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If it makes you feel any better we paid about $11k last year for daycare. We're lucky in that we have a daycare where you can schedule anywhere from a full day to just a few hours a day as long as you know your schedule two weeks in advance. This work out well for us since I work in EM so I have variable hours. My wife works regular day time hours. Some days our daughter goes in half a day, some days a full day, and some days she is at home with me during the week. We're very fortunate to have this available to us. I don't know how some families can hardly afford full-time daycare with multiple kids.
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It does suck but like Jim said it’s just the cost of doing business. Your household income is 750k+ or you are underpaid(I’m also anesthesia). You can still save lots of money. As a data point we are two physician household with decent amount of off hours and our nanny cost is about 50k/yr for 1 child in LCOL Midwest.Comment
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I'm also an anesthesiologist married to a lawyer. Based on the circumstances you described I suspect that $70k is less than 10% of your gross income, and I hope it's closer to 8%. If so, I agree with WCI's comment that it's the cost of doing business. Our family got by without a nanny because my wife left big law at the associate stage after we had our first kid. She traded it for a law job with the federal government which paid a lot less but offered great benefits and a true 9-5, low-stress, 40 hours a week gig. Clearly your wife has invested a ton to make partner but I hope it's not just golden handcuffs keeping her at her job.
For both of you the key is figuring out what the optimal trade-offs are now and when that balance may change. Do you both love your current jobs or would you be happier working less for less money? Even if your jobs allowed for a daycare/after-school care/summer camp model, how much would that cost you? With three kids those ages, I suspect that's at least $20k and could be over $30k. I bet you'd be giving up way more than $50k in salary to have positions that make that model feasible, and that's not even taking into account the "value" that a nanny experience might offer over daycare. When your youngest starts kindergarten, that calculus may change (or you may be ready to dial back your jobs at that point anyway).Comment
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Here’s another data point for VHCOL. Our nanny is $29 an hour for 50-55 hours a week; which is a bit under market rate. With taxes and 2 weeks vacation comes to about 70k/year. Another 1k/month for part time pre school for older child. Oldest is in public kindergarten and nanny watches after school. All told about 82k/year.
For next year we are looking at having the youngest go to daycare, middle at public TK, and oldest in first grade. So we’ll only need either an afternoon nanny or are looking at going the Au Pair routeComment
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I'm primary care and my husband works in a high-demand job with odd hours and frequent travel. I chose primary care to allow us the flexibility with our kids.
When in med school/residency, we had live-in nannies to start. We lucked out and paid something like $250-$300/week plus room and board. We then switched to full-time daycare and haven't gone back.
Our two oldest are now school age, and the daycare where our infant is at has programs when school is out of session. The highest cost week are when all the kids are out of school, as we pay something like $700/week. On a "normal" week, I think our total cost for care for our 3 is $450.
We have considered adding an au pair to just help with the before/after school stuff, especially when my husband's out of town. That would cut down on daycare cost to about $300/week, but would add the cost of an au pair. Still not sure if we will do it.
My oldest is getting to the age where we can leave her home without a sitter in the next year or two. But it's expensive. And hard. And yet somehow we've gotten this far.
Our cheapest daycare and nanny options is when we lived in the Mountain West area. Our most expensive was on the East Coast. We currently live somewhere in the South, and it is reasonable, in my opinion.Comment
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This is so true. After 30+ years in medicine, we’ve noticed a pattern. If one of the spouses in a two-doctor couple is in primary care (my wife is a PCP), then going without an au pair or nanny is difficult, but more doable. The two-surgeon couples that we know all have had a nanny or au pair.Comment
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I have 4 in daycare 8,5,5,3. The older three are in school full day. It is about 30K a year.
As they get older the prices come down but the prices have been going up at the same rate so we have been paying this much for a while now. It is by far our biggest expense only thing close is the mortgage. Lucky both of those things have an end date!Comment
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We pay about 14,000 in a LCOL area per year for Montessori. Three young kids, no family help, surgeon spouse not around during the week. This is our biggest support system! We pay for part-time in home help during the week, as well. ~4,000 a year. It's the cost of doing business, and it takes a village!Comment
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I've been tracking daycare costs for awhile now. Had a child in late 2013, early 2016 and finally middle of 2018. These are our daycare costs:
2016: $25k
2017: $31k
2018: $31k (didn't go up immediately with 3rd child because I finally had a job that allowed paid paternity leave that I could take)
2019: $44k
2020: $33k
2021: $35k (switched the youngest to a more expensive daycare)
2022: $34k
2023 projection: $25k (the youngest goes to kindergarten this fall! all done with daycares! now only have to pay after-school care costs and summer care/camp)
2024 projection: $20kComment
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yup and tack on another $1k/kid/month in random expenses and $500-1000/month to start saving for college at day 0.
I told a family member the other day plan on 50k/kid/year which is 75k pretax.Comment
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It’s like private college tuition numbers for infants, and that doesn’t even tough saving for real college as auggie1983 alluded to…Comment
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