lord help me...if my mom was retired I might just throw her the money instead. How do people afford this shit?

and start stacking that chedda...
.

if you have more than 1 it might be more than your mortgage depending on where you live.

for the past umpteen years.... :(
.

spending money on shit you want isn't a waste. it's what we all work hard for.

indeed squandering :(
lol...

.

it's still something we should all have the freedom to do...we work too hard for this not to enjoy it

for it??
like...
when I think about $33K/year that I was somehow spending on god knows what...I'm like DAMN...WHAT THE FCK WAS I SPENDING THAT MONEY ON????!!!

The ONLY thing I can solidly point to is I was an avid motorcycle rider...and went through several BMW bikes over the past 10 years...but even THAT don't add up to the full $33K i'm spending in daycare now....

I did enjoy it...and it's def. a big part of the fabric that is FLUIDJ....but all that other shit was just squandered... :(
maybe the travel....that was cool....we been places, we seen things....wish we'd seen MORE things and been MORE places though....


.

i look at my net, then think about my regular expenses and what i have in savings...there's usually this huge gap in between of money that just vanished...but then i think about all the damn time i spent working to make that money and just hope i had fun with it at least.

i get what you're saying though. will def need to re-re-evaluate all that. i thought i was good at saving before but will need to streamline for sure.

into my stomach....

.

all you ever hear about is how expensive college tuition is for kids...meanwhile you're basically paying college tuition for babies to go to daycare.

i really had no idea.

unless you go another route like stay at home parent, relative...etc...or maybe you hire an au pair

>unless you go another route like stay at home parent,
>relative...etc...or maybe you hire an au pair

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're r

either fornally or informally.

my mom would take care of a few friends kids at most times after i was grown.

but some people use their home as an official business location. signs out in front or whatever, insurance, licensing etc. my friend who had an education degree did more that version.

a charm. she would actually want my kids over without charging me.

so far we haven't found a good option on that front. those are tough to find without a solid referral

not gonna find one in the want ads and expect it to be any good

I cannot wait until my daughter is old enough to be at the crib solo for an hour or two...that's all I need...

Because i'm not a fan of the Boys and Girls club she goes to...but you get what you pay for...luckily I don't pay the full amount or she wouldn't go there...140 a week for before and after school care is insanity...

afternoon...that shit is MAAAAD JUSTIFIED!! lol..
She wears us OUT on the weekends yo...
we don't have time to even think about anything NOT related to her...

plus she's grown and matured SO FCKIN MUCH!
She's amazingly smart...fun and energetic...
She was talking fluently by 18months...
Walking at like 9-10 months....
she's just so advanced and I really believe good daycare had a big part in that growth. Interacting with other children is major...MAJOR!
.

They have to maintain a 1:4 (or better) teacher:student ratio for kids under 12 months.

and still be profitable?

They tend to be big chains like Brightside Academy. They are terrible, terrible facilities that do just enough to keep the government from closing them down. Their market is low-income black families who qualify for state-subsidized daycare, and they make loot. I toured a couple and they were awful. I asked what their breastmilk policy was, and they were dumbfounded. They didn't have one because they'd never had a breastfed child. The director just said "we provide free formula"

Before my daughter got a spot in her current school, my mother-in-law was staying with us and taking care of our daughter. She had to go home for an emergency and we were left without childcare for 3 days. I called the Brightside Academy located down the street from my office and they told me they could take her for three days. After the first day she had the worst stomach virus and infected the entire family.

The next week, when I stopped by to pick up her diapers, wipes and clothes, they were using my daughter's wipes to change another kid. They asked why I didn't bring her for the other two days I'd paid for, and I said she was sick. The woman said "oh, you coulda still brought her". I was thinking, "you rotten fucking bitch, that's the reason my whole family got sick"

smh at a daycare never having a baby that isn't on formula.

that the state pays for it. No parent good parent would spend their own money. They cake of desperate people who don't have much of a choice.

i've already told my mom that she'll need to move to the states when i think about having one.

and go with a partner (opposite sex) to 5 different day cares and get prices. none were affordable and the ones that weren't frightening were frighteningly expensive. there was one pregnancy (carreid to term) the whole 4 years i was in high school. she was 18, her bf 19 and in the military. Most people didn't start having kids until they were near 30.

