It's Worth It

Last night I had many many thoughts about staying at home vs. working. I always do on the first day school when my friends go back to work, and even more this year when my stay at home mom friends are putting their kids in preschool while I am not. So while the boys played, er, had art and phy Ed class outside, I did a little research and math on my iPhone.

I plan to do 3 activities a week with the boys: ECFE (early childhood family education), a Women's Bible study with Childcare, and (here's the biggie for me) gymnastics. I totaled up the cost of all 3 activities for 1year, including C's sibling care fee when I take M and N to their ECFE class and it came to $1508. Gymnastics is 2/3 of that, assuming they will like it and go once a week for the entire school year. That's a decent chunk of money if you ask me! So I did some math..

What if I were to put them in preschool three days a week? It would be the same amount of activity time for them that I'm planning now, not to mention free time for me...well, me and C. So not quite free. I chose the local public school's preschool for comparison because the rates are posted online. It came to $3,032. Ouch. I didn't even calculate the cost of both of them next year, then more years for C.

What if I were to go back to teaching this year and put all 3 in daycare? Preposterous, I know, but curiosity got the best of me so I looked up the rates for the daycare also through the local school system. Infants are 160week, toddlers to 48 months are 140/week. Nine months at that rate adds up to 23,040!

I'm pretty sure I didn't net that amount my last year teaching.

There's just no argument, staying home with the fellas is worth it for us.

Edit: the cost of our 3 stay at home activities is just 1024 for the entire year. I miscalculated gymnastics. Or mistyped! (it's not easy to do math on your iPhone calculator, record it to the iPhone note pad then remember the number when you type it into the blogger app you know)