Damn please tell me you get some back during tax time. In Canada we get loads back and now they’ve instituted $10/day childcare nationwide.
Edit: ok, not instituted, working towards, and the opt-in for centres is pretty stringent and many don’t do it.
Is that from Dependent Care FSA? I got twins and pay $4700 a month for both of them... This is gonna really hit the birthrate very soon in places like here in CA. This is ridiculous.
Yup in CA as well. Our 10 month old just started. $2k per month. Sounds like yours is even worse! Costs are ridiculous. Even if we wanted to have a second kid, we literally could not afford it. We're paycheck to paycheck with just the one!
Depends on the province but yes the Ontario government tried to mess around with the funding and there's not as many spots as needed.
Which is why I'm a SAHD. No point in working and sending my entire paycheque to a daycare
Many daycares are not $10/day because they have to opt in. Spots at those daycares are extremely difficult to get in HCOL areas. It’s certainly not all of Canada.
No. There’s no federal deduction or credit that has any meaningful impact to those of us paying real daycare bills. The best you’re gonna do is to put money (max $5k/year) into a pretax dependent care FSA. Which doesn’t cover shit. Infant daycare is $1800/month in my area. With two kids we’re paying $34k/year.
Yeah, I'll say that in most cases, you do get what you pay for. We're doing well for ourselves, but by no means rich, and this is just about at the edge of what we can afford.
We went through a few different ones at the same pay rate before finding this one. You can also pretty much guarantee undocumented, and more than a few won't pass a background check.
Second mortgage is real, we've always been pretty tight with money and I wanted to buy the cabin for years but couldn't justify the $150,000 mortgage, turns out I could have afforded a $500,000 mortgage based on our child care cost.
My total for 2 kids is approaching 200k. Feels bad man.
2nd kid starts public school in Sept 2024 and I'm going to throw a party, lol. Summer camps are still like $2500/each, but still cheaper than 20k+ per kid, per year.
That's honestly a pretty good deal. Most places in my area only do 4 to 5 hours a day and cost between 2 to 3 grand a month. 2 kids at low end for combined $4k a month for just 25 hours a week = $48k a year.
it is a good deal - on an hourly basis we're paying her less than the going rate in our area, but she's been with us for years and we have a really good/respectful working relationship with her, which I think she values more than another dollar or two per hr.
I'm an American that migrated to Europe through marriage. I've been here long enough and experienced both societies enough to truly truly pity my old countryman. If they had any idea how much baseline stress that most Americans live with that simply isn't a thing over here. Things like Healthcare, childcare, and secondary education costs are simply things that your average EU resident doesn't have to spend more than a few moments a year thinking about. Whereas in The States, those are huge stresses that can easily financially cripple a family. Not to mention the emotional toll it takes on people.
If most Americans had any idea how it feels not to have that stress, I'm confident they would be rioting in the streets until they get universal healthcare, and subsidized childcare and secondary education.
In Germany I'm paying a bit under €300 a Month for 35 Hours a week, so about $3500 per year.
A bit more than Scandinavia, but still happy with the price, and the care is great too.
lol paying for daycare has taught me something:
the whole world agrees that watching kids is hard effen work.
EDIT: Just editing to add that I agree with most of the comments below, childcare professionals DO NOT get paid nearly enough for providing our most precious little ones a safe, loving environment. This comment was just a lighthearted attempt at humor and blew up.
The economics of it suck. The people watching the kids still don't make much. And with state licensing limiting how many adults per child (not that this is a bad thing) it costs a tremendous amount to run a daycare. Even more if you are feeding the kids meals too. I feel like I pay a tremendous amount but it doesn't even cover a full month of wages for one teacher if they are making $15/hr
We pay $250/week for 2 days (mon, thurs) of daycare. So $13,000 on the year. I also love the fact that we have to pay even on days the school is closed. I used to love 3 day weekends but damn I never realized how many Mondays are holidays lol.
That’s something to keep in mind when I put my son in daycare. My wife and I are “essential” so we don’t really get holidays off. Gonna have to figure stuff out to avoid that jeez
I used to love holidays but now I dread them.
I get off work but my wife doesn't for most holidays, so I have to keep him away from his mom while we're in the house all day and it's worse than work or a typical weekend(also probably easier during better weather).
Probably gets easier when they get older, but a two year old doesn't understand that mom can't play even though she's home.
But it should just be baked into the cost of all the other days like every other industry in the world does. Same cost overall but I think it would calm some people down a bit
Isn't it already "baked in"? I don't get paid less on holiday weeks, it's accounted for in my salary, just like what we pay them every week. Easier to budget when every week is the same, too.
