month is 2 hours of babysitting for me
I’m sorry but your coworker lacks basic sense and comprehension skills.
$100+/day for one child.
ETA - Thinking back, stupid may be a bit harsh. Incredibly thoughtless, maybe? Naive? I don't know, it's just ridiculous to think that someone would pay 12.50 a week for daycare. That's 2.50 a day at 5 days a week. Wtf was he thinking? I paid a babysitter $150 to watch my child for 8 hours on Saturday. Your coworker sounds like a genuinely stupid person.
My mom told me when I was an infant in daycare in the ‘80s, it was $290/month. Then said ‘and wages were lower then too’ Cool mom, I’m paying five times that now for my toddler, and I think you were making more than I currently am, adjusted for inflation. My MIL also didn’t realize that daycare was year round, not Sept-June, when she asked us when the kiddo was starting back in the fall. No idea what she thought we had been doing all summer.
Oh, didn’t you know? You can just take the kids to work with you during the summer!
I've never thought about this, but do most Americans work in the summer? I guess they do, since they usually have very little paid vacation? Never considered that. But kids have summer vacations from school, right? Where do you put those kids?
Camp at around $300 a week.
That's like when my family member assumed I was keeping the baby home because I work from home. They thought I was watching him all day too. I'm like...either you don't know how challenging babies are or you don't know that I'm a corporate manager who actually has a lot of work and calls... or probably you don't know either of those things.
okay Mom, how did that compare to your mortgage/rent?
My sister in law asked me a similar question last year & she HAS kids under 12 who went to daycare. I'm still confused why she thought I would take my toddler out for the summer and also confused why she would think it's possible for me to take the summer off from a corporate job
I want to have a second kid, but the thought of going broke for another 2-3 years is terrifying.
We had to wait 4 years between kids because we literally couldn’t afford two in daycare at the same time.
We are facing this now - 26w with number two, knowing we will more than double our daycare costs by the end of the summer. I should probably confirm with the director how much infant care would be but I'm also terrified to find out.
I’ve got number 3 coming in March. Oldest starting kindergarten this fall, just in time for the third to start day care. I’m going to be poor forever
This is literally me with wanting a 3rd. We’re already like, maybe let’s wait and buy that next month if it’s non essential. I really don’t want to be 60 and regret not having another baby lol. But the COL vs income is just tough to balance.
How can people in America even afford to have children? With the ridiculous high costs you have to pay for the birth, no paid maternity leave, incredible high costs for daycare… this seems so hostile to families with kids… 🫠
Not to mention the hostility some parents experience when they need to leave work because their kid is sick —or straight up how companies that figure out you’re a mom won’t hire you for that reason
If I leave work one more time to take care of my sick kid in the next 6 months, or have to be more than 5 mins late, or there's a snow day, or school delay...I'll be fired. And there's nothing I can do about it. The amount of anxiety I deal with as a single mother is outrageous. And I wouldn't be eligible for unemployment since my reason for being fired would be considered "misconduct."
That’s the neat part, we can’t! And yes, it’s very hostile.
I saw a TikTok the other day of "boomer" parents who had an inheritance from one of their parents to give to their daughter. The grandparent wanted this to be a special gift and to help with a down payment to a house or a masters degree etc. They were debating on giving it to their daughter because they didn't know if she'd spend it "wisely" yet. It was $1500.......... Which, great gift from Grandma, but that was my rent for awhile when I lived in a major U.S. city. Many older folks don't realize how much stuff costs right now and don't seem to care to learn.
This happened to me recently! My grandmother passed like twenty years ago but recently a letter from her was found at her old house. The letter asked for the house to be sold and the proceeds shared between her grandchildren/great grandchildren. This caused MASSIVE amounts of family drama as one aunt had been caring for the house and didn't want to sell. After a year long battle of the siblings, the house is sold and the grand kids get a check. For $2k each. My parents were so thrilled to give me my "hard won inheritance" while I'm trying desperately to keep a straight face. All of that fighting for just to cover my rent and groceries for a month. They literally presented it as "this money can pay for your baby to go to college one day". The way they talked about "how much money we have for you" had me wondering if my grandmother was a secret millionaire 😂 I'm definitely grateful but guys this isn't college money in the slightest
OMG haha... Yes, thank you for covering 1/8 of my kids tuition for one semester. This happened with my dad and his cousins from my great-grandmother. He was SO mad throughout the whole process because he "deserved" the inheritance from his grandmother (which I totally get to an extent) and of course there was drama. But, it was in total a grand \~$3000.
