By Dr. Astrid Moise, Guest Writer
Lifestyle considerations play a huge part in determining whether or not you will be a wealthy physician achieving financial independence in your forties versus a poor physician working until you drop dead. No doubt raising children ranks right up there among lifestyle choices that can have a major impact on the bottom line. One major decision that needs to be made upon learning that you are expecting is childcare. Like many of you, I am one half of a dual physician household. Not only are we dual physicians, we are surgeons. That means running into the hospital in the middle of the night for emergency surgeries and/or consults, 7:30 OR start times, and unexpected take-backs for bleeding. When we found out we were pregnant I was a fellow. For a number of reasons, not a single one financial, we opted for a nanny. My son had a traumatic delivery and I essentially spent almost the entirety of my maternity leave with him in my arms or in a baby carrier. I wanted to maintain that one on one relationship for at least the first year of his life. My husband and I also had ridiculously unpredictable schedules (did I mention I was in my fellowship) and I didn’t want to be in the operating room hoping that I or my husband would be out in time to pick up our son.
Costs of Childcare for Doctors to Consider
Center-Based Daycare
But since this is a personal finance blog, we will focus on the finances. I live in an affluent suburb (median household income of $95,000) of a medium-sized city in the midwest so the prices reflect that. First, with regard to daycare, costs are tiered. The highest cost is during the infant years when the ratio of provider to child is highest. The costs come down generally during the toddler years and then come down again for the preschool years. My youngest is now four so it has been a few years but I did canvas five center-based child care locations in my area and these are the numbers I came up with. Interestingly, if you look at a daycare website, they almost never post their tuition online. Very irritating. Two daycare centers would not share tuition information unless I came in for a tour. I skipped those two. Daycare costs at three different centers – both local franchises – for an infant full-time was $230-280/week yielding a rough estimate of $996-1,213/month. That puts us at an annual cost of $11,960-14,560.
Interestingly enough, I took a look at care.com and they quote the average cost of center-based daycare in the United States as $11,666 per year ($972/month) with annual prices ranging from $3,582 to $18,773. They reference the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies when quoting these numbers. As a point of reference, my brother and sister-in-law live in the high cost of living Washington D.C. area. They were recently quoted a low of $1,600/month to a high of $2,200/month.
In-Home Daycare for Doctors
In-home childcare versus center-based child care will often be cheaper. I did not investigate any of those in preparation for this post. I could not find anyone who used an in-home daycare and they generally advertise by word-of-mouth when a child outgrows their care.
Nannies for Doctors
Costs and Implications of Hiring a Household Employee
In my area, nannies are generally paid an average of $16/hour. Care.com also quotes $16 as the average cost per nanny with a range of $12 to $18. Keep in mind that the numbers can change based on how many children are under the nanny’s care. If you opt to pay the nanny the average pay per hour, expect to shell out $33,280 in salary alone. It does not end there. As a household employee, you are responsible for paying the employer portion of FICA which amounts to 7.65% of the employee's wages, or $2,545.92 in this case. Some cities will require you to pay unemployment compensation if you pay anyone wages of >$1000 per quarter up to a certain wage. We had to pay 2.7% of her salary up to $9,500, which amounts to $237.50. As a household employer, you are also required to withhold federal and state income tax on your employee’s wages which you can hand over to the IRS quarterly or with your tax return April 15. These quarterly withholdings are not an additional expense, just another item on your to-do list. So that salary of $16/hour actually costs you, the employer, a total of $36,064. Some people outsource the withholding to another party. I opted to do it myself. Nannychex, care.com, and others offer this service. For roughly $30/month they will send the nanny a weekly check. For $75-$100 they will file your quarterly forms. For a few hundred, they will prepare the W-2 for you to provide to your nanny.
Our youngest two children with our nanny.
