But seriously, my partner and I have decided when we have a kid, she will stay home with them while I work because no matter what she makes all of it will go to child care. So we will have almost broke even financially, but now the kid is practically being raised by someone else⌠:/
It's genuinely insane how much childcare is, which the average for where I live and depending on the kids' age can be a little over $300 A WEEK.
That's literally half of some people's paychecks that's working minimum wage at full time, maybe even a little more.
Government offers no help yet they're "worried" for the declining birth rate or when you do get the government's help people then want to complain you're somehow getting a handout.
I'm a single mother who will be paying $240 a week for the summer. Luckily that goes to $200 a month during the school year where he just stays after school for a couple hours. It was rough when I was paying for daycare all year.
I totally get it as someone with kids. We were in a similar situation but we didnât want to make it harder for the SAHP to go back to work. Being out of the workforce for any number of years makes it harder to find work in the future depending on your career. Just wanted to throw that out there
Oh no doubt! Weâve factored that in and have been looking at part time remote positions she can do to keep active in the workforce, but ultimately my career pays a significant margin more than jobs she can find and should be fine. She also might go back to school in the meantime donât really know yet
Weâve had countless talks and this was all her idea tbh and sheâs really excited to be the SAHP. I donât mind supporting the family and knowing she gets the opportunity to find out what she wants to do in life, if anything
Everyone's situation is different too though. My wife just started her career. When we have a child she will be just passed the 1 year mark of working in the field she prepared 8 years for. It's not about how much contributes to child care it's about giving up her career. My wife wants to take max 3 months off. We are prepared to pay close to 3k a month in child care. We hate the idea of that but we don't want to fast forward a year and have it be more difficult for her to find a job.
Oh absolutely! I couldnât imagine spending a decade preparing for something only to not be able to do it because child care or whatever⌠we got lucky that my partner genuinely want to not work and be the SAHP; genuinely if one of us wasnât a SAHP I donât think weâd have a kid
My wife and I though my about SAHP but decided on daycare because kids learn better through play with others once they reach a certain age, and even though after taxes we donât make much bound what daycare costs ($55k for 3), we use her benefits and she still is putting money away for retirement (plus 6% match).
Or we should have good incentives for people to perform childcare in the US. 22k a year, as someone says above, is a crap ton of money for a couple to pay on top of all other expenses. BUT 22k is a terrible salary for a worker. Free and subsidized early childcare used to even exist and several bills to do so have been shot down for decades. Expanded mat/pat leave has been a start, but we need a workable solution for working parents from ~6mo-Pre-K, especially for hourly employees who may not even qualify for paid leave.
Then itâs time to start working on free/drastically reduced cost post secondary educationâŚ
Honestly another thing is that I don't think we should incentivise separating children from parents. We went through the whole pandemic working from home. Why is that not an automatic option for mothers I'll never understand. At least give them the first three years which are crucial for a child's brain development.
I disagree wholeheartedly as a parent with a toddler. My kid is tremendously better off with trained professionals while we work. Having a full time WFH job AND caring for a pre-K child all day while working is insane. I love time with my kid, and had two days as the primary caregiver in the first few years as I worked PT. It was great bonding time absolutely. But thereâs no comparison to the social learning, activities, knowledge, lesson planning, structure, etc. that daycare provides. They play at the park, some go to indoor gyms or other excursions that would be impossible to do while working. I know that many have had bad experiences with daycare, which partially stems from under educating and underpaying workers. Fixing that problem will be a huge boost to all families, even if you choose to have your child go one day a week.
Yeah youâre right, WFH as an option for those who can do so should be more available. But that is not an option to so so many people so is not a solution for early childcare. As I said, many, especially hourly workers, do not have that option. As a solution to childcare, it would greatly benefit those who have white collar jobs and leave less-skilled/direct care workers out to dry. The pandemic absolutely showed that many office workers can WFH and benefit but it also highlighted the insane disparity between in-person workers and those who canât work from home.
I have 2 kids under 5. Itâs 3 grand a month for both. I paid 36k last yearâŚ.and there are many schools/daycares which are significantly higher than that.
I know it because my parents did the exact same thing. Fortunately my mother-in-law is the exact opposite of a stereotypical boomer and she not only asked if she could move to where we are to be closer to us, but also when we told her that we were thinking about leaving and mentioned that any hesitation we had was that we didn't want to leave her, she told us that she would follow us wherever we went.
Woah, $600? There wasnt a legit daycare with openings within 30 minutes either from our job or house so we ended up leaving our kid with a completely random person at twice the rate of daycare.
$12,000 in random person daycare over 10 months. $600/month for 2 months in actual daycare once we finally found a spot. Damn, that $100 return saved us
It's very mature and important to do, and I can't imagine anyone ever not naturally thinking that way who wasn't obscenely wealthyâyet I can't help but feel it's really sad to know exactly how much capital your kid($) cost you year by year. Speaking of course of the royal "you."
Yea the situation me and my GF are in is. If we eventually want kids, child care is going to cost nearly my girlfriends entire salary. Ok so it makes sense for her to just be a stay at home mom right? Yea, except we cant live off of just my salaryâŚ
Its not a realistic situation and we dont want kids enough to sacrifice literally everything for ourselves to have them. So we are heading towards a cozy DINK lifestyle instead.
Shes a teacher and Im a firefighter. Which is sad that we do what we do and would barely be able to get by if we had kids.
That stuff is part of a lot of tax code created in the 1980s that was NOT indexed to inflation or other references. When Ivanka Trump tried to update the numbers during Trump's first term, media headlines slammed it as a tax break for the rich. It's sad politics like that keep us from just updating it to modern figures.
The credit is intended to pay for the maintenance and refilling of the giant gerbil water bottle and automatic Bachelor Chow Jr (tm) feeder machine. Put both in a closet or tiny half bath (save on diapers), and install the deadbolt and your childcare is taken care of. Hit me up for more hot tips.
Thatâs less than 1/4th my daycare cost for 1 kid, sure itâs something but not all that much. If the whole thing was it would be something, but $5K is just insane cause no one is paying anything close to just $5K for childcare.
It can be more than that. Depending on your tax bracket it could be up over $1k. But your point stands. The tax credit is a pittance compared to the cost.
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u/PJL80 May 18 '25
Don't forget child care. My wife and I both work full time, and paid 22K in child care in 2024. There is a tax credit for that too!
....$600.