How much income will I have?

[Inspired by Reggio]

Hon .... depends on how much income you WANT to take home

How many weeks are you going to be closed for vacation or personal time - will you charge parents for that?

How much do YOU want to budget to spend on food?

How much do YOU want to budget to spend on creative art / sensory or other consumable learning products?

Are you going to take field trips and outings with your children - is that included in your fee or will you charge parents 'extra' for those things?

How much of your home is your business going to take up - you can write off a % of your shared home expenses based on this - so look at your current monthly hydro, gas, sewer and other bills and expect those to go up by a good 10 due to the additional use of things and factor that into you budget.

How much are you 'willing' to spend on toys and equipment for your program ... this will affect if you are comparable to others in your neighborhood.

Will you have a website? Will you pay to advertize if so how much.

So for example the MAX you would get in revenue for 4 children @ $40 / day if you are working 5 days a week you are looking at revenue of $800 ... how much you get to KEEP depends on YOU!

So you could choose a budget of $2/day/child and focus on cheap processed foods for meals and snacks or you could choose to budget $5 per had and focus on mostly homemade foods and minimal processed or you could choose to spend even more and go organic all fresh menu!

Ultimately it is up to YOU in what you want to offer in order to feel proud of your daycare and what you HAVE to offer in order to attract enough clients in order to make a viable business!

The reality is that after expenses and taking into account that we often work 12 hours days over all home childcare providers generally make less than minimum wage doing hard demanding work ... this is not a 'get rich' business .... this is a business that allows us to earn money while being home for our families - it is THAT investment that makes us rich

As for how much to put aside for TAXES ... I generally put aside 15% a week in my revenue into savings ... this more than covers my tax bill at the end of the year plus helps to cover 'down times' in enrollments when I might need to draw on those savings!