*cries*

we bought a house in this neighborhood specifically because the school district is really good...they're going public

especially now...

there'd literally be no reason to live here if the schools weren't good. we would've just stay in the city if not for that.

fcking fast it's insane!
they're predicting so much crazyness (overcrowding, etc.) in these schools by 2018!! it's really got us shook. The whole point of moving to this county was the proximity to DC and the schools....NEVER thought Private School would even be something we'd even think about as a passing thought....but now...it's a very real possibility...

You just want the best for your kids....
.

an option unless we get a 100% scholarship.

Nope. Fuck that. We'll do better at home and put them in nerd summer camps but FOH with paying for college thrice.

and it just got completely rebuilt.

But you must be talking about wakefield high,becasue that's the most recently renovated. But in general,all the schools in the county are predicted to be overcrowded.

We're already spending private school money.

them kids is expensive


"i wanna hug all u idiotic bastards & then set you all on fire" -Bin

www.twitter.com/bedstuybetty
http://bedstuybetty.tumblr.com/
DROkayplayer: Giving you good puff since May '05

My first kid.

I decided a while ago I wasn't popping any out until my mom stopped working and could provide care during the day.

http://www.originseducation.com/?p=445

As I walked closer to the door of the childcare facility on campus, my two-year-old daughter’s arms tightened around my neck. As a single mom attending the University of Montana, I had to take my toddler to daycare daily in order to attend class. Every day she screamed in protest when the staff pried her out of my arms, and I would walk away with tears in my eyes. Daycare was a costly necessity, and the choices overwhelming, but nothing ever felt quite right.

Fast forward to Seattle two years later: my daughter is four. I dropped her off at 7am in order to make it to work by 8 am. I left work at 5pm, made my way through traffic to pick her up by 6pm. My young daughter spent 11 hours in daycare. Home by 6:20pm, I threw dinner on, fed and bathed her, and tucked her in. I had only 90 minutes on work days with my child. The rest of the time she was being raised by random staff members at a huge daycare center.

One day I had an epiphany. I could make money and have her with me at the same time if I opened my own school. I could offer a level of care that would reassure parents that their child was more than just safe and content. I could create a program that fulfilled children’s basic needs but also nurtured them in a way that was as close to parental love as possible. I could fill their little tummies with nutritious organic food, and provide a curriculum that would provide a true advantage as they entered grade school. I could provide a family away from home, using an eco-conscious curriculum that incorporated principles of sustainability and ecology.

And I did it. I returned home to St. Ignatius, located on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and opened Advantage Academic Academy. I developed the curriculum by interviewing kindergarten and first grade teachers from several school districts to find out what they felt the main gaps were and the most important learning skills. I also researched dropout rates and statistics to learn the most common factors contributing to academic failure. I soon opened up my second childcare facility called Origins Preschool in Missoula Montana.

I cared for well over 100 children over the next eight years, graduating more than sixty into kindergarten. I then opened two more centers in Missoula, an Infant and Toddler Center and a Preschool Center. I’ve been running my own programs for over twelve years.

It’s been satisfying and challenging, expensive and rewarding. Recently I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend, however. There are conversations making the rounds on social media about how daycare/preschool is almost, as or even more expensive, than in-state college tuition. These posts are followed by many comments from people who agree. They talk about how “insanely” expensive it is; how its “ridiculous” and “something needs to be done”; how hard-working families are getting ripped off; how it’s an epidemic that needs to be addressed.

Here is my response:

First of all, very few people are getting wealthy running daycare centers or preschools. Maybe some CEO’s of huge chain centers with multiple locations, but certainly not many independent owners like myself.

And yes, it IS a significant expense for parents. Multiply the tuition for a year by the number of kids being cared for and you see something well into the six figures. Seems like we’re making out fine, right?

Well, let’s remember a few things:

Most college professors teach classes with anywhere from 50-100 students. One teacher, with possibly a TA, teaching all those students. I, however, have to have a staff member on the floor at all times for every four children in my infant center and one staff member at all times for every six children in my preschool.

In other words, every day, between my two centers I have to have five or six staff on the floor at all times, 50 hours a week. It takes all income from two children to pay the salary of one staff member, so 10-12 children’s tuitions go directly into teacher salaries.

That doesn’t cover any of other many expenses. Colleges don’t need to pay the huge liability insurance fees required by caretakers of small children, for example. In addition, I serve all-organic food to my precious people four times a day. For 25 munchkins, that’s 100 organic meals every day, and 2000 organic meals a month. If you know what even small bag of organic groceries costs, do THAT math!

