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How We Decided an Expensive Child Care Center Wasn’t Worth It

How We Decided an Expensive Child Care Center Wasn’t Worth It We all want the best for our children, but when the cost of child care averages more than $10,000 a year, you have to draw the line somewhere. And what matters most is that your son or daughter is safe, active, and in the hands of a loving caregiver — not the size of the playground or the breadth of the curriculum. Photo: mliu92
I live in Indiana, and in the Midwest, almost everything is cheap – including daycare. According to Pew Research Center, the average cost for full-time infant care in Indiana is somewhere between $6,000 and $8,999 a year. Compare that to $14,939 in New York or more than $16,000 in Massachusetts.
Still, averages mean nothing when you’re shopping for daycare for your own family. Even with low average daycare costs relative to the rest of the country, I was pretty shocked to see how much daycare might cost when we moved in early 2014. The Goddard School right outside my neighborhood, for example, wanted $400 per week to watch my two kids full-time. And another private preschool around the corner was even more expensive – they wanted $529 per week for full-time care.
I balked at the idea of paying that much, even though I was slightly intrigued by all of the “extras” they had to offer. The private option taught gymnastics, French, and yoga in addition to preschool instruction taught by licensed teachers. The Goddard School offered much of the same, and both schools offered a huge playground, an ongoing roster of activities, and plenty of other perks.
Still, I couldn’t wrap my head around how we could pay for the expensive centers without making some huge financial sacrifices. At $529 per week, we would be paying out over $27,000 per year. And even at $400 per week, we would still owe well over $20,000. No matter how much we make, that’s still a huge chunk of our pay.
Considering All Our Daycare Options
So I started looking for cheaper options, starting with small in-home daycare options and smaller commercial centers. And I have to admit, I was pretty underwhelmed at first when I compared the two.
Instead of huge playgrounds and activity rooms, most “cheaper” options featured a slide or two and a living room converted to an activity room. Foreign language lessons weren’t on the agenda either, and yoga was replaced with regular ol’ “play time.”
Obviously, our first consideration wasn’t where our kids would go to daycare, but who would be watching them. And that’s one area where I actually wasn’t disappointed.
In almost every in-home or small center I visited, I was greeted by loving caregivers who enjoyed caring for children. I was also surprised to find that many of the in-home centers we considered were licensed. Meanwhile, they all had great references too.
Finding Value in Daycare and Everything Else
Like anyone else, I want the best for my kids. And that’s part of the reason our daycare decision was such a hard one. Still, we all know that sometimes you have to look at the big picture when deciding what is best.
After all, buying the “best” car for my family would involve trading in my paid-off minivan for something pricier – siphoning resources away from other big-picture goals like saving for my kids’ college education. Meanwhile, buying the “best” house in the neighborhood would likely mean upgrading into something more expensive than what we have now. You have to draw the line somewhere, and for me, that line is drawn at “value.”
First and foremost, we wanted a caregiver that would take excellent care of our children. We wanted someone who was responsible and able to provide them with the direction they need. Buy beyond that, everything else was negotiable.
A big playground? We have one in our neighborhood. French lessons? Totally unnecessary. Yoga? Not high on the priority list.
For us, the value of those “extras” was almost non-existent. And even more importantly, none of those things actually added to the value of the care my children would receive.
How I Decided an Expensive Daycare Wasn’t Worth It
In the end, we chose a small, licensed in-home daycare run by a loving caregiver for $150 per week. No ginormous playgrounds. No organic fruit smoothies for lunch. No bells or whistles.
Here’s how we decided that the expensive centers weren’t worth it: At $150 per week, we were paying $7,800 per year. That’s $20,000 less than the most expensive center we considered. Because of that difference, I was able to put $5,000 in my children’s college 529 plans last year, take my kids on a handful of family vacations, and also max out our retirement accounts. And because we are still sticking with a less expensive option, we should be able to do the same from this point forward.
When you look at all we gained by forgoing the pricey “extras” of an expensive childcare option, it’s easy to see why we decided that the expensive centers just weren’t worth it. Simply put, the price we would have to pay for the “best” is money we would rather put toward college savings, retirement, and other family goals.
It isn’t always easy to decide what’s best for your family. I know I struggled with this decision for far too long, even when the answer might have seemed obvious to an outsider.