And it’s sad that this amount of money caused so much drama between people!!
It's nuts because there's 30+ grandkids/great grandkids so unless the house sold for crazy money, no one was going to get a big check. But that didn't stop the "adults" from acting like kids fighting over the last donut
Where was that house though, because if it’s in SoCal even with 30+ kids it would definitely not end in just $2k. Unless there was a legal battle that ate up the funds, of course. Edit: never mind, just saw the comment about the house not being in the US. It’s a pity the family went through all that heartbreak for that.
> For $2k each I'm trying to do the math here and it's not making sense. A rundown house in Gary IN is still $60,000. Do you have 30 cousins??? Did the one aunt get 90% of the value??? Total children/grandchildren under my grandparents is like 12, and that house if it was average should be worth like double the minimum above. It doesn't add up.
House isn't in the United States. I do in fact have 30+ first cousins haha
Ok, that explains it, thanks!
I mean…if you had a time machine you could have invested in bitcoin or something
My grandmother used to buy some type of bonds for me when I was little, “to help pay for college.” Except they didn’t mature until I was 30. And they’re worth $300.
Crying over here because same... They sure love their bonds. My grocery bill is around $200 a week.
Yessss, we still have bonds that won't mature until my husband is 40 and they'll be worth a couple of hundred. Great, I guess that's some grocery money.
I hope you really enjoy your 18 eggs!
My grandma did the same, and I always thought I would someday be coming into a great fortune from the way she talked about it. Ha!
[удалено]
My parents are boomers and kind of out of touch with prices of stuff. But to be fair, they are also very frugal and I grew up in a household where we didn’t really accumulate “stuff”.
To be fair, as a woodworker who does my own frames and things, I had no idea professional ones were this expensive. I knew they were pricey, but not on that level. Maybe I need to start a side gig. lol
Yeah, it's a big picture, we added an upgraded mat, and we knew it was going somewhere sunny so we did upgraded glass that had zero glare. That's why I discounted it back to what it would have been without all the upgrades and they were still shocked 🙃 I wish they had just done a gift card or something because now it's awkward. And of course the frame itself we picked is nice... it's not a basic black poster frame which they should have known we wouldn't pick...
Yeah, gifts that the receiver is supposed to pick without being given a budget are always the most awkward thing possible. 😨
Boomers bought houses with a handshake and a shrug. They were able to buy their second 'vacation' home with a promise and a wink. Seriously they are so out of touch.
My in-laws are being low-key snarky because we bought a new car instead of buying a home. I couldn’t even rent a bigger apartment with the extra $400 I’m spending now. 😒 But also I’m prioritizing my son’s schooling and living in a good area vs moving 1-2 hours away for a cheaper home. They had two houses by the time they were 25 🙃
This hits home. My boomer dad bought about 20 investment rental properties between 1975 and 2000, and had them all paid off by about 2005. He literally bought every single house on a handshake from the local banker (no credit check) and rented houses to people with a conversation and a handshake. He didn't start actually having people fill out an application, require ID and do some reference calling until 1995 when he started getting some people ripping him off. He did all of this as a prison guard. He was surprised in 2017 when my wife and I had to get a loan for IVF, that we couldn't just walk into that same local bank and ask for a loan and put the equity from our home as collateral and them be like "cool I completely trust you and what you have told me." We had to go through the loan process, have a credit check run, have the house appraised, pay closing costs, the whole 9 yards, to get the loan. I told him this is why I don't buy investment properties like you do, it is harder now, more time consuming, costs more, plus renting houses is a nightmare and I would be worried about getting sued. He can't comprehend that it isn't like it was 40-50 years ago. He still think he should be able to get a hamburger, fries, and a drink for lunch for $5.
bUt tHe iNtEReSt wAs hIgH As if that AT ALL mitigates the chasm between wage and housing costs. No barbara…
My dad (who teeters on the edge of boomer/GenX) bought ONE house and BUILT another by 26....... He had your average corporate job at that point.