Transportation
Other things to consider is transportation. As the child gets older, you may ask the nanny to take the child to playdates, the library, or swimming lessons. You could opt to provide the nanny with a car with the concomitant cost of increased car insurance and maintenance costs. Or you could reimburse the nanny at the 2018 IRS mileage rate of 54.5 cents per mile for use of their own private vehicle. We had a minivan that we purchased new with the second child that we allowed the nanny to use.
Does the Cost of a Nanny Decrease with Multiple Children?
In summary, a nanny can cost twice or triple that of daycare. One thing to consider, however, is that in the case of multiple children, the cost of a nanny can more approach the cost of daycare. The nanny may get a bump of an additional $1-$17/hr for that extra child, resulting in an annual increase (including taxes) of $2,329, a six percent increase. In contrast with daycare, your cost will essentially double. I say essentially because the cost of daycare for a toddler is slightly less than that of an infant. However, I find that many families do not switch to a nanny after multiples. If the older child has already been in a daycare setting and is happy, it is difficult to pull them out to be with a nanny. In addition, at three years old, many of the daycare centers will have an integrated pre-school within them which is generally considered a positive as parents look towards encouraging their children to develop social and pre-academic skills.
What I do find with people that employ nannies versus using a daycare, is that the added cost of a second or third child is minimal. At the same time, daycare cost will get less as children get older so that needs to be weighed in as well. Nanny costs, however, will essentially stay fixed for as long as all the children are not enrolled in school. For example, although my oldest one started kindergarten (essentially graduating from the nanny’s care) when my youngest was still an infant, I was still paying her the normal full-time rate. If my kids were in daycare, I would have noticed a significant reduction in expenses.
Au Pairs
A brief word about au pairs although I do not have direct experience with them. One of my neighbors has used au pairs exclusively through cultural care au pair. The program fee can be considerable. Cultural care au pair quotes a processing fee of $8,695 along with a $75 registration fee and $300 program fee with a weekly stipend fee paid to the au pair of $195 weekly. The total annual cost would be $19,210. The hefty processing fee goes to recruitment, background check, obtaining a visa for the applicant, an airplane ticket, and training of the au pair. Aupairs are paid anywhere from $100-$400 per week with a minimum stipend fee of $195 as stated above. A car needs to be provided for the au pair as well as their own accommodations, essentially their own bedroom. Aupairs are also restricted in terms of the numbers of hours they can work, but generally, they can work a max of 10 hours a day and 45 hours during the week. They generally work for one year, although extensions can be made at the request of the employer and au pair for an additional year. When including the car requirement, housing arrangement and feeding the au pair, the cost is more than daycare but possibly less than a nanny.
My issue with an au pair is that you don’t select who you get. They just show up. Having said that, if there is an incompatibility, the agencies make every effort to remove the au pair and replace her with another one. My nanny actually started as an au pair.
Why Did I Choose a Nanny?
So why in the world would I pay more than double the amount for childcare if I didn’t have to? I alluded to a few reasons in the beginning. The unpredictable schedules my husband and I had was tops. But other perks of a nanny are the fact that they will do light housekeeping and laundry for the kiddos. When we went on family vacations, she would pack the kids’ suitcases for me. Sometimes our nanny would prep meals for me. If she was making rice for the kids, she would just make rice for the whole family. In addition, when your child is sick, they can stay with the nanny. If your child is visibly sick, the daycare will force you to keep them home. It was also nice to just leave the kids in their pajamas and in whatever state of “morningness” they were in and have someone else take over. My friends with kids in daycare had to coax sleepy children into clothing, feed them as well as cart around their food for the day every morning. Some daycares have rules like you can only bring in finger food for kids to eat. So that means no applesauce, oatmeal or any other item that requires feeding the children one-on-one.
Cons of a nanny are obviously you have someone in your house all day. Sometimes the nanny might have odd habits that you essentially put up with—like rearranging your kids' closets, leaving every single light on in your home, or going through a roll of paper towels a day. It’s like when you first moved in with your spouse and you discover one by one all their quirks. Even worse, sometimes the nanny gets sick and can’t make it. My nanny was very conscientious but one day she came in looking as close to a cadaver as a healthy person could look and I was forced to cancel my day and send her home. Another time it was a funeral. Lastly, nanny horror stories abound with regard to neglect, physical abuse, and just plain stupidity. We have been fortunate to have worked with some really good people in the past and don’t have many bad stories to share.