But when I’m able to pay for my kid’s college tuition years from now, I know the sacrifice will be worth it.
The post How We Decided an Expensive Child Care Center Wasn’t Worth It appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Is Time Economy a Good Justification for Wasting Money?

Is Time Economy a Good Justification for Wasting Money? When you factor in the cost of your time, is it still cheaper to make chicken alfredo at home than to order it at Olive Garden? Photo: Olive Garden
The other day, I had a great conversation with a reader who wrote in to discuss why I advocate the value of maintaining your stuff, cooking at home, and other such things that require some effort but save significant money in the long run.
His argument primarily revolved around the idea of time economy or opportunity cost. Basically, his idea was that it’s often worth paying others to do simple tasks for you, like maintaining your car or cooking your meal, because it saves you time.
In some situations, I agree with him. Much of modern life is about time economy. Do we harvest wheat from our fields and mill it into flour? No, we buy a sack of flour from the store. This is all about time economy, because although it might cost less to grow wheat, harvest it, and then run the wheat through a mill to produce flour, the time investment there is huge for the amount of flour an individual person might need.
However, there comes a point where time economy becomes a crutch, where you’re no longer saving much time at all but you can “pretend” that it is because you see other advantages.
Take, for example, a plate of pasta alfredo at the Olive Garden. You can literally make the same meal at home – a small salad, a few breadsticks, and a plate of pasta – in about fifteen minutes. If you’re making the breadsticks from scratch – and trust me, if you do that, they’re going to blow the Olive Garden breadsticks out of the water – you may have to invest ten minutes earlier in the day as well. Add another five minutes for clearing the table and loading up the dishwasher and you might – might – have half an hour of effort involved from beginning to end.
If you add up the time it takes to go to the restaurant, wait for a table, place your order, wait for your food, then drive home after the meal, it’s actually far greater than the time invested in actually making the meal at home.
Yet meals are often used as a prime example of “time economy,” in that it takes more time to prepare food at home than it does to get food from a restaurant. However, that’s often not true at all, and even when it is, it doesn’t make up for the increased cost of restaurant food.
(Don’t get me wrong – there are situations where time economy is definitely a factor. Ordering delivered food is probably the prime example of this phenomenon. There are other situations where location brings time economy to the forefront, like when you’re near a fast food restaurant and 20 minutes away from home, but you have a meeting in 30 minutes and you’re hungry. Those are exceptional situations, not typical meal times.)
The reality is that “time economy” is often used as an excuse to offload a skill onto someone else.
Choosing to pay someone else to make a meal for you instead of making one yourself looks like “time economy” if you aren’t experienced in making food yourself, because the process itself feels slow and cumbersome and full of risk of failure to you. However, as you gain experience with preparing food at home, the “time economy” begins to quickly disappear.
I’ve cooked literally thousands of meals for my family over the last several years. At this point, it is faster for me to make almost anything at home than it is to go to a restaurant. I know how to prepare at least a few dozen meals my family likes off the top of my head, and I can follow most reasonable recipes really easily if I need more ideas.
The thing is, at the start, I was pretty terrible at cooking. I couldn’t manage scrambled eggs very well. Boiling pasta seemed like a major chore. It took a lot of experience for me to reach the point where time economy feels strongly in favor of preparing food at home because it’s a skill I built up.
And that, to me, leads to the Catch-22 of time economy. Whenever you use time economy as a reason to pay someone else to provide a service for you that you could easily provide for yourself, not only is it costing you money, it’s also costing you that increase in skill that you would get from doing it yourself.
That increase in skill has value. It means that the next time you’re faced with a similar choice, you’re going to be more likely to simply take on the task yourself. It’s going to seem less intimidating. It’s going to take less time. It’s going to take less mental focus. And it’s still going to save you money, too.
This entire phenomenon isn’t just about restaurant food. It’s about things like paying someone to fertilize your yard or to mow your lawn or to change the oil in your car. It’s about hiring a plumber to fix your toilet or an electrician to install a new thermostat. It’s about hiring someone to make a cup of coffee for you in the morning.
All of those – and many more – are example of the very same phenomenon. As you build up a particular skill, it seems less and less sensible to hire someone else to perform that skill for you.
