I even asked my wife when she got home what it was we were quoted with 2 years ago. Well, she even said my figures were a tad high. She told me it would cost us more like $35,000 to $40,000 for daycare with 5 kids and 2 of them in school most of the year.

But, I still think that is high. There is no sense for me to go to work just to turn around and spend that money on daycare when I can be home with them myself. I will talk more later about some of the things I do when I’m home in case for some reason I am left in a hairy situation. Everybody should have a back up plan if things go bad.

But Kailana of Hawaii emailed me and left me what it costs her for childcare:

Hey Steve,

Glad to hear that b5media has added a Daddy blogger to their group! I’ve been a big fan of Kerri and Hsien and look forward to reading your blog, too.

My daughter attends preschool here in Hawaii and it cost $600/month. Next year we’d like to get her into private school which will cost us $15,000 a year for kindergarten. Can you believe that?

Aloha ~ Kailani
The Pink Diary

Post from: Blisstree

A Day Care Cost Confession

So if you put all those together it was almost inevitable, unless we wanted to put the kids in daycare. Not that my wife and I are completely against the idea, but we would rather have one person at home with the kids.

So for us there were 2 major determining factors in this:

1) My wife was making 5 times the amount of money I was. With her working there were tons of benefits from it, including the weekly paycheck.

2) We wanted our kids to have one parent raising the little ones during the day. Statistics show good results with at least one parent at home than throwing them in daycare for the day. Again, I am not opposed to daycare facilities. For some families both parents need to work and I am happy there are opportunities for the parents to use daycare facilities. But for us it doesn’t seem to be an option. Why?

Well, currently the daycare cost in my area is running anywhere between $350 and $500 per week per child. I have (or will have in January) 5 kids. Even if we chose the cheapest route we would have to fork out $1750 for the week. If I paid the higher prices I would be forking out $2500 for a week. I have 2 kids in Elementary School so I wouldn’t have to pay for 2 kids during the school year and only during school vacation and summers. So let’s get a rough estimate using the cheapest possible scenario.

3 children in daycare for 52 weeks at $350 per child would total $54,600 for the year. Let’s say I needed to dump my 2 older kids in daycare for 2 months in the summer and 2 weeks for vacation time like Christmas break, etc. So let’s go with 10 weeks for the year. So for 2 kids for 10 weeks at $350 per child would run us $7,000 for the year. That’s not too bad but let’s add that number to the $54,600 we originally came up with for the 3 kids and we would be forking out $61,600 for an entire year of daycare.

So basically if I had a job that paid me $61,000 per year it would cover all my expenses. With me at home we are actually saving money. To be honest with you, I don’t think I would end up paying $350. I think realistically it would be anywhere between $400 and $500 so the $61,000 is a bear minimum figure.

So now you know a little bit about why I decided to stay home. A lot of it is financial reasoning.

Post from: Blisstree

So How Did I Become a Stay at Home Dad?