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Shifty Pony posted:the claim form for my dependent care FSA has a whole bunch of honeypot options under the claim types. i thought you could use FSA funds to pay for nannys and stuff, is that not the case
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Jan 2, 2022 16:00
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depends. if the babysitting is to let you work then yes it is eligible but if it isn't then you can't claim it. preschool is covered, school tuition after that is not. day camp is covered, field trips are not. it is really dumb: https://fsafeds.com/explore/dcfsa/expenses?take=100
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Jan 2, 2022 16:43
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it boggles the mind that early childhood development salaries are so low you have to commit to a net negative income to be a teacher, but also any sort of childcare from daycare to preschool is so expensive you need a well paying second income to afford it.
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Jan 2, 2022 22:28
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doing my best to turn all of them into little nerds; let the oldest be the DM this time. perfect for her personality, she has a big imagination and loves to be in charge.  you’re goddamn right they didn’t get out of PJs all day, it’s 18*F outside. devmd01 fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jan 3, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 00:39
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RokosCockatrice posted:it boggles the mind that early childhood development salaries are so low you have to commit to a net negative income to be a teacher, but also any sort of childcare from daycare to preschool is so expensive you need a well paying second income to afford it. my wife works in early childhood education and she had to stop working so that we could actually afford to live while my kid was daycare age he's starting kindergarten in the fall and now she's worried about a multi-year gap on her resume really no one wins except corporate daycare owners so gently caress those assholes charging an arm and a leg and paying staff a pittance while smashing as many kiddos together and cutting as many corners as they legally can
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Jan 3, 2022 01:33
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RokosCockatrice posted:it boggles the mind that early childhood development salaries are so low you have to commit to a net negative income to be a teacher, but also any sort of childcare from daycare to preschool is so expensive you need a well paying second income to afford it. ugh
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Jan 3, 2022 01:34
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RokosCockatrice posted:it boggles the mind that early childhood development salaries are so low you have to commit to a net negative income to be a teacher, but also any sort of childcare from daycare to preschool is so expensive you need a well paying second income to afford it. we have a FT nanny and it’s something like 4 grand a month after taxes, but it’s not that much more than infant daycare
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Jan 3, 2022 01:36
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We decided to just host an au pair. Not directly as expensive as a nanny or daycare, though I'm sure the indirect costs of room and board will compensate. We're just lucky that we have the space. (Also they don't arrive until late spring so can't really speak to the experience of hosting an international guest, though the person we matched with seems like a lovely person)
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Jan 3, 2022 03:24
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lmao jesus yall
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Jan 3, 2022 03:38
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shoeberto posted:We decided to just host an au pair. Not directly as expensive as a nanny or daycare, though I'm sure the indirect costs of room and board will compensate. We're just lucky that we have the space. (Also they don't arrive until late spring so can't really speak to the experience of hosting an international guest, though the person we matched with seems like a lovely person) if we had the space, would have considered it Achmed Jones posted:lmao jesus yall infant daycare is something like 2500-3000 a month (at a good place) and has a waitlist we'd have to have gotten on before we even got pregnant. that said it's basically my wife's entire take-home each month; ironically enough, she's basically just working to provide childcare... so that she can work.
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Jan 3, 2022 03:46
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the other nice thing about a nanny is that, you know, you don't have to rearrange your schedule at the drop of a hat due to covid closures/staffing issues.
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Jan 3, 2022 03:47
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kitten emergency posted:ironically enough, she's basically just working to provide childcare... so that she can work. this was my wife for a couple of years when we had the twins in infant/toddler care and the oldest in pre-k/kindergarten. can’t wait for when we can stop paying for pre-k for the boys
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Jan 3, 2022 03:48
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yeah i know how much it is, and i'm not throwing shade. but "we have a full time nanny" followed up with "yeah we couldn't afford that, we're getting an au pair. thank goodness weve had the servants quarters open ever since Bartleby left us for Lady Effingbottom's valet!" is funny i might be taking some liberties with my interpretation  we were in the same boat with ms jones. she decided to stay home with little jones cause there wasn't much of a career ladder for her to climb - the job track she was hoping to go for transferred to texas right when he was born and she noped out. every time she's about to go back to work, we move or there's a pandemic or some poo poo. little jones will be in first grade next year, so maybe she'll go back then 🤷♀️
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Jan 3, 2022 03:55
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Achmed Jones posted:yeah i know how much it is, and i'm not throwing shade. but "we have a full time nanny" followed up with "yeah we couldn't afford that, we're getting an au pair. thank goodness weve had the servants quarters open ever since Bartleby left us for Lady Effingbottom's valet!" is funny daycare for 2 kids is approximately the wage of a daycare worker so it actually makes sense...