In retrospect, I think we made the best decision for our family using a nanny. In fact, I consider it the best life hack we as a dual physician household have done to date.
What do you think? Have you used daycare, a nanny, or an au pair? How much did it cost you? Which childcare option would you recommend it to others? Comment below.
[Editor's Note: Dr. Astrid Moise is a regular WCI reader and surgeon. She and her surgeon husband live in the Midwest with their three boys ages 10, 8 and 5. This article was submitted and approved according to our Guest Post Policy. We have no financial relationship.]
We use a high quality day care and for our two kids, it runs us around $1750 per month. Prior to this year my kids had always been in part time day care that mirrored my wife’s part time hours. After she went back full-time, that was no longer an option.
Day care costs are really expensive, particularly when your spouse is not also a high income earner. However, we are really happy with the day care that they are in, and it has worked out quite well for us.
Not sure at this stage of the game we could have afforded a nanny, but we did consider it briefly. Really looking forward to our second kid going to kindergarten next year and the potential savings that $800 a month will provide.
TPP
So we have an au pair… the info about it in your article is not fully correct. You interview the au pairs just like online dating over skype, emails etc. However, you don’t know someone until they show up at your home. For my family it allows flexibility as its hard to find a nanny for certain hours. APIA )Au Pair in America is a large company we’ve used, they offer a discount for any PMG (Physician Moms Group) Member. Additionally APIA is most flexible on weekend coverage rules so if you are a doctor that takes weekend call, this company rules better than cultural care. All in, with a car, food, lodging etc we’ve calculated it costs us 12-13/hr for 45 hours.
Thats interesting to hear that you are able to interview the au-pair. My ex nanny started as an aupair and told me she was simply placed into a family and met them on-site. It was not a good match and she was re-assigned to a much more compatible family. She ended up meeting her husband here and became a professional nanny. As I understand it, aupairs have the expectation they will stay for one year but can stay for a max of two years. Has that been your experience as well? We opted not to have an aupair because we had no space. We were in a small two bedroom apartment with one bath, so someone would have to sleep with the baby (and he was not a good sleeper). In addition I didn’t want to switch out aupairs annually.
I know this is not the main point of the post, but we use au pairs and have found they are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than nannies in our area, especially for multiple kids.
Also, it is important to note that there is a matching process so it is definitely not a random person who shows up in your home. We definitely select who we get. I just finished matching with our next and reviewed 75-100 profiles, sent connection requests to about half, maybe 1/4 accepted those, we emailed back and forth, and I interviewed a few by skype before choosing our match. The one we chose skyped with me, our kids, our cluster coordinator, and our current au pair. I feel like I know her pretty well already.
The biggest benefit to an au pair as part of a dual physician couple is the flexibility. I dictate her hours within the program guidelines and it can change each week which we found difficult with a nanny. Also, our early mornings/ call nights/ weekend needs are covered much more easily.
Completely agree, ANES. We have an au pair, and we feel like we were able to sufficiently interview and interact to get to know the candidates during the process. Also, as you said, au pairs are by far the most flexible option in our experience, as their schedule can change on a daily/weekly basis, you can bring them along on trips, you can have them work overnight if you are on an overnight shift, etc.
As for the financial aspect of the au pair programs, as the others have said, the cost is ~$19,000 or so, before room and board are added. However, this cost does not rise if you have 2, 3 or even more kids. So with a single child it may be more expensive than daycare, but it can be less expensive and more flexible once you have more than one child.
