Quick rant: $18k/year for one kid in the DC area. My wife makes slightly more than daycare costs us, so we're basically working just to pay someone else to watch our kids. Has anyone looked into nanny shares? Or is there a reason those seem impossible to coordinate? Trying to figure out if we're missing something obvious here.
$18k seems CHEAP for DC honestly but you're right that the math is stupid. Nanny shares CAN work but you need like 3-4 families coordinating schedules and it's a scheduling nightmare if anyone has different hours. We tried it for 2 months and someone's kid got sick every week.
Honestly the nanny share idea is smart but execute it VERY carefully - get everything in writing, have backup plans, and make sure all families actually know each other and trust each other. Otherwise one person's annoyed about schedules and it implodes.
Real talk: nanny shares are impossible to coordinate because it takes one person's schedule change and suddenly nobody's happy. Also if there's an issue with care, you're stuck because you can't just fire the nanny without screwing over the other families. We did this and it was drama.
The reason nanny shares seem impossible is because they kind of are. Someone's always got different pick-up times, someone's kid has weird allergy stuff, and when the nanny calls out sick everyone panics at the same time. Daycare sucks cost-wise but at least it has backup.
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Have you looked into whether your wife could go part-time or shift work? Like I get that it's not a real solution but sometimes flexing one person's schedule makes the numbers work better than it looks on paper.