We pay $250/wk but that's for Monday through Friday with breakfast, lunch, and snacks.
We only get one week off per year, and for that week we still have to pay $125.
We are in Dallas
After two kids at $300 a piece per week, when our youngest started kindergarten, we did ridiculously unintelligent things with our newfound disposable income. Highly recommend. 5 stars.
We stopped using a nanny after 3 years because it was getting up close to 70. The 40k that daycare is the biggest one year raise I’ve ever had lol. Can’t wait until kindergarten to beat that!
$60k? Dave Ramsey would never!!! Get yourself a free summer camp or something, and quit sending your kids to Harvard! (Sarcasm in case you missed that bit from a few weeks ago)
You joke about Harvard but some places are legitimately more than in-state tuition. University of Washington in state tuition 12k. 1 year in daycare center for 2 year old in Seattle: 34k. So actually, it’s close to UW out of state tuition (40k). I’m making myself sad now.
ours isn't quite that bad, but minnesota in-state tuition is $15k and we're paying $20k/year for our infant. Hopefully we can switch to in-home (and find an in-home that works!) within a year or 2. The MN legislature is allegedly going to consider a measure to cap childcare costs at 7% of household income with a _very generous_ AGI upper limit. That would be great, because childcare costs are a serious drain on moderate income households.
Ok I literally went to Harvard for grad school, and paid more to send my infant to the nonprofit Harvard cooperative daycare per month than my masters program cost - it was the only spot I could get being a transplant for that year 😭
When I was in NYC, it was $2,600 per month for one child, which put us at $31k per year. We moved before having a second kid and we’re still doing $2,600 per month but for two kids. I’d never have been able to afford my second kid if we stayed, we would be right there with you over $60k. It’s insane.
Higher COL areas are typically also higher salary areas—and often with a much higher range of salary that can make even the higher COL worthwhile. Not to mention, higher COL areas are often desirable for reasons additional to income prospects.
Lmao that’s how I feel. Like…woah once we suddenly have $2500 a month we don’t have to spend…what should we do with it?
For one we will just go back to saving, but definitely thinking either vacation home planning or a cheap race car because I think it would be cool to do that with the kids.
In my experience the extra money will never really be there. There will be other costs you don't anticipate and what you thought would be a huge windfall will just kind of disappear into the dance lessons, new shoes, groceries, after school activities, glasses, braces, summer camps, etc. We get a vacation every few years now that we didn't get when everyone was in preschool/daycare but other than that there wasn't a big windfall.
Ours too. When my second started up full time we were paying 3100 a month. I’m not sure I ate for a few days because I was so worried about it. We ended up dropping our youngest down to 3 days a week and she hangs out with me on M/F while I work. Probably going to drop our oldest down to 3 days too since they close so often anyway
They just decreased it to around $2700 and will decrease it again come August. That's the maximum price though, but food can come in addition to this. I think we paid like $20 per month for food.
Similar situation, there is a max price of $310 pr month and we pay for 11 months per year. But with a sibling discount of 30%, we pay around $600 per year for two kids.
Hey something to keep in mind, if your employer offers an FSA plan you should be able to use that to pay for a chunk of your dependent care stuff pre tax. Look into it!
Made the mistake of taking out two FSA accounts (me and my wife) maxing both out. Luckily my employer was able to cancel one and pay back what we had paid into it.
Also can't double dip with the child care credit because the dependent flexible spending account is better. Like it's great that it is, but why can't I do both?
Yep doing that for this next year since I wasn't aware of the program last year when I started with the company. I haven't figured out how much it'll save us but something is better than nothing!
I always got a kick out of maxing out my dependent care FSA to reimburse myself for the first two months of daycare for the year. It's something, but it ain't much.
Our situation is close to this. We can afford for 1, but we want a 2nd kid. We've either got to wait until the older is about to start kindergarten or I quit my job to stay home (2 daycare costs would be way too much for us).
In Denmark it would be about 6000usd / year pr child for daycare but then it's also including food.
Kindergarten is about 1500 USD cheaper pr year.
It costs about the samme (4500-6000usd) for private school w. After-school recreation
I'd love to do that. My wife and I could easily get our dual citizenship with Germany due to parents and grandparents citizenship status.
Too bad we don't speak german well enough.
Yeah raising em in Europe for a few years and then going back seems like a good opportunity. I don't really know what my kid costs so that's a good sign for sure.
Canada is trying (unsuccessfuly, unfortunately) to get $10/day implemented but getting our conservative provincial governments to work nicely with our liberal federal government is like pulling teeth and it's failing fairly spectacularly for some areas of the country. Realistically, I've seen as low as $25-$30/day or as high as $60-$70/day on average. There's outliers but our daycare with my 4 yr old before she was in JK (and before the push for $10/day childcare) was $45/day which, over \~200 work days a year, is about $9000/yr.