One more note- we are a huge advocate of the au pair program, and our au pair is like a family member to us. The intent of the program is to foster cultural exchange, and SHOULD NOT be seen as a way to get cheap childcare. If you are not the type of family who wants to welcome an individual from another country/culture as a member of your family, show them America, and learn about their culture, then I would recommend against choosing this option. Bottom line- do it for the right reasons, and saving a few dollars on childcare should not be the highest priority when this is a person who will be living with you and your family on a daily basis for an extended period of time. It has been a perfect situation for us, but go into it with your eyes open and heart in the right place because it is a real commitment and opportunity for all involved.
In the Boston area, $20/hr is the going rate for nannies and daycare for an infant is minimum $500/week. Au pairs quickly become the cheapest option if you can afford the extra bedroom to house them. We are spending nearly $900/week right now for two in daycare which is still cheaper than paying a nanny over the table for the coverage we need.
Not sure if it has changed with the tax reform, but it might be worth mentioning the tax benefit of using an FSA for daycare costs, which could save almost $2k/year on taxes.
For clarification it is the dependent care account which is maxed at 5k per couple.
Just as a note of caution, my husband is considered a highly compensated employee so he is capped to $1500/yr. It’s not an issue for us because I don’t have that cap. Some couples, however, might find both are subject to caps preventing them from maximizing their dependent care accounts.
Aside of the financing of childcare…the decision really should boil down to what WORKS for ones particular situation. There are pros and cons to each decision, sometimes something works for a bit and then needs to be changed, many families will use combinations of both nanny and daycare so the kids are piped into the daycare and could be dropped off on PRN if the nanny calls in sick etc. For us (dual MD), we could not risk the unreliability of a nanny (calling in sick, quitting, wanting vacations, etc), so we went with full-time daycare. We were military, so it was subsidized and cheap even though we were paying the highest rates as officers. it has been a long time (kid in college now), but i think it was less than $500/month for full time (with doors opening at 5:30 am).
When we left NYC the price of full-time daycare dropped by about 40%. This is an important piece of COL that sometimes gets overlooked.
Also remember that you can partially fund daycare or a properly employed nanny with a dependent care fsa . Not sure about au pair.
You can also use the dependent care FSA if you have an au pair. As individuals temporarily in the US on a special work-enabled J visa, they pay taxes and have a SSN.
We were very lucky- military child care is very well scrutinized and trained- though I think the (Army vetted) family child care- a mom who took another few kids into her home every day- was the best by chance anyway. When that family moved on I used the German neighbor which was a total gamble but worked out fine- her 8 yo son was actually the one who arranged it during one of his many visits to our dogs and baby. (Our friendship started when we’d give him hot food- unlike them we got our stove with the home, they had to order theirs and wait months.)
Do have to acknowledge tho that Army daycare had a lot of young childless so far Army wives who weren’t as good as moms sometimes, but were never alone and had great ratios to kids. Less chance horrible abuse, more chance ignorance/ frustration.
However I chose to leave the Army and to leave full time “real doctoring” as the guy who gave me part time work called it rather than hire a nanny. Easy choice with spouse deployable still and my career in part sabbatical, part prepare to move every few years anyway.
If you are military the day care is often open much longer hours than commercial though not a surgeon’s call hours! More like 5 am PT hours. And in many Army towns- in rural Southern areas- the nonmilitary alternatives are scary unscrutinized church daycares which don’t even have BLS or allergy training/ precautions let alone background checks on all the nice church ladies who work or volunteer there. And a slightly older kid comes home a Christian no matter the parents’ faith.
We have used a nanny ever since our first daughter was 3 months old, when my wife went back to work full time. I have to say that it was the best decision in terms of childcare for our family. Due to our crazy schedules, unpredictability was the norm, but we never felt more comfortable leaving our daughter (and now her little sister as well) with her than with anyone else we knew including family. The fact that there may be quirks/habits that you may have to endure is absolutely true, but in the end, all of the pros that were listed above definitely outweighed the cons in our situation.
I also reiterate the fact to not forget an employer’s FSA/dependent care savings account that we use to offset some of the costs ($5000/year in our case).
Thanks for this great post, it’s one I’d been meaning to write myself!