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Jan 3, 2022 04:07
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my daycare is a stack of colouring books and a bunch of toys and them helping me debug code they’re 3 and 18mo lol
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Jan 3, 2022 04:10
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when they were tiny non mobile babies the strat was a swingaroo thing and when they were only crawling it was an extended playpen full of babby toys
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Jan 3, 2022 04:14
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I've been pretty self conscious talking about the au pair thing openly because I realize how bougie it sounds, and initially I was repelled by the idea because of that, but it sort of became the best option for us. Day care around here is hella expensive and we're fairly concerned about the covid risk to a newborn/toddler. We're just trying to be conscientious about the whole thing and try to make it equitable and enjoyable for the au pair while she's staying with us.
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Jan 3, 2022 05:14
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yeah I mean don’t get me wrong, it makes sense if u need to go into an office, but if you don’t I’m thrilled to hear I’m apparently saving 3x my mortgage on childcare I frankly never even considered these options since I’ve always had either a day or two of wfh a week or have been perma wfh since having kids
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Jan 3, 2022 05:54
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hobbesmaster posted:daycare for 2 kids is approximately the wage of a daycare worker so it actually makes sense... we had a FT nanny until the summer before our younger kid turned 3 and started preschool now we have a great part time nanny who is a college student and hopefully will be returning to campus on schedule I didn’t grow up with a nanny and so the whole thing is sort of foreign and uncomfortable to me but like, there’s no dodging that me and the missus are rather bougie strictly from our jobs and educations so
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Jan 3, 2022 06:17
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yospos is a land of contrasts
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Jan 3, 2022 06:22
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servants make sense under conditions of inequality, I don’t make the macroeconomic conditions I just live (rather modestly but for the nannies) under ‘em 
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Jan 3, 2022 06:38
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here i was thinkin i was a fancy yancy for considering homeschooling to avoid my kids getting school shootered lol
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Jan 3, 2022 06:47
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Blinkz0rz posted:my wife works in early childhood education and she had to stop working so that we could actually afford to live while my kid was daycare age vote!
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Jan 3, 2022 10:28
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FAT32 SHAMER posted:here i was thinkin i was a fancy yancy for considering homeschooling to avoid my kids getting school shootered lol hot take, my personal opinion as someone who was homeschooled all the way through high school is that homeschooling is a form of child abuse, except for situations where developmentally/behaviorally/health-wise home is a better place for the child. there are parents who can homeschool well and still provide the level of education and social development that a child needs but those are a rarity. mine were not in that category.
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Jan 3, 2022 11:15
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it’s babby’s 1 month birthday. this has been the fastest month of my life.
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Jan 3, 2022 17:15
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my wife and i are contemplating having kids, so the fsa thing is useful to think about. where do most of the costs come up? i’d naively think it’s a lot in the actual birth, but idk what costs to expect in pregnancy or how much the checkups and immunizations and other newborn/toddler medical needs stack up. our insurance is a bit annoying, i got added as a plus one for about 2x the amount (makes some sense) but the next step up is a “family plan” for like 4x more.
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Jan 3, 2022 17:21
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with our costs it was basically nothing, but then once or twice a year we'd "have" to go to urgent care or the ER because a fever spiked crazy high or wtf he's coughing really hard and sounds like a dang seal or whatever. this sort of stuff of course tends to happen at midnight, when you can't really just call the pediatrician FSA isn't a bad idea at all. that young there'll be stuff that comes up, and it will make you feel better to say "screw it let's go to the expensive place" rather than "oh god we can't afford it, but let's wait until morning and be terrified". plus you can buy a ton of useful baby supplies with any FSA money you don't use. ofc if you can do HSA that's probably better
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Jan 3, 2022 17:35
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lament.cfg posted:it’s babby’s 1 month birthday. this has been the fastest month of my life.