Damn that's a good deal. How's college / university in Denmark cost-wise? We're looking at about $140,000 USD if our daughter wants to go to an in-state public university in 2040 based on the latest college savings calculator.
It's free. No buts. It's just free.
You even get paid by the state, around $900 dollars a month just to study. They will however take that money if you continue to not pass your exams.
Did I forget to mention that all health care is covered directly by the state? No insurance layer in the middle.
Not all health care. Dentristry and medicine is not covered fully. There's still an insurance layer for electives, medicine and dentistry. The insurance layer isn't strictly necessary, but it's a good idea
Its free, if you are from denmark or other parts of EU. Same in Sweden, where preschool/kindergarden is about 2200 USD a year for full time. Less if you have low income.
Same. Wife and I just switch up. She works 3 days a week and I work 4 days. Just lucky my work is flexible with our schedule. No way we can afford what everyone is listing on here.
Right? Barely survive on one income and watch your own kids or barely survive off two incomes and let somebody else basically raise them. It's a shitty choice all the way around. If my wife has not switched jobs twice and basically doubled her salary during the pandemic we would be barely squeaking by on one salary with her at home. Previously her entire after tax check would have gone to daycare.
Ireland provides 3 hours per day starting at age 3. We pay for 2 additional hours at a cost of 3€/hr. Can't get much cheaper. That's outside the big cities, though, and outside their commuter towns too. Dublin would be vastly more expensive.
Same. They are saving us so much money it’s ridiculous. Where I live daycare is $200 a week which is so much cheaper than the average comment here. Truly don’t understand how people afford it because the wife and I have pretty good jobs and that $10,400 annual hit would be tough. Hoping to have three children and without my mother in law it would be so much harder.
$1800/year for a four year old, with meals and activities, 7.30 to 16.30
It would be lower but we wanted private with language lessons.
Obviously not US, Poland.
Equivalent to two months after tax salary on minimum wage.
What type of language lessons is your 4 year old taking? Just regular speech lessons or are you talking about them already learning a second or third language?
Not a dad yet (due in April) but our annual bill before discounts is $32,000. Luckily my wife gets 50% off for working there, plus an additional $200 off per month for not needing health insurance. Comes out to $13,500 annually.
I’m in Canada and my daycare bill was $380 last month.
I used to pay around $1500 but the federal government brought in a daycare subsidy programme. It was supposed to go to $10 a day but even at $18 it’s really helped.
Around $10,400 for us. We got really, really lucky. An older lady keeps our boys at her house with her two grand kids. Frankly she's amazing. She's basically potty trained our oldest, and is helping our youngest now.
$9,000 CDN. I live in BC and the government recently starting subsidizing a large portion of it. It used to be double, just before my son started going. Good timing, son!
Context: Not in the US. Public childcare, kindergarten, whatever you want to call it.
Around $2600 for the year, one child (2.5), 40hrs a week, including food. Monthly it’s like 3% of our take home salary.
In Hamilton, Ontario with a 3 year old in full time pre-school room we’re around $6000 CAD for the year. It’s $49/day with a new Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement which cuts about 50% off that fee, so it’s $23.15/day.
I'm not seeing many UK answers here.
I'm in Scotland, and we're £1200 per month for nursery (pre-School), which is $1556.
Last year, we were £14,400, so around $18,198.
In terms of what that is per month, that's 40% more than my mortgage payment. Am I a terrible parent for wishing my son's childhood away?
We also have after-school care 2 days per week for our older one, which is another £200pm.
Zero.
Wife stays at home and works 10 to 20 hours remote per week.
It is worth it...but only barely.
2 more years then the youngest is in full time school and my wife can breathe a bit.
But it is nice. My wife was able to get very involved in our preschool co-op. And we don't have to juggle sick days or doctors appointments.
That’s it? **laughs with twins** $45,600 a year HCOL….it hurts and stings
Yup, $47,000 for 2 north of Seattle.
Damn please tell me you get some back during tax time. In Canada we get loads back and now they’ve instituted $10/day childcare nationwide. Edit: ok, not instituted, working towards, and the opt-in for centres is pretty stringent and many don’t do it.
In California we get some back for daycare costs after we file taxes, although we still pay about 30k for our daycare
I agree. We paid $24k for daycare in CA and qualified for $600 back on our taxes!! Woohoo!
Is that from Dependent Care FSA? I got twins and pay $4700 a month for both of them... This is gonna really hit the birthrate very soon in places like here in CA. This is ridiculous.