Like the author, we are a dual physician couple who started our family in residency and opted for nanny for our kids since no day care would have been open when one of us was in the hospital overnight and my wife had to leave at 5:45 to set up an OR. We’ve been super happy with nanny care for all of the reasons discussed above. It is truly wonderful to let the kids sleep in when you have to go in early. In addition you have more
control over what the kids are doing during the day – we have no TV in our house and screen time is minimal. That may be true of some day cares too. One of our resident salaries basically went to the nanny but we were fine with that. now that we have two kids daycare would not be a whole lot cheaper.
Au pair was not a consideration for us, as the fact that they live in your house full-time seemed a little too invasive to us. This is important to think about – the au pair will be in your house ALL the time.
Whatever you go with the kids are worth every penny! Thanks again for the post!
We used home day cares until we welcomed our third child and now have a combination of public school+home daycare + nanny. The addition of a nanny has been amazing for our quality of life and our childcare expenses are higher than they will ever be but this is temporary. Our kids are younger (0-6 years) and the past two winters we have had at least one child home sick 2-3 days/week. Unless you or your spouse have a very flexible job or family nearby this can be disastrous to deal with as you are literally scrambling for coverage last minute. I have been asked to pick up my son from school because he had a 99 “fever” complained that his throat hurt, had a runny nose and the school nurse wanted to “rule out strep”. It is true that the immediate cost of a nanny is higher than day care but one must also consider the long term costs of being unreliable at work and many families need less care once the kids are in school. An au pair is a good option to provide emergency coverage in some cases but we are in NYC so the cost of an extra bedroom is much more than the difference in cost between a nanny and au pair. We are very frugal in most ways (debt free before residency and a good savings rate during residency) but have learned the hard way that redundancy is key for childcare and have accepted that this is an area where we will spend a lot.
We have historically found our home day cares by driving around as most have signs outside though in NYC all licensed daycares are listed online.
Reminds me of a residency classmate. He was a resident and she was an ICU nurse working nights. They were the only ones in the class besides us with a kid, who was the same age as my oldest. Katie stayed home after she was born at the end of my intern year, so she also watched their kid. We were conveniently located a half mile from the hospital (and on the way to and from) and available at all hours. Katie got paid a little and they had reliable, high quality child care for those times when neither of them could be with their little one. Might be a good option for some.
Sounds familiar. Our nanny is married to a resident and staying home (now working from home!) with her own child. It’s definitely a win-win.
I can understand why the use of Nanny might be preferable for some, even though it is more expensive. We’ve been using our church daycare since our daughter was 3 months old. While it is tough for us (I’ve had to cancel my schedule 3-4x since then for several days b/c of an illness), I will say the experience has been mostly positive. My wife is not comfortable at all with having a nanny at the house all day. I think she’s heard too may horror nanny stories to make her paranoid
My husband had similar misgivings so we installed a nannycam in the kitchen, play area and baby bedroom.
We used a combination of things, over the years, and settled on nannies. We had a morning nanny and an afternoon nanny. Our kids are grown, but we remain close to both, who became extensions of our family. Unfortunately, my wife’s family was of little to no help with the kids when they were young.
With day care, nannies, drivers, sitters, and after school extended care, I estimated that we spent upwards of $250k on childcare. Now that the kids are older (son in college, daughter junior in HS), we have little need for daytime help, except occasionally a dog walker or an adult to stay with our daughter when we are away together (once or twice per year).
$250K a year? It takes a heck of a job to not just go for being a stay at home parent at some point there.
I’m hoping he means $250K in total… not just per year?
Maybe he does. Seems a more realistic figure.
Yes, that was $250k for childcare, over about 8-10 years. Now that I think about it, maybe my estimate was too low.
