Realizing if we have a second kiddo, our daycare bill will be close to $40k a year. We live in a lower cost of living city and go to a nice daycare, but there are plenty that are way more expensive. We both have good jobs with what we consider to be high paying salaries for our early 30s.

How do people afford this? Absolutely insane.

The answer is the simple one. People in your financial position just suck it up and remind themselves it’s a temporary expense until elementary school starts (if you aren’t planning for private school). People who can’t afford it have one parent stay home, or have grandparent help, or work part time with nanny help.

Everybody has to make their own choices based on ranking priorities. We wanted a big family (5 kids). To make it happen, only one of us works while the other stays home and takes care of, and home schools, the kids. That meant we had to choose not to live in or even very near a large city because costs are way too high. It also means we don't drive new cars or have big new house. For us, it has been completely worth it.

Stay at home and raise your kids. Maybe work remote?
Reduce your expenditures, and you should be able to take care of your most precious gifts ... your children.

Realizing if you only pay 20k a year and state limits put it so a licensed ECE teacher can “only” watch 4-5 kids at a time. that means for a year that school has 80,000-100k and has to take care of expenses for educating and taking care of 4-5 kids for 8 hrs a day. meanwhile the school has to make a profit, and the teacher has to get paid and so the 40k a year you can afford is all the teacher takes home a year. Meanwhile the teacher gets puked on, hit, pooped on, peed on, talked back to and that’s the kids. when the parents pick them up all 5 parents have different opinions on how the kid should be taken care of for 8 hrs, the state also has an opinion, and so does their boss. so now they are trying to please 10 parents 1 state 1 boss and 5 kiddos for 40k a year and almost every day is hard.

Lots of cheaper options as well. Most families make a lot less and make it work.

My husband and I make almost $500K/year and are seriously considering if we can afford to have a 3rd kid. We have an au pair for our 2 kids now and would love to do a religions (read: inexpensive) private school, but that might not be in the cards. It’s wild!

My kids are 9 and 12 now, but their daycare cost us about $36k a year when they were both in daycare. My net salary at the time just covered it so I was basically making nothing, but I knew if I left the workforce it would be a challenge to get back in where I left off so we figured it out. I took a hard look at what we were spending money on and we had to cut back on things like buying lunch, going out to eat, buying coffee at a shop, etc. I think I lowered my 401K contribution a bit during that time as well then bumped it up when my eldest started elementary school. Remember too if you can't be home at the end of the day when elementary school starts you'll have to find and pay for after care too. It's much less expensive, but still something to consider. Look for places where you can cut back and I'm sure you can make it work. Good luck!

This, among other things, is why my husband and I only had one child. I feel like the cost of having children has changed dramatically since the 90s and even early 2000s. I had a co-worker who would always give me shit about not having a second child until I asked her if she was going to pony up the 20k/year for child care and another ≈4k for their health insurance...suddenly she decided she would stop making the comment (neither of our employers offered health insurance). My husband and I have always lived beneath our means but the math was simply not mathing. If I left the workforce we would have been making less than 50k/year and just with the bare minimum of what we needed to survive without just constantly eating Ramen we would have been absolutely screwed if anything unexpected came up. Despite how much we wanted to we just didn't have the funds or family support to be able to do a second

We are a $300k dual income household gross- my husband and I regularly say ‘how do people do this’. We’d love a third, but our kids would be too close in age and our daycare costs would be around 65k/ year. We suck it up and count down the days ….

I've survived off of less than $5,000. Per YEAR since my Bankruptcy and identity theft back in 2010. Why not Raise your own offspring and DO what God created you to do - Glorify God and Thank Him for your breath of life each day and Be Grateful? "money" is a Man Made concept - all we really have is Exchange of Currency (current) - such as our LIFE, energy, sweat equity we invest in Each Other's lives as peer to peer community members. What Gifts and Talents were you Born with that gives you real JOY? God is waiting and whispering - but are you Listening?

My local public elementary school has a daycare center on campus. Maybe check your area to see if there are any public schools that offer this. It was a fraction of the cost of private daycare and a real godsend!

We have four kids and my spouse stayed home after our second was born. It helped with the child care costs, however I wish someone would’ve warned us about the trade offs. He had a hard time re-entering the work force once the youngest went to Kindergarten because of the gap in employment. I would caution to not think of the decision as just a financial decision.

My husband and I live well within our means, and we did daycare for a few years so I could go back to work. then COVID hit, and everything changed. The daycares closed, and we were at home again. it showed me that I’ve been missing out raising my kids, and no amount of money can make up for that. I noticed other peoples beliefs and views were being drilled into my kids, and I no longer wanted that for them. My kids are 14 and 10 now so fully capable of taking care of themselves, but I’m still at home because I don’t want to miss things with them and pass them off to someone else. I don’t have a new car, nice clothes, or fancy things, but I’ll never regret the extra times with my kids.

The only way we have made having 3 kids work is by having my mom help. My husband works Wednesday - Saturday, I work Monday- Friday with a very flexible job, and my mom helps 2-3 days a week. If there are days that my mom cant help and my husband is working, I will start work super early, take a break to get the kids up and to school, come back and work until my youngest is done with his half day pre-k, come back home have lunch with him and play for a bit, then he does quiet time/plays in his room while I work until it is time to get the other 2 from school. Its exhausting but my youngest starts kindergarten next year so I will have them all in school all day and hopefully they have the before/after care program running and they can go to that.

You wait until your first kid is in school

Sacrifice for the the family. One parent works days the other works 3rd shift. I brought my sons up with being daddy day care, my wife took over on weekends and when I was at work. Was it hard yes did we have little means yes. But we were there when the boys grew up and we didn’t have money for day care.

We were in the same boat for 6 years - Make sure you take advantage of the FSA benefit and tax credit for daycare expenses - it helps a bit to soften the financial blow

It happened accidentally, but our kids are 4.5 years apart, so by the time the little one started full time daycare, the older one was in kindergarten. Older one goes to aftercare at the same place still, but saved is $12k and lets us pick them both up at the same time.

Friends in Germany in your position earn a third less than us in comparative roles, but their childcare costs for two kids in daycare are less than €10k

Though my kids are older now, my kids were spaced five years apart just for this reason because of daycare one kid in daycare at a time unfortunately that’s what it comes to. I am not diminishing the importance of a good daycare and the cost of it, but there are no real options for families