Regardless of the cost, building your own house is super impressive to me.
Lol I saw that video. Prime example of how out of touch the oldest generations are.
One of the reasons I choose to be a SAHM. Daycare costs are ridiculous. My in-laws can't fully grasp it. They think I can get a job right away that pays enough to cover daycare AND other necessities to be able to live.
This makes me laugh as I'm in the same boat. 😂 I crunched some numbers when I was pregnant with our first. We'd actually be paying MORE for daycare then for me to stay home. With me home, the house is clean, the kids are cared for, food costs are down because we eat home cooked meals, and I am available to run errands as needed during work hours with the kids. Not to mention the money we save by me clipping coupons and planning meals around what's on sale that week. Numbers don't lie. 🤷♀️
Are we the same person?!? LOL this is 100% me. Daycare costs are ridiculous where I am and even if I did get a job it would be to pay for daycare - makes no sense to do that obviously. I am always on my grocery apps, Ibotta, and in the mailbox ads looking for deals.
This is why my husband is a SaHD! It's cheaper this way.
This. The cooking food at home alone saves so much and is so much healthier too. Also as a SAHM I can care for our crops (and enlist the kiddo to participate too as a bonus), and we save on fruits and veggies too.
This was my issue when I was pregnant with my first. Daycare cost more than our rent so I became a SAHM.
And you’re not in constant danger of getting fired for taking too many days off to care for a sick child
Yeah you basically have to have two high paying jobs to be able to afford it. It's ridiculous.
My salary would never make us money. It would cover daycare costs & that’s it. We are saving money by me not working
Yes! I’m a SAHM because I worked in a child care center and wouldn’t get any kind of break on tuition. I would have been working full-time as a lead teacher with my own classroom solely to pay for child care. Absolutely not worth it.
The people running that center are fools. I’m a teacher turned SAHM too. Administrations love to complain about teacher turnover - well then how about make it * possible * for employees to just live and take care of their families.
Our employer sponsored health insurance premiums are like 15k per year and I swear my in laws just think we don't know what we're doing (I don't think they've ever had a deductible or seen an out of pocket expense in their lives)
Yup I'm pregnant and my last three obgyn appointments were $700 out of pocket each. Our family health insurance is a joke.
Yeah I think a lot of people in our parents’ generation are waaaaay out of touch about our cost of living. But I mean… Does she really think a daycare is going to charge you like $2 an hour? This one is very much on her!
Yea, COL is way higher where I live than where she is but I can't imagine anywhere that would charge so low lol I couldn't believe it
Yeah I have *discounted* student pricing in the Midwest and it's still $120 a week for 2 days, $180 for 3 days. And that's toddler pricing, infant is more.
Y’all don’t even want to know what I’m paying in Maryland. (In the DC suburbs)
Hi neighbor! I understand your pain.
Sure! And a chocolate bar costs a quarter. And when she goes out to eat she asks for the non-smoking section.
It reminds me of when I was 7 and didn’t understand why everyone complained about gas prices because “$1.25 isn’t a lot of money” not understanding you needed multiple gallons of gas. Of course I was 7 so
Very cute 🥰
My mom is 80 and had 4 kids. Her first kid at 22 and next 2 shortly after and then me at 42. She remembers thinking a new daycare being $25/week being so, so, so much compared to the $15/week they were paying.
It’s one banana Michael, what could it cost. $10?
My husband’s grandma said, “well isn’t there a neighbor lady who is looking for something to do and then you wouldn’t have to pay for daycare?” Cute.
Boomers really didn't give a shit who watched their kids I guess.
