Reply to How can we improve the childcare crisis?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The insane waitlists for daycare.

The nanny shortage.

The lack of parental leave.

What can reasonably be done to even take a step in the right direction?[/quote]

Stay home and you take care of your children.  I did.  Why can't you?[/quote]

So, your answer is to keep women out of the workforce?  [/quote]

Not women.  There are SAHD and will be more and more of them.  For the first year, a baby needs a parent.  A grandparent can step in but a parent is best.  [/quote]

Ok, so how about a year of parental leave? Some of us can't afford to just leave our jobs and/or would have a lot of trouble getting a new one without moving cross-country. Other countries do this. It's possible.[/quote]

Stop having children you can't afford.[/quote]

Okay, so only the rich will have children. Who do you think will do almost every working and middle class job in America then?[/quote]

Real middle class and lower income can get day care vouchers in this area.  Its those of us who make too much to qualify but day care costs are the same as our take home pay that it makes it impossible to work.

For the poster who says  a grandparent can step in.  Mine live 10 minutes away, healthy and have never babysat even once in an emergency in 13 years.  Can and will are two different things.  I could be dying and my mom would still make up  an excuse not to help.[/quote]

Here's my thoughts - I know 'MC' people who bought $800K - $900K homes - which in this area you know is not some palatial estate but still acceptable - that were whining after they were stripped of a $1,200/month CTC.

Why should you get a daycare subsidy when you can afford and willingly bought a $1 million property? Why shouldn't you be expected to use your HHI, usually $150K - $400K, again seems high enough to me - to provide for your own children?[/quote]

If you actually know such people, they are running a scam. Either their parents bought their homes or they are lying about how much they received in CTC or they are purposefully making their lives a living hell. Here's the math:

800k house means down payment of 80-160k, plus annual mortgage payments of about 45k. In order to qualify for $1200 in CTC, they would need to have four kids under age 6 (logistically challenging) AND they need to have an HHI of under 150k. Daycare for four kids in that age group is going to cost 60k at least (or maybe you find a nanny willing to take all four kids, but I don't see there being any savings because a nanny of 1-2 kids in DC easily costs 40k so good luck)

Let's say they make $149k to slide under the CTC cap, and assume some favorable taxes due to mortgage interest deduction, retirement savings, and having kids. Their take home is around $115k.

Minus 45k in mortgage payments = $70kk
Minus 60k in childcare = $10k

So you know multiple families who have 10k a year to pay for food, clothes, and other necessities, and their main concern is the CTC, which by the way they still qualify for, just a little less money and it is paid as a refund instead of monthly?

Let me save you the time of answering. No. You don't.[/quote]

The expanded CTC was actually an additional $1,000 a year per a child and there were plenty of people authorized for the program who did not in fact have the annual income necessary to have $12,000 per child in tax deductions per year.

Second, your assumption that each family is paying 20% - 30% as a down payment and/or in closing costs of their housing expenses is also faulty. I know plenty of people who just scrapped up 5% and got in with what they had.

Third, the family I referenced has 2 kids over the age of 12 and 2 kids under 5. The difference is or was $1,100/month in cash deposits. If you want to discount the extra $100/month have at it. But their childcare costs are roughly $3,200/month plus benefits - the nanny watches the two kids on a schedule which is $38K a year not $45K.

Based on your calculations, their housing is paid for, their childcare is paid for, and they an extra $1,000/month for incidentals. Plus the childcare costs are temporary until pre-K enrollment. I don't see the problem or why the government needs to subsidize them or anyone else. [/quote]

If you put down 5% on an 800k home, you are now paying 5k+ per month on your mortgage (plus you are paying PMI). This actually makes the math worse than what I offered because you could argue that their parents gave them the down payment, but very few people have family willing to help them pay their mortgage. Which means now their annual mortgage costs more like 60k.

Good job looking up the actual rules on the advanced CTC payments for your imaginary family so that your math on that technically makes sense, but now that their imaginary mortgage payment is higher, they still only have $17k a year for food and incidentals. Since feeding a family of six that includes 2 teenagers is going to cost you around 1k, and doctors co-pays suck up the rest, I guess their kids do no activities and have no friends. And no money for any of their four kids to go college either. I'd feel really sad for this family if you hadn't invented them for the sole purpose of making a point that, by the way, you have still failed to make.[/quote]

Zero empathy for a  family who makes those choices.[/quote]

This family does not exist, so it's smart to save your empathy for actual people.

An actual family of 6 with less than 150k in income cannot afford an 800k house in DC (would never get approved, would never be able to save for the down payment, would never be able to afford the mortgage payment. That family would be living in an exurb, commuting 45 minutes each way, and drowning in debt.

It is unlikely they would have childcare costs at all because they'd probably sacrifice the mom's 60k salary (which would not even cover childcare expenses after taxes) and live on the husband's 90k salary while she stayed home. This would save them hundreds of thousands of dollars but she'd have to stay out of the workforce for so long that it would would torpedo her career, and they'd be stuck trying to save for retirement and college for four kids on one salary plus whatever she could find, making probably a fraction of her prior salary (plus she needs flexibility because even once in school, her kids have vacation days, holidays, and sick days, and they have a very slim budget for camps and emergency childcare. And that budget might be slightly augmented by CTC but not enough to help them spend a million on a house.

I guess you can be mad they had four kids. But to give you a sense of what reality looks like, we're a family with one kid on a 130k, we own a 1000 sq ft house we bought for 400k 8 years ago. We have one 15 year old car. We used CTC to buy better quality food for our kid (more fresh fruits and vegetables, fewer processed foods which are cheap and kept our grocery bills down), pay for dentist visits (we are not offered dental insurance through work), buy school uniforms when she went through a growth spurt (it's a public school, don't worry), and enroll her in an inexpensive gymnastics class at the Y because her pediatrician says she needs to work on coordination and her teacher says she lacks confidence.

I don't actually care if you empathize with me or not (truly, don't give two sh!ts what you think of me) but thought it would be useful to provide a picture of what an actual family benefitting from CTC looks like.

And yes, we should overhaul the childcare system with more paid parental leave and subsidized childcare programs so that we can pay childcare workers a living wage for hard work without bankrupting families. Both my mom and I have worked in childcare facilities and it is hard and draining work, but as a parent myself I know how hard it is to find quality care in budget. The reason my kid is an only is that we simply cannot afford to have more. And we are two college graduates (I have the loans to prove it) in white collar professions (DH is an engineer for a public agency, I'm a teacher) who are careful with money and do not live beyond our means. If we are just barely making this work, I have trouble understanding how families with less stable jobs, more kids, less education, or all of the above make it work.[/quote]

So you and your spouse are clearing $5,000 a month, have a mortgage of $2,000 a month or less, have a short commute or no commute (single car), and the only thing you want the CTC for is extra vegetables and gymnastic classes.

I'm not exactly sure why you or someone like you is 'struggling' enough to need free unearned monthly payments. [/quote]

No one said struggling -- we are making it work. Our mortgage is 2600/mo and my DH commutes almost an hour each way though (not by car).[b] And what do you have against vegetables and exercise for kids?[/b] The federal government gave out billions in loans to businesses for Covid relief, forgave a huge portion of them, and a significant portion turned out to have been fraudulently obtained. But I'm the one hasn't earned a $300/mo payment to help make sure my kid eats healthy and gets dental care? Ok.

Flush this country down the toilet, we'll see how it goes for y'all. [/quote]

Nothing. If their parents pay for them and not the government.[/quote]

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