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Jan 3, 2022 17:35
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Eeyo posted:my wife and i are contemplating having kids, so the fsa thing is useful to think about. where do most of the costs come up? i’d naively think it’s a lot in the actual birth, but idk what costs to expect in pregnancy or how much the checkups and immunizations and other newborn/toddler medical needs stack up. having a kid is a qualifying life event so you don't have to convert to family plan now, you can do it when your kid is born
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Jan 3, 2022 17:49
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Blinkz0rz posted:having a kid is a qualifying life event so you don't have to convert to family plan now, you can do it when your kid is born worth looking into the process though since some insurance companies have rather tight windows for changing it over post-birth. while you're looking into it check your insurance to see what they cover for birth. iirc the ACA made it mandatory for them to include childbirth as one of the examples that insurance plans give for out of pocket costs. ours was 100% coverage from dollar one for routine delivery or c-section, others make you pay the deductible first. if yours is the latter then putting the deductible amount into the FSA the year of the delivery is a good idea since there's no way you won't end up paying the full deductible. pediatrician visits for shots and such should be 100% coverage because they are "preventative". also you might want to consider pregnancy/delivery medical care costs for whoever carried the baby. pelvic floor therapy is a very very good idea to do but in the US you'll be paying a copay for it, if it is even covered. expenses are just so variable. besides for the PT copays we didn't have any direct baby medical expenses other than Tylenol and Motrin, but others have several ER visits in the first year.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:21
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2022 off to a good start: 3 staff sick at nursery and they can't properly staff the room so it's gonna be an attempt to WFH with babby in the room  gj government "let 'er rip" covid approach
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Jan 4, 2022 09:51
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Eeyo posted:my wife and i are contemplating having kids, so the fsa thing is useful to think about. where do most of the costs come up? i’d naively think it’s a lot in the actual birth, but idk what costs to expect in pregnancy or how much the checkups and immunizations and other newborn/toddler medical needs stack up. i live in a civilized country so i'm not sure about the cost but here's my experience with frequency through 5 months at birth our baby needed two weeks in the ICU because he was born with fluid and a hole in a lung (apparently not that unusual, and not serious with medical care). spent another weekend in the ICU because he was suddenly lethargic one Friday night and they couldn't discharge him on the weekend. the recommended-but-not-mandatory vaccines weren't covered by insurance so that was a few hundred bucks too. at two months he wasn't weaning well and the pediatrician observed that he had tongue tie. so we had to visit a specialist and pay out of pocket for them to snip it, which here costs three dollars. there were maybe 2 or 3 times something seemed off and we went to get it checked by the pediatrician just out of caution. we were concerned about his weight and eating since he was in the bottom 5% on the charts and not having the recommended amount. but it turned out to be fine and he's thriving now. i'd hate if we had to consider what it would cost to see a doctor about concerns like that. i think there are like 18 recommended vaccinations in the first two years. i'm sure those add up without coverage.
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Jan 4, 2022 13:00
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My friend's sister works at a school where they're testing all the students... after they come back. Being a school administrator must be the worst job on the planet right now. And I'm saying that between working double shifts at the blowjob factory today
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Jan 4, 2022 20:21
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shoeberto posted:We decided to just host an au pair. Not directly as expensive as a nanny or daycare, though I'm sure the indirect costs of room and board will compensate. We're just lucky that we have the space. (Also they don't arrive until late spring so can't really speak to the experience of hosting an international guest, though the person we matched with seems like a lovely person) How do you intend to pay them? Under the table? We don't have space for an au pair, but have been nanny shopping. A shitload of them are undocumented and want cash. Would we have to worry about the IRS getting on our dick about employer taxes?
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Jan 4, 2022 20:32
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RokosCockatrice posted:My friend's sister works at a school where they're testing all the students... after they come back. yes this is the plan
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Jan 4, 2022 20:44
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Poopernickel posted:How do you intend to pay them? Under the table? We don't have space for an au pair, but have been nanny shopping. A shitload of them are undocumented and want cash. Would we have to worry about the IRS getting on our dick about employer taxes? that depends on your political aspirations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nannygate_(disambiguation)
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Jan 4, 2022 20:49
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Poopernickel posted:How do you intend to pay them? Under the table? We don't have space for an au pair, but have been nanny shopping. A shitload of them are undocumented and want cash. Would we have to worry about the IRS getting on our dick about employer taxes? It's all through an agency, via a program overseen by the state department, so it's all above the board. We pay a program fee for the match + au pair visa + their flight, and I guess it also covers the agency's costs, since they stay pretty heavily involved in overseeing the whole thing (the au pair has a local rep that they meet with to make sure they're happy, getting paid, being treated well, etc). Beyond that we'll pay a weekly stipend to them directly. I don't really have any experience looking into anything else. But the au pair program involves a special visa, which has a bunch of state department regulations around it. The matching agency takes care of pretty much all of that, and makes sure the au pair files whatever paperwork is required before and during their stay, including filing taxes.
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Jan 4, 2022 21:02
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graph posted:yes this is the plan my kids school made us go pick up tests and return them over the weekend, and everybody was out on Monday while the tests cooked or whatever good thing too, rumor is that at least one staff member spiked a pos and is staying home today
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Jan 4, 2022 21:27
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ill know more tomorrow but i believe i have to go to work at some point this week and get a test out of a vending machine and drop it off somewhere
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Jan 4, 2022 21:43
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worth remembering that the whole "deal" with the Au Pair program is that they are basically a family member while you host them so they should be treated the same way you'd treat an adult family member. that means you need to give them the option to join everyone else in the household in meals, activities, vacations, etc which will drive up overall cost of living because you'll be buying food and whatnot for an extra person. you also need to be vigilant and respect that their "work" responsibilities have to be limited to the 45 hours a week and 10 hours max per day and "work" means them being required to do anything. if the au pair is watching the kids during the workday they should be able to veg on the couch every evening and all weekend with absolutely zero family responsibilities, even something as simple as unloading the dishwasher. there's a lot of abuse in the system from people who treat the au pair as a sunrise to sunset nanny when they are very much not, and the au pair is often scared to report any abuses since that means they'd get uprooted and transferred somewhere else (at best).
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Jan 4, 2022 21:49
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