Pull from savings for preschool?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We also pay for nanny+AM preschool. We're big savers and it's hard to deplete them, but we figure it's only for a few years, and it's the best set up for our family/our kids.

That is what we did years ago. It was a short time window and was worth it to us for a variety of reasons.

We mitigated the cost by sharing our nanny a few days a week, after our older child was in school. The nanny cared for our younger and for one other child 2 or 3 days/week.

Is that an option, OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also pay for nanny+AM preschool. We're big savers and it's hard to deplete them, but we figure it's only for a few years, and it's the best set up for our family/our kids.

That is what we did years ago. It was a short time window and was worth it to us for a variety of reasons.

We mitigated the cost by sharing our nanny a few days a week, after our older child was in school. The nanny cared for our younger and for one other child 2 or 3 days/week.

Is that an option, OP?

Oooh, great idea. There are a bunch of kids in the area so I'm sure we could defray the cost a little by doing a share.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also pay for nanny+AM preschool. We're big savers and it's hard to deplete them, but we figure it's only for a few years, and it's the best set up for our family/our kids.

That is what we did years ago. It was a short time window and was worth it to us for a variety of reasons.

We mitigated the cost by sharing our nanny a few days a week, after our older child was in school. The nanny cared for our younger and for one other child 2 or 3 days/week.

Is that an option, OP?

Oooh, great idea. There are a bunch of kids in the area so I'm sure we could defray the cost a little by doing a share.

We used to have $$$ overtime hours (50 hours) and when our kid entered AM preschool, we were able to cut back to 40 hours. So if you have a nanny who doesn't mind that, it's often not that big of an extra expense.

[Anonymous]

Op, you can do without preschool and without a nanny, unless you are working.

[Anonymous]

Just keep the kid with the nanny. Don’t pull money out of savings to pay for preschool. There are a bazillion other things that will come up in life. Save your money for those.

[Anonymous]

We are doing this. It's for a relatively short window of time and I really want continuity for our daughter with her nanny. Nanny has been her primary caregiver since birth. For us, it's worth it.

[Anonymous]

NO!!!
My kids are now in late elementary and middle school and I totally regret spending all that money for a top preschool. At the time it seemed SO important but now I wish we would have just saved the cash. We don't even really need the money but looking back it was such a waste.
I was briefly between jobs and spent some time subbing at one of the popular NW DC preschools and had a blast. But it really opened my eyes to what is actually happening at a preschool. Nothing sinister (of course) but nothing really that special either. Most of the day is just spent in free-play and it's not anything special. When I was a parent of young kids I thought that preschool was essential for their development (social and otherwise). Now I"m not convinced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NO!!!
My kids are now in late elementary and middle school and I totally regret spending all that money for a top preschool. At the time it seemed SO important but now I wish we would have just saved the cash. We don't even really need the money but looking back it was such a waste.
I was briefly between jobs and spent some time subbing at one of the popular NW DC preschools and had a blast. But it really opened my eyes to what is actually happening at a preschool. Nothing sinister (of course) but nothing really that special either. Most of the day is just spent in free-play and it's not anything special. When I was a parent of young kids I thought that preschool was essential for their development (social and otherwise). Now I"m not convinced.

FWIW this is not an elite preschool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, you can do without preschool and without a nanny, unless you are working.

I work full time.

[Anonymous]

We had the same full time nanny for 9 years and each of my 3 kids knew her since birth. We finally aged out when our youngest entered FT elementary school. For many years we paid for preschool for 2 kids at the same time with the FT nanny. I would do it all over again. However we did not have to raid savings or cut back on retirement for it.

Can you do a church based preschool? Those are usually only a few hundred a month at the most. Not sure I see any value in an expensive preschool vs a non-profit.

[Anonymous]

Isn’t this only for one year as your 4 year old will be in K in fall 2020? I don’t have hundreds of thousands in savings outside of retirement but if I did this would seem entirely reasonable to me as there is value to having the kids at one school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn’t this only for one year as your 4 year old will be in K in fall 2020? I don’t have hundreds of thousands in savings outside of retirement but if I did this would seem entirely reasonable to me as there is value to having the kids at one school.

Yes he'll be in K but our public school system sucks so I'm going to try to see if we can swing private. We can definitely do it w/o a nanny because he pay her so much. But with a nanny, that's where we need a little extra $$

[Anonymous]

We waited until ours were 3 before putting them in pre-school. One rule of the school was they needed to be potty trained and neither of them was ready at 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NO!!!
My kids are now in late elementary and middle school and I totally regret spending all that money for a top preschool. At the time it seemed SO important but now I wish we would have just saved the cash. We don't even really need the money but looking back it was such a waste.
I was briefly between jobs and spent some time subbing at one of the popular NW DC preschools and had a blast. But it really opened my eyes to what is actually happening at a preschool. Nothing sinister (of course) but nothing really that special either. Most of the day is just spent in free-play and it's not anything special. When I was a parent of young kids I thought that preschool was essential for their development (social and otherwise). Now I"m not convinced.

My kids are 21 and 18 and I have the opposite view. My older child in particular benefited from the excellent preschool near our house and he still has fond memories of his time there.

[Anonymous]

Why not just find full time care so you can drop the nanny expense? I can’t fathom paying for 2 types of care if you can’t afford it in your monthly budget.