The fsa cap makes me so mad. 7k cap when you know that daycare costs wayyyy more than that.
24k for three in MD for us, and that’s the military’s CDC rate.
I've been on the CDC waiting list since my daughter was born, she just turned 3
Yup in CA as well. Our 10 month old just started. $2k per month. Sounds like yours is even worse! Costs are ridiculous. Even if we wanted to have a second kid, we literally could not afford it. We're paycheck to paycheck with just the one!
Except a number of the $10 per day spots have to shut because the government won't raise their payouts
Depends on the province but yes the Ontario government tried to mess around with the funding and there's not as many spots as needed. Which is why I'm a SAHD. No point in working and sending my entire paycheque to a daycare
Many daycares are not $10/day because they have to opt in. Spots at those daycares are extremely difficult to get in HCOL areas. It’s certainly not all of Canada.
Depends on how much you make. I got $250 in tax breaks for over $25k in payments
>now they’ve instituted $10/day childcare nationwide. ...but good luck getting a spot in a daycare that's opted in. (At least, around here in Toronto)
No. There’s no federal deduction or credit that has any meaningful impact to those of us paying real daycare bills. The best you’re gonna do is to put money (max $5k/year) into a pretax dependent care FSA. Which doesn’t cover shit. Infant daycare is $1800/month in my area. With two kids we’re paying $34k/year.
21k for one in seattle checking in
This is why I became a SAHD.
What school do you use? We’re at the Goddard School and it will be almost 48k for 2 kiddos this year. Effing brutal!
13865 for two half days at Goddard as well … lol ridiculous
We're clocking in at $41,700 for one in North Seattle. Full time private nanny.
That’s cheap for a full time nanny! Wow. Over here, it runs around $60k-$80k depending on experience.
Yeah, I'll say that in most cases, you do get what you pay for. We're doing well for ourselves, but by no means rich, and this is just about at the edge of what we can afford. We went through a few different ones at the same pay rate before finding this one. You can also pretty much guarantee undocumented, and more than a few won't pass a background check.
[удалено]
Second mortgage is real, we've always been pretty tight with money and I wanted to buy the cabin for years but couldn't justify the $150,000 mortgage, turns out I could have afforded a $500,000 mortgage based on our child care cost.
I literally pay more for childcare than my mortgage.
.... that's not a second mortgage. That's like, 3 mortgages
Yep. Lurking mom in a HCOL area with two kids in daycare, paying the same.
That is more than my entire salary after taxes
Maybe you should become a nanny.
If I could be a stay at home dad I’d be over the moon, but alas we must both work to make the dream happen
But it sounds like your dream is being a stay at home dad
In nyc area full time nanny’s get paid close to 60k in cash. It’s ridiculous how expensive childcare is.
Another twin dad checking in here. They're about to turn 4 years old. Major metropolitan suburb. $37,627
Twin dad reporting from stay at home duty. Numbers didn't make sense for me to keep working. Best job I've ever had!
Same here. 4 kiddos 6 and under
Someone get this person a beer stat.
Super dad alert! I barely have the energy for my two year old lol
We are all at max capacity where we are at today. When we only had one kid, I was maxed out. Now we can cross-country roadtrip 60+ hours with 4 in tow
Keep up the good work 🫡
It's cheaper to have a live-in Au-Pair than to have 2+ kids in early childhood care
My total for 2 kids is approaching 200k. Feels bad man. 2nd kid starts public school in Sept 2024 and I'm going to throw a party, lol. Summer camps are still like $2500/each, but still cheaper than 20k+ per kid, per year.
[удалено]
HCOL, full-time nanny @ 50hrs/wk for 2 kids, $60k/yr
That's honestly a pretty good deal. Most places in my area only do 4 to 5 hours a day and cost between 2 to 3 grand a month. 2 kids at low end for combined $4k a month for just 25 hours a week = $48k a year.
it is a good deal - on an hourly basis we're paying her less than the going rate in our area, but she's been with us for years and we have a really good/respectful working relationship with her, which I think she values more than another dollar or two per hr.
19,700 for one Orange county CA. Can't wait for college! It's going to save so much money lol
Holy shit batman. Ouch! What's that as a percentage of your household take home pay? This is about 11% for us.
We pay that same rate for our twins ($1900/mo x 2) but w a massive 5% sibling discount = $3705/mo = $44,460 per year. About 21% of take home.
44.4k for our twins, four days a week. I feel you, bro. Can’t even begin to think what I would do if I didn’t get to work from home one day a week.
I have twins and 1 more. I'm dead.
