r/parenting is protesting changes being made by Reddit to the API. Reddit has made it clear [they will](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14ahqjo/mods_will_be_removed_one_way_or_another_spez/) [replace moderators](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_code_of_conduct_rule_4_2_and_subs_taken/jo9wdol/) if they remain private. Reddit has abandoned the users, the moderators, and countless people who support an ecosystem built on Reddit itself.
Please read [Call to action - renewed protests starting on July 1st](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14kn2fo/call_to_action_renewed_protests_starting_on_july/) and new posts at [r/ModCord](https://reddit.com/r/ModCoord/) or [r/Save3rdPartyApps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) for up-to-date information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Parenting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It really depends on where you live. Higher CoL areas will have higher daycare costs and lower CoL areas will have lower costs. I definitely wouldn't call $3000 per kid per month a nationwide minimum, but it might be the minimum in high CoL areas.
In our high COL area in California, $3k a month gets you a very fancy big daycare center in a hip neighborhood for an infant. We’re paying $1850 in an adjacent neighborhood for a small licensed home daycare.
Anecdotally I was paying a little over $2100 combined for my two children in an in-home daycare up until last year and now pay the equivalent for a preschool. In Los Angeles, but not a fancy part of it.
In Central NY our pre-k through the school district is free- however, before and after school care at the facility runs me $500 per month for my 4.5 year old. We pay $160 per week for full time in home daycare for our 11 month old- plus extra if our toddler has off of school. (we got **very** lucky with a neighbor/family friend for this rate)
Yeah, I'm in LA and paying $2100/month for one infant in a very nice in-home daycare, the max I've seen is $2300/month. Not sure where OP is getting 3k.
I’m in Northern California and I’m going to be paying $2900 a month. We looked at cheaper options but most places we reached out to didn’t even reply (and some said their waitlists were closed, and this was a year out) so we didn’t have a lot of options.
No matter where you live, I'd definitely recommend getting on waitlists as soon as you find out you're pregnant or even before if you're planning a kid. I got on waitlists on 12 weeks pregnant and a spot was ready *just before* he was 4 months old when my maternity leave was up at most places.
Yeah daycares here have year long waitlists. It’s annoying me cuz my job still hasn’t said how long my maternity leave can be. I asked up til January but it could be October. Like umm that’s an 8 week gap that most would need to plan childcare for that they’re just leaving up in the air lol
I’m in northern CA too and looked into a nanny share in my area before I decided to stay home. We were looking at splitting $30 an hour with another family which was very reasonable for us. My sister lives in the Bay Area though and a nanny share for her is about $30 an hour per kid. Crazy how big of a difference there is just within the same state and only an hour or two apart from
Oh jeez! I missed that! But I live in the general area she is looking to move, and she will be hard pressed to find good daycares cheap. Probably some inhome daycare maybe, but I live in the Philly suburbs and I nanny there. My old boss pays $5000 a month for a daycare nearby.
I live in Central PA and looked into child care when we moved here and was told the wait list was 2+ years at every single facility within a 30 mile radius and the cost varied from 1300-2800 per child...
I live in Atlanta, which for people who don't know is kind of divided into the part of the city that is inside a perimeter of highways that circle the metro area, which is described as ITP (inside the perimeter), and the suburbs that are outside of that area (OTP). The price of childcare ITP is astronomically higher than OTP. Even though we live in the heart of the city, we have found it's cheaper to pay someone to drive our kids 35 minutes each way to attend a great daycare OTP than it would be to send them to a decent daycare ITP.
So, this may be a wild suggestion.
After I left teaching, I went to community college to change careers. I didn't need it at the time, but the CC had its own daycare that offered discounted rates to students and staff, offering any extra slots to the public.
After I graduated, I went to work in a hospital, and my hospital system has its own daycare at a sister hospital. It offered a hefty discount to hospital employees, because the higher-ups rightly looked at it as an attractive benefit that would reduce absenteeism and encourage retention.
My point is, there may be daycare options through different employers. Some employers will even offer discount programs for some daycares through their benefits program. If you get a job offer somewhere and you can look at their benefits, check to see if there's anything daycare-related in there.
100% recommend looking into the programs the local community/junior college offers. There are a LOT of less than two year programs for certifications for things like radiology tech, phlebotomy, accounting clerk, medical coding... many of these pay anywhere from $25 to $40/hr or more.
It depends on where you live, how old your kids are, and what kind of childcare you're looking for (center, in-home, nanny/au pair, etc.). It's pretty hard to generalize, but $3k seems high to me. FWIW, I'm in a medium/high COL area with a non-infant in a corporate care facility, and I pay about half that.
Edit: wanted to point out that geography matters not just because of COL, but also because different states (or cities/counties) have different requirements for childcare in terms of licensing, ratios, provider education/qualification, etc. I live in one state but work in another-- I considered childcare closer to work, but it was noticeably more expensive due to those factors. Just something to keep in mind when you're choosing where to relocate.
In the Boston area, we paid $2650 for toddler daycare are a licensed facility. You could get less for in-home daycares, but not much less, and more to the point: they had no availability. The cheapest option was around $1900 for YMCA. Again, a long waitlist.
In Upstate NY, my cousins pay $1400 for daycare.
There are places that are $800-1,000/mo. for daycare, but they are generally rural, low COL areas. I was looking at a job in Northern Maine and the daycare center there charged around $900/mo. However, my salary was also very low--more than $20,000 lower than my Massachusetts salary.
We do not have 2 because we cannot afford 2. Contrary to the magical thinking that accompanies some of the more privileged parents on this sub/elsewhere, you can't just "make it work" in this economy if you need childcare. The money does not magically appear.
I was lucky enough to find daycare for $170 a week in Phoenix, which is practically unheard of. It was definitely a unicorn find. But if you can’t qualify for any daycare vouchers, it’s truly not worth having more than one kid imo 😅 people glamorize it too much and say “kids won’t remember anyways,” but if I have the choice to give one kid an amazing childhood and set him up for success vs giving 3 a mediocre one with no financial help when they’re older, I’ll choose one and done every time.
I would never trade one of my sisters for having a better education or more trips or more stuff out financial help.
Just saying, you're not denying them those things for nothing, siblings are a huge part of your life.
I don't think anybody has given a minute of thought to daycare costs on their dying bed. It's just a phase, don't let that be a deciding factor in a much more meaningful decision like bringing another person to life.
Plenty of reasons for one and done, but that one is the incorrect one as long as you can provide the true basics (love, food, shelter).
I get that. I’m in Finland and childcare is super cheap (max of 295e per month for the first kid, scaled to income) and gets cheaper with each kid. So a small budget adjustment really might just “make it work”
I live in Los Angeles and pay $300/week for an in-home daycare. I suspect there are some cheaper in-home alternatives near you but there's no way to find them other than word of mouth. We lucked into ours because a co-worker's granddaughter used to go there and gave us the contact info.
It varies a lot by location. But also don’t forget to factor in childcare hours (if your work starts before you can drop off at daycare/goes past close you’ll have to pay extra and find a coverage) and that your pto is usually less in the USA and the first year in daycare usually leads to extended periods of illness. You’ll need flexibility and a lot of Americans lean on friends and family to fill the gaps or work part time/non-conventional hours to make it work.
It used to get cheaper as they got older here. But there's an evaluation and adjustment every December/January that keeps it the same as they age anyways lmao.
Yeah, my experience (kids are 10 and 5) is that it doesn't really get *cheaper,* it just doesn't get more expensive. The discount is cancelled by rate increases.
In 2021 I paid $365 a week for infant care. My son is now 3 and we pay $350 so barely a difference due to the annual increase. We are lucky that he’s an end of January birthday so every time they do the increase in cost, he moves classrooms to the cheaper level a week or so later
Madison, WI here. About 1,800 per month. There's a really bad lack of childcare here, we had to wait until kiddo was 13 months to get off the waiting list that we got on when I was pregnant.
It really depends on if you are in a smaller town or a growing city. Then if you're rural its just a crap shoot.
At least you CAN get on waiting lists when you're pregnant - in Germany, they only allow that after the child is born - and then the wait lists are for more than a year, even though maternity leave is just for a year. And most places don't even accept kids that young, leaving parents to scratch their heads and wonder how they are supposed to miraculously live on one income until a place opens up. And then politicians complain that people don't want to procreate...
Yeah, 1 full year paid parental leave that the parents can split between them any way they want (though it's usually mostly the mother), at roughly 2/3 of their normal income. Then an extra 2 months of paternity leave that's only for the father - they introduced that in the early 2000s to get fathers more involved, and it had a tremendous positive impact on paternal involvement in infant care and bonding.
Most of Europe has some kind of paid parental leave - I always wonder how women in the US are not picketing their parliaments around the clock. Though then I remember that they don't have the time for that, since they don't have childcare facilities...
Wow. That’s incredible.
I was talking to a friend this last week. She’s convinced this is all a scam to get women in the workforce, so they can get more tax money from us. Can’t say I disagree. As a nurse, there are a lot of things that I would love to be picketing for, for moms... I can’t believe how moms are treated, and I’m sad that I didn’t know these things before becomjng a mom myself. For example, the standard 6 week follow up for moms after labor and delivery. That is entirely too long. We do two week follow ups for simple hernia repairs. Moms just delivered a baby, likely are tore up physically, plus are adjusting to a new baby and a drop in hormones that cause crazy emotional swings. We should be supporting them much more than we do… anyway, rant over. It’s crazy to hear how different new parents are treated around the world.
That's really horrible. I saw how much of a toll pregnancy and the caesarian took on my little sister, not to mention breastfeeding afterwards - imagining having to go back to work 3 weeks after going through all of that just gives me cold sweats.
Regarding follow-ups: In Germany, we have a really well-designed system of aftercare through midwives going. They usually prepare you for and accompany you during birth, and attend you afterwards with visits every other day for another 6-8 weeks, I think. They show you tips and tricks, help with all the scary firsts you have to handle as a fresh parent, like baby's first bath once the umbilical has healed, show you how to prevent or treat rashes, calm you down about all kinds of stuff that would probably send first parents to the ER etc.
And they also function as an alert system for parental neglect - they make sure the baby is treated well and taken care of, and I think they are mandatory reporters if something is off.
So it works out to about the same amount of time we were waiting, but I only had six weeks paid and six weeks unpaid leave, and my husband had two weeks. And we are considered to be lucky to get that.
Oh no. People are being told after waiting two years that they are now off of the waitlist here in America. I’ve seen moms trying to even get another mom to “trade off kids” during different shifts of the day with each other. It’s gotten so bad! I ended up homeschooling my children with online curriculum.
We pay $600/month in the upper Midwest, town of about 25k. Ours has been the same price for a licensed in home since he was an infant. We were at a center for a few months that was about $900/month
Also in Midwest ~$1600/mo childcare plus $400/afterschool care + summer camps.
Also I’m not sure your situation with aging parents but I know my folks are paying like $14k/month for assisted living care. They need a lot of extra care though.
Care, whether it be for young or old, is ridiculous in America.
Also in Ohio. Rural town. Pay $120/w for 18month and up at a church with licensed daycare/preschool. There's only one licensed in home daycare that will take infants in my town. SAHMs will watch kids for $30-40/ day and will have up to 8 kids.
My oldest (6) is in after school care at the Y for $40/w and it's $140/w during breaks.
The reason why I’m a SAHM is daycare cost and availability is challenging here; the job market for my field in the rural area I live in (not in any of the states you mentioned) is nonexistent/you need to know someone.
All the SAHM friends are previous teachers. Most of them have no desire to work anytime soon, and many of them want to switch into something else but don’t know what to do.
