The math seemed impossible, but numbers don\u2019t lie \u2014 it was less expensive for Julie Kelley to send her 9-year-old son to seven different summer camps in three states than to enroll him in one full-time program in Vermont, where they live.<\/p>\n
Summer vacation lasts 10 weeks for the Kelleys. And it will cost Kelley and her husband Richard about $2,000 for their only child.<\/p>\n
When Kelley searched for full-time, five-day summer camps near Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, where her family lives, she says she couldn\u2019t find any options.\u00a0<\/strong>Other full-time camps in Burlington, Vermont, about a two-hour drive from their house,\u00a0cost $400\u00a0per week.<\/p>\n By the time school starts in August, Kelley\u2019s son will have attended day camps in Vermont, New Hampshire and Minnesota, where they\u2019ll stay with relatives. All the camps cost between $150 and $400 per week.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds insane, but those were the best options within our budget, even planning months in advance,\u201d the 50-year-old mom tells\u00a0CNBC Make It.\u00a0The local day camp they used last summer closed because of staffing shortages.<\/p>\n Kelley, a communications consultant who works from home full time, says she and her husband are spending \u201cmore than double\u201d what they did last year on other child-care arrangements.<\/p>\n \u201cAny time I run into other parents in line for coffee or at the park and ask how they\u2019re doing, I see the same sleep-deprived expression reflecting back to me,\u201d she says. \u201cSummer shouldn\u2019t feel this hard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n American families now spend nearly one-fifth of their income, an average of $800 per month, on child care,\u00a0the Federal Reserve\u00a0reports.<\/p>\n The rising cost of child care is not a seasonal issue, but the summer months can be especially challenging for families as schools close and parents are on the hook for day care, sleepaway camps and other expenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0average cost\u00a0of summer camp in the U.S. is about $87 a day, with sleepaway camp tuition at about $173 a day, according to the American Camp Association.<\/p>\n Years marked by inflation and a nationwide child-care crisis mean that families are more cash-strapped than usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n Summer camp isn\u2019t an option for many households across the U.S. as 40% of parents say that they can\u2019t afford such programs due to a higher cost of living, according to a\u00a0recent Credit Karma survey\u00a0of more than 2,000 U.S. adults.\u00a0<\/p>\n Of those who are sending their children to camp, nearly 30% are going into debt or resorting to buy-now, pay-later options to cover the cost.\u00a0<\/p>\n A\u00a0separate report\u00a0on summer parenting, released in June by the non-profit organization ParentsTogetherAction, found that 59% of parents have someone in their household who had to cut back on hours or leave a job because they can\u2019t afford reliable seasonal child care.<\/p>\n In summers past, both of Margaret McGriff\u2019s daughters, ages 7 and 12, would attend a day camp near their home in Lake Worth, Florida, Mondays through Fridays while she was at work.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the perfect setup,\u201d McGriff, who is a single parent, says. \u201cI\u2019d drop them before driving to the office and pick them up on my way home around 5 p.m.\u201d<\/p>\n This summer looks a lot different. After months of struggling with higher tax, grocery and gas bills, among other necessities, McGriff says she could only afford to send her younger daughter back to camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n The program costs about $2,000 per child, which means she\u2019ll save $2,000 by keeping her 12-year-old daughter home for the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Margaret McGriff has been bringing her oldest daughter to work with her on Wednesdays in the summer to save on child care. She says having a flexible employer has been a \u201cgodsend.\u201dPhoto: Margaret McGriff<\/p>\n McGriff, who is a senior content strategist at Labor Finders, a staffing and recruitment firm in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, had to ask her boss if she could work mostly from home until August, as she couldn\u2019t find a nanny or part-time camp for her eldest daughter within her budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead of spending three days in-office each week as she normally would, McGriff is commuting once a week between June and August. On Wednesdays, her daughter comes with her to the office.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m super fortunate to have that job flexibility, but it\u2019s still been incredibly challenging to balance parenting and working full time,\u201d McGriff, 42, says. \u201cThis is the first summer I haven\u2019t had access to affordable child care. It\u2019s just mentally exhausting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n McGriff says that, despite the unexpected challenges this summer brought, she and her daughter have grown \u201ceven closer\u201d and are finding silver linings in being home together.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her older daughter has been reading, baking and completing workbooks to kill time while McGriff is at her job. In the evenings and on weekends, McGriff takes her children to museums, parks, the movie theater and other outings to make up for the field trips her oldest daughter is missing from not going to camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n Natasha Brown works from home as a data annotator from midnight until 8 a.m. five days a week, then clocks into her \u201csecond shift\u201d as a working mother to six kids, all off from school and home for the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is complete chaos,\u201d Brown, 40, says. \u201cThis has been the most stressful summer ever.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown and her husband, Christopher, live in Cumming, Georgia with their children \u2014\u00a0their youngest child just turned 1, and their oldest is 20 \u2014 and two dogs. Christopher also works from home full time as a data manager for a health tech company.\u00a0<\/p>\n Natasha Brown and her husband, Christopher, opted to keep their six children home (pictured here with five of their children) for the summer and save the money they would have spent on camps for a family vacation in the fall.Photo: Natasha Brown<\/p>\n Last summer, the parents hired a full-time nanny for about $800 per week to watch their four youngest children while they worked. The Browns would also send their children to part-time day camps and one-off activities like cello and singing lessons.\u00a0<\/p>\n This summer, however, Brown says they\u2019ve been \u201ccrushed\u201d by higher child-care costs and had no choice but to keep their children at home. Hiring another full-time nanny would\u2019ve cost the family about $1,800 per week, more than double the amount it cost last year.<\/p>\n \u201cAt that rate, almost my entire paycheck, or my husband\u2019s, would be spent on summer child care,\u201d she says. \u201cWe want our son and daughters to have a fun summer but we don\u2019t want to blow our savings to make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Her two oldest children, who are 16 and 20, have summer jobs, and the younger three \u2014 ages 11, 9 and 5 \u2014 are taking online classes in French, Spanish, math, ballet and other subjects on the platform Outschool. Classes can cost as little as $10 or upwards of $100 depending on the subject.<\/p>\n Other than that, Brown says she\u2019s tried to keep her children occupied with summer movie marathons and encouraging them to play outside with other children on their street and have sleepovers with their friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n She and her husband take turns watching their 1-year-old daughter when they\u2019re not working.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brown estimates that she\u2019s saving at least $3,000 by keeping her children home this summer \u2014 money that she\u2019s planning to use toward a family trip to Martha\u2019s Vineyard in September.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEven if we didn\u2019t get the relaxing summer we hoped for, it\u2019s a short-term sacrifice to ensure that our bills are paid, our children are comfortable and we don\u2019t slip into debt,\u201d she adds. \u201cI still feel blessed to have that option.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The math seemed impossible, but numbers don\u2019t lie \u2014 it was less expensive for Julie Kelley to send her 9-year-old son to seven different summer camps in three states than to enroll him in one full-time program in Vermont, where they live. Summer vacation lasts 10 weeks for the Kelleys. And it will cost Kelley […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}