Extra Cash -- How To Earn More and Spend Less As A Family (Part 1)

One of the problems that couples with children face is the extreme cost of childcare. This interferes with a family's finances in ways couples without children (or Double Income No Kids -- DINKs) never have to face. I am always slightly amused and irritated by financial experts who recommend a 2nd or 3rd job to people in debt, because this kind of plan actually sinks a family with children further into debt. Here's why:

• Kids require more than just daycare -- that cost is straightforward. Let's just say you have your child in daycare, and the daycare center is open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. (standard hours) and you can leave your child there that entire time for a set cost -- say $450/month, which is middle of the range for Tucson. An extra job is after hours. This means that you must find a sitter for those hours, and we've never managed to find someone to babysit for us for under $7/hour, and that's dirt cheap. I remember babysitting as a teen to the tune of $2-3/hour, but trust me -- those golden days are over. First of all, it is now illegal to leave your child with anyone under the age of 13 (I babysat for extra money at 11 and 12 years old). Second, kids are simply more saavy these days, and they ask for more. We usually don't use high school aged sitters, however, because our kids are so small, and college kids don't go for less than minimum wage, but even the few times we let a high school kid watch our son (before we had 2) we still paid $6/hour and stressed about it the entire time.
• Anyway, so if you take on a 2nd job, say from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., you will pay $21+ for a sitter. Then there is dinner. A couple without kids might get away with a sandwich eaten over the sink, but kids need nutrition. But just for fun, let's say you go the cheap route -- .89/box macaroni. Watch to see how much that costs you.
• Kids need attention, and that means you, not the sitter, not the minimum-wage-earning daycare worker, but you.Parents who are away from their children for great lengths of time tend to spend more on their kids to make up for it. It is very, very difficult to resist this urge. After a long workweek, who wants to fight with a child in the middle of Target over a 99 cent toy? It's only a dollar, really, but it's just that sort of thing that adds up over time.
• Next, parents who work long hours and must put their children in excessive care (most daycares have a limit of 10 hours a day, so excessive is anything over that) find that their children have behavioral problems. When my husband and I had our son in daycare full-time (about 40 hours/week, or four 10-hour days), we found that most of our time at home consisted of disciplining our son. Instead of being able to enjoy our weekend, we had to enforce rules that the minimum-wage-earning daycare worker didn't. We have well-behaved children; we are not much for corporal punishment, but time-outs, early bedtimes and long talks about listening filled our weekends. This is not a solitary experience; several studies have shown that a lot of daycare = more difficult children. Parents who don't enforce the rules on the weekends experience other problems, such as injuries, that happen when kids are out of control. Even the co-pay on an emergency room visit is expensive.

Ok, so your kid is in daycare, you have a good sitter and you found a second job for both parents, with a combined extra income of $22/hour minus your sitter. You're finally getting ahead a little, although the kids are slightly misbehaving and living on macaroni and cheese dinners. You take off a little time for that checkup with the doctor, and find that your child has high cholesterol and it's exacerbating his/her asthma. Co-pays on the meds are over $50/month, and that's just the beginning.

Kids need proper nutrition. Give a kid sugar cereal for breakfast, cafeteria food for lunch and a mac-n-cheese dinner, and you get the following problems:

• Childhood Obesity
• Early onset of type II diabetes (check any newspaper to see diabetes skyrocketing in young children)
  
• ADD/ADHD and other disorders (sometimes but not always linked to diet)
  
• Lead Poisoning (yes, an iron deficiency leads to lead poisoning, which retards childhood development and requires therapy, nutrition intervention, and a whole host of other things that translate into even higher costs).
• Heart disease, kidney disease, high cholesterol and high blood pressure

Sound depressing? It is. The main thing children need from their parents is the one thing hard to give -- time. No amount of extra cash will make up for a parents time. Even a parent working just a regular full-time job will find it hard to meet the needs of a single child in the hours remaining. One responsible adult in the family needs to be around to make meals and/or lunches, spend time helping with homework (school age) or playing and reading stories (little ones). If both parents are working, and at least one has a lot of energy, it is possible to make this work, so long as both parents are trying. If one has a flexible job, that's even better. But add a second job to one parent, and you invite exhaustion and illness in the adult, and you may even risk the future of your child.

So, for a family in debt, what are the options?