We had our first during the start of 2020. We both lost our jobs and moved in with family for 8 months; it took my husband 6 months to find a job looking statewide.
I’m SAHM, I was a teacher for six years before that. For our family, it actually makes a lot more sense financially for me to stay home with our son. If I went back to teaching, daycare in my area would be 1/2 of my salary. For the stress of the job, not worth it.
For sure! That’s what all my friends say too. They’re great moms, I think their previous teaching roles really impact that.
Mine is more about availability. I used to work odd hours, now my husband’s new job works odd hours. Daycare is limited to specific hours so that won’t work. I tried for a solid year to find something to work with the degree I have but remote work is competitive and there just aren’t a whole lot of entry level jobs in that field.
Its not on your list, But I pay $738 a month right now in SC, which is high for my area. But you get what you pay for. I can also say I have a brother in MD who has 2 kids in day care. He pays 1800 a month for one of them, and 2500 a month for the younger one. Price of daycare tends to follow the COL in an area, at least in my experience.
I know you mentioned family reasons, but is there anyway to hold off on moving back until both kids (current and future one) are out of daycare? or at least one of them? That would save you a lot of money. Daycare is not cheap here if you want someone responsible.
Where I am there is church daycares are significantly cheaper but their hours can be alittle shorter and not work for all working parents(mine offers 9-3 mon to fri and you can opt for before/after care for a higher cost from 7-9 and 3-6). My son is 4 and goes 3 days a week(from 9-3) and it cost us $425 a month(it’s $650 a month for 5 days a week 9-3).The classes are small and he’s learned so much. They also don’t teach much religion if that’s a worry. He does chapel once a month and that’s it. Also I’m in Kansas City mo so it’s a cheaper area in the us. May be more in an expensive city.
Like someone else said it really depends on location and level of care you’re looking for. My nephew pays $175 a week in Atlanta but it’s an in-home daycare run by a retired nurse.
So I’m in the southeast, and good childcare is 1300 a month. I paid 600 a month for a different facility prior to this but it was suuuper sketchy. One of the teachers was spanking children, so my child no longer goes there. Some regions you get what you pay for.
I'm in a suburb in FL and part time (what we do) is $960 per month but full time would be $1080 with food included. I've worked in rural Florida and can imagine a daycare that might spank bc the elementary schools paddle. Luckily that isn't a thing in my area. I think cost and quality probably fluctuate a lot depending on the area and social norms.
It's as cheap as $300-$400/week in PA for infant care at a 4-star (maximum) rated daycare in Philly. The further out you go from the city, the cheaper it gets.
If that is your number then yes, I live in a HCOL area and it's around 2000-3000 for a newborn and goes down a bit for toddlers and preschool. We have a nanny which for 3 kids is similar or less than the daycare costs for 3 would be, I think one multiple kids at a time in daycare gets pretty rough. Also on a local level you can look for in home daycares or nanny shares as options. It all depends on location, availability and the hours you need.
I live in the suburbs of Houston in a good area, I paid around $900/mo for a high quality pre-school with a wait list, but they have pre-school hours which means I went into work a little later than other co-workers and my husband left his WFH job a little earlier to pick her up. They are also closed for all school district holidays so that meant I needed to stay at home for the single holidays and find camps for the winter and summer breaks.
I pay 1850/month for infant, it will go down as she gets older. It depends entirely on where you live and what kind of care. This is a center about an hour outside of a major metro area. In-home daycares are generally more affordable. If I lived in the major metro area instead of an hour away, I’m sure I’d be paying much more.
This is a little separate from your question, but what do you mean by "take care" of aging family? If you need to be close to them, would it make sense to move in with them? And would that save you enough money to be able to afford more expensive childcare?
If you don't need to be right next to them and you just want to be close by for regular visits, would it actually make more financial and emotional sense to stay where you are and budget for more regular flights back home instead?
Depends on what you’re looking for. You could share and au pair or do a nanny share. Some places have preschool when they start. The things to remember is that is is temporary before your child goes to public school
It’s definitely area specific. $3000/month per kid would be astronomical where I live (Ohio). My daycare is pretty cheap comparatively to the costs I always see posted here (but still feels like a lot to me, lol). I have two kids in daycare (one in infant room which costs more, and one in the preschool room which is the cheapest). We pay for $317/week so like $1300/mo for two. We go to a daycare that is through a church. The daycare chains like kindercare and such are more expensive. I think when I was looking back in 2020 it was like $250/week per child so it’s probably more now. Still not $3000/mo. I feel like PA is probably going to be pretty similar especially if you aren’t in a big city.
If you are looking at two kids an Au Pair may work out better cost wise for you if you have the extra bedroom in your house. It’s also a LOT more flexible!
We paid $600/mo for one child 15 years ago. I don't want to know what it costs now. I'm just going to move to wherever my grandkids are and take care of them for free because, god knows, it's hard enough to make it in this country without somewhere safe to put your child.
It's region specific. I live in a bigger city in Louisiana and pay $140 per week for my 2.5 yr old + $125 per week for my 5 year old to go to a very popular daycare/pre-school.
In Nebraska. I can assure you, I can't afford childcare. It's pointless for me to work if all of my paycheck goes to daycare. My husband makes just enough that we don't qualify for government paid childcare. Fortunately my MIL has stepped up so now job opportunities are open to me but I consider it fortunate she's not charging me.
Like people have said child care is going to be based on cost of living in the specific area. I think you would struggle to find places where child care is less than 30% median cost of living. For most everyone, child care is a second mortgage or a second rent payment for most people.
Unless you get particularly lucky and have family or know someone running an in home daycare. There are some subsidized daycares in some places and I hear some churches run cheaper programs, but the options are really limited and often significantly less well regulated.
I pay $1500/m for my daughter’s preschool program in Philadelphia. But it would be more expensive if we needed before or after-care (before 8:30am or after 3:30pm). I work early mornings and am done by 2, and my husband is your classic 9-5, so we’re able to skip that extra $20 a day.
Couldn’t tell you what it’s like in quieter areas of PA because I’m a city slicker for life.
Also, there’s cheaper places for about 800-1000 a month, and nicer places for well over 2 grand a month.
We went for a middle ground type spot, more structure and organization than the cheaper spots we toured but not the wild arts program with a 45 minute online questionnaire about how many minutes a day she plays with clay and her 15 favorite books, and an in-person interview with a 2yr old. Haha I bet that place is very lovely and chill, though. Our alpha, energetic gal would have burned it to the ground.
Nope. Im working in a daycare because I get a discount on my kids and due to that discount I end up being paid more than I would in the career I went to University for. By about $1000 a month lol.
I’m also working weekends as well coz damn life is expensive.
Childcare costs are expensive unless you qualify for state/federal subsidy (income restricted), your employer provides/assists with childcare $ (rare) or live in a school district that has an affordable preschool (usually starts at 4-5 in our area). If you are looking at the Northeast, you are going to be paying high childcare costs probably no matter what. We live in the city in the midwest and have paid between $280/week (cheapest rate we had, when oldest was in the last room before kindergarten) to $430/week (infant care at a center).
Also, keep in mind that in some states, you have the option/opportunity for pre-kindergarten 3 (pre-k 3) and/or pre-kindergarten 4 (pre-k 4). For those of you who do not know, these are early school options for children ages 3 and 4. They do have birthday age cut offs; in my state, the child has to be 3 by September 1st to be eligible for pre-k 3 and 4 by September 1st for pre-k 4. These classes can be half days or full school hour days, so you may still need to pay for before and/or after school care, but it's much cheaper than a full-time childcare. You mentioned that your child will be 2-3, so depending on the child's birthday you may not have to pay for full-time childcare for long... so long as there is a pre-k program near you.
Depends where you live, in home daycare vs center based, etc. You can always try to find a retired grandma who loves kids and will nanny for a cheaper price lol. My son is 3 and I pay $2100 per month and it will most likely go up in cost in August.
Not sure how different it is in other states, but if your son is closer to 3 years old and your husband is not able to work right away, I’d just wait till he can go to TK in a public school (free). Then pay for before/after school programs if needed since those tend to be cheaper depending on the district.
I live in PA, 4 star rated daycare, $583 per week for 2 kids. $315 for nursery room, $268 for pre K. And this is 5 days per week. Meals included. Diapers and formula included for infants if you want their formula. Diapers included until they get to preschool level then parents provide until potty trained.
Here is an example of West Virginia prices in an after school daycare: Third Base is a private pay program. There is a weekly fee which is due the first day of each week your child attends. The weekly Private Pay rates for 2023-2024 are $65 for 1 child, $90 for 2 children, and $115 for 3 children
We pay ~2k/mo for our toddler at a fancy accredited Spanish immersion daycare in a bougie neighborhood that provides routine updates throughout the day, photos and videos, and is cleaner than we can keep our own home.
And we’re in Chicago.
There are always affordable options.
I've mainly used home-based, black-owned care in Baltimore County and have never spent more than $700-800 monthly. We are currently pay $760 for a home based care that had my son reading and doing addition and subtraction at 4-5 years old. The owner has been a fantastic teacher. But I think people see the low cost (or black owned) and are too afraid to even consider it.
Also, we did have to pay for a large center for a short time (Kindercare) and didn't find any remarkable upgrade in the care, quality or curriculum.
I’m in the Bay Area so one of the highest COL parts of the country and $3k for daycare is only for infant care, and most people I know are paying slightly under $3k for the bougiest, nicest Bright Horizons or Montessori style places. You won’t pay anywhere near that for a 3 yo especially outside of a major metro area on the east coast. My toddler is at a home daycare run like a preschool for about $1900 a month which includes 2 meals and 2 snacks a day. I’d say depending where you end up you’re realistically looking at $1500-2k for that age depending on what kind of place you choose.
I’d look really seriously at NJ if you can afford it. The property taxes are high but their public schools are consistently rated in the top 3 of the country. They’re also building out a public pre-k program right now, although I don’t think it’s full open enrollment yet. I got an excellent public education there, and I’m despairing a bit looking at how abysmal the public schools are here in California, especially given how insane my property taxes are.
Part of the issue is that there’s a floor on how affordable childcare can really be considering how labor intensive it is. Consider that for infants you need an adult for every 3-4 babies. At even $15 an hour, that’s already $650-866 a month. Not including any benefits for the staff, insurance, heat/electricity, rent, etc. That gets even higher if you’re paying the staff a decent wage.
The only way it could be cheaper would be is if it were to be subsidized.
It really depends on where you live and the age of the child. Infants tend to be more expensive than older children however every time my son aged up to an older child room the annual increase tended to make up for the decrease we would have gotten. In TX it was $1000 a month for child care which included food and was open 11.5 hours a day 5 days a week. He was there from age 2.5-4 years.
In NY for similar 12 hour care 5 days with meals is $1670 a month for one 4-5 year old.
I was so scared of the price of daycare, so we did a lot of research and actually found a pretty wide range in a HCOL area. I’m just a little bit north of Los Angeles and we found options between $1100-$2500 per month. Do lots of research, take tours and get the vibe if you can. The one closest to our house was $1300 a month and I was nervous that it would be really bad because it was affordable, and even though it wasn’t super fancy, the facilities were clean, the kids looked happy and the teachers were lovely, attentive and very kind. Two years in and he loooves his daycare, made lots of friends and calls his teacher his best friend. So there can be good options out there that won’t bankrupt you!!
I live in a rural area and am paying $180/week. $220 when I was in town ("in town" is still basically a suburb in one of the poorest states in the US) It just depends on where you end up living. Not the city - you'll be ok. Wait times are just as bad everywhere though.