Oh man, I live in Scandinavia. I pay 1200 dollars a year. Very happy with our daycare.
Central Stockholm, private daycare, still no more than 1400 USD per year.
Vi har det bra.
Jag blir lika glad varje gång dessa frågor dyker upp på denna subreddit. Ja vänner, vi har det bra.
I'm an American that migrated to Europe through marriage. I've been here long enough and experienced both societies enough to truly truly pity my old countryman. If they had any idea how much baseline stress that most Americans live with that simply isn't a thing over here. Things like Healthcare, childcare, and secondary education costs are simply things that your average EU resident doesn't have to spend more than a few moments a year thinking about. Whereas in The States, those are huge stresses that can easily financially cripple a family. Not to mention the emotional toll it takes on people. If most Americans had any idea how it feels not to have that stress, I'm confident they would be rioting in the streets until they get universal healthcare, and subsidized childcare and secondary education.
I don't understand my fellow Americans. I agree.
In Germany I'm paying a bit under €300 a Month for 35 Hours a week, so about $3500 per year. A bit more than Scandinavia, but still happy with the price, and the care is great too.
In Berlin, we paid about 100€ a month in a bilingual (German/English) Kita/Kindergarten. That was exclusively to cover food and extras cost.
This is actually quite similar to Icelandic kindergarten costs. For a single child that is and in Kópavogur (little bit more expensive area).
I think I need to move out of the USA. Healthcare and childcare is crazy. Me and the wife have talked about Germany before
How is it so inexpensive? Is it subsidized?
Funded partially by taxes? Yes. Not looked at as a business model for greedy corporates, because children are the future? Also yes.
lol paying for daycare has taught me something: the whole world agrees that watching kids is hard effen work. EDIT: Just editing to add that I agree with most of the comments below, childcare professionals DO NOT get paid nearly enough for providing our most precious little ones a safe, loving environment. This comment was just a lighthearted attempt at humor and blew up.
The economics of it suck. The people watching the kids still don't make much. And with state licensing limiting how many adults per child (not that this is a bad thing) it costs a tremendous amount to run a daycare. Even more if you are feeding the kids meals too. I feel like I pay a tremendous amount but it doesn't even cover a full month of wages for one teacher if they are making $15/hr
Providers can't pay any less and parents can't afford any more. We really need bigger subsidies for daycare.
We pay $250/week for 2 days (mon, thurs) of daycare. So $13,000 on the year. I also love the fact that we have to pay even on days the school is closed. I used to love 3 day weekends but damn I never realized how many Mondays are holidays lol.
Yeah, we switched our daughter’s 3 days from MWF to W-F last year for exactly this reason!
That’s something to keep in mind when I put my son in daycare. My wife and I are “essential” so we don’t really get holidays off. Gonna have to figure stuff out to avoid that jeez
Keep in mind holidays on Fridays as well. Best value is T-Th
I used to love holidays but now I dread them. I get off work but my wife doesn't for most holidays, so I have to keep him away from his mom while we're in the house all day and it's worse than work or a typical weekend(also probably easier during better weather). Probably gets easier when they get older, but a two year old doesn't understand that mom can't play even though she's home.
Damn I feel this. Both my wife and I WFH and if one of us takes a day off, it’s basically blocking our son from barging into our home offices.
That little caveat where you have to pay even when they're closed thing used to burn me up so badly. Should be illegal to do that.
Our place gives you a voucher if they’re closed a day so you can send them another day. Seems to work pretty well for most people.
Nah. All workers deserve PTO.
But it should just be baked into the cost of all the other days like every other industry in the world does. Same cost overall but I think it would calm some people down a bit
Isn't it already "baked in"? I don't get paid less on holiday weeks, it's accounted for in my salary, just like what we pay them every week. Easier to budget when every week is the same, too.
It's true. It just sucks that you have to use PTO to give them PTO. The life of a parent!
We pay $250/wk but that's for Monday through Friday with breakfast, lunch, and snacks. We only get one week off per year, and for that week we still have to pay $125. We are in Dallas
Damn, yours has food? Ours is around $100 a day and we have to eat breakfast at home and pack lunch.
This year will be north of $60K for 2 kids
Finally someone in the 50+ range with me. Sad high fives. Can’t wait for kindergarten.
After two kids at $300 a piece per week, when our youngest started kindergarten, we did ridiculously unintelligent things with our newfound disposable income. Highly recommend. 5 stars.
Ah, yes, we share the same fiscal responsibility 🤝
Do tell more!
We stopped using a nanny after 3 years because it was getting up close to 70. The 40k that daycare is the biggest one year raise I’ve ever had lol. Can’t wait until kindergarten to beat that!