This doesn’t mean that the initial choice is an easy one. At the start, the balance is almost always heavily weighted toward paying someone else to do it for you in favor of “time economy.”
When I first started making my own food, it was far, far easier to just go to a restaurant somewhere for breakfast. Making my own scrambled eggs was a slow process that usually involved errors like dropping shells into the eggs, adding too much milk to the mix, burning the eggs in the skillet, dropping food on the floor because I had a bad skillet grip, and so on. I had to take my time with each step because it wasn’t intuitively familiar.
As time went on, all of those little steps became easier and more natural and faster. I learned about little tricks like heating the skillet while I was cracking and mixing the eggs, and how to properly and efficiently crack an egg (I now usually crack two at once with one hand). I can tell just by glancing at the eggs how close they are to being done and whether they need to be turned over in the skillet. This means that cooking such eggs used to be my focus, but now I can make scrambled eggs and pancakes at the same time while still carrying on a conversation with whoever happens to be in the room.
The “time economy” of ordering such food instead of making it myself pretty much vanishes at that point. It simply isn’t more efficient with my time to have someone else make it for me (without the exorbitant price of delivery or a home cook or an exceptional restaurant with a great chef).
However, I never would have reached that point had I not chosen to go against “time economy” on a regular basis earlier on in my life. There were many, many times where time economy in that moment pushed me toward ordering delivery or takeout or even going to a restaurant. Those options offered some efficiency with my time – but at a financial price. However, by going against time efficiency and going toward cost efficiency, I began to steadily improve my personal skill at cooking.
The next time I made the choice, the difference in time efficiency was less… and each time I made the active choice to cook for myself instead of go out, I became more and more efficient in my home kitchen. Eventually, time economy largely stopped being a factor at all, which makes the cost savings of home cooking really, really attractive.
This entire story could be repeated for a number of personal skills. For example, with changing oil in cars, I’m still at the point where “time economy” pushes me toward having others do it. I’ve not done it enough times so that it’s really mindlessly efficient for me to just do it myself, though I know that I will eventually reach that point if I keep pushing myself to just change my own oil.
When I reach the point where it’s a matter of grabbing a pan, sliding under the car for a few seconds to drain the oil into that perfectly-placed pan, waiting an hour, then sliding back under to replace the screw, then pouring oil in the top – taking maybe five minutes all told – then it will be far more economical in terms of time and money to just do it myself.
Here’s the take home message: in the short term, “time economy” often pushes us to make financially poor choices. It’s often easier to pay someone else in the moment to do something to save us a little time and effort. However, once we build up that skill a little bit, that “time economy” gets smaller and smaller – and it often vanishes.
As we become more efficient with a task, with faster completion and a lower error rate, the time advantage of paying someone else to do it starts to become unjustifiable as the savings of doing yourself increases and the time for doing it yourself decreases.
Thus, unless you’re in an emergency, you’re usually better off trying to do most common tasks yourself. It’s not because it’s going to be cheaper right now – though it almost always is – or because it’s going to be more time efficient right now – often, it won’t be – but because you’re building up a skill for later use that will both reduce the cost and the time for you to do it yourself. Eventually, you’ll reach a point where the time economy of paying someone else becomes so small that it’s no longer worth it most of the time.
So, make the tougher choice sometimes. Make your own meals when going out seems easier. Try changing your own motor oil. Fix your own toilet when it leaks. Those tasks might seem difficult compared to just ordering food, heading to Jiffy L**e, or calling a plumber, but doing it yourself is far cheaper, and the more times you do those tasks, the easier and less time-consuming they’ll become.
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Eight Tips to Make Credit Cards Work for You, Not Against You

Eight Tips to Make Credit Cards Work for You, Not Against You Stay in control of your credit cards — don’t let them control you.
A credit card can be a valuable tool if you know how to use it properly. Likewise, using credit cards irresponsibly can lead to a world of hurt.
If you need an example of how badly things can go, look no further than your neighbors, friends, and relatives. According to the most recent statistics, the average American household carries around $7,200 in credit card debt. Even worse, that figure tends to increase with each passing year, even as household incomes struggle to keep up with inflation.
Further, a 2001 study by Drazen Prelec and Duncan Simester titled “Always Leave Home Without It” surmised that individuals using credit are often willing to spend twice as much for the same exact item.