College students are adults who can take care of themselves. They don’t have university staff wiping their poopy butts and runny noses; putting them to bed, getting them up and cleaning up after them all day; making sure they are happy, healthy, and safe; AND teaching them colors, numbers, letters, and phonics; teaching them to read; and instilling in them awesome social skills: how to share, be polite, use their big child voices instead of whining; how to cough in a way that keeps toys and playmates unsprayed. It’s a significant expense, but shouldn’t it be? The care & education of what means most to you in LIFE?

My staff and I do one of the hardest and most important jobs on the planet. We’re lucky when we get to work with parents who appreciate that and understand what a HUGE undertaking it is. The liability of taking care of people’s precious children and their INFANTS–often keeps me up at night. Ten employees and over thirty families rely on me every day for their lives to run smoothly. If my doors aren’t open, none of them can go to work.

In spite of all the money involved in running these programs, I never made enough to afford my own heath insurance until recently, thanks to the Affordable Health Care Act.

One of the grand ironies is that thanks to what I do, a lot more children will MAKE it to college. Look at the stats about how important early childhood education is to children’s academic futures!

I want people to consider these details before concluding that childcare providers are somehow making more money than university professors. Wouldn’t that be great!? The cost of childcare and education should be right up there with rent/mortgage, transportation and food as a priority. And which of those categories means the most to you and for which is the most at stake?

Overall this trend of comparing daycare and college tuition costs is ridiculous because the only thing they have in common is the fact that education/learning is happening in both places. The care of young children is a completely separate service to educating, and early childhood professionals do both. So you are actually getting twice the service for your money as opposed to when you send your young adult children to college.

As I reflect on this, I see that it’s not just about early childhood education. It’s about the skyrocketing costs of running any small business. Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, as Seattle has just done, would put me out of business, unless I were to raise my rates again significantly. If I pay teenage aides and PT entry-level employees $15, what do I pay my more qualified FT employees? $18? $20? Keep in mind whatever base rate I pay an employee I have to add roughly another $3+ dollars an hour to pay on every employee’s taxes (FICA, unemployment, workers compensation, Social Security etc.,) which means that each individual staff member would absorb the tuition of 4 children. I would have to close the infant center, which has a 1:4 teacher/student ratio, or start charging $10 per hour for tuition. That would make full-time tuition almost $2000 per month!

But people are already up in arms about paying $6 per hour. Maybe this conversation really needs to be about tax breaks for small businesses. That, and more subsidies for not just low-income, but middle income families, like myself, who are always the ones who slip through the cracks.

It’s time we take child care seriously, and treat child care providers with the respect—and salary—we deserve.


...

Vee is I and I am She

...

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Folks need to understand that expensive doesn't necessarily mean ripoff.
______________________________
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it's worth every single penny we pinch to cover the cost.

The expenses are no joke.

I reviewed her budget a couple of weeks ago.

Scary.

I'm still excited though.

God is good, because I can't remember how we were able to manage that.

Two kids

Thank God for both our parents the other two days of the week.

*****************************************
huh

day care. He was with my parents 2 days of the week and in day care 3 days. And this was for a mid level day care, there were plenty other options which were nicer but more expensive.

It literally made us plan our family differently. We waited until he was 6 and in school all day to have our second child last year. We definitely would have preferred having them closer in age (and us being done with new kids at a younger age) but there was no way we could afford them both being in day care at the same time.

Even now, he has to be in before and after school care which is around $600 per month because both my wife and I work. Add that to day care costs for the new baby, and then don't forget about summer when he'll need to be in camp or some kind of day care.

I keep trying to convince my wife to stay at home, but she ain't having it after staying at home with the kids during her maternity leave. Too much work.

our son is in daycare but only 3 times a week, and our provider is CHEAP. she's $880/month including food and diapers, plus she ended up being walking distance to the house.

when i was searching for a daycare, i was seeing shit that is $1500/month. that's a mortgage. i don't know how people with multiple children do it.

it just worked out better for me not to work, because i would really just be working to pay daycare. this allows me free time to do my work and days that we can beat the crowds and do things during the week.

besides the fact that working from home is fucking awesome.

by the time i start popping out babies (or adopting), i want to have a few lucrative home-based businesses.

also, daycare scares me.

and with a kid in the house, it's almost impossible to get shit done

that would be ideal but who the fuck knows how shit will happen in reality.

that's just a recipe for disaster. i have calls sometimes with colleagues that are home and something happened where they have to watch their kids that day (snow storm or whatever) and it's ridiculous. i feel their pain.

from work and daycare she has about an hour left on the clock....

we pretty much are confined to the bedroom for the duration of that hour because there's no way she'd be able to productively work.
.

she's always strolling in wanting to talk about something when i'm still working...i just give her the stanley from the office look most times.

simultaneously with a child between the age of 1-day up to about 5 years old at home with you....

that's a pipe dream if I ever heard one lol....

working full time from home for someone else.

my dream includes subcontractors and/or an assistant. with all that help, i dont think its unreasonable to shoot for 2-4 hours of work a day with a child at home.