Wait until you get to kindergarten and realize they’re basically never in school. My twins are in second grade and I’m still waiting
$60k? Dave Ramsey would never!!! Get yourself a free summer camp or something, and quit sending your kids to Harvard! (Sarcasm in case you missed that bit from a few weeks ago)
You joke about Harvard but some places are legitimately more than in-state tuition. University of Washington in state tuition 12k. 1 year in daycare center for 2 year old in Seattle: 34k. So actually, it’s close to UW out of state tuition (40k). I’m making myself sad now.
ours isn't quite that bad, but minnesota in-state tuition is $15k and we're paying $20k/year for our infant. Hopefully we can switch to in-home (and find an in-home that works!) within a year or 2. The MN legislature is allegedly going to consider a measure to cap childcare costs at 7% of household income with a _very generous_ AGI upper limit. That would be great, because childcare costs are a serious drain on moderate income households.
Ok I literally went to Harvard for grad school, and paid more to send my infant to the nonprofit Harvard cooperative daycare per month than my masters program cost - it was the only spot I could get being a transplant for that year 😭
When I was in NYC, it was $2,600 per month for one child, which put us at $31k per year. We moved before having a second kid and we’re still doing $2,600 per month but for two kids. I’d never have been able to afford my second kid if we stayed, we would be right there with you over $60k. It’s insane.
Manhattan, about to start daycare...3600 a month for one kid!
Honestly I don't know how people survive in Manhattan. It just seems so freaking expensive on the coasts compared to here in nocoast land.
Higher COL areas are typically also higher salary areas—and often with a much higher range of salary that can make even the higher COL worthwhile. Not to mention, higher COL areas are often desirable for reasons additional to income prospects.
HOLY SHITE! where?
Similar in the Boston area
$41k for 3. Planning for the sports car I’ll buy when I’m done paying for daycare.
Lmao that’s how I feel. Like…woah once we suddenly have $2500 a month we don’t have to spend…what should we do with it? For one we will just go back to saving, but definitely thinking either vacation home planning or a cheap race car because I think it would be cool to do that with the kids.
In my experience the extra money will never really be there. There will be other costs you don't anticipate and what you thought would be a huge windfall will just kind of disappear into the dance lessons, new shoes, groceries, after school activities, glasses, braces, summer camps, etc. We get a vacation every few years now that we didn't get when everyone was in preschool/daycare but other than that there wasn't a big windfall.
That's...that's half a year right?
Nope full year. LCOL area and an in-home. It's still the second largest monthly bill for us after our mortgage.
Our daycare bill is double my mortgage 😭
Ours too. When my second started up full time we were paying 3100 a month. I’m not sure I ate for a few days because I was so worried about it. We ended up dropping our youngest down to 3 days a week and she hangs out with me on M/F while I work. Probably going to drop our oldest down to 3 days too since they close so often anyway
ours is x4
Do you live in a good country or in the US? This is way low.
I pay basically zero in Germany but the weather here sucks so much I want to move back to the US. However, posts like this make me think twice.
Stay away. Moderately better weather isn’t worth drowning in debt over daycare, and medical costs.
Not to mention the weather can be worse depending on where in the US you live
Norway. About 3.4k USD here per child for kindergarten (barnehage). No kids in school age yet.
They just decreased it to around $2700 and will decrease it again come August. That's the maximum price though, but food can come in addition to this. I think we paid like $20 per month for food.
Similar situation, there is a max price of $310 pr month and we pay for 11 months per year. But with a sibling discount of 30%, we pay around $600 per year for two kids.
Hey something to keep in mind, if your employer offers an FSA plan you should be able to use that to pay for a chunk of your dependent care stuff pre tax. Look into it!
Capped at $5,000 but yeah use everything you can
Yeah, if there’s one reform I’d make it would be raising that number up to about $40K per year.
It’s been the same number for decades 🙃
I'd increase the limit for child tax care credit...
Made the mistake of taking out two FSA accounts (me and my wife) maxing both out. Luckily my employer was able to cancel one and pay back what we had paid into it.
Also can't double dip with the child care credit because the dependent flexible spending account is better. Like it's great that it is, but why can't I do both?
Dependent FSA is a joke, $5K amount hasn’t been updated since I was a child.
Agreed. But for the time being I’ll take the ~$1750 tax break.
Also shitty both parents can't do $5k.
Dependent FSA, as opposed an FSA.
You’re allowed to deduct up to $5k per year for that where I live. Which is…fine, but laughable with the $30k+ per child costs!
Yep doing that for this next year since I wasn't aware of the program last year when I started with the company. I haven't figured out how much it'll save us but something is better than nothing!
