Increase in savings once kids are in elementary school?

Jen&Len

DH and I are having a hard time building our savings accounts.  We basically just have enough for an emergency.  Since having kids the amount has basically plateaued even though we are pretty frugal.  We spend 10-15K per year on child care alone.  Because of our work hours, there aren't any day cares in our area that open early enough for us to drop them off and get to work on time.  We don't live near family, so we rely on a sitter, who comes over.

DS started preschool this year, which is an additional 4K this year, will be 5K next year and in 2 years, both DS and DD will be in preschool at the same time (they fall on either side of the cut off, so they will only be 1 grade apart).

We are comfortable, but we really wanted to start retirement funds outside of what we contribute at work and hopefully, college funds for the kids and there is just no way right now.   Plus, a family vacation would be nice!

We're hoping that once both kids are in elementary school full time, a lot of these costs will go away and our savings accounts will take off. Did any of you see that happen?  Or are there additional costs that we have to consider once the kids are in elementary school?

littlemermaid

You should be able to save money on childcare if you use the Latch-key care(before/afterschool care at the school) once they are in elementary school.  Then you might spend money on afterschool activities like dance, sports, music lessons depending on the child.

lady_tytah

littlemermaid:

You should be able to save money on childcare if you use the Latch-key care(before/afterschool care at the school) once they are in elementary school.  Then you might spend money on afterschool activities like dance, sports, music lessons depending on the child.

All of this. Once my daughter was in PreK (state ran so free) costs pretty much went down. We could have actually saved money last yr if we didnt buy a house, taxes didnt bite us in the a%& and have a wedding. I have my daughter in fall/football cheer leading but it's not a big cost. About what I would pay for a month of daycare, ~$500. But that's over a almost 4 month time, and because she's a prior cheer leader the cost is pretty much a third of last years. Hopefully you can find some combo before/after school care and an extra curriculum. Where I live I could have her in a dance after school program.
Sorry for rambling....but yes, costs should go down.

gimmietimmies

I would like to think that there was, but some of what we've been paying in daycare will be going to dance, sports and other extra curricular activities. Once we're done paying daycare, it'll have to be a conscious effort to remove the funds from checking on payday (ie automatic withdrawl) and moved to a less accessible account.

And it would be very easy to have the cost of the activities exceed daycare. My DH and I have been lucky that our salaries have steadily increased (not crazy, but noticable) over the years and this will also help.

Just to give you perspective, our daycare currently costs around $2200/month, but dance as a teen will cost $300/month for dd2, competition costumes and entry fees excluded, and dd1's sport of choice will cost about the same per month, but that doesn't include travel or equipment. It could easily get to $1000/month, for just the two girls.

shouldbworkin

Camp and activities still eat up a lot of our income even though our older kids are in school now.  We did get childcare down to $6k this year for PreK (not including camps), but we'll add that back as soon as the baby goes to daycare/preschool. 

neverblushed

Yes -- even if you have to do before/after care and a summer camp program, you will probably save money over full-time child care and/or preschool.  If you can arrange your own work schedules so that you need little or no before/after care, then you're really only looking at paying for summer camps/activities.  

In my area many schools have a b/a care program right at the school.  But you pay for this convenience.  To have 2 kids in it would cost me $900/month -- not worth it for me because I'm a teacher and I would only use about an hour of the care a day.

Other babysitters or programs can be cheaper but may demand more of you in transportation.  My neighbor watches my kids b & a, and it costs me about $120/week.

Also, keep in mind that elementary schools have MANY more days off than a daycare center (teacher work days, holidays, etc.)  You can go through a lot of leave between this and when your kids are sick.   

jlw2505

DH and I have been doing this very math as older DD starts full day kindy in the fall and younger DD starts the PreK program at the same school.  For us, while the daycare costs go down (PreK is only $28 less a month), we still need to pay for before care for older DD (and for both starting next year), after care 2x a week and summer care (school program or daycamp) for older DD for next summer and for both the summer after.  The PreK program is 9 1/2 months but we still send the girls to daycamp for 3 weeks (it works out so we only double pay 1 week).  In addition religious school from K to 2nd grade is $600 for the year and then add in any extra activities that the girls do - we will save some money but not as much as we would like - oh and we pay for full day kindy.

MyaMaternity

School is definitely cheaper than DC expenses but you will still have expenses.  Depending on what you do for before and afterschool care that will be an expense and usually there are other activities that cost a little bit of money but nothing like DC.  It will definitely help you though,

JJEM98

We saw a huge savings when our daughter started kindergarten in the public school system.  When she was in kindergarten we paid $110 per week for full day kindergarten plus aftercare. Now that she is in full day school we only pay $55 per week for just after school care.  There are smaller expenses here and there but it's all about what you choose, we let our daughter do one extra activity of her choosing each season and it's usually through our city's park and rec program and is fairly inexpensive, I think $80 per month is the most we have paid for a gymnastics program or $25 a month for swim lessons at our local YMCA.  Then we do piano lessons once a week at $15 a lesson.  Compared to paying for preschool through a local universities early childhood education dept plus a babysitter which ran us $900 per month we are definitely saving money!!

stdldb29

Once DS is out of daycare, we will put all daycare funds into his college fund. 

That is how we are planning on doing it.