I No Longer Pay for Daycare, but My Childcare Costs Are Still Soaring. Here's Why

Childcare is one of my greatest expenses -- and it keeps rising.

When my oldest child was born, I made the decision to return to full-time work even though I knew I'd be losing a huge chunk of my paycheck to his daycare facility. At a cost of over $300 a week, paying for daycare constituted a big blow to my family's finances, but thankfully, I was earning a high enough income to justify that expense.

When I had twin daughters three years after my son, I went freelance and began working from home. In doing so, I was able to swap my son's daycare for a preschool that was a lot less expensive. And given that it would've cost me over $50,000 a year to put all of my kids in full-time daycare, it was a necessary career pivot.

But even though I dumped daycare once my son turned 3, I still spent a ton of money on a combination of preschool and babysitters. And then when my daughters got to preschool, my bills effectively doubled (by then, my son had started kindergarten, which was free).

Back then, I told myself I just needed to get through that rough patch, and that the burden of childcare would ease up once the kids got a little older. Only it didn't ease up -- it got worse.

I'm still spending a fortune

At this point, all of my children are school-aged and therefore don't need daycare during the week. But I'm still spending a lot of money on childcare for one big reason -- the summertime gap.

In my neck of the woods, it's difficult to find a full-day summer camp for under $3,000 a child. And the camps that "only" cost $3,000 usually require you to drive your kids back and forth (sometimes 30 minutes or more each way) and don't provide amenities like meals or a place to swim. As such, most of what I'd call the reasonable camps in my area for full-time working parents have a price tag upward of $4,000 per child.

Plus, the older your kids get, the more activities they get to do at camp. That's a cost that's passed on to parents, resulting in ultra-high bills. As such, the amount of money I now spend on summer camp, which serves as childcare for me for two months, exceeds the amount I used to spend on preschool in a given year (to be fair, part of the reason is that I never had all of my children in preschool at the same time, whereas I have them all in camp at the same time).

Another reason my childcare costs are up? It's gotten more expensive to hire a babysitter. Years back, I could get away with paying $10 to $12 an hour, but these days, $15 an hour seems to be the absolute bare minimum where I live.

Now to be clear, I'm all about paying sitters a fair wage for their work. But still, it's gotten to the point where my husband and I hardly ever go out on our own because the costs are so astronomical.

Things may not get better anytime soon

At this point, I'm resigned to the idea of having to spend a lot of money on childcare. And I know those costs will take away from other things, like my ability to improve my home, travel, or add to my savings.

But at the end of the day, I now know to budget accordingly for childcare expenses so they don't come as a shock. And that way, the cost of summer camp and babysitting ultimately doesn't have to impact my long-term financial goals.