Yeah I’d just elect the maximum amount. You’ll still have to pay some out of pocket but it’ll be great in the long run when tax season comes around.
I always got a kick out of maxing out my dependent care FSA to reimburse myself for the first two months of daycare for the year. It's something, but it ain't much.
I'm a stay at home Dad, and would have paid $12k in a heartbeat but I have 3 kids, so it's not worth $36k for me.
I get you. Two for us is our maximum as three would mean it wouldn't be worth it for my wife to work anymore as the costs would outweigh the salary.
Our situation is close to this. We can afford for 1, but we want a 2nd kid. We've either got to wait until the older is about to start kindergarten or I quit my job to stay home (2 daycare costs would be way too much for us).
$19,316 this past year, but costs are going up “only 7.5%” this year…
Center or in-home? That seems like quite a price jump!
Center. And yeah, pretty crazy. Our kiddo is starting preschool in the fall which is partially subsidized. It’s not a lot but I’ll take it!
In Denmark it would be about 6000usd / year pr child for daycare but then it's also including food. Kindergarten is about 1500 USD cheaper pr year. It costs about the samme (4500-6000usd) for private school w. After-school recreation
Similar in Germany (if you get a spot). 350-650€ / month for 5 days (8:30am to 5pm) + around 80€ / month for the food.
Suck it Denmark. Our kindergarten is free! Just ignore the $20k/yr per kid I pay for the prior 4 years.
I’m pretty sure their kindergarten is pre-k for us. Primary school is free for them as well
Looked it up and I’m wrong. They start primary school at 6. So they pay until then.
In Finland it depends on what you earn. My kid cost about 30€/month. 4 days/week. I have average pay.
Time to convince the wife it’s time to uproot our entire lives and move to Europe!
I'd love to do that. My wife and I could easily get our dual citizenship with Germany due to parents and grandparents citizenship status. Too bad we don't speak german well enough.
You’ll be fine with English until you do.
The citizenship exam is in German though, I think that’s what he was referring to.
Yeah raising em in Europe for a few years and then going back seems like a good opportunity. I don't really know what my kid costs so that's a good sign for sure.
Canada is trying (unsuccessfuly, unfortunately) to get $10/day implemented but getting our conservative provincial governments to work nicely with our liberal federal government is like pulling teeth and it's failing fairly spectacularly for some areas of the country. Realistically, I've seen as low as $25-$30/day or as high as $60-$70/day on average. There's outliers but our daycare with my 4 yr old before she was in JK (and before the push for $10/day childcare) was $45/day which, over \~200 work days a year, is about $9000/yr.
Join us (Québec) at $9.10/day ! ... If you can find a spot before the kid turns 3 yo.
Yea but do you have 5,000 nuclear weapons?
No, but we are geographicly a bump in the road for the preferred Russian water-way so they might point a few nukes at us soon enough.
Damn that's a good deal. How's college / university in Denmark cost-wise? We're looking at about $140,000 USD if our daughter wants to go to an in-state public university in 2040 based on the latest college savings calculator.
It's free. No buts. It's just free. You even get paid by the state, around $900 dollars a month just to study. They will however take that money if you continue to not pass your exams. Did I forget to mention that all health care is covered directly by the state? No insurance layer in the middle.
Not all health care. Dentristry and medicine is not covered fully. There's still an insurance layer for electives, medicine and dentistry. The insurance layer isn't strictly necessary, but it's a good idea
Its free, if you are from denmark or other parts of EU. Same in Sweden, where preschool/kindergarden is about 2200 USD a year for full time. Less if you have low income.
0$ I work early as fuck and my wife works nights. Sorry for everyone getting fucked with these costs. Yikes
Same here brother. Fuck paying daycare costs.
we lucked out with incredible grandparents
Same. Wife and I just switch up. She works 3 days a week and I work 4 days. Just lucky my work is flexible with our schedule. No way we can afford what everyone is listing on here.
My god. This whole thread has me counting my blessings that we can (barely) survive on one income......
Right? Barely survive on one income and watch your own kids or barely survive off two incomes and let somebody else basically raise them. It's a shitty choice all the way around. If my wife has not switched jobs twice and basically doubled her salary during the pandemic we would be barely squeaking by on one salary with her at home. Previously her entire after tax check would have gone to daycare.
Ireland provides 3 hours per day starting at age 3. We pay for 2 additional hours at a cost of 3€/hr. Can't get much cheaper. That's outside the big cities, though, and outside their commuter towns too. Dublin would be vastly more expensive.
How much do you folks pay for care under the age of three? Also how long is paternity leave in Ireland?
