Making the decision to care for children in your home is just the beginning. Whether you have a Registered Family Home Or Licensed Child-care Home can make a huge difference in how much money you earn.
Running a Registered Family Home can be an excellent way to work in childcare & control your earnings. I suggest it to people all the time. No extra overhead, you select your students, you don’t have to drive anywhere. If you have all your slots filled the $$$ is better than as a teacher at a center. It can be great.
It can also be very limiting. You are frequently the only person in your program that can property conjugate verbs. Lack of adult conversation can result in you driving your family members crazy when they come home at the end of the day with the need to have REAL conversation. I know my husband was not amused by how much I expected him to interact when he got home. He had already used 950 of his 1000 words for the day at work, and I was wanting way more than he had to give. (If that reference didn’t make sense to you, grab a copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and all will become clear.)
There is also a real cap on how much you can earn. If you want to care for 2 babies, Texas standards will only let you have 4 other children during most of the day, and 2 school-aged kids in the afternoon. Not everyone feels comfortable with the same number of children, These numbers are just an example. If I charge
- $140/week- infant
- $140/week- infant
- $120/ week – toddler
- $100/ week – preK
- $100/ week – preK
- $ 35/ week – after-schooler
- $ 35/ week – after-schooler
- free my after-schooler
then I earn $670/ week, which is not too bad. If you are only open 40 hours a week you are earning over $16.75/hour. Many in-home programs are open from 6:30-6:30, which brings your pay down to $11.16/hour. Still not bad for a job that lets me get paid while staying at home and spend time with my child.
Here is the question: would it be better for me if I could earn more $$$ and have someone else working with me to share the work and increase my job satisfaction?
In most cases the answer is YES. I don’t really want to work 60 hours a week. Do you? You can hire someone to work at your program for part of the day. In a Registered Family Home (RFH), this does not change you ratios, just your stress level and job satisfaction. Some of your tuition simply goes to making life better, or reducing your hours. That is something I invested in, myself.
If you are in a Licensed Child-care Home (LCH), the story is a bit different. You can enroll more children. Your total of children can go from 8 to 12. If we had the same children as before (2 babies, 1 toddlers, 2 preK, 3 schoolers for $670) and a second staff person, you could add 4 more children for a possible $480. If you paid a person to come in for 8 hours starting at 7:30 for at $8.00, you would have a bit of extra money ($160 before tax). You may have to hire 2 people and shift the hours around a bit, depending on when your children arrive, but I would take that extra $8000 a year along with less work and someone to talk to and share work with.
The other thing to consider is your food program revenue. Many in-home programs use the USDA food program to increase their income. If you add 4 more children each month and you would increase your food program check by an average of $300 a month or $3600 a year.
OK, I got a little too into the numbers there, but the point is this: If you went from a RFH to a LCH, you could make you life better financially, reduce your stress and have more fun doing what you love to do!
Now your thinking, “But that has got to be hard to do or costs a bunch of money.” NOPE. The only real difference is that you, the person who stands to benefit, has to become a licensed Director. The easiest and quickest way to do that is to take a class with TexasDirector.org. Classes start at $475 and can be completed in as little as a week. You can complete the class at home, on-line. $475 for an increase in income of more than $11,000 per year. Yes please!