Why? Because, according to the study, using a credit card instead of cash — particularly on items with a hard-to-specify value, such as tickets — somehow muddles our fiscal judgment and lulls us into spending more than we’d planned.
The good news, I suppose, is that Americans are really awesome at using credit cards. According to the Federal Reserve, 53% of all purchases are made with credit. Unfortunately, we’re just not nearly as awesome at paying them off.
How to Use Credit Cards to Your Advantage
But if you want to use credit in the right way, you don’t have to forsake credit cards altogether — although that’s not a bad strategy if you know you’re prone to abusing them.
Instead, adopt a few simple habits that will let you enjoy the benefits of credit cards — cash flow flexibility and rewards perks, to name two — without the dangerous downsides.
Follow these tips to make credit your best friend (instead of your mortal enemy):
Pay your bill in full every month.
If you don’t want to end up like the “average American,” you need to stay out of credit card debt altogether. That means charging only what you can afford and paying your bill in full every month — or even a few times a month if it helps you stay ahead of it.
Doing so may seem challenging, but this is the number one rule of using credit cards instead of letting them use you; it is truly the only way to avoid getting into credit card debt, and the only way to avoid paying interest on your purchases. (Trust me, you don’t want to do that: A 20%-off sale means next to nothing after you get whacked with an 18% finance charge.)
Never pay your bill late.
In addition to paying your bill in full, you should also make sure you pay your bill on time. Most issuers charge an ugly fee — often up to $39 — for a late payment. And since 35% of your credit score is based on your payment history, a missed payment can really ding your score.
Meanwhile, paying all of your bills on time is a great way to keep your interest rates low and improve your credit score – and your overall credit health – over time.
If you’re afraid you’ll forget and wind up missing your due date, set a reminder on your phone a few days beforehand or mark the date on your calendar. Another option: Adjust your online account settings so your bill is paid automatically on a certain day of the month through a direct bank draft.
Log into your account.
One reason credit is easier than cash to use and keep track of is because it creates a paper trail. When you use credit for all of your purchases, you don’t have to keep receipts for things like grocery and gas purchases. Instead, you can just log in to your online account to see where you spent money, how much you spent, and how much you have left.
Checking in often — at least once a week — can help you stay on top of your spending so it never spirals beyond your control. If you notice yourself pushing the limits of what you can afford to pay back this month, stop using your card immediately until you get the balance paid down.
Examining your account activity can also help you spot any money leaks in your spending. Are you spending way more at Starbucks than you realized? Most credit cards offer powerful tools on their websites to track your spending — use them to your advantage.
Use your credit card as a compliment to your budget.
If you’re disciplined enough, you can use a credit card as a compliment to your budget. This strategy usually involves creating a written budget, then using your credit card for purchases until you work through your predetermined spending limits. This is a great way to earn rewards for purchases you’d be making anyway, and to gain certain protections that only credit offers.
To stay on track, make sure to log in to your account once per week or every few days. Seeing your spending on your computer screen - in black and white - is sometimes the only way to let how much you’ve really spent sink in.
Know your limits.
If you’re worried that you might overspend, ask your credit card company to lower your credit limit to something you know you can manage on a monthly basis. They should be more than happy to oblige since they ultimately want you to pay the money back, and they can often make the credit limit change effective immediately. Not everyone wants a $10,000, $5,000, or even $3,000 limit on their cards, and that’s okay.
Another strategy you can try: Use your card until you’ve spent a self-imposed limit, say $500, and then put your card away in a drawer until the beginning of the next month – or until you pay your bill in full. This can help you stay on budget and on top of your bill while allowing you to maintain a larger credit limit that might be useful in an emergency.
Only use your card for the big stuff.
A lot of people who get into credit card debt complain that it sneaks up on them, and for good reason. Sometimes it’s those little $10 and $20 purchases that, over time, can take on a life of their own when left unchecked. If you want to avoid a “death by a thousand cuts,” consider using your card just for big purchases instead.
The best way to do this is to save up for your purchase in cash first. Then, after you make the big purchase with your rewards credit card (and reap the rewards points), you’ll have the funds to pay it off right away.
