re: Is child care/daycare innately expensive? What can society do to reduce *cost* of it?

I think the math is tough to make work, unless you have some subsidy (e.g. a public facility, direct subsidy).

For good reason, most states mandate a 1 to 4 or 1 to 5 ratio of teacher to kids, depending on how young. At a 1 to 5 ratio, and a tuition of $12,000 a year, you have $60,000 to cover the cost of the 1 teacher ($30,000-$40,000) plus all admin overhead, substitute teachers for sick and personal days, meals, rent/mortgage, insurance, utilities, etc.

If the facility costs are largely removed because it’s within a church property, municipal owned building, or a personal home, the cost can be reduced a bit. But anything less than $1,000 a month is tough to work.

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Curious.. what were you making? Because this matters a lot here. Were you making ~$130k too? If so, kudos for making that sacrifice. But if you were already making $250k+, much easier decision to make.

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At the time about 140k. So to go from 270 combined to 140 over night was a big adjustment no doubt. About 5 months later I made a change which improved that, and things have continued to improve, but at the time we had to make some lifestyle changes.