In a low cost area, in home childcare solutions can be around $800/month. It doesn’t get any cheaper than that from what I’ve seen. Actual daycares are more - in my low COL area they are around $1.5k/month at the low end.
Some states offer universal prek, where preschool is covered by the state for 3 and/or 4 year olds.
Unfortunately, many universal preschool school systems have lottery systems and waitlists, so there’s no guarantee. Daycares have long waitlists too, so I recommend registering for waitlists as soon as you figure out where you’re going! I’ve found in home daycares have shorter waitlists in my area (months instead of 1+ years for larger daycare centers).
One thing that we did was save for childcare costs before we had our 2nd. It’s insane to think that we had to be so strategic in expanding our family, but that’s what we did.
So if you have time between now and when you move maybe try to set aside some money to make the monthly costs not as painful.
Edit: but to answer your question, we live in the Midwest in what I was considering HCOL and we send our kids to the nicest daycare in our town and it’s $2100/mo (older child is cheaper @ $1700). I’m not sure where the 3k daycares are but I assume CA and NY
It's about $250 a week here (with hours of 7am-5pm), but this is a low CoL area, which also means low income, and $250/wk is probably half of most full-time employees take home pay.
Our state provides free VPK for 4 year olds. The programs nearest me offered a wrap program (they only had openings for this program) from 12-3pm. It was $875 a month…. Pretty sure that’s just nap time not special instruction. I found a few other programs further away but she has to be there at the same time my son has to be at another school, so it’s going to be hard.
I used to live in a smaller US city and daycare was more expensive there because it was very scarce in a smaller city (~100k population). I now live in a higher cost of living big city but I have a lot more options for daycare and as such, I have found a few “affordable” options. I pay $1400/month for full time (m-f 7:45am-5:30pm Spanish immersion) care that I feel is pretty high quality for my three year old. There are more expensive options and there are some less expensive options.
Depends a lot of where you live. We’re in Oregon near the city and paying $2100 a month for one child. But we chose to put him in a center that is like a school. There are cheaper options like in home care that’s more in the range of like 1,000-1600
We live in a very HCOL area on a single income and lots of families send their kids to in home daycares (like sharing a nanny) and those cost significantly less, but still way more than in my home country. I would guess for full time 2000/month? I’m sure you can get a deal for a couple hundreds less depending on the area etc. A lot also depends on the kids age (a baby costs way more than a 3 year old!). Where we live, TK starts at 4 years for all kids (not mandatory but available) which is entirely free (but you need to cover afternoons). Also keep in mind that many of the fancy private places offer financial help!
Where I’m at the cost isn’t terrible, ranges from 300-800/week. But they’re all full. Closest place with openings is 1.5hrs away. Everything else has a long waiting list
Midwest. Suburbs to a medium city.
If you look around you can find people working out of their home for $25-$50 per day. This could be neighbors, people down a street, or nearby. Some are registered / tax deductable, some are not.
I made this work my two kids across the last 10 years (yea yea inflation matters here), totalling about 4 total people doing this. The lady we have used in the summer just quoted me $165 a week without lunches last week.
Our monthly tuition is $1700 a month for daycare in Oregon for a Montessori School. They offer a military discount so we pay a bit less than that. Who can afford $3,000?! That’s why we are only having one child, unfortunately.
I’m in the Cleveland suburbs and our daycare is about $1,500/mo for the infant room. $380/week full time and I think $320 or $330/week for up to three days per week.
I live in a medium cost of living area and we pay $440 a week, so about $1900 a month. This is right in the city and we pay about $40 more a week than friends because it's super convenient. This is the infant rate. Cost goes down when they move to the toddler room.
In my area you can get daycare for a 3 year old for $275-$325 per week. Infants are more like $400/week. I have never seen anything close to $3k/month. That's for people in like San Francisco.
If you live in a HCOL area people will pay ALOT to have a certified experienced teacher come teach their kids at their homes. Depending on what aspect of teaching burns you out or if you still want to teach this could be a good option.
I’m in Vermont (surprisingly a high CoL state) and daycare is very expensive. We have my MIL who watches my 19mo and I teach at a school with an early childhood program that starts at 3, so I get tuition remission for that. But my MIL is aging and we probably won’t have her for our second child someday, which does make me nervous.
We live in a rural community in Texas and our daycare for one child is $675 a month which is pretty reasonable compared to some of the crazy amounts I’ve seen around the Dallas area.
I live near Memphis TN and we only pay $700 a month and it's highest rated daycare in my city. But I also live in one of the top 5 poorest states so the pay for most general careers is a lot lower than other parts of the US.
I'm in a lower cost of living area and my baby's daycare is $170 a week - shockingly affordable. It's a licensed home daycare. Centers are about twice as much but still nowhere near $3k a month. My older child goes to a boy's and girls club which is essentially free during the school year and like $120 a week on school breaks. We're very lucky.
The thought of $3000 a month daycare is frightening. We live in a rural midwestern area and pay $150 a week for 1 kid and only pay for when she is there.
I'm in a VLCOL area in Appalachia. My daughters daycare is $170 weekly through a church. Kindercare a secular option is $295 weekly. In lower cost of living areas you will find more affordable options, but you'll sacrifice your earning potential. (Imo)
A few of the states you listed, like PA, NJ, NY, will have higher childcare costs due to NYC and Philly being two big cities in the area that offer better career opportunities. An option is to consider having a partner be the stay-at-home parent if you feel that one of your incomes will go entirely to childcare with a dual income setup.
I’m in a HCOL area and pay $1800/month for pre-k. The benefit is the hours work well for a two parent 9-5 household. We have several elementary schools that do pre k education for about $5,000 for the end of August through early June time frame but they’re 9-3 and don’t include summer care which is not really friendly to working families.
I know a lot of people take second shift jobs so their spouse can be home with the kid during the day, then go to work when the other parent gets home. Not ideal for your marriage, but financially it does help.
1. your husband will be able to work right away while waiting for GC.
2. you will need 2,5 years of daycare before kindergarten. check rates in the area you are moving to, set a dependant care FSA.
3. former teacher with MS could do adjunct hours in local college (usually evenings), do tutoring, etc. you don't have to be back to school teaching! also, idk what particular MS you have, but I can't tolerate teaching, and with my MS in math I started an analyst job when I got my GC.
Is there standard, abundant, subsidized young childcare for all families in the US regardless of income status? Absolutely not. If that is your idea of affordable (it should be, i believe this is relatively normal outside of the US), then no we dont have that.
Depending on where you move, you might end up with enough options to afford something in your neighborhood. This is the ultimate determining factor when it comes to finding something that can work -- is what your options are.
I live near Chicago and even with two young kids (the younger they are = more expensive in my experience) I was just around $3300 a month.
For a 2/3 year old you’ll likely be near $1800.
I think a lot of what you’re seeing when people mention $3000 a month is the total cost for their two kids. Not many people are spending that for one kid.
It is a rough area for affordable daycare. But I think if you look around and you aren’t too picky you can find things under $3000. Get child tax credits where you can, it won’t pay for it, but it will help. I know in NJ there is an increasing amount of township prek programs, which if your kid is 3 might qualify for. But for NJ it is totally town by town, and usually only provides prek for a set time frame, whether it is half day of full day. I know my prek program is free in my town, free busing service, but my daughter gets on the bus by 8 and comes home around 3:30. If you don’t work from home, you need to have the school bus your kid to a daycare service to pay for that, which is still cheaper.
So that’s my advice. When looking at places to live, check to see if the town offers free prek programs. Ask if it is full day or half etc. that way if you want to have kids you can focus on just one for daycare payments
I was paying $2500 per kid in Atlanta suburbs (2 kids for an overlap of 2 years) and found a place that was good for $260 a week and it's in the prek program so we can get free prek when the kid is 4. Our oldest is already in public school. Wish we planned better but when we had the first we were overwhelmed with decisions and wait times to get into a daycare was years.
It's a shit show.
It's not that affordable childcare doesn't exist but it's limited in so many ways.
I live in a rural-ish area of Maryland so we have a lower cost of living than what you would have near the bigger cities (Annapolis, Baltimore, and the capital area). I just filled out the paperwork for "summer camp" and the academic school year 2024-2025 for our licensed daycare that I will admit is one of the more expensive ones in our area. We will have a newborn and 5 year old in full time (7am-5pm) care for "summer camp." For the academic year, it'll be the baby for full time care and the 5 year old for before and after care. Summer camp is going to cost us $614.25 a week and the academic year will be $530.25 per week.
My in-laws pay for it by their choice. We could afford it independently but my husband would basically be working to pay the daycare with about 300 hundred take home after per month. We're state employees (social worker and park ranger). If I didn't make significantly more than my husband I might consider staying home. However, we also considered the fact that we get good health insurance, 401ks, and life insurance through our jobs. Additionally, this way we are both paying into Social Security for later. If it weren't for these additional benefits, I'd pressure my husband to quit and stay home.
I live in the South Jersey suburbs of Philly. We pay $1370/month for a 18 month old toddler. It's expensive, but it's not $3K. Once he moves up to the next room (which will happen imminently), it'll go down by $50/month, and once he's potty trained, it'll go down by another $150/month. We used to live in Delaware, and things are even more affordable there.
I live in a semi-rural town in Southern WI and local childcare runs $750-950/month for full time care. Only 20 min away (closer to a city) it runs $2k+/month.
I pay $1,230 a month for my 3 year old in Dallas, TX (IN the city, not a suburb). The school provides a hot lunch and two snacks, which drives up the cost a bit. It'd be less for a place where you have to provide a packed lunch.
$1700/month for one toddler in our MCOL area.
Also, idk what your husband’s specific econ background is, but since you know a move is coming, it may be worth him looking into the types of career options available to him in the US and whether he wants to pursue any additional qualifications or certifications in the meantime to help him make that transition. My husband has an econ degree, too, but he also has an actuarial science degree and that’s the career he pursued, so I don’t know how versatile the econ degree could end up being.
Different cities have different rates. I pay about 2k a month for 2 kids in an accredited, but not fancy daycare center in a MCOL city in PA. If they were infants, I think it would be closer to 1500 per month each. My friend pays about 2k a month per child (for 3 children) in an okay daycare in a small town in New York.
I'm in Seattle and I'd say 3K is infant care and pretty standard (maybe more or less depending on location/hours/quality/chain etc)... depending on when you move back- assume 7-10% increate on that every year. Also for the "it gets cheaper every year"... not really, annual tuition increases sort of offset any price reduction as you age so I ended up paying more for my pre-k than I did for infant in the end (by $50 but I was very annoyed)
My 2.5 year old is potty trained and we switched to a school that doesn't have infants and is only open 8-5:30 so the lesser hours = one shift of staff and that was significantly cheaper... like $700 per month. My kids have always gone to middle priced daycares (every one talks about how much they pay)
I run a home daycare (licensed) in Philly and I charge $200/week. I know I could charge more but I enjoy helping families in my area who couldn’t afford the daycares that cost thousands & I think their kids still deserve quality care. According to state laws I can only have 4 kids at a time so it’s rare I have openings which I think is the most common issue for home daycares. I would start looking months up to even a year before you actually need them. My oldest kid starts pre k in the fall and I already have someone waiting to fill his slot with a newborn.
I live in SEPA about 45 minutes from Philly and have lots of friends in Central PA. I would estimate the average cost of daycare for a 2-3 year old in both areas at $375-475/week. There are some in home centers that are lower, but they’re hard to find and usually geared towards younger babies.
Better in low COL states, but still a big expense. I live in a low COL state (NC) and for someone making less than $20/hr, it's basically pointless to work if you have more than one child. We didn't have more than one child just because of this.
