Since I work for a local City, our paid time off and vacation are a little different then your normal private sector business. It varies from City to City, but i'm fortunate that all of our paid time off (so sick leave and vacations) are put into a single place.
Each paycheck I accrue a set number of hours for sick time and vacation and i'm only allowed to have so many hours in the pot before I am forced to take time off, or sell the hours back to the city during the once a year buy out.
The number of hours i'm allowed to have is actually quite high. I've only come marginally close to hitting my limit and that was when we were preparing for Little Dude's arrival and I needed all the hours I could bank so I could take off the full 12 weeks for maternity bonding time and still get a majority of my income.
But still its in the 600-700 range.
As a habit, I never let my vacation pot run below 200 hours, this was even after I took 12 weeks off with little dude, that way when I came back to work I still had the flexibility of 5 weeks of time off readily accessible for doctor visits, or emergencies.
At the end of 2017, I had 453 hours of paid time off... and we aren't planning on having a second child soon because we can't afford to have two in daycare at a single time.
With little dude getting older, daycare will eventually be replaced with a pre-school daycare combo since we need to pay someone to watch him and costs are very comparable. If we had family who would watch him while we worked, we could get by with a very affordable city run half day program, but that's not the case for us.
His current daycare costs us $450 every two weeks, or $900 a month unless its a three Friday month and we will need to shell out $1,350 for the month. We can get up to 2 vacation weeks where we only pay $50 for the week if we don't need care to save our space.
We actually found a really well liked (by friends and co-workers) christian pre-school right by my work that has better hours!!!!!! Our current daycare modified their hours after we started going there and it meant I couldn't take a lunch break at work if it meant getting my kiddo back on time (7:30-5 pm, so I had to do an 8-4 pm schedule).
This new pre-school will be open 7:30 am - 6:30 pm, which gives me the flexibility to get off work at 4 pm, get in a workout and a shower right after (our free gym will be 5 minutes from my office), OR I could also do a mid-day lunch break workout and get off at 5 pm and get him still by 5:15-5:30! This new place is actually on my way to work so I'll drive less than before and it will be much more efficient.... and if there is a day where I need to stay late day at work, I'm still okay since they close at 6:30, hubs could still work till 5 pm in San Clemente and then make it on time to preschool for pick up without having to skip his lunch and loose out on overtime hours when I have work events!!!
Now how does this tie in to selling my vacation hours?
Well, before we found this place, our currently daycare offered to discount her price if we enrolled Little Dude in the 1/2 day preschool program that she was already taking her son to three days a week. Instead of paying $450 bi-weekly, we would pay her $390 every two weeks ($45 for 2 full days, $35 for 3 half days -- she's letting us keep our full time discount without being full time) ... plus a monthly fee of $198 (April) and $308 (For end of April thru June 1) for the partial day preschool.
So $978- for April $1,088 for May
In order to come up with the extra money we would need every month, we opted to sell some of my vacation time since we felt our budget couldn't take the increase, and then pull out the difference needed each month...
So this was our back up plan, if we couldn't find a preschool/daycare combo (wait-lists are normal in our area), we would opt for a hybrid program and keep our current provider...
However, we were able to get Little Man into the place I mentioned earlier. He starts in September since they run a fall program, but Summer Camp opens up for registration in May 1st .... and it's around $200 a week (Might be cheaper) and you only select the weeks you need coverage for. They will be closed the week before and of Labor day for staff training and so teachers get a week off before school starts.... But he might be able to start his new school earlier depending how registration goes.
Now lets talk about tuition
You make 9, $910 payments that covers a 10 month school year... Which is cheaper than we are paying now in the long run... and since Summer camp there is typically $175-$200 a week, its also cheaper then the $450 bi-weekly payments we get now! We will have to pack him a lunch everyday, so groceries will go up slightly more, but little dude has also been much better with the potty, so eventually pulls at night and poop helpers will fade from our budget!
------
Keeping Little Dude in straight daycare isn't an option. Little dude is taking to some behavior problems because all his friends are old enough to go to the school class and he has to stay behind with the really little kids because he's not THREE yet... so we will most likely put him in the temp preschool for a couple months (April and May) until he's ready to go to his new school (Assuming Summer registration works) so everyone is sane.
My friend who goes to the temp preschool, got a different job with the city part time (she quit to be a stay at home mom a while ago), but since a part time position opened, she took it and will be sending her kiddos to our current daycare provider and the part time preschool, so that will be another regular buddy for him in both places before we move him to full time "pre-school."
No comments:
Post a Comment