>working full time from home for someone else.
>
>my dream includes subcontractors and/or an assistant. with all
>that help, i dont think its unreasonable to shoot for 2-4
>hours of work a day with a child at home.

Not trying to knock your dreams at all fam. I'm really not. Just....brace yourself for impact when the day comes....

and where i know people who have done it.

in any case, whatever i gotta do to avoid daycare will be done.

.

i was bout to say dont let me get my BFF and my cousin on here to school ya.

even with two ppl in the house, it's REALLY hard to get shit done
it hard sometimes to even go pee let alone reply to an email.

even if you don't do daycare, best believe you'll need someone in the house so you can actually get some shit done.

She had a mini-meltdown/rant on Facebook last week
Her kid is like, one.
And that 29K is for one year.

The older I get, the more is understand why new parents family-plan around the locations of other family members. Having a free childcare/support system is gold, it seems.

that's over 2k a month. she's doing it wrong.

We don;t have family here either, but we were looking at over 2400/mo for daycare in Boston, and decided that we didn't like the city enough to stay there.

daycare costs probably average at around 1200 here which is still fucking with me but if given the choice between and living in a more expensive city where you pay double...i'd have done the same shit

lickety split!
.

>The older I get, the more is understand why new parents
>family-plan around the locations of other family members.
>Having a free childcare/support system is gold, it seems.

FML

most of my paycheck would go towards daycare. Fuck that shit.

aint no discounts or that shit..kids will change ya life 180 degrees..

my mom said when my baby brother was like 2 months old (and i was 3, big brother was 4) she was walking down the street with him in the stroller trying to figure out how she was going to manage, she ran into this lady who basically volunteered to keep us. im sure she paid her something but not much. to this day, my mom calls her her guardian angel.

RIP Mrs. Elnory Johnson

most of the ppl i know with fresh babies now days either have south afrian au pairs, stay at home moms, or retired grandmoms

you really have to have a home that's set up for it...

That's one thing that kinda nixed that option for us with the quickness when we very briefly considered it.

Ultimately...even if our home was ideal for it...I don't think it'd have been a good move for us in retrospect...

You're essentially talking about having a young female adult living in your home, under your care, your responsibility 24/7.

Needlessly to say unless it is significantly paid for by aid it ain't happening.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're r

what are they doing in that school that's worth all that loot?

in brooklyn
that's all

lol

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're r

I might consider spending that kinda of loot if it meant living a life free of these lil niglets.
































I keed. I keed

But I know yall above those type of schemes.

>

Day care stage.

The money goes elsewhere... Karate, after school programs, basketball, tennis, swim lessons, spring break vacations.

seems like it would slow down a bit if you're not counting regular expected things like food, clothes, healthcare...etc.

Daycare I was paying 200 a week...
Once my daughter started school...I have to pay for before and after school services...which is 140 a week...I talked him down to 90 a week when I explained the custody situation with her mother...

But I can't wait until my daughter can stay at the crib for 2 hours after school...that's all I need really...

Soccer, Gymnastics, Ballet, Korean school

Because in kindergarten and elementary school the kids aren't old enough to get to other after school activities or sports on their own. If you work a typical 8-5 shift, a full school day is around 8:30-3:30 or so. The kids gotta be somewhere for that time before and after school, and at least in my area there aren't any free options.

hockey, skating classes, baseball, and gear for both sports since they grow out of everything every season. Plus this summer we are going to try MMA classes. You aren't lying man

We just got finished paying off her day care expenses in December (good thing the day care manager liked my wife and loved my daughter).

The idea of leaving your child with one of your parents makes perfect sense from a monetary sense, but you may be trading one set of issues for another. As much as I love my mother, and as much as she helps out now, there would have been bigger problems if our daughter was with her most of the day 5 days out the week.

get that right away...

its before tax money for daycare...

lol...

.

people scoff at that reasoning until the find how much it is a month.

Like do they exist anymore? Where did your parents take you?

Is babysitting similar to daycare?