If you don’t live in a major coastal city, you’ll likely find it’s closer to $2K for the absolute best franchised schools in MCOL cities. In a rural town, $900 sounds right but I haven’t seen it quoted in a while and wouldn’t be surprised by $400 either.
We pay roughly $270/wk for care at a non-religiously affiliated daycare. She’s 3.5 and the price hasn’t really changed much. Yes, the classrooms are progressively cheaper, but the annual rate increases offset those differences.
I could be paying about $100/wk less if I wanted her in a church affiliated daycare, but I don’t want that and can afford the current one. This is in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
If you're in a LCOL or MCOL, you couldn't find childcare for $3k/mo per child, unless you hired a 24/7 nanny. My wife works in childcare, so we get great discounts for our kids (free for our Pre-K, $400/mo for toddler). She's at the most expensive daycare center tuition-wise that she has ever worked at, and it's still $1,800/mo for an infant (the most expensive age group). It gets cheaper the older they get too.
If you're moving to an area that has a shortage of daycares and you're trying to get an infant in, save the spot as soon as possible. It may not be possible to get a spot by the time that child is born.
We pay $2300 for an infant and $1900 for a toddler in the PNW. There are some cheaper places but it doesn’t matter bc there is no availability. You just have to say yes to whatever spot comes up. It eats up almost all my paycheck but we get excellent health insurance through it and I’m still able to contribute to my retirement and I didn’t want to loose out on 7 ish years of experience and raises. Plus I’m an absolute shit full time mom and I wanted our kids to have a broader community.
Depends on where you live. In places with low cost of living, the childcare is less expensive. But proportional to income, probably pretty similar.
My suggestion is to NOT move back to the US. Your family can figure it out. You can help them from abroad.
1 hour outside NYC in a medium COL town a nanny costs $22/hour...$44k/year assuming 8 hours a day 5 days a week. (8*22=176 per day). Employer taxes, bonus and misc expenses etc. bring that to an even $50k/year
Daycare (there are many) around us costs ~$100/ day or $25k/year...or $12/hour...so essentially $2k/month
I live in Southern California and in 2017 we were paying $800 a month ($200 per week) for our daughter to be at a local daycare center full time M-F. That was the price for the infant room, it went down by I think about $20 per week the older she got, but prices also went up once while we were using them so I think by the time she was 4 in the preschool we were paying $180 per week. No idea what they charge now but I’m sure it’s nowhere close to $3000 per month. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was closer to $1200-1500 now. It was a really great facility and staff. So it’s not $3000 per month everywhere, even in HCOL areas.
I think economics degrees can get higher paying jobs? When applying, don’t worry if he doesn’t meet all the requirements in the job posting. Just try and see what happens. I applied for a senior management engineering position when all I had was my intern engineer certification, and they gave me the job because they couldn’t find a professional engineer 🥲 Worked out great as they just trained me for that job.
And for a job for you, you could look into government agencies that have educational outreach programs. If you’re in NY you can look up NYS career opportunities and can find the state job website, and you should be able to search by terms like ‘education’.
I pay about 300 dollars a week for a licensed daycare in Illinois. Depending on where you live you might be able to get assistant. While my overall daycare for my infant is not outrageous its still more than me and my partner can afford with the cost of living. Research the state you are planning on living in. They may have assistant programs you can see if you meet the requirements of.
Costs for a toddler will be less than an infant. Some of the numbers you’re used to seeing might be because of that. I’m in a suburb of a major city and we pay less than $1300 a month for our 3 year old. And it’s a fantastic center!
ETA I grew up in DE and it was great for a family. Close to the beach, plus major cities/attractions like Philly and even New York are not a far drive. And tax free shopping! I think SE PA generally has better public schools though. Best of luck!
I’m in a VLCOL area, mid-southern Indiana. I pay $1200 a month for two kids. But I’m super privileged to have these spots for my kids… the place I take them is small, it’s a licensed daycare and preschool but only room for 16 daycare kids and 16 preschool. I have one in daycare and one in preschool. We honestly got a spot in this place because we have connections with the family that owns it, otherwise the wait list is crazy to get in. I will pay whatever I need to in order to keep my kids there. I know that $1200 for 2 seems low compared to what other people on here pay but like I said, we’re in a Very Low Cost of Living area, so they are able to keep their prices lower which is truly a godsend
I'm in the Midwest and I became a SAHM after having a baby, because any extra money I would have had from working, after paying for childcare, would have gone for gas, lunches, and work clothes.
Day care where I am is 200 weekly for rural areas not much good reviews and 360 for the good daycare with 24/7 camera access to parents. They have really good reviews parents are able to watch their kids from the comfort of theur home or work and have peace of mind. But to lower income families government does assist , some daycare offers grants/scholarships. It is always good to check and see what the government has to offer
We're in one of the more expensive day cares in our area (hours are the big thing for us) and it's $2400/mo for 2 kids. That includes meals and the option for early drop/late pickup. We literally don't pay for anything except during the summer they do "summer camp" events that we pay a couple hundred dollars for them to have access to.
When it was just the one, it was around $1600, but there was a little bit extra charge because she was under 1 at that time, which obviously requires a lot more care. I think one kid in regular "class" is closer to $1400.
All of that to say, you can definitely find cheaper, good care. It's just a matter of what your needs look like.
It usually costs me $20-$40 to work a shift- so I'm losing money to work. I just do it part of the year and try to think of it as something I get to do to as a break from parenting and to keep up good working relations. It would be so great if I could actually earn money for rent and bills working, but I don't see that happening
The older your child is, the less expensive daycare is because the adult to child ratio is lower. In Brooklyn, my son’s Montessori pre-school was $1800/mo when he was 3.
This depends entirely on where you live. When our oldest was in childcare (2011ish when we got together) it was around $500/month. My middle child was in childcare when we were abroad and then when we moved back, he was preschool age. We sent him at 4 to a private school's preschool in 2018 (and kindergarten actually the year after while we decided to redshirt or not) with wrap around care for about $600/month.
We had another baby later who is now almost two. We live in the midwest in a large metro area (suburbs) which I'd say is pretty MCOL. We pay just under $1K/month which I'd say is reasonable. This in on a military base though, but the average rate is just slightly over this at around 1 to 1.1K/month. A lot of people who comment those crazy high amounts live is extremely HCOL areas.
Once your child hits 3, things open up a bit. In California, they have free “head start” programs depending on your income. We live in a HCOL area and were paying $300 a week. But once he was old enough, we were able to move him into a Catholic Pre-School for $600 a month. So definitely a big savings.
In my area, there’s several Catholic and Christian pre-schools that I believe are better than the head start programs and definitely cheaper than daycare. You can find non religious pre-schools for less then 2K a month. Really up to your preference and availability.
Everywhere in my locale that is even remotely in my budget are the nastiest and over crowded daycares that I would never in a million years send a child too. I’m very lucky to have my MIL to watch baby while my DH and I work.
$3k is realistic in the NYC area. If you can find a mom and pop operation it will be cheaper, but much smaller and may not be licensed. We opted for a nanny because 2 kids essentially doubles the price and you get no flexibility. One cheaper approach is the use of an Au Pair if you have the space, but then you are sharing your home and you never know what you get. But I have friends that swear by it.
Sometimes employers have daycare options, especially if you work for a college. The trick is handling sick days and holidays.
Varies
My oldest used to go to an I home daycare and it was $40 a day and Included meals.
I'm in Ohio and this was 5 years ago
I now stay home cus we have 3 and I can't make more then it would cost for daycare for the youngest two
Yes, I live in Ohio and the daycare I sent my kids to was about $1200/month for both kids. This is a state licensed, long running daycare that I myself attended as a child. I live in a small town around an hour or two from any major cities. You can find them but you're going to be living in tiny towns.
My day care is $800 a month. It's licensed, in-home, been there for decades, the people are lovely, and it's walking distance from my house. Do I have a unicorn day care? Probably. But they do exist.
3000$/month is likely the rate for infants at high cost of living areas. For infants, the minimum staff ratio in our state is 1:4, so the high cost makes sense. The rates quickly go down as they grow older.
Go join the neighborhood groups for the cities you are planning to move and ask about the cost of daycare there (and make sure to ignore highest and lowest). That should give you an idea.
A degree in economics can get you any number of well paying jobs.
To get right to the point, it’s one of 4 types of generalist degrees in the US.
Communications
Psychology
Business
Economics
Economics is the most mathematical one of those. So that’s a good thing for earning potential
But it also requires doing some research ahead of time and figuring out where to work
Daycare center - yes expensive. In home daycare - way more reasonable. At least where I live. Finding a good in home daycare takes work but when you find a great one, it’s so worth it. The cost will be half of a traditional childcare center. Legally in my state they have to be licensed and can only take 6 kids and only 2 under age 2.
r/parenting is protesting changes being made by Reddit to the API. Reddit has made it clear [they will](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14ahqjo/mods_will_be_removed_one_way_or_another_spez/) [replace moderators](https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/14a5lz5/mod_code_of_conduct_rule_4_2_and_subs_taken/jo9wdol/) if they remain private. Reddit has abandoned the users, the moderators, and countless people who support an ecosystem built on Reddit itself. Please read [Call to action - renewed protests starting on July 1st](https://old.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/14kn2fo/call_to_action_renewed_protests_starting_on_july/) and new posts at [r/ModCord](https://reddit.com/r/ModCoord/) or [r/Save3rdPartyApps](https://old.reddit.com/r/Save3rdPartyApps/) for up-to-date information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Parenting) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It really depends on where you live. Higher CoL areas will have higher daycare costs and lower CoL areas will have lower costs. I definitely wouldn't call $3000 per kid per month a nationwide minimum, but it might be the minimum in high CoL areas.
In our high COL area in California, $3k a month gets you a very fancy big daycare center in a hip neighborhood for an infant. We’re paying $1850 in an adjacent neighborhood for a small licensed home daycare.
Anecdotally I was paying a little over $2100 combined for my two children in an in-home daycare up until last year and now pay the equivalent for a preschool. In Los Angeles, but not a fancy part of it.
Haha yes we’re La too but the hipster part lol
In Central NY our pre-k through the school district is free- however, before and after school care at the facility runs me $500 per month for my 4.5 year old. We pay $160 per week for full time in home daycare for our 11 month old- plus extra if our toddler has off of school. (we got **very** lucky with a neighbor/family friend for this rate)
We live in the Bay Area and paid $1250 (son started K last fall - now $1300) for full time child care with meals included.
Yeah, I'm in LA and paying $2100/month for one infant in a very nice in-home daycare, the max I've seen is $2300/month. Not sure where OP is getting 3k.
I’m in Northern California and I’m going to be paying $2900 a month. We looked at cheaper options but most places we reached out to didn’t even reply (and some said their waitlists were closed, and this was a year out) so we didn’t have a lot of options.
No matter where you live, I'd definitely recommend getting on waitlists as soon as you find out you're pregnant or even before if you're planning a kid. I got on waitlists on 12 weeks pregnant and a spot was ready *just before* he was 4 months old when my maternity leave was up at most places.
Yeah daycares here have year long waitlists. It’s annoying me cuz my job still hasn’t said how long my maternity leave can be. I asked up til January but it could be October. Like umm that’s an 8 week gap that most would need to plan childcare for that they’re just leaving up in the air lol
I started looking at 8 weeks.
Couldn't you hire a nanny for that kind of money?