Another option: Use your card for big, important purchases, then pay it off over the course of a few months under a strict timeline — knowing that you’ll pay a bit in interest for the luxury of spreading out the payments. (That is, unless you can take advantage of an introductory 0% APR offer.)
When you go this route, start with a plan and stick to it carefully. For example, if you plan to buy a new washer and dryer for $1,200 and then pay it off over three months, make sure you’re prepared to pay $400 a month for three straight months (plus some interest). Ask yourself, “Can I definitely keep up that pace?”
It may also be helpful not to use your card on other purchases until you’ve paid off the washer and dryer in full. You don’t want that balance do***ng you months after you thought it would be history.
Take advantage of all the rewards you can.
Those who have the most to gain from credit cards are the people who master the art of credit card rewards. The best rewards credit cards offer an array of benefits – including cash-back, hotel loyalty points, and frequent flyer miles — that can be earned just for using your card for regular expenses such as groceries or the cable bill.
Of course, credit card rewards become a lot less lucrative when you’re paying interest on your purchases because you’re carrying a balance. To avoid that misstep, only pursue credit card rewards if you know for a fact that you can pay your balance in full. If you don’t know that for sure, those rewards probably won’t be worth it.
Choose cards with extra perks.
Even if you’re not interested in credit card rewards per se, you can still leverage the benefits of a credit card. For example, some of the best credit cards out there offer perks such as free travel insurance, primary and secondary rental-car coverage, price protection, and extended warranties. If you pay your card in full every month, you can enjoy all of these perks for free.
Don’t Be Average: Use Credit to Your Advantage
Yep, the average American really sucks at using credit cards. The thing is, that doesn’t mean you have to follow in his footsteps. Instead of falling victim to the credit card trap, buck the trend and use credit responsibly. The perks and rewards are amazing, but only if you have the willpower and self-discipline to truly take advantage.
The post Eight Tips to Make Credit Cards Work for You, Not Against You appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Sometimes

Sometimes Sometimes, you need to take a young child shopping, and it might throw off your list and your meal plan. But overspending by $20 doesn’t mean you’re a financial failure – it means you’re human. Photo: Quinn Dombrowski
Most of the time, I have my financial house in pretty good shape.
I follow my well-planned grocery list at the grocery store.
I don’t spend much money on stuff I don’t need.
I keep us on track with our family’s budget.
I don’t spoil my children with expensive stuff or experiences.
I save plenty for an early retirement and maybe for a new house in the country.
I enjoy the free things in the community and in my home.
I take care of maintenance tasks and plan ahead for them.
I make wonderful meals at home.
I stay content with what I have and the abundance that my life gives me.
Sometimes, though… sometimes, I don’t.
I’ll find my day completely disrupted by a series of unfortunate events and find myself at the grocery store trying to plan three or four days’ worth of meals on the fly with a five-year-old following me around asking me to add Chocolate Frosted Mini Wheats and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish to the cart – and in a frazzled state, I do.
I’ll click “Submit My Order” on the shopping cart at an online store at eleven o’clock at night because I just saw that they had a board game that I really wanted on discount. Three days later, the box arrives on my doorstep and I honestly don’t remember at all what I ordered, but when I open the box, I wonder what on earth I was thinking.
I’ll buy a bunch of Kindle books and then completely forget that I ordered them, causing me to go way over my personal “free spending” budget for the month. (I actually wrote about this in detail not long ago.) The next day, I’ll be standing at the library looking at the cover of that very book just sitting there waiting to be checked out for free in the “New Releases” section.
I’ll completely mess up my tracking of our family’s budget using You Need a Budget, get really frustrated with myself, not enter things for a week, then spend two or three hours fixing everything (more or less).
I’ll try to talk myself into dialing back my savings pace a little. Why? I’ll have this vague and unsubstantiated feeling in my head that we’re “saving too much” and not “living for today,” even though I’m happy with things the vast majority of the time.
I’ll go into Des Moines and do something fun and needlessly expensive with some friends, even though I know of plenty of free and fun things to do that very same day closer to home.
I’ll accidentally leave a bag of groceries in the car because I was in a hurry while unloading things. The next day, something will smell odd in my vehicle and I’ll discover a disturbingly leaky package of some sort of dairy product. The sludge has escaped all over the back seat and $20 worth of groceries are ruined, along with a meal plan completely disrupted.