We use daycare for our 2yo and we LOVE it. Admittedly this only works because my husband has a normal 8-5 job and can use sick days to stay home when the kiddo is sick (which isn’t often, breastfeeding FTW!). Daycare has taught my son so many things, they do all sorts of arts and crafts, and he is interacting with other kids his age which I feel like is a huge plus. Yes, the cost will almost double when baby #2 comes next spring, however it will go down by quite a bit when they start elementary school. We started about $1300/mo as an infant and now it’s closer to $1100/mo, in a MCOL area. As was stated in the post, there are pro’s and con’s for each arrangement but daycare has worked really well for us.
This is a wonderful post. Something to consider as a child reaches the 2-5 age group is that preschool is very good for children even if a spouse can stay home. My wife works very part time and is mostly a stay at home mom. We chose to put our 2 children in this age group in preschool rather than keep them at home despite the money because it has been excellent for their social development. Luckily as physicians, even with one salary we mostly to make enough to do that if we make other smart financial decisions.
This is a topic dear to my heart. Thank you for it. My husband and I are a dual physician family. He works as an independent hospitalist which means he is most times away from home for a week every other week. As an OBGYN i have 1:3 call during the week and 1:4 call on weekends meaning I needed a live in nanny. Day care or au pair was not an option. Like you I was blessed with a great nanny that I have had for 4 years that stays with us during the week and goes home on weekends when I’m not on call. It is quite expensive though. We pay $1100 biweekly not including taxes and paying for nanny Chex company for paystubs, quarterly taxes and yearly w2. My kids are 8 and 4 and I wonder if there is a better way to reduce cost. I already do the dependent care through work. Does my husband as an independent contractor qualify for dependent care as well? please if you don’t mind add in comments how you do the pay stubs yourself. Thanks.
Unfortunately for you, the $5k of Dependent Care FSA space is per “married filing jointly” tax return, and so even if both spouses work in different companies, the cap does not go up. Also, there are lower limits if you use any other tax filing structure, so there’s no way around that.
Is there a threshold amount under which paying a babysitter is not considered taxable? We have a part time babysitter that we pay in cash. I didn’t realize there may be a problem with that… this nanny Paychex/w2 talk scares me!
Yes, there is an amount. I think it’s $2K, but it’s been a while, I better look it up.
https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/household-employees-and-the-1040x-kids-corner/
Looks like it’s $2K a year.
Just a quick correction – with au pairs you do get to select who you want.
Websites like au pair care, cultural care, etc. have profiles of hundreds of applicants. You have the opportunity to review the profiles – which contain more information than you would typically get if you were hiring them for a normal position in the US – including age, whether or not they are dating someone, religious beliefs, etc. (I only mention it, because I was surprised this information was even allowed to be provided – but I guess because they’re living with you they want to be sure it’s a good fit) A host family uses this information to request an interview with au pairs whose profile they’ve reviewed. Once that interview takes place, the family can choose to offer a position to that au pair or continue with their search.
The au pair also provides typical job related information, such as a resume and references. So there is a pretty extensive amount of control on the part of the host family. That being said, I’ve found that the most highly qualified candidates – those who have graduate degrees in education who worked in the field of childcare or education – are often very difficult to hire due to competition.
Similarly, the match has to be mutual – the au pair is looking at your family and deciding if they want to be a part of your family as well.
There are some downsides – we’ve found with our au pair – that about halfway through her program her focus moved away from childcare and more towards her new boyfriend. We didn’t mind that she was dating, but when she started texting instead of paying attention to our child, it became a problem. With a nanny, it would be fairly easy to part ways and find a new caregiver. I also feel like someone who has made a professional commitment to carrying for a child is probably more likely to stay focused on the job.
With an au pair, it’s usually a young man or woman who may be traveling to the US for the first time. There are inherently things that compete for their focus. They’re also someone whose in a highly transitional job and they want to make the most of their time while they’re here, so I think their work quality can reflect that. When issues do come up, the family’s ability to remedy the situation is a bit more restricted due to the year long commitment. It’s possible to move on from an au pair – but the process is more cumbersome and disruptive – and may leave a gap in childcare until a new au pair is available to join the family.
