If you’re awaiting a baby then you might wonder how much does daycare cost? It’s normal. After all, everybody is saying that a baby costs a lot. Unfortunately… they are right!
Depending on where you live and where you’ll send you kid (in house daycare or commercial daycare) and what kind of education you want your kid to have, you can expect to spend at least 150$ to 350$ per week to send your kid to the daycare, 35$ per day being the average. This is for only one kid… I know! It’s expensive! But that’s really how much daycare costs.
I know someone who owns a daycare and he told me that each kid brings in roughly 12000$ per year in income.
If you’re like me, chances are that you don’t like to give that much money to strangers and that you’d prefer raising your kids by yourself to make sure you transmit them your values.
Here are 6 tips to help you save on daycare cost:
Get help from grand-parents
At five years old, you kid will start going to school. So this expense is not going to last forever. Well… there will be other expenses but school will take care of your kid for most of the time starting at 5. Since you’re going to have a maternity leave, you can expect to send your kid to the daycare for 4 years. Now that you know how much does a daycare cost, let’s do the math :
300$ x 52 weeks x 4 years = 62,000$ net! That’s huge! That’s more than my mortgage payment!
If your parents and the parents of your husband or wife are retired, then they may be happy to help you out 1 or 2 days per week each. If they could do so, your life would be so much easier. You could even offer to pay them. After all, you would have paid a stranger to keep you kid. It could make them a side income!
Work part-time
Many employers nowadays have programs for work/family conciliation. Ask your HR department about that or ask your boss. You might be able to skip one day per week to stay home. Combined with the help from your parents, you might have found the solution.
Work from home
If you have the kind of job that would permit it (office job), then you might obtain from your employer to work from home one or a couple of days per week.
Start small. Offer to do it once a week for a month to put you to test. Do your best to be more productive when you work from home and keep the numbers to show your boss. If you can prove that you are at least as productive or more productive, you could win the possibility to work from home two or three days per week or even for the full week!
If you employer is really not open to that then you could consider other working from home opportunity like freelance writing. There are tons of ideas to make money from home with the help of internet nowadays.
Change shifts
If you both have jobs and if it’s possible, one of you two could take the evening shift or the night shift for a while. That way there would always be someone home with the kid. I know it’s not the best for a couple, but you have a kid now. He’s the most important one.
Get government help
Depending of where you live and your family income, you might be entitled to get government help or subventions. Verify with you state or province for subventions.
Quit your day job and start an in home daycare
Now that you know how much does a daycare cost, if you work for an average salary and if none of the above is working for you, then you might consider starting your own in home daycare at least until your kid or kids are old enough to attend school.
If your prefer taking care of older kids, than you could start a preschool. These opportunities are great for work-at-home moms.
It could change your life for the better. No more boss, you’ll be with your kid at all time and you won’t have to hit traffic everyday to get to the office… your job will come to you!
That’s really something to consider!
Image courtesy of Boians Cho Joo Young /FreeDigitalPhotos.net