I’ll find myself on a road trip when the maintenance light turns on and I remember that I forgot to change my oil several hundred miles ago because I didn’t add it to my calendar, so I’m stuck at a Jiffy L**e at seven o’clock at night in an unfamiliar town because it’s still a better option than buying an oil pan and dealing with that mess in a parking lot somewhere. All because I couldn’t remember to add a single simple task to my calendar.
I’ll hear my friend talking about the movie he just saw or the restaurant he just ate at and I’ll suddenly have this huge burning desire to see that movie or eat at that restaurant even though I had absolutely no desire to see a movie or eat out prior to this conversation. Even worse, I’ll sometimes go ahead and do it.
I’ll stand there trying to figure out what went wrong with this pan of lasagna, then I realize that I accidentally set the oven to 450 F instead of 350 F, and as I drop the crispy remnants of a once-delicious meal into the trash, I find myself stuck between the expensive options of getting some restaurant food or making yet another meal this evening.
As well intentioned as I might be, I make pretty big personal finance mistakes on a frighteningly regular basis. Even though I know incredibly well what I should be doing with my money at every turn, that doesn’t mean that I actually pull off those good moves.
The truth is, I’m not perfect.
At the same time, the truth is that if I expected perfection, I would only guarantee myself failure.
Why? I’m a human being. Human beings make mistakes and sometimes they fail even with the best of intentions.
My goal is not perfection. My goal is to wake up tomorrow and do better than I did today. My goal is for May to be better than April. My goal is for 2015 to be better than 2014.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize one key secret of success. The difference between me and a person more succesful than me is that the successful person manages to be on point just a little bit more often than I am. That’s it. It’s not a giant chasm of difference, but it’s enough so that if it’s repeated each and every day, it’s going to add up to a lot.
I might make the right financial choice 90% of the time, but the guy who makes the right choice 91% of the time is going to be just a little bit more successful today… and a little more successful tomorrow, too. The difference is tiny – maybe just a few cents or a dollar or two.
But those dollars and pennies add up, little by little. A few dollars a day, over the course of a month, adds up to $100. Over 10 years, that’s tens of thousands of dollars. That other guy who gets it right just a little more than I do ends up far, far ahead of me.
That’s the motivation. My goal isn’t perfection. My goal is to move from the 90% guy to the 91% guy.
What does that mean?
It means not beating myself up when I fail. Yes, I didn’t do things right. It does not mean I am a failure. It means I made a mistake.
It is really, really tempting to look at a mistake and let it define me as a complete failure in what I’m trying to achieve in a broader sense. If I can’t, say, follow a grocery list, then I’ll extrapolate that into saying that I can’t possibly spend less than I earn, which I can then carry into believing that my big financial goals are hopeless… and use that all as an excuse to just stop trying.
That’s foolish. I made a mistake, but I am not a failure. I’m like a runner who got my toe stuck on a sidewalk crack. That doesn’t mean that I give up running. It just means that I avoid that sidewalk in the future or perhaps get a better pair of shoes. I still get right back out there and keep running.
A mistake does not define me as a failure. It defines me as human.
It means looking for the reasons for that mistake. Why did I make that mistake? What conditions caused it to happen? For example, did I allow myself to use my credit card when I was tired? Maybe I made the poor choice of taking my five-year-old to the store with me when I wasn’t prepared to turn that grocery shopping trip into a teaching experience.
Every mistake I make happens for a reason. Mistakes aren’t a matter of personal failure. They’re due to my inability to address a situation well. The mistakes I make are correctable if I’m willing to sit back, study them, and find a better way of doing things.
Answering “why did I do this?” doesn’t expose me as a fundamentally flawed person. Instead, it exposes something in my life that I can strive to correct.
It means finding ways to not replicate that mistake the next time. Yes, I messed up today. That doesn’t mean I need to mess up in the same way tomorrow… or next week… or next month… or ever again. If I recognize that mistake and what caused it, I can figure out a way to not have that mistake ever darken my door again in the future.
I might not be perfect, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. Instead of mixing mistakes old and new, I’d rather just have new ones.
And with each little day that passes, I hope to slowly move from Mr. 90% to Mr. 91%. I don’t expect to – or even want to – be Mr. 100%.
Mr. 91% will do.
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