I was reading an article on Military.com this afternoon titled seven ways to cut Child Care costs. They had some good tips but it struck me that they had only listed seven ways. I have three children and after going through some budget readjustments over the last year we have had to find a number of ways to cut child care costs.

Child Care expenses for us easily topped our house payment as an expense!

I’ll start off listing their 7 ways and then add my own additional ways.

1. Employee Discounts — Check with both your employer and your daycare provider to see if there is a discount available based on your company. For example used to work for Motorola and they had a partnership with takers across the country that enabled me as an employee to get a certain discount based on my salary. The general idea was that employees that burned lower salaries or wages would receive a bigger discount than those employees that had higher salaries.
2. Telecommute — An obvious way to lower your child care costs is to telecommute and watch her own kids. Now when you’re watching your own kid you definitely will not be as productive as as you might be if your kids were in daycare and you were working at home alone. However you can creatively rearrange her schedule such that you can watch your kids during the day, work at night then when your spouse is home and proceed from there.
3. Flex hours — by rotating your schedule just a bit media couple hours one way and your spouse a schedule another way by a couple of hours you might be able to cover the entire period that is currently being used for child care. Even if you can cut your child on the halftime you might feel to save money.
4. Community programs — see if there are community programs that you can enroll your child and it don’t cost money. Or the possibly cause less money. Then you might be what makes up daycare with the community programs.
5. School Programs — see if your state sponsors a school program. I lived in Georgia where they had a lottery program that funds prekindergarten education for four year old children. This is pre-K. and not daycare, but it’s paid for by the state. That definitely saves you money and it prepares you child for kindergarten, see if your state has a similar program. Some states cover select children in some states cover all children. In addition some states cover children with special needs.
6. Use Operation Military Child Care (OMCC) — the military provides childcare fee assistance for National Guard and reserve troops that are placed on active duty and deployed when their children are not in DOD licensed childcare programs already. This is also available to active duty members of the military
7. Relatives — if you have family members are capable of watching your children, you might see if they can do that. It will definitely save you money and to give your children time and opportunities to bond with other family members. Even if they could only watch your child a few hours for a couple days a week that might help you reduce your childcare bill.

Those are the ways that military.com mentions that she might be a little reduce job care bill. Here are some additional ways that might help you:

1. You could attempt to renegotiate a better childcare rate. Sometimes you can negotiate a slight discount or even a temporary discount to save some money.
2. You could volunteer at your child’s daycare potentially in exchange for discount.
3. You might even barter your own services in exchange for daycare services.
4. Make sure that you are utilizing depending care savings funds to save money on your taxes as it relates to daycare.
5. You should also make sure that you are utilizing the childcare credit allowed for an income tax law.
6. If you have an infant, try and make the extra time to pump breast milk instead of buying formula. This does require extra work as you know at the pulpit but you can freeze it and make sure that your daycare is stocked with the right type of milk. Formula is very expensive and this can definitely save you a lot of money and based on my experience and research it’s healthier for your children.
7. Potty train your children early. This is not easy but the sooner you can potty train your children, the fewer diapers you’ll have to buy. If you can make the time to train your children to use the potty it can save you money.
8. On occasion you can take turns watching your neighbor’s children and in exchange they can watch yours from time to time. This can save you the cost of a babysitter, and on those days when schools out but you have to work, you can even take turns staying out with a group of children while your neighbor works and alternatively, having your neighbor stale with all the children while you work.
9. Plan your vacation sets up the fallen school holidays. This is not always possible, but if you can make it work or lease plan to telecommute on these days you might be a little save yourself the expense of putting your children into afterschool care during those holidays.
10. Don’t pay for your daycare with a credit card, pay with cash or check you don’t need to pay interest on daycare. If you have a rewards debit card, such as a PayPal card, then you can get a 1% cashback savings when you pay for daycare with your PayPal debit card. If you pay for daycare and it costs you $400 a month for two children, that is close to $5,000 for the year. A 1% cashback discount is $500 and that’s a hefty savings!
11. Don’t bounce checks with your daycare. If you don’t have the funds don’t write the check. You don’t need to pay a bounced check fee to daycare.
12. See if there’s a scholarship available for the your child care program. Alternatively see if there is a grants available for any type of financial systems that you might be able to use towards childcare.
13. See if you can get a discount for paying in advance. I wouldn’t advise paying more than three months in advance, , however you could potentially get a bit of a discount if you pay three months in advance. It doesn’t hurt to ask especially at the financial means to do this.
14. Don’t have anymore kids. I say this half jokingly, but there is a truism here. My wife and I have three children over stopping in two. Our third child was a bit of a surprise, she was a good surprise, however financially additional children especially infants are expensive. If you have the luxury of planning, consider that child care is expensive. Put together a family plan of how you anticipate paying the expenses that will come from a new child in the family. Planning can only help you take better care of your children. Birth control however can save you a great deal of money and childcare.
15. Pay Your daycare bill on time. Pay on time so that you don’t have to pay late fees for paying late, but don’t neglect my rule above and bounce a check.
16. Use generic diapers and wipes. Unless your child has allergies, generic diapers and wipes can work just as well as daycare setting. You can oftentimes save 30% on generic diapers and wipes compared to premium brand-name diapers and wipes.
17. Choose a daycare that’s close to your home or centrally located between your job and your home. You don’t want to have to spend more time, or gas, traveling back and forth to the daycare. Pick a daycare that’s close and convenient and don’t go out of your way if you don’t have to.
18. Do everything in your power to keep your house clean and keep your children healthy. Children often times get sick at daycare and bring it home, or get sick at home and take it to daycare and get the other kids sick. Sick kids are expensive. Keep your kids healthy keep them clean and if your pediatrician agrees make sure they take their vitamins. You need every advantage you can get!
19. See if your state offers any tax credits for daycare or childcare programs.

That’s all I can think of right now, I’ve had children in day care or childcare for the last nine years. Some of these lessons above I’ve learned the hard way and some of them I’ve just recently learned, I’m sure there are many more so if you have some ideas or thoughts on how other people could save money on childcare please share them here and I will be happy to publish them and give you credit in any way that I can.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 1:48 am and is filed under Saving Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.