Anyone getting childcare vouchers? How does that work?
What is your hh income?
If my income after childcare is low, can I qualify for subsidised section 8 housing and food stamps?

Bump

Anonymous wrote:These costs are outrageous. You guys would do better just getting au pairs over from the Caribbean. Combines cheaper domestic help and nanny into one. Significantly less in the long run.

You sound like a rich asshole.

Wow, I feel like we're getting a deal here! We're about to have 3 in daycare (1 in full day preschool, 2 in an in-home daycare) and we'll be paying $3400 per month. And we live in McLean- a notoriously high-cost area.

Anonymous wrote:These costs are outrageous. You guys would do better just getting au pairs over from the Caribbean. Combines cheaper domestic help and nanny into one. Significantly less in the long run.

IME, unless you have the miracle au pair, they are not exactly great domestic help and childcare is about as good as a low-grade nanny. So it's not quite the amazing deal that you suggest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These costs are outrageous. You guys would do better just getting au pairs over from the Caribbean. Combines cheaper domestic help and nanny into one. Significantly less in the long run.

Sorry, when I said au pair, I didn't mean the agency run establishments that just match names to families like what happened to this poor girl:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/20/au-pairs-provide-cheap-childcare-maybe-illegally-cheap/

I was referring to directly inviting over domestic help for yourself rather than through large agencies. The key is to network, and many ways to go about this. Ask the many happy families in Florida and New York

So you are taking about an illegal alternative?

There clearly are some bad situations and it sounds like the agencies may be problematic, but there are rules to protect au pairs and they are not supposed to be maids, this is time limited child care (45 hours/week) and with room and board in addition to the stipend. I know families where this has worked well and also have friends that went overseas as au pairs and it changed the direction of their lives for the better. I would think going through the state department endorsed programs would be better protections for the au pairs.

Anonymous wrote:These costs are outrageous. You guys would do better just getting au pairs over from the Caribbean. Combines cheaper domestic help and nanny into one. Significantly less in the long run.

Sorry, when I said au pair, I didn't mean the agency run establishments that just match names to families like what happened to this poor girl:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/20/au-pairs-provide-cheap-childcare-maybe-illegally-cheap/

I was referring to directly inviting over domestic help for yourself rather than through large agencies. The key is to network, and many ways to go about this. Ask the many happy families in Florida and New York

These costs are outrageous. You guys would do better just getting au pairs over from the Caribbean. Combines cheaper domestic help and nanny into one. Significantly less in the long run.

Church/childcare center for 3yo. $1250/mo and after school extended day for 5yo at K $270/mo. I live in Arlington.

When we use to be in CA, we paid $1800/mo for infant. As my oldest went to older classrooms it slowly went down to about $1400/mo by 4yo. We really loved all the teachers there and it was 1:3 ratio, so though painful we felt it was worth it.

When we first moved to the area, we couldn't find any local daycares and went to falls church. My older 4yo went to a preschool that was $1050/mo and my 2yo at the time went to an in home daycare for around $1075 I think.

In any case, it's very rangy. We passed on another high cost center in Ballston as we thought they were very clinical vs the loving feeling that we got from our CA center.

While costs are lower now in general thanks to public schools, the day camps, summer camps and holiday camps is where it starts to hurt again, ranging from around $250-450/week.

For those thinking you can't afford childcare, just bare in mind that different childcare options are out there and vary in cost, and that obviously some neighborhoods have a higher COL than others and that gets rolled into the cost of childcare. Just some rates that I personally know of from the last two years:

Downtown DC center, not affiliated with the gov: $2.2k
In-home daycare in DC: $1.5-1.7k/month
Center in Old Town Alexandria: $1.3k/month
In-home in Arlington, VA: $1.2k/month
In-home in Alexandria, VA: $1k/month
Center in Hyattsville: $1k/month
In-home in Hyattsville, MD: $780/month

Some employers also have childcare subsidy programs and don't advertise them - ask! And if your HHI is under six figures, look up your state & municipal childcare subsidy programs - the HHI caps on those are much higher than I expected them to be.

Once your child is old enough for preschool, there are free preschools available in different municipalities, and the preschools run through the rec centers are often just 1-3k for the whole academic year. Some have on-site aftercare and some don't.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These costs are outrageous. Why don't parents rise up and demand and vote for subsidized care, along the lines of what some European countries provide? I just don't understand it.

Who wants to pay even higher taxes for your babysitting work?

I have thought about this a LOT and what I think we need is better tax treatment of child care expenses. Allow every $ to be tax deductible as a business expense, for example. Or allow it to be a tax credit capped at an amount that would actually help ($20K)? I think subsidized child care or government child care is a bridge too far but the fact that we don't treat child care as a necessary expense for parents to work is out of touch with modern reality.

I'm at around $2300 for two kids. One in full time preschool (basically daycare) and one in public elementary with aftercare. Preschool is $2k per month and after care is around $300. Will be rejoicing when younger one is in public PK3 next year. We were helped out a lot by the fact that older child was already in public PK3 when little one came along so we never had full time day care for two kids at the same time. That is super expensive.

People who live in DC when you're reading this - don't move to the burbs until you've gotten your PK3 and PK4 from DC! That's two years of nanny/preschool that you don't have to pay if you live in DC as compared to MD or VA.

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone purposely Space kids out so as to not have 2 in daycare at the same time? I don't get how I would afford a mortgage and 1 kid in daycare...forget 2

Yes. Made sure older would be in public PK3 (*only* paying for before care, after care, and summer camp) before we'd start paying for infant daycare for the younger. Now paying about 2100/mo for the two.

Anonymous wrote:Twins in day care - $2250/month. Now in before/after care with school $986. So wonderful.

This is very close to us. 3.5 yo twins.
From 3mo - 2 yrs, we paid $1395/child/month ($2790/mo)
For one month, rates went up and we paid $1495/child/month ($2990/mo)
From 2-3 yrs, we paid $1182/child/month ($2364/mo)
3 years we moved them to a preschool and pay $916/mo ($964 with a 5% sibling discount = $1832/mo)

We are so enjoying having that extra $1K per month back.

And we live in PG county where the rates are lower. It would have really been a stress to have to pay the DC downtown rates.

Anonymous wrote:These costs are outrageous. Why don't parents rise up and demand and vote for subsidized care, along the lines of what some European countries provide? I just don't understand it.

Same reasons we don't have state medicine and government pensions here, or 50-60% taxes. It's a wild west here. Don't have kids if you can't make enough to support them (including daycare).