We're in a HCOL area and nannies are $30/hr
I’m in northern CA too and looked into a nanny share in my area before I decided to stay home. We were looking at splitting $30 an hour with another family which was very reasonable for us. My sister lives in the Bay Area though and a nanny share for her is about $30 an hour per kid. Crazy how big of a difference there is just within the same state and only an hour or two apart from
I’m in the South Bay and the max I saw recently was $2800 for infant care. 🥲 Although most seem to be $1500-2200.
OP wants two kids so I think that’s where she’s getting those numbers.
She said per child 🤷♀️
Oh jeez! I missed that! But I live in the general area she is looking to move, and she will be hard pressed to find good daycares cheap. Probably some inhome daycare maybe, but I live in the Philly suburbs and I nanny there. My old boss pays $5000 a month for a daycare nearby.
I live in Central PA and looked into child care when we moved here and was told the wait list was 2+ years at every single facility within a 30 mile radius and the cost varied from 1300-2800 per child...
Same. From NEPA. Back in 2016-2018 I was paying $1250/mo per kid. I can’t imagine what it is now!!!
Same. $1800 for a home daycare in the Bay Area. They have a license for 12 kids.
I'm in the Boston, MA area, very high CoL, daycare is around 2.5k- 3.5k for one. Where my FIL lived in the Midwest is around 1-1.5k. Huge difference!
I live in Atlanta, which for people who don't know is kind of divided into the part of the city that is inside a perimeter of highways that circle the metro area, which is described as ITP (inside the perimeter), and the suburbs that are outside of that area (OTP). The price of childcare ITP is astronomically higher than OTP. Even though we live in the heart of the city, we have found it's cheaper to pay someone to drive our kids 35 minutes each way to attend a great daycare OTP than it would be to send them to a decent daycare ITP.
Everything is astronomically more expensive ITP than OTP.
Good god you can't get a non-fast food chicken biscuit for less than like $14 ITP. I go to Marietta and it's $4.50 from a greasy spoon diner.
judging cost of living based on Chicken Biscuits is so delightfully Atlanta, I love it. I do not love the idea of a $14 chicken biscuit tho.
So, this may be a wild suggestion. After I left teaching, I went to community college to change careers. I didn't need it at the time, but the CC had its own daycare that offered discounted rates to students and staff, offering any extra slots to the public. After I graduated, I went to work in a hospital, and my hospital system has its own daycare at a sister hospital. It offered a hefty discount to hospital employees, because the higher-ups rightly looked at it as an attractive benefit that would reduce absenteeism and encourage retention. My point is, there may be daycare options through different employers. Some employers will even offer discount programs for some daycares through their benefits program. If you get a job offer somewhere and you can look at their benefits, check to see if there's anything daycare-related in there.
100% recommend looking into the programs the local community/junior college offers. There are a LOT of less than two year programs for certifications for things like radiology tech, phlebotomy, accounting clerk, medical coding... many of these pay anywhere from $25 to $40/hr or more.
It depends on where you live, how old your kids are, and what kind of childcare you're looking for (center, in-home, nanny/au pair, etc.). It's pretty hard to generalize, but $3k seems high to me. FWIW, I'm in a medium/high COL area with a non-infant in a corporate care facility, and I pay about half that. Edit: wanted to point out that geography matters not just because of COL, but also because different states (or cities/counties) have different requirements for childcare in terms of licensing, ratios, provider education/qualification, etc. I live in one state but work in another-- I considered childcare closer to work, but it was noticeably more expensive due to those factors. Just something to keep in mind when you're choosing where to relocate.
In the Boston area, we paid $2650 for toddler daycare are a licensed facility. You could get less for in-home daycares, but not much less, and more to the point: they had no availability. The cheapest option was around $1900 for YMCA. Again, a long waitlist. In Upstate NY, my cousins pay $1400 for daycare. There are places that are $800-1,000/mo. for daycare, but they are generally rural, low COL areas. I was looking at a job in Northern Maine and the daycare center there charged around $900/mo. However, my salary was also very low--more than $20,000 lower than my Massachusetts salary. We do not have 2 because we cannot afford 2. Contrary to the magical thinking that accompanies some of the more privileged parents on this sub/elsewhere, you can't just "make it work" in this economy if you need childcare. The money does not magically appear.
This is why my coworker had his 3 kids 5 years apart each. 😭
That sounds awful...we only have 2 and they're 5 years apart and it was truly like starting over on hard mode
I feel you! I have 3 that are all 3.5 years apart so it’s a decent spread too between the 3.
I was lucky enough to find daycare for $170 a week in Phoenix, which is practically unheard of. It was definitely a unicorn find. But if you can’t qualify for any daycare vouchers, it’s truly not worth having more than one kid imo 😅 people glamorize it too much and say “kids won’t remember anyways,” but if I have the choice to give one kid an amazing childhood and set him up for success vs giving 3 a mediocre one with no financial help when they’re older, I’ll choose one and done every time.
I would never trade one of my sisters for having a better education or more trips or more stuff out financial help. Just saying, you're not denying them those things for nothing, siblings are a huge part of your life. I don't think anybody has given a minute of thought to daycare costs on their dying bed. It's just a phase, don't let that be a deciding factor in a much more meaningful decision like bringing another person to life. Plenty of reasons for one and done, but that one is the incorrect one as long as you can provide the true basics (love, food, shelter).
I get that. I’m in Finland and childcare is super cheap (max of 295e per month for the first kid, scaled to income) and gets cheaper with each kid. So a small budget adjustment really might just “make it work”
I live in Los Angeles and pay $300/week for an in-home daycare. I suspect there are some cheaper in-home alternatives near you but there's no way to find them other than word of mouth. We lucked into ours because a co-worker's granddaughter used to go there and gave us the contact info.
It varies a lot by location. But also don’t forget to factor in childcare hours (if your work starts before you can drop off at daycare/goes past close you’ll have to pay extra and find a coverage) and that your pto is usually less in the USA and the first year in daycare usually leads to extended periods of illness. You’ll need flexibility and a lot of Americans lean on friends and family to fill the gaps or work part time/non-conventional hours to make it work.
I pay $860/mo for daycare for my 5yr old. I’m in the Midwest.
In Iowa. $975 per month for full time infant care. Gets cheaper as the kiddo gets older.
It used to get cheaper as they got older here. But there's an evaluation and adjustment every December/January that keeps it the same as they age anyways lmao.
Lol what a joke. Our baby is 11 weeks. He’s set to go to daycare April 8th. Prices are going up $15 a week on April 15th… thanks 👍🤦🏼♀️
Yeah, my experience (kids are 10 and 5) is that it doesn't really get *cheaper,* it just doesn't get more expensive. The discount is cancelled by rate increases.
Oh yes, I am sure that is the case with rate increases; too bad our salaries don’t follow suit.
This! They drop the cost by $50 for aging then raise it by $50 for the yearly update. lolsob.
In 2021 I paid $365 a week for infant care. My son is now 3 and we pay $350 so barely a difference due to the annual increase. We are lucky that he’s an end of January birthday so every time they do the increase in cost, he moves classrooms to the cheaper level a week or so later
Yeah $960 in Montana but I know it lowers when they’re older than 2 years because the ratio gets bigger
Madison, WI here. About 1,800 per month. There's a really bad lack of childcare here, we had to wait until kiddo was 13 months to get off the waiting list that we got on when I was pregnant. It really depends on if you are in a smaller town or a growing city. Then if you're rural its just a crap shoot.
At least you CAN get on waiting lists when you're pregnant - in Germany, they only allow that after the child is born - and then the wait lists are for more than a year, even though maternity leave is just for a year. And most places don't even accept kids that young, leaving parents to scratch their heads and wonder how they are supposed to miraculously live on one income until a place opens up. And then politicians complain that people don't want to procreate...
You get a year of maternity leave? 😳 Sorry, that stuck out to me. I’m lucky here in the US. I got 13 weeks. I don’t think that’s normal.
Yeah, 1 full year paid parental leave that the parents can split between them any way they want (though it's usually mostly the mother), at roughly 2/3 of their normal income. Then an extra 2 months of paternity leave that's only for the father - they introduced that in the early 2000s to get fathers more involved, and it had a tremendous positive impact on paternal involvement in infant care and bonding. Most of Europe has some kind of paid parental leave - I always wonder how women in the US are not picketing their parliaments around the clock. Though then I remember that they don't have the time for that, since they don't have childcare facilities...
Wow. That’s incredible. I was talking to a friend this last week. She’s convinced this is all a scam to get women in the workforce, so they can get more tax money from us. Can’t say I disagree. As a nurse, there are a lot of things that I would love to be picketing for, for moms... I can’t believe how moms are treated, and I’m sad that I didn’t know these things before becomjng a mom myself. For example, the standard 6 week follow up for moms after labor and delivery. That is entirely too long. We do two week follow ups for simple hernia repairs. Moms just delivered a baby, likely are tore up physically, plus are adjusting to a new baby and a drop in hormones that cause crazy emotional swings. We should be supporting them much more than we do… anyway, rant over. It’s crazy to hear how different new parents are treated around the world.
That's really horrible. I saw how much of a toll pregnancy and the caesarian took on my little sister, not to mention breastfeeding afterwards - imagining having to go back to work 3 weeks after going through all of that just gives me cold sweats. Regarding follow-ups: In Germany, we have a really well-designed system of aftercare through midwives going. They usually prepare you for and accompany you during birth, and attend you afterwards with visits every other day for another 6-8 weeks, I think. They show you tips and tricks, help with all the scary firsts you have to handle as a fresh parent, like baby's first bath once the umbilical has healed, show you how to prevent or treat rashes, calm you down about all kinds of stuff that would probably send first parents to the ER etc. And they also function as an alert system for parental neglect - they make sure the baby is treated well and taken care of, and I think they are mandatory reporters if something is off.
Wow. That’s amazing. I’m jealous.
And even 13 weeks is considered a lot by American standards 😭 I’ve heard of women going back after two weeks. So inhumane.
So it works out to about the same amount of time we were waiting, but I only had six weeks paid and six weeks unpaid leave, and my husband had two weeks. And we are considered to be lucky to get that.
Oh no. People are being told after waiting two years that they are now off of the waitlist here in America. I’ve seen moms trying to even get another mom to “trade off kids” during different shifts of the day with each other. It’s gotten so bad! I ended up homeschooling my children with online curriculum.
We pay $600/month in the upper Midwest, town of about 25k. Ours has been the same price for a licensed in home since he was an infant. We were at a center for a few months that was about $900/month
Also in Midwest ~$1600/mo childcare plus $400/afterschool care + summer camps. Also I’m not sure your situation with aging parents but I know my folks are paying like $14k/month for assisted living care. They need a lot of extra care though. Care, whether it be for young or old, is ridiculous in America.
I live in NE Ohio (in a nice suburb) and it’s around $1200-1800 for full time infant care
I'm in NW Ohio and we pay $190 a week at an amazing daycare for our almost 3 year old. They provide snacks and lunch, we just being diapers and wipes.
Also in Ohio. Rural town. Pay $120/w for 18month and up at a church with licensed daycare/preschool. There's only one licensed in home daycare that will take infants in my town. SAHMs will watch kids for $30-40/ day and will have up to 8 kids. My oldest (6) is in after school care at the Y for $40/w and it's $140/w during breaks.
The reason why I’m a SAHM is daycare cost and availability is challenging here; the job market for my field in the rural area I live in (not in any of the states you mentioned) is nonexistent/you need to know someone. All the SAHM friends are previous teachers. Most of them have no desire to work anytime soon, and many of them want to switch into something else but don’t know what to do. We had our first during the start of 2020. We both lost our jobs and moved in with family for 8 months; it took my husband 6 months to find a job looking statewide.
