We had to scrimp on other things. Older cars, cheaper vacations, smaller house, less retirement savings, etc.

What everyone else said:
- you'll go out way less (saves $$)
-we cut back what went to retirement, only enough to get the match)
-things were tight (only travel was to grandparents homes, where we could drive to and stay for free!)

And, it gets better. Your salaries will grow faster than day care expenses. And they've onto be in day care forever! Youngest is now 17, and we've got college expenses covered for each child, and, on track to retire at 65 amd 63!

Keep in mind that you’ll have no social life because of baby. That will save you $$$$

No, but I gave up my chill do-gooder job to switch back to a more highly paid role in anticipation of these costs.

Yes, with two in daycare we had to lower retirement savings to just enough for match and still ended up in $10k credit card debt. It was tough but we paid it off during the pandemic when expenses went away.

Anonymous wrote:one thing to consider is that whatever you're spending on daycare will then likely be needed for 529s. Early ES is a lull, but once activities start, you're getting expensive again

This is a good point. And I’ve been disappointed at how little child care costs went down even after both kids were in school. With aftercare and activities and camps, etc. we still easily spend $20-$25k for two kids. Much better than day care, but still, something to budget for. Kids are just expensive!

one thing to consider is that whatever you're spending on daycare will then likely be needed for 529s. Early ES is a lull, but once activities start, you're getting expensive again

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know people that stopped or decrease retirement savings to pay for daycare. You do what you have to do.

This was us.

Same. And we had 2 kids in daycare, we were in the red. It was more than our mortgage payment. Now thankful that I can max out on my contributions.

No, but we got the cheapest shack we could find, no travel and not much else.

Yes, two in daycare is pushing me there. I have some windfall savings in burning through and then I’ll decrease my retirement savings if necessary.

We were in the red for a few months when my husband was between jobs. It didn't make sense to keep the kid home and then not have childcare for interviews and networking meetings. Otherwise we just spaced out the kids and bought a tiny, crappy, far away house so we could pay more for day care than our mortgage. Yay.

Anonymous wrote:We were not in the red. We chose to use a church based daycare and was quite pleased with the care. We are no religious but respected their religion. Our kids learned a lot academically and it was cheap. Shop around and choose your options wisely. I found that the 2k monthly daycares did nothing more or better than the cheaper ones.

Maybe, but that wasn't our experience. The Montessori our DS exited from as a K was teaching what the publics are covering in 3rd grade.

No. We only had 1 child, chose a home based daycare, and were so darn exhausted the first couple years there were no extras (date nights, restaurants, travel). Honestly the only $$$ output was daycare.

No, but we based our house purchase (when we had one child and had not conceived a second) on what we could afford while also paying for two in daycare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know people that stopped or decrease retirement savings to pay for daycare. You do what you have to do.

This was us.

This. I put into retirement just the amount that my employer matched (didn't want to forego free money), no more. We also didn't start saving for college until after we stopped paying for daycare. We spent very little on vacations/entertainment. And, the cost of daycare was a material factor in our decision to wait until DC1 was 4 (and in public pre-k) before we started TTC again. (Our kids are 5.5 years apart--no regrets, I have loved this age gap.)

Me again, should also add that we deliberately bought (much) less house than we could have theoretically afforded, because we knew daycare expenses were in our future.