Would you take out a loan to help with your childcare costs for the priveledge of working???

This kind of blows my mind!!! NYC has developed a program that is 1st of it's kind program to help middle class americans with the cost of child care. Now, if your income is between $80,000- $200,000 (ya, you read that right). and your credit score is above 620, you can get a loan for your childcare!!! It seems that NYC has some of the highest child care in the nation! Going as high as $2,300 a month!

I think I'd quite my job and go on welfare before I'd take a loan out so I can afford to work!! And, I imagine that if the income has to be at least $80,000, that there's a good possibility that those below that amount are having their childcare subsidized the taxpayers. Meanwhile, most of the jobs that are being created are low wage service jobs, so ya, pay a thousand or two a month for the childcare so you can work at a 8 or 9 dollar an hour job! If this was truly a free market, there is no way that this kind of crap could even come close to happening!

money.cnn.com...

reply to post by dawnstar


That is so backwarded ! There are some obvious geniuses at work !

I guess it boils down to the math. If the childcare is $2300 a month or so, but someone is able to make $40 or $50,000 a year, it MAY be worth it, but after taxes you probably wouldn't be left with much. I certainly wouldn't take out a loan though. A better option would be to allow childcare to be paid for with pretax dollars like healthcare or 401Ks, or try to find work at a company that offers on site daycare or provides subsidies for it.

www.nyc.gov...

gee according to this, a family of 4 would be cut off from the NYC childcare subsidy if they make a little over $918/wk. times that by the 52 weeks in a year and it comes to $47,736/yr.
but in order to qualify for that laon, you'd have to be making over $80,000/yr.

First I want to know just where in the world are the funds coming from for this program, and don't give me the crap that it will be earning money in the long run because of the interest. The funds have to come from somewhere to the initial loans, are they taking money from the taxpayers now, you know those $47,736 earners now so that those with income over twice as much as they are making can pay their childcare later??? Are they coming from just the funds collected from NY City, or are they also coming from the state funds, or national funds???

My next question is this. So, you think that it's a hardship on those $200,000 income earners to pay such outrageous child care costs and at the same time, you think that those that are in the $47,736-$80,000 can just cut their budget down?? If they can cut their budget down, why can't those making twice or more a month do the same with a heck of alot less hardship!!!

Maybe I am wrong, maybe the city is just conjuring up the money from somewhere. Maybe the city has it's own program to help those who seem to be getting left out to dry, but that eligibility calculator does have NYC in it's logo, so it seems doubtful to me!!!
Seems to me this is just another attempt of a gov't entity to pad the pockets of some friends and contributors to their campaigns!

So, now that class of people that are too rich to get any help but too poor to actually afford crap can not only subsidize the childcare (which they are struggling to afford, or heck, maybe leaving their kids home alone because they can't) not only for the "poor" but also those earning much more than them!!!

I bet if you check on the cost of childcare in NYC around this time next year, it will have doubled, why not, between the rich and the poor who are being aided by the government either by loans or by subsidies on the backs of those who are truly struggling to make it, they should have plenty of customers!! why worry about those who can't afford the insane prices!! They are gonna pay for it weather they want to or not if not for their own kids, then for someone's elses!! Heck if the government it lucky!! They will decide that the only way up is down and make a move to decrease those earning so they can live a decent life also!!!

reply to post by dawnstar
If people would just go back to the way it was before over priced daycare centers we could force them to lower their prices. When my kids were young I worked out a deal with one of my friends: while I worked days she kept all the kids and while she worked nights I kept all the kids. Neither of us could afford child care so it worked for us. Because so many parents aren't close to their friends and neighbors anymore the child care facilities have them by the "coin purse" and are taking advantage of it financially.

Loans for child care- what rubbish! If you make $80-200K per year I'm sure you can afford child care without tax payer assistance. Quit trying to keep up with the Jones' and use that money for your kids.

reply to post by littled16



both my parents had to work, there was no way around it. Back then there was no gov't handing out funds for childcare. I felt like an unwanted sack of garbage from time to time as I was passed around to my sibling (who would argue and grumble about it), friends of my mom's, and well if all else failed, I would be going to work with them. I enjoyed going to work with my dad, he worked at the Water Works and I got to learn how to test the water and read the graphs, but my mom worked in a bar and that wasn't so pleasant really!
But, we survived, and that is what mattered.

Extended families still played a big part for many back then. The families weren't spead out across the nation as badly as they are now.
You'd be very lucky to take your kid to work with you now days. Although my last boss alowed it some. Taking you kid to work at the bar, well that would be illegal. And you are right, we aren't as close to our neighbors as we once were.
What we have now is just insane!! And offering a loan payment for chidlcare just makes it more insane! I am glad my kids are grown and I hope that when they have kids I will be able to help them by taking charge of the kids. Because they are more than likely gonna need the help.