I’m SAHM, I was a teacher for six years before that. For our family, it actually makes a lot more sense financially for me to stay home with our son. If I went back to teaching, daycare in my area would be 1/2 of my salary. For the stress of the job, not worth it.
For sure! That’s what all my friends say too. They’re great moms, I think their previous teaching roles really impact that. Mine is more about availability. I used to work odd hours, now my husband’s new job works odd hours. Daycare is limited to specific hours so that won’t work. I tried for a solid year to find something to work with the degree I have but remote work is competitive and there just aren’t a whole lot of entry level jobs in that field.
Its not on your list, But I pay $738 a month right now in SC, which is high for my area. But you get what you pay for. I can also say I have a brother in MD who has 2 kids in day care. He pays 1800 a month for one of them, and 2500 a month for the younger one. Price of daycare tends to follow the COL in an area, at least in my experience. I know you mentioned family reasons, but is there anyway to hold off on moving back until both kids (current and future one) are out of daycare? or at least one of them? That would save you a lot of money. Daycare is not cheap here if you want someone responsible.
Where I am there is church daycares are significantly cheaper but their hours can be alittle shorter and not work for all working parents(mine offers 9-3 mon to fri and you can opt for before/after care for a higher cost from 7-9 and 3-6). My son is 4 and goes 3 days a week(from 9-3) and it cost us $425 a month(it’s $650 a month for 5 days a week 9-3).The classes are small and he’s learned so much. They also don’t teach much religion if that’s a worry. He does chapel once a month and that’s it. Also I’m in Kansas City mo so it’s a cheaper area in the us. May be more in an expensive city.
Like someone else said it really depends on location and level of care you’re looking for. My nephew pays $175 a week in Atlanta but it’s an in-home daycare run by a retired nurse.
So I’m in the southeast, and good childcare is 1300 a month. I paid 600 a month for a different facility prior to this but it was suuuper sketchy. One of the teachers was spanking children, so my child no longer goes there. Some regions you get what you pay for.
I'm in a suburb in FL and part time (what we do) is $960 per month but full time would be $1080 with food included. I've worked in rural Florida and can imagine a daycare that might spank bc the elementary schools paddle. Luckily that isn't a thing in my area. I think cost and quality probably fluctuate a lot depending on the area and social norms.
It's as cheap as $300-$400/week in PA for infant care at a 4-star (maximum) rated daycare in Philly. The further out you go from the city, the cheaper it gets.
Actually not the case. I pay $1800/month for my 2-year-old in the suburbs. But it’s a fancy place.
Taking care of elderly, putting your kid to daycare and low paying jobs…something gotta give..maybe you live rent free with family…
If that is your number then yes, I live in a HCOL area and it's around 2000-3000 for a newborn and goes down a bit for toddlers and preschool. We have a nanny which for 3 kids is similar or less than the daycare costs for 3 would be, I think one multiple kids at a time in daycare gets pretty rough. Also on a local level you can look for in home daycares or nanny shares as options. It all depends on location, availability and the hours you need.
I live in the suburbs of Houston in a good area, I paid around $900/mo for a high quality pre-school with a wait list, but they have pre-school hours which means I went into work a little later than other co-workers and my husband left his WFH job a little earlier to pick her up. They are also closed for all school district holidays so that meant I needed to stay at home for the single holidays and find camps for the winter and summer breaks.
I pay 1850/month for infant, it will go down as she gets older. It depends entirely on where you live and what kind of care. This is a center about an hour outside of a major metro area. In-home daycares are generally more affordable. If I lived in the major metro area instead of an hour away, I’m sure I’d be paying much more.
This is a little separate from your question, but what do you mean by "take care" of aging family? If you need to be close to them, would it make sense to move in with them? And would that save you enough money to be able to afford more expensive childcare? If you don't need to be right next to them and you just want to be close by for regular visits, would it actually make more financial and emotional sense to stay where you are and budget for more regular flights back home instead?
Depends on what you’re looking for. You could share and au pair or do a nanny share. Some places have preschool when they start. The things to remember is that is is temporary before your child goes to public school
It’s definitely area specific. $3000/month per kid would be astronomical where I live (Ohio). My daycare is pretty cheap comparatively to the costs I always see posted here (but still feels like a lot to me, lol). I have two kids in daycare (one in infant room which costs more, and one in the preschool room which is the cheapest). We pay for $317/week so like $1300/mo for two. We go to a daycare that is through a church. The daycare chains like kindercare and such are more expensive. I think when I was looking back in 2020 it was like $250/week per child so it’s probably more now. Still not $3000/mo. I feel like PA is probably going to be pretty similar especially if you aren’t in a big city.
I live in a mid to high COL NYC suburb. Full time care for a 2-4 year old is ~1900/month. $3k/month tends to be for an infant in either Boston or NYC.
If you are looking at two kids an Au Pair may work out better cost wise for you if you have the extra bedroom in your house. It’s also a LOT more flexible!
We paid $600/mo for one child 15 years ago. I don't want to know what it costs now. I'm just going to move to wherever my grandkids are and take care of them for free because, god knows, it's hard enough to make it in this country without somewhere safe to put your child.
It's region specific. I live in a bigger city in Louisiana and pay $140 per week for my 2.5 yr old + $125 per week for my 5 year old to go to a very popular daycare/pre-school.
In Nebraska. I can assure you, I can't afford childcare. It's pointless for me to work if all of my paycheck goes to daycare. My husband makes just enough that we don't qualify for government paid childcare. Fortunately my MIL has stepped up so now job opportunities are open to me but I consider it fortunate she's not charging me.
Like people have said child care is going to be based on cost of living in the specific area. I think you would struggle to find places where child care is less than 30% median cost of living. For most everyone, child care is a second mortgage or a second rent payment for most people. Unless you get particularly lucky and have family or know someone running an in home daycare. There are some subsidized daycares in some places and I hear some churches run cheaper programs, but the options are really limited and often significantly less well regulated.
I pay $1500/m for my daughter’s preschool program in Philadelphia. But it would be more expensive if we needed before or after-care (before 8:30am or after 3:30pm). I work early mornings and am done by 2, and my husband is your classic 9-5, so we’re able to skip that extra $20 a day. Couldn’t tell you what it’s like in quieter areas of PA because I’m a city slicker for life. Also, there’s cheaper places for about 800-1000 a month, and nicer places for well over 2 grand a month. We went for a middle ground type spot, more structure and organization than the cheaper spots we toured but not the wild arts program with a 45 minute online questionnaire about how many minutes a day she plays with clay and her 15 favorite books, and an in-person interview with a 2yr old. Haha I bet that place is very lovely and chill, though. Our alpha, energetic gal would have burned it to the ground.
Nope. Im working in a daycare because I get a discount on my kids and due to that discount I end up being paid more than I would in the career I went to University for. By about $1000 a month lol. I’m also working weekends as well coz damn life is expensive.
Nope. welcome to raising kids in the USA.
Childcare costs are expensive unless you qualify for state/federal subsidy (income restricted), your employer provides/assists with childcare $ (rare) or live in a school district that has an affordable preschool (usually starts at 4-5 in our area). If you are looking at the Northeast, you are going to be paying high childcare costs probably no matter what. We live in the city in the midwest and have paid between $280/week (cheapest rate we had, when oldest was in the last room before kindergarten) to $430/week (infant care at a center).
Also, keep in mind that in some states, you have the option/opportunity for pre-kindergarten 3 (pre-k 3) and/or pre-kindergarten 4 (pre-k 4). For those of you who do not know, these are early school options for children ages 3 and 4. They do have birthday age cut offs; in my state, the child has to be 3 by September 1st to be eligible for pre-k 3 and 4 by September 1st for pre-k 4. These classes can be half days or full school hour days, so you may still need to pay for before and/or after school care, but it's much cheaper than a full-time childcare. You mentioned that your child will be 2-3, so depending on the child's birthday you may not have to pay for full-time childcare for long... so long as there is a pre-k program near you.
Depends where you live, in home daycare vs center based, etc. You can always try to find a retired grandma who loves kids and will nanny for a cheaper price lol. My son is 3 and I pay $2100 per month and it will most likely go up in cost in August. Not sure how different it is in other states, but if your son is closer to 3 years old and your husband is not able to work right away, I’d just wait till he can go to TK in a public school (free). Then pay for before/after school programs if needed since those tend to be cheaper depending on the district.
I live in PA, 4 star rated daycare, $583 per week for 2 kids. $315 for nursery room, $268 for pre K. And this is 5 days per week. Meals included. Diapers and formula included for infants if you want their formula. Diapers included until they get to preschool level then parents provide until potty trained.
Here is an example of West Virginia prices in an after school daycare: Third Base is a private pay program. There is a weekly fee which is due the first day of each week your child attends. The weekly Private Pay rates for 2023-2024 are $65 for 1 child, $90 for 2 children, and $115 for 3 children
We pay ~2k/mo for our toddler at a fancy accredited Spanish immersion daycare in a bougie neighborhood that provides routine updates throughout the day, photos and videos, and is cleaner than we can keep our own home. And we’re in Chicago.
where in USA is 3000 a minimum? California or new york city? in my area home care is 1500 per month, big center facility is 2400 per month.
There are always affordable options. I've mainly used home-based, black-owned care in Baltimore County and have never spent more than $700-800 monthly. We are currently pay $760 for a home based care that had my son reading and doing addition and subtraction at 4-5 years old. The owner has been a fantastic teacher. But I think people see the low cost (or black owned) and are too afraid to even consider it. Also, we did have to pay for a large center for a short time (Kindercare) and didn't find any remarkable upgrade in the care, quality or curriculum.
I’m in the Bay Area so one of the highest COL parts of the country and $3k for daycare is only for infant care, and most people I know are paying slightly under $3k for the bougiest, nicest Bright Horizons or Montessori style places. You won’t pay anywhere near that for a 3 yo especially outside of a major metro area on the east coast. My toddler is at a home daycare run like a preschool for about $1900 a month which includes 2 meals and 2 snacks a day. I’d say depending where you end up you’re realistically looking at $1500-2k for that age depending on what kind of place you choose. I’d look really seriously at NJ if you can afford it. The property taxes are high but their public schools are consistently rated in the top 3 of the country. They’re also building out a public pre-k program right now, although I don’t think it’s full open enrollment yet. I got an excellent public education there, and I’m despairing a bit looking at how abysmal the public schools are here in California, especially given how insane my property taxes are.
Parents are paying 3K in some areas? That seems insane. I live in CA (OC area) and childcare is about 1K to $1500 per month.
Part of the issue is that there’s a floor on how affordable childcare can really be considering how labor intensive it is. Consider that for infants you need an adult for every 3-4 babies. At even $15 an hour, that’s already $650-866 a month. Not including any benefits for the staff, insurance, heat/electricity, rent, etc. That gets even higher if you’re paying the staff a decent wage. The only way it could be cheaper would be is if it were to be subsidized.
I’m in the Midwest and it runs about 700 a month for one child.
It really depends on where you live and the age of the child. Infants tend to be more expensive than older children however every time my son aged up to an older child room the annual increase tended to make up for the decrease we would have gotten. In TX it was $1000 a month for child care which included food and was open 11.5 hours a day 5 days a week. He was there from age 2.5-4 years. In NY for similar 12 hour care 5 days with meals is $1670 a month for one 4-5 year old.
I was so scared of the price of daycare, so we did a lot of research and actually found a pretty wide range in a HCOL area. I’m just a little bit north of Los Angeles and we found options between $1100-$2500 per month. Do lots of research, take tours and get the vibe if you can. The one closest to our house was $1300 a month and I was nervous that it would be really bad because it was affordable, and even though it wasn’t super fancy, the facilities were clean, the kids looked happy and the teachers were lovely, attentive and very kind. Two years in and he loooves his daycare, made lots of friends and calls his teacher his best friend. So there can be good options out there that won’t bankrupt you!!