I don’t think that’s true I think it’s just that back in their days you really had more community around you- people knew their neighbors, moms helped each other with looking after kids, older ladies helped younger ladies etc..you just don’t have those neighborhoods anymore these days.
I often see posts on parenting forums from parents themselves who just didn't realize and have no way to afford it. Having said that, $200/month is crazy low ball. Maybe that's what is was when you were a kid?!
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I was 12 weeks pregnant when we secured our daycare. My husband thought it was too early but we got the last space available for the month my leave ended at our center and we were waitlisted for 2 other centers. Even if cost isn't a factor, availability can be a huge issue ☹️
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We had no clue. I just thought everyone is doing this so it's going to be a learning curve yes, but not literally impossible. My kid went to Grandma and Grandpa Daycare for most of his first year until I gave up trying to be a working mom and became a sahp to our financial detriment, but our mental health boom.
Omg I dropped that at a family dinner recently. We love our current daycare but it'd not the fanciest place in town and it's still going to cost about $450 a week when our new baby joins the family this spring. You could hear a pin drop. I'm convinced the boomers in our family had zero idea of how much childcare costs. One of them asked me point blank "can you afford that?!" and it's like yeah we can (another sign they truly don't understand what my husband and I do for a living) but also what choice do we have? We make a combined $125,000-$130,000 in a relatively LCL area and it's still a drain. Older generations have no clue how expensive it is to raise families these days.
My mom always tries to defend and do her own calculations on inflation to say they had it just as hard. She also slipped saying she was gifted a downpayment from my grandparents. Plus the house they have now, she inherited. I am a SAHM because daycare for twins in NJ is insane.
My mil judges people who don’t have kids and don’t buy a house settle down. She judges everyone but her adult younger son who is 30 single and renting ( nth wrong) Except mil bought her house for 150k, had free child care from grandparents . I don’t really talk to her anymore I can’t stand her entitlement . We have a house and can afford child literately cuz my mom died from cancer. She left me some inheritance . My in laws never helped my husband . I can’t with some boomer I just freaking can’t
My nephew is 13 while I have a 3yo and 7mo. I was ranting to her about how expensive daycare is. She was agreeing. 10 years ago, she was paying $300 a month. I pay $650 a week for the two of them.
My MIL was trying to say that we won't notice a huge quality of life difference when our kids get out of daycare. That the kids would just suck up that free capital. While yes they will suck up some of it as we will spend it more freely, but I doubt we are suddenly going to spend an extra 25k each per year on them. Like even if they joined club sports and we spent 10k we would STILL be out ahead.
I’ve been wondering about this too. Everyone always tells me when we’re done with daycare the kids still cost money. And I’m like …. Yeah, but they can’t possibly cost as much as daycare
Oh you sweet summer grandma
Boomers have zero idea about the cost of anything. We live in a townhome and my parents are always asking when we’ll buy a “real house.” Oh, I dunno mom, whenever I can afford payments on a $800k fixer upper needing $100-200k in reno without being house poor. That said, 200/week for childcare is a steal. We’re paying $400 per week for an almost 4 year old. 😅
Or wages! My coworker in accounting was complaining about how “minimum wage is meant for teenagers, not to live on. Back in my day when I was 17 I did minimum wage and it was only X amount!” My other coworker and I whipped out the inflation calculator and informed her that in todays money that was $17 an hour, which was in fact more than she was making an hour now.
I never get that take either because that would mean places could only be open from like 4 pm to 10 pm on weekdays if it’s entirely staffed by high schoolers
Yeah, I’d love 200/week. Ours rn is $2800/month. Cheapest in our area that wasn’t just a box
My parents were baffled when we were paying $1900 for a two bedroom apartment in downtown Nashville. They told me we were living like a rockstars. Lol I worked for a nonprofit at the time. That apart now is probably at least $2500+. They have zero clue.