But, like I said, if a family is struglling trying to cope with the high cost of childcare with an income under $50,000 and are being told oh you are making plenty of money! Well someone making $200,000 shouldn't be needing any help with it!!

reply to post by dawnstar
It is insane, I definitely agree with you!

I quit my job a little over three years ago to stay home and take care of my grandchild because I knew my daughter could not afford daycare but made too much money to get financial assistance. The loss of income took some serious adjusting but I had done it before when my own children hit the mischievous teen years. Not everyone has the ability to do such and we are very fortunate that my husband makes enough money that it is manageable. I feel really bad for those who work half of their pay periods just to finance their child care. It is very sad for the parents and the children.

reply to post by littled16

There were many years when my kids were young that I couldn't work. My husband made too much to qualify for the childcare assistance and my income just wasn't gonna cover the cost. And, we really needed the extra money!
I find it annoying that any gov't be it city, or state, or on the national level would take it upon themselves to create a program for people making over 16 times more than we did!! There was a span of time when I went eating one meal every other day just to make sure there was food for the rest of the family. Are these $200,000 dollars gonna have to miss a meal because of their childcare cost?
There were times when one of my kids would have to stay home from school till the next paycheck came and we could get that extra refill of his asthma medicine to keep at school. Will any of these kids from those $200,000 income earning homes miss any school because while their parents doesn't have the money handy to fill a perscription? And, once we got the medicine refilled, I had to walk close to a mile to the school and personally hand it to the nurse since we could only keep one car on the road and my hubby needed that to drive two counties over to his job! Will any of those them have to walk to their kid's school in freezing cold temperatures?
I am gonna have to do some digging on this and well, maybe write a few letters. I really want to know how this is being financially backed, if the parents decide they don't want to pay the loan back, will it be the taxpayers job to?? ect. And, well, are they hoping that this thing will take off so that they can start slicing and dicing these loans up and selling them to investors and creating the great Childcare Bubble that will explode in our faces so we have to pitch in and safe the poor, poor banks again!!

The City Council allocated $300,000 to Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners to cover loan loss reserves, interest rate subsidies, loan portfolio servicing, reporting and overall pilot administration.

council.nyc.gov...

This is for a pilot program serving 40 families for one year....comes out to around $7,500 per family!!!

Originally posted by peter_kandra
I guess it boils down to the math. If the childcare is $2300 a month or so, but someone is able to make $40 or $50,000 a year, it MAY be worth it, but after taxes you probably wouldn't be left with much. I certainly wouldn't take out a loan though. A better option would be to allow childcare to be paid for with pretax dollars like healthcare or 401Ks, or try to find work at a company that offers on site daycare or provides subsidies for it.

The math almost never works out for value though.

Let's say you make $60,000 a year and pay $1900 a month for child care.

You'll pay about $21,000 in taxes (before deductions)

That gives you $39,000

$22,000 for child care

$17,000 total net income, with another 5,000 in likely tax refund.

But then you have the cost of commute, gas, etc etc.. is it reallllyyy worth it? I have friends that work and pay for child care and I just don't understand it. Is a few thousand dollars, that you'll most likely waste on stupid crap anyways, really worth letting strangers raise your kid, spending no quality time with them, and stressing yourself out trying to manage time, a job, being a parent, and so on?

Some people just completely insist on having “kids” and one of the big things a father or mother has to give is child care during infancy and early childhood. It's not exactly inexpensive either, as child care costs have been accelerating away for a while.

Ahhh, loans. More debt. Yes, that's the answer to everything, ain't it? Debt slavery. Keep people working, keep people enslaved to a system that makes zero sense. Keep them poor, keep them on a leash.

God I am glad I don't live in New York.

reply to post by dawnstar


why is this in the global meltdown section?

reply to post by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf


it isn't just more debt, it's more debt backed by the US taxpayer!! With the money for backing the loans already given to the bank.. Another nice giveaway to the banking sector.

Right now it's just a pilot program. But considering that there are many not so low skilled people leaving the workforce because of the cost of childcare, It wouldn't be surprising to me if the pilot program took off and ended up being available in many other cities.
This would::

Inflate the cost of childcare even more.
Put the taxpayer on the hook for the cost, we are already on the hook for those people who are low income, now we can be on the hook for those earning much more than us also!
Allow the business sector to keep wages stagnate.
And, it wouldn't be surprising to me that somewhere there is someone ready to start slicing and dicing these loans, repackaging them and grading them AAA regardless of weather they are worthy of that grade or not, and selling the securities.
A new potential bubble to exploit!!

In so many ways, it is a prime example of the stupidity that brought about the global meltdown to begin with.
Charge more than the people can afford
Pay so little that most people aren't paid enough to afford it.
Come up with a bunch of programs to give taxpayer money to some of the people who can't afford it
And well, when it starts hurting the one's working just below the big money money makers come up with a loan program to suck the money out of them
But by all means do not, I mean do not, actually address the probelm!