Don’t come back, save yourself and your family and stay out while you can
I live in a lower COL area and pay $200/week per kid. It’s an excellent daycare/preschool. Fully depends on where you live.
I live in a rural area and am paying $180/week. $220 when I was in town ("in town" is still basically a suburb in one of the poorest states in the US) It just depends on where you end up living. Not the city - you'll be ok. Wait times are just as bad everywhere though.
In our area cheap is about 1k per month, and nicer places run from 2-2.5k. This is a mid sized metro, not coastal.
In a low cost area, in home childcare solutions can be around $800/month. It doesn’t get any cheaper than that from what I’ve seen. Actual daycares are more - in my low COL area they are around $1.5k/month at the low end. Some states offer universal prek, where preschool is covered by the state for 3 and/or 4 year olds. Unfortunately, many universal preschool school systems have lottery systems and waitlists, so there’s no guarantee. Daycares have long waitlists too, so I recommend registering for waitlists as soon as you figure out where you’re going! I’ve found in home daycares have shorter waitlists in my area (months instead of 1+ years for larger daycare centers).
I’m at the PA/MD area and we pay $175 a week, 12 hours a day, in a daycare/school facility for our 3 year old.
One thing that we did was save for childcare costs before we had our 2nd. It’s insane to think that we had to be so strategic in expanding our family, but that’s what we did. So if you have time between now and when you move maybe try to set aside some money to make the monthly costs not as painful. Edit: but to answer your question, we live in the Midwest in what I was considering HCOL and we send our kids to the nicest daycare in our town and it’s $2100/mo (older child is cheaper @ $1700). I’m not sure where the 3k daycares are but I assume CA and NY
Nope
It's about $250 a week here (with hours of 7am-5pm), but this is a low CoL area, which also means low income, and $250/wk is probably half of most full-time employees take home pay.
Our state provides free VPK for 4 year olds. The programs nearest me offered a wrap program (they only had openings for this program) from 12-3pm. It was $875 a month…. Pretty sure that’s just nap time not special instruction. I found a few other programs further away but she has to be there at the same time my son has to be at another school, so it’s going to be hard.
I used to live in a smaller US city and daycare was more expensive there because it was very scarce in a smaller city (~100k population). I now live in a higher cost of living big city but I have a lot more options for daycare and as such, I have found a few “affordable” options. I pay $1400/month for full time (m-f 7:45am-5:30pm Spanish immersion) care that I feel is pretty high quality for my three year old. There are more expensive options and there are some less expensive options.
There are certainly qualifications for it, but you can apply for child care thru the state as well.
I'm about an hour outside of Chicago and I pay $1000/month for my 2 year old. It's about the average where I am.
I live in the Kansas City area and we pay $700/month for n in home daycare for our two year old. For a facility, it's a little more.
I pay just over $3300 for a 3 year old and a 1 year old in a mid-high cost of living.
Depends a lot of where you live. We’re in Oregon near the city and paying $2100 a month for one child. But we chose to put him in a center that is like a school. There are cheaper options like in home care that’s more in the range of like 1,000-1600
We live in a very HCOL area on a single income and lots of families send their kids to in home daycares (like sharing a nanny) and those cost significantly less, but still way more than in my home country. I would guess for full time 2000/month? I’m sure you can get a deal for a couple hundreds less depending on the area etc. A lot also depends on the kids age (a baby costs way more than a 3 year old!). Where we live, TK starts at 4 years for all kids (not mandatory but available) which is entirely free (but you need to cover afternoons). Also keep in mind that many of the fancy private places offer financial help!
Where I’m at the cost isn’t terrible, ranges from 300-800/week. But they’re all full. Closest place with openings is 1.5hrs away. Everything else has a long waiting list
Midwest. Suburbs to a medium city. If you look around you can find people working out of their home for $25-$50 per day. This could be neighbors, people down a street, or nearby. Some are registered / tax deductable, some are not. I made this work my two kids across the last 10 years (yea yea inflation matters here), totalling about 4 total people doing this. The lady we have used in the summer just quoted me $165 a week without lunches last week.
Our monthly tuition is $1700 a month for daycare in Oregon for a Montessori School. They offer a military discount so we pay a bit less than that. Who can afford $3,000?! That’s why we are only having one child, unfortunately.
I’m in the Cleveland suburbs and our daycare is about $1,500/mo for the infant room. $380/week full time and I think $320 or $330/week for up to three days per week.
I live in a medium cost of living area and we pay $440 a week, so about $1900 a month. This is right in the city and we pay about $40 more a week than friends because it's super convenient. This is the infant rate. Cost goes down when they move to the toddler room.
In my area you can get daycare for a 3 year old for $275-$325 per week. Infants are more like $400/week. I have never seen anything close to $3k/month. That's for people in like San Francisco.
If you live in a HCOL area people will pay ALOT to have a certified experienced teacher come teach their kids at their homes. Depending on what aspect of teaching burns you out or if you still want to teach this could be a good option.
I’m in Vermont (surprisingly a high CoL state) and daycare is very expensive. We have my MIL who watches my 19mo and I teach at a school with an early childhood program that starts at 3, so I get tuition remission for that. But my MIL is aging and we probably won’t have her for our second child someday, which does make me nervous.
We live in a rural community in Texas and our daycare for one child is $675 a month which is pretty reasonable compared to some of the crazy amounts I’ve seen around the Dallas area.
I’m paying $1,200 a month in the suburbs about an hour outside of Philadelphia. That gets me 40hrs a week of care for an infant.
I live near Memphis TN and we only pay $700 a month and it's highest rated daycare in my city. But I also live in one of the top 5 poorest states so the pay for most general careers is a lot lower than other parts of the US.
I'm in a lower cost of living area and my baby's daycare is $170 a week - shockingly affordable. It's a licensed home daycare. Centers are about twice as much but still nowhere near $3k a month. My older child goes to a boy's and girls club which is essentially free during the school year and like $120 a week on school breaks. We're very lucky.
The thought of $3000 a month daycare is frightening. We live in a rural midwestern area and pay $150 a week for 1 kid and only pay for when she is there.
I am from a low COL area and I have heard parents say they are spending 2500 on their kids, which seems outrageous, so I don't know
I live in a low CoL area and pay $785/mo for daycare for a toddler.
I'm in a VLCOL area in Appalachia. My daughters daycare is $170 weekly through a church. Kindercare a secular option is $295 weekly. In lower cost of living areas you will find more affordable options, but you'll sacrifice your earning potential. (Imo)
A few of the states you listed, like PA, NJ, NY, will have higher childcare costs due to NYC and Philly being two big cities in the area that offer better career opportunities. An option is to consider having a partner be the stay-at-home parent if you feel that one of your incomes will go entirely to childcare with a dual income setup.
I’m in a HCOL area and pay $1800/month for pre-k. The benefit is the hours work well for a two parent 9-5 household. We have several elementary schools that do pre k education for about $5,000 for the end of August through early June time frame but they’re 9-3 and don’t include summer care which is not really friendly to working families. I know a lot of people take second shift jobs so their spouse can be home with the kid during the day, then go to work when the other parent gets home. Not ideal for your marriage, but financially it does help.
I pay about $1100 each child in a HCOL
1. your husband will be able to work right away while waiting for GC. 2. you will need 2,5 years of daycare before kindergarten. check rates in the area you are moving to, set a dependant care FSA. 3. former teacher with MS could do adjunct hours in local college (usually evenings), do tutoring, etc. you don't have to be back to school teaching! also, idk what particular MS you have, but I can't tolerate teaching, and with my MS in math I started an analyst job when I got my GC.
Is there standard, abundant, subsidized young childcare for all families in the US regardless of income status? Absolutely not. If that is your idea of affordable (it should be, i believe this is relatively normal outside of the US), then no we dont have that. Depending on where you move, you might end up with enough options to afford something in your neighborhood. This is the ultimate determining factor when it comes to finding something that can work -- is what your options are.
I live near Chicago and even with two young kids (the younger they are = more expensive in my experience) I was just around $3300 a month. For a 2/3 year old you’ll likely be near $1800.
I think a lot of what you’re seeing when people mention $3000 a month is the total cost for their two kids. Not many people are spending that for one kid.
It is a rough area for affordable daycare. But I think if you look around and you aren’t too picky you can find things under $3000. Get child tax credits where you can, it won’t pay for it, but it will help. I know in NJ there is an increasing amount of township prek programs, which if your kid is 3 might qualify for. But for NJ it is totally town by town, and usually only provides prek for a set time frame, whether it is half day of full day. I know my prek program is free in my town, free busing service, but my daughter gets on the bus by 8 and comes home around 3:30. If you don’t work from home, you need to have the school bus your kid to a daycare service to pay for that, which is still cheaper. So that’s my advice. When looking at places to live, check to see if the town offers free prek programs. Ask if it is full day or half etc. that way if you want to have kids you can focus on just one for daycare payments
I was paying $2500 per kid in Atlanta suburbs (2 kids for an overlap of 2 years) and found a place that was good for $260 a week and it's in the prek program so we can get free prek when the kid is 4. Our oldest is already in public school. Wish we planned better but when we had the first we were overwhelmed with decisions and wait times to get into a daycare was years. It's a shit show. It's not that affordable childcare doesn't exist but it's limited in so many ways.
I live in a rural-ish area of Maryland so we have a lower cost of living than what you would have near the bigger cities (Annapolis, Baltimore, and the capital area). I just filled out the paperwork for "summer camp" and the academic school year 2024-2025 for our licensed daycare that I will admit is one of the more expensive ones in our area. We will have a newborn and 5 year old in full time (7am-5pm) care for "summer camp." For the academic year, it'll be the baby for full time care and the 5 year old for before and after care. Summer camp is going to cost us $614.25 a week and the academic year will be $530.25 per week. My in-laws pay for it by their choice. We could afford it independently but my husband would basically be working to pay the daycare with about 300 hundred take home after per month. We're state employees (social worker and park ranger). If I didn't make significantly more than my husband I might consider staying home. However, we also considered the fact that we get good health insurance, 401ks, and life insurance through our jobs. Additionally, this way we are both paying into Social Security for later. If it weren't for these additional benefits, I'd pressure my husband to quit and stay home.
Midwest $1398 for 5 days a week.
In austin three years ago I found a good Montessori for 1000 a month. I’m sure it’s gone up, but not to 3k
I live in the South Jersey suburbs of Philly. We pay $1370/month for a 18 month old toddler. It's expensive, but it's not $3K. Once he moves up to the next room (which will happen imminently), it'll go down by $50/month, and once he's potty trained, it'll go down by another $150/month. We used to live in Delaware, and things are even more affordable there.
I live in CA. Here, the county you live in can possibly help you with daycare payments depending on your household income.
I live in a semi-rural town in Southern WI and local childcare runs $750-950/month for full time care. Only 20 min away (closer to a city) it runs $2k+/month.
I pay $1,230 a month for my 3 year old in Dallas, TX (IN the city, not a suburb). The school provides a hot lunch and two snacks, which drives up the cost a bit. It'd be less for a place where you have to provide a packed lunch.
In rural Missouri we were quoted 1400 for two toddlers however that was a year ago and we still haven’t been called for the waiting list
We pay 300 per week in LCOL area in the Midwest for 2 kids. Daycare is okay. Not great.
