Clinton has said that child care should not cost more than 10% of one's household income. I wonder how many people currently spend less than that. We spend 16% of our pretax income on childcare. Much more than that if you just look at take-home pay. Does your childcare cost you more or less than 10% of your household income?
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We would be spending 29% if we sent them to full time daycare. It would be 104% of my personal take home.
I'm home until they're in school. -
Much less. We only have one LO in preschool, though.
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We're waaaay over 10% of our income. Full time daycare for two would be 107% of my full-time income (LO2 isn't here yet) - a full thousand dollars more than we pay for our mortgage.
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Right now it's at 12% but with lo2 next year it will be over 20%
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Much less, but our daycare is onsite at work and heavily subsidized. It is way cheaper than other options in the area.
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28% with 2 kids in full time daycare.
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This is hard to calculate--would they look at last year's taxes and the adjusted take home pay? Would they look at monthly gross? How do year end bonuses factor in?
We pay about 14% of our gross annual salary now, and it's about 20% of our adjusted income.
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More - it's just over 10% of our household income. If I was on my own, it would be about 20% of my gross income.
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Childcare - $12,220 for one, so 6% of our pre-tax income.
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We're at almost exactly 10% for two kids, but we live in Indiana where childcare is a lot more reasonable than elsewhere in the country.
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10% would be a dream! Ours works out to be about 30% of our pre-tax income, 2 in full time daycare.
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Less than 10% but we only have 1 LO and only pay for half time in the summer (2 months). Once we have 2 in preschool it will definitely be more than 10% though...
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This year, I think around 7% of our pre-tax income, but DH had a good year with consulting and LO moved up to the preschool level, which is much cheaper. It would normally have been around 10% of our normal income. Next year when LO2 arrives, we will be spending around 20% of our normal income. Ugh.
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Right now with one 3yr old in full time day care we are at almost exactly 10% of our take home pay. In the spring when we have our 3yr old and new born in daycare full time it will be approx 20% of our income and I consider our DCP to be very reasonably priced.
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We live in NYC (so there's that) we spend about the same each year on rent and childcare. Each is about 1/4 of our take home....
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Less than 10%
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Right now, it's just over 10% of our income. Starting in January, it will be over 20% of our income for two in full-time daycare.
ETA: this is pre-tax. I don't even want to know what it is post-tax.
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Two in full time daycare is significantly less than 10% of our household income.
I'm weary of setting/discussing child care costs based on percentage of income as I wouldn't be happy with a sliding scale where I end up paying more under policy changes because we have relatively high household income.
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10.9% of our gross income with just 1 in daycare, ugh.
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Ours is about 10%. But we have a fairly inexpensive daycare for our area and we're both engineers who make good money. I'd guess the majority of people around here are spending much more than 10%!
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16% with 2 in full time preschool.
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We only have one and full time daycare is about 6.6% of our gross combined salary. Obviously a higher percentage if we're going with take home pay.
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11% of our gross annual income right now, but next year when #2 gets here it will be 25%. But only for about 5 months until DS1 goes to Kindergarten then it will go down to about 18% since we will still have to pay for after school care.
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It's a little over 10% of our pre-tax income. But after taxes, 401k, insurance, etc., it's about 25% of our take home pay which is a huge hit each month for just one child. I can't imagine when we decide to have another.
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When DD was younger, we paid about 10% of our pre-tax income. Between her getting older and tuition becoming correspondingly less, and a couple decent raises, it's now about 7%.
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We will be putting them in daycare soon but haha no! There is no way our daycare fees will be less than 10% of my income or joint income. I'm expecting and assuming to pay at least 20% of my income.
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Over 20%. If we didn't use insurance through my work, I would probably quit and stay home with them.
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7% for us, but we have only one in daycare.
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It's more than 10% pre tax, and that's not even a good number to look at, because we can pay for only about $5000 of the expenses per year with pre tax money (that's less than half of what we pay for child care). The rest comes out of post tax money, and if you look at that number, about a quarter of our earnings goes to child care. Though I'm more upset about where my tax money goes (I've got family working for city government, and the stories are not pretty).
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13.8% exactly, for one kid, as a percentage of our *net* take home per month. It would be 8% of it was a percentage of our gross income. And our daycare is definitely the lower end of the spectrum in the DC area.
I'm a Clinton supporter, but I will say that I generally HATE these kinds of proposals (the age old "no more than 1/3 of your income on housing" advice makes me outright ragey) because no one talks about where you're calculating percentages from. And why middle class families usually get shafted on any kind of tax credit or relief on this stuff because we make just a bit too much to qualify.
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We were paying less than 10% even when both kids were in daycare. But daycare is extremely affordable where we live.
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Funny enough, if LO went to preschool full time, it would be 10% exactly of our current household income. Right now I am a SAHM / WAHM and she goes part-time.
Obviously once we have two, it would be twice as much! But in that scenario I would be WOH full time so then our household income would go up, too.
I don't think these conversations are really for folks like my husband & I. I'm thinking of a newly single friend who is going back to work and looking at childcare for her two kids at nearly 50% of her income as a single parent, despite being educated and working in a professional full time job.
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We spend 25% of our pretax and more like 33% after taxes. It sucks. I just took a huge huge paycut to start a residency, though so it hasn't always been this bad. Next year dd will be in kindergarten, thank god!!!!!
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@Truth Bombs: I actually haven't seen anywhere that childcare would be based on income, just that it would be capped at 10%. Meaning if you currently pay 5%, they aren't going to make your daycare payments higher until they are 10%.
It would be through Tax credits and deductions, so I think if you show that your payments are over 10%, there will be some kind of tax credit/deduction until it's at 10%.
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@Mrs. Carrot: I don't think the middle class will get shafted on either of the proposals from Trump or Clinton.. In Trump's proposal, there was worry the lower class wouldn't get any benefit because they already don't pay taxes so a tax deduction wouldn't work, so then he came back and said he would also offer a tax credit, where people can actually get $$ from the gov't. But his plan does favor richer people.
In Clinton's plan, which is not super detailed at this point, it appears that all she says is that childcare wouldn't exceed 10% of income. Presumably, in many cases, people living in more expensive cities have higher salaries and also pay more for services like childcare--so a percentage of income seems more equitable than a lump sum amount. Like currently, people can claim up to 5k of childcare through pre-tax deductions on a paycheck. But 5k in my area is laughably low and a drop in the bucket.
What do you think is a more equitable way to help people with childcare expenses, if not through percentages?
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@Mrs. Carrot: I am a Clinton supporter, too and think this would be a good idea... but on the flip side, I wonder how this would affect daycare workers. I know daycare workers and teachers are all underpaid. I would certainly not want this program to affect their take home pay.
That would be my concern.
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If we were paying for full time care it would be a quarter of our pre tax income.
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@Anagram: Ah, through tax credit and deductions... I see. That sounds good to me and I don't see how it would affect daycare facilities directly.. Unless the tax credit, creates an added jump in people using a childcare facilities and therefore might cause daycare workers to work longer hours. But that could be more revenue to the facility and they could hire more people.
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More for sure, and this is with ONE kid that goes PART TIME.
Next year with two kids and more hours for DD1, it's gonna be insane and I don't foresee any huge salaries raises
Please Clinton, if you're saying that, DO something about it for ALL of us!
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