My wife and I are a dual physician couple and have 3 kids. We used family to help when our kids were very young then transitioned to a babysitter. It appears we have now slowly transitioned to making that same babysitter our nanny over the years. It has worked out well for us. Having extra time to spend with our family has been worth every dime spent. We have been very lucky with our babysitter and we know several people that have gone through many nannies, babysitters and au pairs . It has definitely been expensive at times but it gives us time together as a couple that we wouldn’t be able to enjoy otherwise. I think the bottom line for the most part is: whatever works best for each family is the way to go. If it is based solely on price you will most likely regret some decisions. I am quite frugal with some things and my wife has to remind me occasionally that you get what you pay for in certain situations.
We have a 2 child, dual MD family. We’ve had great luck with a nanny share.
My schedule is different every week, my wife’s is predictable – sometimes we would need childcare 2 days a week, sometimes 5. My coworker who lives nearby (also with an unpredictable schedule) was in a similar boat with her two kids. So on any given day (depending on other activities), our nanny could be with 1-4 children. Between our two families, we pay our nanny $15/hr for 1 child, $20/hr for 2 children, $25/hr for 3 children, $30/hr for 4 children…it’s a win/win situation. She gets more money for watching more children, while the cost/hr/child goes down for us. Plus the kids from the different families get along really well and love spending time with each other – they’re pseudosiblings now (but with less fighting than actual siblings!). Watching 4 kids is obviously no walk in the park, but I definitely think it’s easier to watch 4 of them at once then just 2 siblings from one family; the kids entertain each other.
We’ve been lucky enough to have a wonderful nanny – absolutely trustworthy and reliable, great with the kids, friendly, a quality human being through and through.
This approach takes a bit of work to sort out logistics about which kids will be with the nanny on what day – but once the calendar is made, it works out great.
We live just outside of Boston and day care costs are well above numbers in this post.
Most recent monthly day care tuition based on 5 days per week (8am-6pm)
Infant $2708
Toddler $2492
Preschool $2080
They do give a 10% discount on oldest child’s tuition if multiple kids.
We have 3 kids 9, 5, 2 (only one still in daycare). My wife and I work shifts, ER and ICU and we use daycare 4 days per week with babysitters/grandparents for the rest.
Still costs are Crazy!
Yes. Those costs are crazy. On an after tax basis, a stay at home parent would be “making” more than $100K with three kids given those expenses.
For us last year $72500 of our pre tax income went to daycare.
For a dual physician family it still makes sense to work but given current daycare expenses working through the numbers is an important exercise.
Our current daycare is fine but not as academic as when we lived in town. The center associated with my prior hospital had many more educational activities, option for swimming lessons and costs about the same as our current daycare. Once we had two in daycare a Nanny would have been cheaper but the social aspects of daycare were important to us.
I suspect there are many couples out there where one of them is working just to cover child care costs and sadly some who are actually losing money when they go to work without even realizing it.
We had many patch together arrangements. One of my children was high intensity and inflexible. Home based care worked better for his quirks. we ended up with wonderful after school care well into middle school. I hired people who we’re able to take him to many appointments and were patient beyond saints. One grandfatherly man (well vetted) in particular taught him to do “ he man stuff” changing oil in a car, home repairs and how to be a gentleman. He was a miracle for our chaotic life with chronic illness thrown into the single parent and call mix. The paperwork for w2, pay stubs and taxes is not that hard with and off the shelf program. I paid both halves of the social security which is not an uncommon arrangement. My son comes home from college as much to see “Papa” as to see his brother and me.
The information provided in this post about au pairs is horribly inaccurate. I urge you to find someone who knows what they are talking about on this issue.
Other problems:
1) She lives in a low COL area, so her numbers do not apply to people who don’t.
2) She fails to account for the additional hours the nanny will have to work over 40 hours per week, which they must be paid time and a half for. As a resident, I needed 70 hours of childcare per week, so… do the math on THAT one.
Why not point out what is inaccurate rather than just saying it is inaccurate?