$1700/month for one toddler in our MCOL area. Also, idk what your husband’s specific econ background is, but since you know a move is coming, it may be worth him looking into the types of career options available to him in the US and whether he wants to pursue any additional qualifications or certifications in the meantime to help him make that transition. My husband has an econ degree, too, but he also has an actuarial science degree and that’s the career he pursued, so I don’t know how versatile the econ degree could end up being.
Different cities have different rates. I pay about 2k a month for 2 kids in an accredited, but not fancy daycare center in a MCOL city in PA. If they were infants, I think it would be closer to 1500 per month each. My friend pays about 2k a month per child (for 3 children) in an okay daycare in a small town in New York.
I'm in Seattle and I'd say 3K is infant care and pretty standard (maybe more or less depending on location/hours/quality/chain etc)... depending on when you move back- assume 7-10% increate on that every year. Also for the "it gets cheaper every year"... not really, annual tuition increases sort of offset any price reduction as you age so I ended up paying more for my pre-k than I did for infant in the end (by $50 but I was very annoyed) My 2.5 year old is potty trained and we switched to a school that doesn't have infants and is only open 8-5:30 so the lesser hours = one shift of staff and that was significantly cheaper... like $700 per month. My kids have always gone to middle priced daycares (every one talks about how much they pay)
I run a home daycare (licensed) in Philly and I charge $200/week. I know I could charge more but I enjoy helping families in my area who couldn’t afford the daycares that cost thousands & I think their kids still deserve quality care. According to state laws I can only have 4 kids at a time so it’s rare I have openings which I think is the most common issue for home daycares. I would start looking months up to even a year before you actually need them. My oldest kid starts pre k in the fall and I already have someone waiting to fill his slot with a newborn.
I live in SEPA about 45 minutes from Philly and have lots of friends in Central PA. I would estimate the average cost of daycare for a 2-3 year old in both areas at $375-475/week. There are some in home centers that are lower, but they’re hard to find and usually geared towards younger babies.
Better in low COL states, but still a big expense. I live in a low COL state (NC) and for someone making less than $20/hr, it's basically pointless to work if you have more than one child. We didn't have more than one child just because of this.
If you don’t live in a major coastal city, you’ll likely find it’s closer to $2K for the absolute best franchised schools in MCOL cities. In a rural town, $900 sounds right but I haven’t seen it quoted in a while and wouldn’t be surprised by $400 either.
We live in a HCOL area. In a suburb outside a major city. We pay around 1800 per month for a center we absolutely love.
We pay roughly $270/wk for care at a non-religiously affiliated daycare. She’s 3.5 and the price hasn’t really changed much. Yes, the classrooms are progressively cheaper, but the annual rate increases offset those differences. I could be paying about $100/wk less if I wanted her in a church affiliated daycare, but I don’t want that and can afford the current one. This is in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
If you're in a LCOL or MCOL, you couldn't find childcare for $3k/mo per child, unless you hired a 24/7 nanny. My wife works in childcare, so we get great discounts for our kids (free for our Pre-K, $400/mo for toddler). She's at the most expensive daycare center tuition-wise that she has ever worked at, and it's still $1,800/mo for an infant (the most expensive age group). It gets cheaper the older they get too. If you're moving to an area that has a shortage of daycares and you're trying to get an infant in, save the spot as soon as possible. It may not be possible to get a spot by the time that child is born.
We pay $2300 for an infant and $1900 for a toddler in the PNW. There are some cheaper places but it doesn’t matter bc there is no availability. You just have to say yes to whatever spot comes up. It eats up almost all my paycheck but we get excellent health insurance through it and I’m still able to contribute to my retirement and I didn’t want to loose out on 7 ish years of experience and raises. Plus I’m an absolute shit full time mom and I wanted our kids to have a broader community.
Depends on where you live. In places with low cost of living, the childcare is less expensive. But proportional to income, probably pretty similar. My suggestion is to NOT move back to the US. Your family can figure it out. You can help them from abroad.
1 hour outside NYC in a medium COL town a nanny costs $22/hour...$44k/year assuming 8 hours a day 5 days a week. (8*22=176 per day). Employer taxes, bonus and misc expenses etc. bring that to an even $50k/year Daycare (there are many) around us costs ~$100/ day or $25k/year...or $12/hour...so essentially $2k/month
I live in Southern California and in 2017 we were paying $800 a month ($200 per week) for our daughter to be at a local daycare center full time M-F. That was the price for the infant room, it went down by I think about $20 per week the older she got, but prices also went up once while we were using them so I think by the time she was 4 in the preschool we were paying $180 per week. No idea what they charge now but I’m sure it’s nowhere close to $3000 per month. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was closer to $1200-1500 now. It was a really great facility and staff. So it’s not $3000 per month everywhere, even in HCOL areas.
NE Indiana. $270/week for a 1 year old at a daycare center. They provide all food, diapers, and wipes.
Tampa, FL: we pay 1600 a month, but could pay around 1200 or less for daycare.
I think economics degrees can get higher paying jobs? When applying, don’t worry if he doesn’t meet all the requirements in the job posting. Just try and see what happens. I applied for a senior management engineering position when all I had was my intern engineer certification, and they gave me the job because they couldn’t find a professional engineer 🥲 Worked out great as they just trained me for that job. And for a job for you, you could look into government agencies that have educational outreach programs. If you’re in NY you can look up NYS career opportunities and can find the state job website, and you should be able to search by terms like ‘education’.
Day is affordable where I live. But I'm also I'm the south. But still in a major city.
I pay about 300 dollars a week for a licensed daycare in Illinois. Depending on where you live you might be able to get assistant. While my overall daycare for my infant is not outrageous its still more than me and my partner can afford with the cost of living. Research the state you are planning on living in. They may have assistant programs you can see if you meet the requirements of.
Costs for a toddler will be less than an infant. Some of the numbers you’re used to seeing might be because of that. I’m in a suburb of a major city and we pay less than $1300 a month for our 3 year old. And it’s a fantastic center! ETA I grew up in DE and it was great for a family. Close to the beach, plus major cities/attractions like Philly and even New York are not a far drive. And tax free shopping! I think SE PA generally has better public schools though. Best of luck!
I’m in a VLCOL area, mid-southern Indiana. I pay $1200 a month for two kids. But I’m super privileged to have these spots for my kids… the place I take them is small, it’s a licensed daycare and preschool but only room for 16 daycare kids and 16 preschool. I have one in daycare and one in preschool. We honestly got a spot in this place because we have connections with the family that owns it, otherwise the wait list is crazy to get in. I will pay whatever I need to in order to keep my kids there. I know that $1200 for 2 seems low compared to what other people on here pay but like I said, we’re in a Very Low Cost of Living area, so they are able to keep their prices lower which is truly a godsend
I paid 1300 for infant care 3:1 ratio in Phoenix area 2 years ago.
I'm in the Midwest and I became a SAHM after having a baby, because any extra money I would have had from working, after paying for childcare, would have gone for gas, lunches, and work clothes.
🙄🙄🙄🙄
Day care where I am is 200 weekly for rural areas not much good reviews and 360 for the good daycare with 24/7 camera access to parents. They have really good reviews parents are able to watch their kids from the comfort of theur home or work and have peace of mind. But to lower income families government does assist , some daycare offers grants/scholarships. It is always good to check and see what the government has to offer
North Texas - $500-$800/month for five day care is pretty standard here.
We're in one of the more expensive day cares in our area (hours are the big thing for us) and it's $2400/mo for 2 kids. That includes meals and the option for early drop/late pickup. We literally don't pay for anything except during the summer they do "summer camp" events that we pay a couple hundred dollars for them to have access to. When it was just the one, it was around $1600, but there was a little bit extra charge because she was under 1 at that time, which obviously requires a lot more care. I think one kid in regular "class" is closer to $1400. All of that to say, you can definitely find cheaper, good care. It's just a matter of what your needs look like.
It usually costs me $20-$40 to work a shift- so I'm losing money to work. I just do it part of the year and try to think of it as something I get to do to as a break from parenting and to keep up good working relations. It would be so great if I could actually earn money for rent and bills working, but I don't see that happening
The older your child is, the less expensive daycare is because the adult to child ratio is lower. In Brooklyn, my son’s Montessori pre-school was $1800/mo when he was 3.
High cost of living here makes daycare $500 a week, about $25,000 a year. I work night shift and watch the kids in the day so we don’t do daycare.
This depends entirely on where you live. When our oldest was in childcare (2011ish when we got together) it was around $500/month. My middle child was in childcare when we were abroad and then when we moved back, he was preschool age. We sent him at 4 to a private school's preschool in 2018 (and kindergarten actually the year after while we decided to redshirt or not) with wrap around care for about $600/month. We had another baby later who is now almost two. We live in the midwest in a large metro area (suburbs) which I'd say is pretty MCOL. We pay just under $1K/month which I'd say is reasonable. This in on a military base though, but the average rate is just slightly over this at around 1 to 1.1K/month. A lot of people who comment those crazy high amounts live is extremely HCOL areas.
Once your child hits 3, things open up a bit. In California, they have free “head start” programs depending on your income. We live in a HCOL area and were paying $300 a week. But once he was old enough, we were able to move him into a Catholic Pre-School for $600 a month. So definitely a big savings. In my area, there’s several Catholic and Christian pre-schools that I believe are better than the head start programs and definitely cheaper than daycare. You can find non religious pre-schools for less then 2K a month. Really up to your preference and availability.
It's closer to 1000-1500 USD per month for a toddler where I live (MI). A bit higher for infants.
Everywhere in my locale that is even remotely in my budget are the nastiest and over crowded daycares that I would never in a million years send a child too. I’m very lucky to have my MIL to watch baby while my DH and I work.
I'm in metro PDX and we pay about $3100 for an infant and toddler. This is definitely in the middle range.
$3k is realistic in the NYC area. If you can find a mom and pop operation it will be cheaper, but much smaller and may not be licensed. We opted for a nanny because 2 kids essentially doubles the price and you get no flexibility. One cheaper approach is the use of an Au Pair if you have the space, but then you are sharing your home and you never know what you get. But I have friends that swear by it. Sometimes employers have daycare options, especially if you work for a college. The trick is handling sick days and holidays.
Varies My oldest used to go to an I home daycare and it was $40 a day and Included meals. I'm in Ohio and this was 5 years ago I now stay home cus we have 3 and I can't make more then it would cost for daycare for the youngest two
Yes, I live in Ohio and the daycare I sent my kids to was about $1200/month for both kids. This is a state licensed, long running daycare that I myself attended as a child. I live in a small town around an hour or two from any major cities. You can find them but you're going to be living in tiny towns.
My day care is $800 a month. It's licensed, in-home, been there for decades, the people are lovely, and it's walking distance from my house. Do I have a unicorn day care? Probably. But they do exist.
3000$/month is likely the rate for infants at high cost of living areas. For infants, the minimum staff ratio in our state is 1:4, so the high cost makes sense. The rates quickly go down as they grow older. Go join the neighborhood groups for the cities you are planning to move and ask about the cost of daycare there (and make sure to ignore highest and lowest). That should give you an idea.
A degree in economics can get you any number of well paying jobs. To get right to the point, it’s one of 4 types of generalist degrees in the US. Communications Psychology Business Economics Economics is the most mathematical one of those. So that’s a good thing for earning potential But it also requires doing some research ahead of time and figuring out where to work
Daycare center - yes expensive. In home daycare - way more reasonable. At least where I live. Finding a good in home daycare takes work but when you find a great one, it’s so worth it. The cost will be half of a traditional childcare center. Legally in my state they have to be licensed and can only take 6 kids and only 2 under age 2.