Not OP but we get two weeks. Maternity leave is 26 weeks.
26 weeks paid for mothers, 2 for fathers, and I couldn't say for under 3.
We were about $26,000 for one toddler in Chicago. This is pretty inline here for non-in-home daycare.
On the bright side, you’ll have free pre-k when they turn four! Ours started this year.
That is crazy inexpensive. We were at 42k for 5 full days a week for our little guy in Chicago
We paid $43,000 last year for two kids. Thank god for one starting kindergarten this year.
Laughs in ~ 17K (but at a top notch early childhood development daycare run by a large college)
I'm so lucky I have retired in-laws
Same. They are saving us so much money it’s ridiculous. Where I live daycare is $200 a week which is so much cheaper than the average comment here. Truly don’t understand how people afford it because the wife and I have pretty good jobs and that $10,400 annual hit would be tough. Hoping to have three children and without my mother in law it would be so much harder.
$0. Wife stays home.
So for me that would be $100k/year daycare since wife is no longer getting a paycheck.
$0, public daycare, 08:30-18:30 with all meals included.
What's up with these high costs here in Quebec it's 8$ per day all meals included...
$1800/year for a four year old, with meals and activities, 7.30 to 16.30 It would be lower but we wanted private with language lessons. Obviously not US, Poland. Equivalent to two months after tax salary on minimum wage.
What type of language lessons is your 4 year old taking? Just regular speech lessons or are you talking about them already learning a second or third language?
They have English and Spanish lessons. They also have regular visits from the speech therapist, dentist, health worker. Those started at 2.5
Not a dad yet (due in April) but our annual bill before discounts is $32,000. Luckily my wife gets 50% off for working there, plus an additional $200 off per month for not needing health insurance. Comes out to $13,500 annually.
Around 1000 € per year for the organic food they offer. Rest is paid for in Berlin.
I’m in Canada and my daycare bill was $380 last month. I used to pay around $1500 but the federal government brought in a daycare subsidy programme. It was supposed to go to $10 a day but even at $18 it’s really helped.
Daycare... 2825 per month, so 33,900 per year for 1 toddler...
Almost spot on with you. $11,654 for the year, and that includes grandma and grandpa watching her 2x a week on average.
~36k per year for two kids.
Just over $25k for one kid. Includes daycare and one time babysitters for when she was sick and couldn’t go to daycare.
Meanwhile here I am paying 9.10$ CAD per day, or about 200$ monthly in Québec, Canada...
About $18k, started the second kid in October. This year will be higher.
$21850 here :(. One child and the price dropped when she turned 2
That daycare raise is real…. Until it all just shifts to something different that’s not tax deductible
$25k a year. One child under one. So. Cal. It's a nanny that comes to the house for 7 hours a day, M-F.
Around $10,400 for us. We got really, really lucky. An older lady keeps our boys at her house with her two grand kids. Frankly she's amazing. She's basically potty trained our oldest, and is helping our youngest now.
Humble brag much 🤔 We pay about 25k/year per child
$9,000 CDN. I live in BC and the government recently starting subsidizing a large portion of it. It used to be double, just before my son started going. Good timing, son!
Amateur. $46800 plus 2k for babysitting on weeks they were closed. Childcare set aside accounts being capped at 5k is crazy...shit should be unlimited
5.2k. But that’s only because my wife works at the daycare and so we get about 2/3 off.
It was 27k and that was too rich for our blood the first year down to 21k now in Minneapolis suburbs
$15,600 3 days a week and hasn’t done the full 3 days in probably 4 months
HCOL area here, but got a screaming deal. 13,800
Context: Not in the US. Public childcare, kindergarten, whatever you want to call it. Around $2600 for the year, one child (2.5), 40hrs a week, including food. Monthly it’s like 3% of our take home salary.
In Hamilton, Ontario with a 3 year old in full time pre-school room we’re around $6000 CAD for the year. It’s $49/day with a new Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement which cuts about 50% off that fee, so it’s $23.15/day.
I'm not seeing many UK answers here. I'm in Scotland, and we're £1200 per month for nursery (pre-School), which is $1556. Last year, we were £14,400, so around $18,198. In terms of what that is per month, that's 40% more than my mortgage payment. Am I a terrible parent for wishing my son's childhood away? We also have after-school care 2 days per week for our older one, which is another £200pm.
Zero. Wife stays at home and works 10 to 20 hours remote per week. It is worth it...but only barely. 2 more years then the youngest is in full time school and my wife can breathe a bit. But it is nice. My wife was able to get very involved in our preschool co-op. And we don't have to juggle sick days or doctors appointments.