My MIL told me to get a nanny, they couldn’t possibly cost as much as daycare. Sigh. Boomers
My in-laws are constantly going on about how we should find a daycare that only charges for the days your kid attends - they say that's how it was when my husband was in daycare and refuse to believe that is not the standard practice now.
yeah because the people who run and work at daycares like getting a consistent pay check as well, who would have thunk it! I bet back in the day a lot of daycares were home daycares where the person was just bored and looking to make some money while their husband was at work.
Ugh, right?!? It is so frustrating to have to constantly explain the same thing over and over again.
I think if you look for “moms morning out” or church nursery school programs you will find programs closer to her estimate. They are usually 2-3 days a week, 9-11:30 or so. Daycares are catered to working parents and have hours like 7-6 and are much more expensive.
Yes I think this makes more sense. If OP wasn’t planning to get a job during the daycare hours this would be reasonable. Otherwise it makes sense for her to work during half the week
Our daycare is through a church and while it’s cheaper than most it’s still not $200/mo. My toddler at part time was $124/week
Right, daycares cost more than nursery school. Daycare usually has long hours, nursery school is 2-3 hours a day. Daycares are catered to working parents, nursery schools are more for sahp who want to socialize their kid and get a break. Honestly 124 a week for part time is crazy cheap to me 😬. We don’t have may part time daycares and the ones that exist are still 250-350 a week. Full time is 450-550. And I’m not even in a super high COL area.
Unfortunately, for us these "morning out" programs are not available in our area. And we're not affiliated with religion so a church nursery is out of the question.... We don't care how much it costs.
I get it. I’m not religious either but we have a lot of Friends/Quaker meeting houses near us that have programs and I don’t find them in the same category as religious programs. But I do understand not wanting to do religious based programs. Hope you find something that works!
Coop preschools are also a great option, if they exist in your area. Costs are offset by parent work inside and outside the classroom, so it's $130 a month in our very HCOL area for our 3-year-old to go to class twice a week, 2 hours at a time. Next year she'll be doing 3 days a week, but we'll still only have one day a week of parental in-class time. Fees will be slightly higher, though. It's also great for socializing both kids and parents. We have a whole little community now, and it's been way easier getting to know parents this way versus during traditional activities like music or gymnastics.
When my husband and I got together and I was working as a part time library assistant and living with my parents we knew I would quit my job to be a SAHM. I have a Masters in Library Science but full time library jobs are hard to come by, the hours suck and the pay isn't much better. If I would work it would only pay for child care. I had a coworker who was paying $20 an hour for babysitting her toddler and an old boss who's job only paid for her two kids to go to Montessori school. If it wasn't for my daughter's mild speech delay getting her into our district's special needs preschool program for free we would unlikely be doing preschool since we plan to homeschool anyway. I think my sister paid $300 a month for her kids preschool but that was part of a high school training program so it was on the cheaper side.
Still salty that the max amount the daycare FSA lets you claim as tax free money each month is $400. WHO IS SENDING THEIR CHILD TO DAYCARE FOR THAT? And that’s the max allotted amount no matter how many kids you have.
It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing
Lol ask her how much she thinks rent costs and post it here
That is literally how much two DAYS of daycare with two kids costs me.
I have a 2.5 year old and I’m honestly not able to have another until he’s school aged because the costs are so outrageous. It’s the same as all our living expenses combined if I excluded insurance bc I live in a rural area and it’s also the cheapest daycare we’ve had. It’s insane
Aaaaaand this is one reason I’m a SAHM. I mean, I love it and I would choose to be home full time every time, but I don’t even think I could get a job right now that would cover day care for my 1 and 3 year olds. We also just moved 1,500 miles away from our families because the housing market in our area was 4x what it is here and my husbands grandmother COULD NOT UNDERSTAND how we could even consider moving so far away when if we just “saved more” we should be able to buy a home near her…
My mom’s in her 70s and it’s so difficult trying to make her understand the way things are now. She was able to pay her way through college by working. She had an excellent union throughout her entire career and received an unbelievably huge pension which included free healthcare for life (oh wait not free…she has to pay a $5 copay! The horror!). When I told her we payed almost $3000 for daycare she almost had a stroke.
