So.....even though 3/4 of her take home pay was going to daycare, it still made sense to have her work? Did they factor in the other costs associate with her working such as travel, second vehicle (if needed), gas, the cost of buying meals because you don't have time to make them, tax savings from being in a (possibly) lower tax bracket? Not to mention the things that you can't put a value on such as additional time with your kids.
It seems to me that there are a lot of people who are in financial difficulty because of their "need" to drive a new car, have a new cell phone, a new tv, a big house etc, and then they blame their financial difficulties on their kids...
At least these people are paying for their own kids. Good for them!
We had my wife’s retired mother as our “day care provider.” God bless her - it made it so easy on us, and Grandma loved it too.
Oscar should’ve pulled out something besides his calculator. Dumbass.
Stupid is as stupid does. Two incomes rarely are worthwhile with small children. Time spent with children pays off long after everything you ever did at work is long forgotten.
It has been my experience that some women do NOT want to stay home with their children. It is much easier to put them in daycare and go to work than to stay at home with toddlers. I know this!
So presumably one child was in daycare and they were paying $1600 per month. They had twins and knew they couldn’t afford three times that, so they moved, and are paying $1800 - $2100 per month. That math does not add up. Stay home, mom! Save $1600 per month!
Why would you have children if you didn’t plan on raising them yourself?? status symbol? self esteem?
Perhaps the wife should get her license - stay at home with her 3 kids - take in 3 more kids - and call it even...$3,000 a month....$36,000 a yr with no travel - no worry about who is watching her kids - and the time delay in dropping off/picking up....seems to be more reasonable...or take in 4 kids and increase the yearly intake by $12,000...not bad...
Tom, This is something to consider as you’re growing your family!
Shalom!
- Megan
Here in my trailer park we take turns looking after each others’ kids. Money rarely changes hands. Sometimes an old lawnmower or other bartered item or service does.
Working people are penalized in this country. People on welfare don’t have these worries.
Why so expensive?
I had to spend a lot for daycare but I felt like I needed to keep working because I stayed home for a year with my first one. I applied for a job and they told me they wanted someone with recent experience. I was furious! It was a year of not working - not ten years. I think that is one reason a lot of women feel like they need to keep working. Of course, if you can stay home with your children, that is the best thing for them.
You are assuming that they are paying for new cars, a big house, big new TV sets, fancy new cell phones, etc. That’s not a fair assumption. But I agree with you that it’s absurd for the wife to continue working under these circumstances.
I made a LOT of sacrifices to stay home after I gave birth to a child who had a lot of health problems, and just started a home business. It was bloody hard.
That is almost exactly what I wrote on Yahoo as well.
It is expensive to go to work. You must provide new clothes, cars, gas, lunches, lattes and any number of daily expenses that most people do not consider while working. Also you turn over your kids to someone else at great expense.
Stay home with your kids, have more than 2, be a family and don’t worry about an expensive home and new cars.
We live it. We save money. We get by.
I stay home with our children and have since Obama was elected. My wife works, making around half what I used to make. She had the health insurance, something we unfortunately have needed to the tune of millions of dollars since 2008.
Yet, because we have ten year old cars, live in a beautiful, but modest home and never eat out or do silly things, we make it. We live better than most and aren’t missing any meals.
BONUS: I had the chance to spend every day of our son Doug’s life at home with him and I get to raise our other kids myself.
My twins will be in preschool, free public preschool, in August. I will go back to schlepping home improvements and will certainly earn at least as much as my wife and probably several times more.
I miss the money, but when I die that money will hardly be as important as the quality children we have raised.
Life is about priorities. She stated she didn’t want to get too wrapped up in her kids. Why? They are the only thing you have that matters. She is an administrator,her job is irrelevant in the grand sceame of things, her children aren’t
"Though they would’ve preferred to stay in Hoboken, N.J., the couple knew they would not be able to afford $1,600 a month per child, the going childcare rate in the area, plus the cost of moving to a bigger home. So they packed up and moved to the neighboring town of Union City where daycare rates are around $600-$700 a month."
I'm too lazy to pull out my calculator and crunch this, but just scanning the numbers, my guesstimate is that their gross income is significantly higher than the median household income in the United States ($53,046 according to the Census Bureau).
Like, maybe in the low six-figures. So how do the other 90% do it? I suspect that taxes have a lot to do with their troubles, but still. Lots of people commute to NYC from Pennsylvania. There are reasons for that, not the least of which are taxes and lifestyle. They can have it all, just not in Hoboken, New Jersey. 4 acres in Pennsylvania is affordable. 4 acres in Hoboken is a big part of the city.
It only makes sense for mom to keep working in these circumstances *if* she’s in some kind of profession where it will kill her professionally to take a “time out” for three or four years (such as banking, law, etc. — all the professions where they expect you to have a killer outlook). Otherwise, they’re being foolish. But hey, their kids and their money and their time . . . not mine.
“Says Oscar: “I never pictured that this was how we were going to end up spending our money. It’s more than the cost of our mortgage”
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Duh,Oscar......kids cost money,lots of money.
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