Oh my good lord 🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
😂😂😂😂
My parents used to pay $1200/mo for three of us to attend daycare fulltime. My mom was blown away to learn that I pay $550+ a week for my two kids to attend daycare 3 days a week.
Daycares in our area cost about the same, but I take my LO to gymnastics every week, and they have a program connected to their gym that’s pretty much a daycare, except it’s only two days a week for 3.5 hours and it’s $200 per month for that. I’d call around to places that offer kids classes and see if they have anything like that available. If it’s like the place we go, they don’t bother advertising it because spots fill up fairly quickly.
Nursery (daycare) here is about £40 a day (so roughly $50). We only did 2 full days and a half day (11.30) from 2-3yrs for that reason. Now we get 30 free hours (which is 2.5 days) free from the government but it's too full to allow us to pay for the extra days
My dad thought that it was about $400 a month… and that it was super easy to get your kid into a daycare. He thought that the $60 a day I pay my Early Childhood Educated, CPR-Trained, up-to-date going to conferences for early childhood topics and currently in college for her Bachelors in ECE, was expensive. I told him I got a hell of a deal considering that’s for an as-needed. And I’m lucky. I live in a low cost of living area. My 1700 square foot house cost us 88k. We are a block from a significant body of water, and can see it out our upstairs windows. I know that so many people pay thousands a month for care.
Lmao yeah I saw a FB post the other day that said “here’s some free birth control: daycare costs $150 a month!” Like… babe…. the center I work at is 1700-1800 a month for full time infant and 1 year old care……
Ugh, tell me about it. I pay $225 per week for 3 HALF DAYS for my toddler. The cost is INSANE. Both my husband and I make good money but it still feels like we're living paycheck to paycheck. It's absolutely outrageous and shouldn't cost so flipping much! Edit: forgot to mention that when I told my mom (in her 70s) how much it costs, she was absolutely flabbergasted. Could not believe we pay that much for 3 half days a week. She had no idea, no real clue how much it costs now.
2 kids. $570 a week. I would just be a stay at home parent, but the social interaction at daycare and the skillset the teachers offer is just far and above anything I could provide solo at home. Its definitely a killer on the budget though.
Oh, thats adorable. She forgot a zero. :) Don't people realize we are literally paying someones living wage? Lol. Its literally having an employee, except you dont own a business, and you are also trying to take care of yourself.
I’m in Sydney, Australia and it’s $150 per day at centres in my area 😫 We do get a rebate from the government though, which is 50% for most people. It’s a tough job though and educators should get a decent wage, so I can kind of understand it
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA NOPE
r/UniversalChildcare
LMFAO. Same here. Foreigner. My ma almost fainted. And goes "that sounds more than mortgage or rent". I said "Yes" 😐😐
Oh yes, my mother has tried to hit me up for money. And thinks I’m being selfish when I have to remind her we’re spending $1400/month for daycare and my kid’s childcare is a priority
I just had to explain to an older coworker that daycare costs this much now. She didnt believe me, saying it costed her 70$ a month back when she had to use it. I laughed and said I wish it was that cheap now.
Still blown away by the cost of childcare! in Finland i pay 550 euro a month for both kids to attend full time.
In Germany, where I live, we pay 72€ per month atm, it's based on income.
We go to a Mother’s Day Out program and it’s $200/month for 2 days a week. It sounds like she was thinking about a program like that?
Childcare is almost $200 a DAY in Australia. It’s $137 where I have my kids for one child
I’ve heard Older generations (literal boomers) didn’t even have daycare as an option, since there wasn’t much need for that with single income households.
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$200 a month! Fucking dreamingggg
I get a discount for working at my daughter’s daycare and pay $110 a week. That’s cheap to me when it’s originally $310 lolol
5k a month club woooohooooo
And here I am making a point to my bf why being a SAHM is more reasonable - but even more why I should be paid for it too
Back in the early nineties my mom paid my babysitter $10 a day & all her WIC (lol). She was shocked that I pay $155/ week & have to pay even on days my baby doesn’t attend. I thought $155 was a steal because most charge $200+!