Who in this Forum is in a "Closing Countdown"?

[justgettingstarted]

TODAY is my last day, woohoo! Although I feel like I've been closed for a week. I have just one dcg this week and she is super sweet and easy and I will miss her a lot. Plus I already suspended my license so I havent had to worry about keeping doors locked or putting away the handsoap. If I weren't 40 weeks pregnant I'd be doing a happy dance happyface

I've been slowly selling stuff on CL but am keeping most things for DS and my new DD (if she ever decides to be born!). I only did daycare for 1.5 years and I had wonderful families so its been a great experience but I definitely want my house bck and am looking forward to working just 2 days per week. DS has adjusted xvery well to preschool and my mom and MIL are anxious to watch the baby after my maternity leave. Everything has worked out so well I really could not be happier!

[bunnyslippers]

happyfacehappyfacehappyface This! Except my last day with be June 6th. It has been great, and really good for my family, however my kids are now older and not fans of the daycare, and I was approached for a part-time RN job that will almost double my current income and require 24 hours per week instead of current 50 hours. happyface I cannot friggin' wait. I also am nervous about getting back out there as I'm sure my nursing skills are rusty, and I know it will stink to commute in cold weather / have the morning rush again. I cannot wait to get all the daycare stuff out of my house - it's completely taken over my first floor - and for our family to have living space again. I love my DCK's, but it is time to think of my family first and use my education again / return to my first career love. I was just offered this job a few days ago, so have not yet told my families. I think I will do so next Friday which will give 10 weeks notice. I'm dreading the telling them part! How'd it go for you, bunnyslippers?

They were all very supportive. When I opened, I let everyone know this was not a lifetime deal for me. I have always planned on teaching again, once my children were old enough. That being said...since I have told them all, they have definitely started to slide a little with following my rules. It is annoying, but just further validates my closing. I figure we all know it is coming to a close, so we are all sort of slacking. I know I have slacked a bit on my end, too. Can't WAIT! happyfacehappyface

[Binkybobo]

What are you guys going to do with all of your daycare stuff?

I sold it all on Craigslist. I priced everything to sell, and got rid of it in about 1 week.

[Unregistered]

Logging in unregistered.

I would love to quit. I have been doing fcc for over 20 years. I so want my home back and think this year may be the time. I am losing most of my group to school this fall. Don't want to start over with families again. BUT I don't know how to replace this income. It is too good. i would have to take a paycut and can't do that with 2 of my own in high school.

For those of you that have quit, what will you be doing now and can I ask if and how much of a cut in pay you had to take?

[Scout]

I am in the countdown of ALL countdowns! I am closing on the last day of school (June 24th). I have 66 more days of daycare. It can't end fast enough for me. Every day that I wake up, I am just counting the minutes until the day is over. I have had it with most of my DCPs. They are all great people, but just keep pushing my limits. They all know I am closing, so they don't really care if they push too much...we all know it is coming to a close.

For me, the hardest part of the decision is that I will be rejoining the workforce (teaching) and so my 3 year old will be going to preschool. I can't imagine him going, but I also know he is ready for some time away from his home and his mama. He is turning into as much of a shut-in as me, and really hates the daycare kids. He is ready for some independence (sniff sniff).

My husband can't wait to close. We all are tired of people traipsing in and out of our house, calling during family time, commenting on the state of our home/kids/life, etc. We are so ready for the house to be OUR house again. We moved into our home in March of 2008, and opened the daycare in August of 2008. From the second we moved in, it has been daycare daycare daycare. We finished our basement for the daycare. We have such huge plans about what we will do with that space!

I can't wait for the consistency of a real paycheck, not having to count on other people to make sure my finances are in order, and the safety net of having a team of people to work with. I can't wait to care about what I look like again, wear shoes, and socialize with co-workers and not people who view me as their employee.

I can't wait for the day when I can pick my kids up from school and give them my FULL attention. I can't wait for all of it.

I am scared about getting back into the world. I have been out of it for 5 years, and I don't get out much. I am scared that my teaching skills are a bit rusty (I teach special ed). Otherwise, there is nothing but excitement!!!!!

Do you feel your stress level going down? I hope this will help your health! It sounds like a good choice for you!

[crazydaycarelady]

In my dream world I will be done with this at the end of 2014. Don't know if it will happen then or not.

[bunnyslippers]

Do you feel your stress level going down? I hope this will help your health! It sounds like a good choice for you!

I do feel the stress level going down. One of the deciding factors for us was that IF I get sick again, we will be able to have disability insurance covered through my new school system, as well as PAID sick/personal days (usually 15 per year). The stress of wondering IF I get sick, how do we pay our bills was overwhelming this past year. Now we know that I have coverage just in case, and it is a huge relief.

I love how supportive all of you are ~ I won't be leaving this forum when I go back to work and close down. I will just offer advice instead of my own issues.

[bunnyslippers]

Logging in unregistered.

I would love to quit. I have been doing fcc for over 20 years. I so want my home back and think this year may be the time. I am losing most of my group to school this fall. Don't want to start over with families again. BUT I don't know how to replace this income. It is too good. i would have to take a paycut and can't do that with 2 of my own in high school.

For those of you that have quit, what will you be doing now and can I ask if and how much of a cut in pay you had to take?

I will be making more, and will also be paying back into the teacher retirement system. Win-Win for me!

[Unregistered]

I will be making more, and will also be paying back into the teacher retirement system. Win-Win for me!

I have 7 kids I watch full time. There is no way I would make the same. I guess after all my deductions maybe, but so much of what we can deduct is normal ordinary things that we would be paying for either way. I find with dc I have more disposable income. I don'tknow, wish I had a big degree or something to fall back on.
I do love early childhood, but think something at another level, maybe training is where I need to be now. Just not as fulfilling as it was when I started and my own kids were little.

[Unregistered]

I am now down to three days a week, with only one amazing, funny, well-behaved child.. although it will be two after her mom has the new baby this fall/winter. (Not including my own two). I am happy with this.

[jen]

I am 1.5 years post daycare!!! I was a provider for 10 years and while there was much of it I loved, there was a lot that drove me nuts. My whole family is SO much happier. I am working in education, graduating in April with a Master's degree in teaching special education. LOVE it!

[lolaland]

Oh my… where to start??! For now I will only describe the “Before Reaching the Decision”.

Before reaching the decision to close – Quit my job when could not found a nice daycare for my newborn/my child turned 2/I felt morally obliged to get a job/I open the daycare in our first floor apartment/spent a little fortune turning the apartment to my dream daycare/ sign a contract with Citizens for Citizens because I could not find kids to enroll in my new daycare/State families were a bad crowd- rude and sloppy and spent their lives in courts and being chased by Child Protection Services and running from husbands or husbands running from wives and moving constantly their addresses as if being kicked out God knows why/our mortgage is high and when we tried to refinance we were denied because we had a business in one of the apartments (daycare) and we could not refinance until we close daycare or turn that apartment into a business status/EEC was very clear that if we changed the apartment status to business instead of residency I was no longer able to legally operate a in home daycare in that space/because of my income our health insurance went from 300 a month to 1000 and very high copayments (I haven’t gone to the doctor or make any repair needed at the dentist since I open daycare)/my husband is self-employed as a landscaper and with my daycare income our quarterly taxes went up so ridiculysly that took us several months to overcome the shock/I was overwhelmed with work and my daughter was going to start pre-K and I had no one to drive her to from school and our account company said our taxes would benefit if I hired someone and so I hired my brother that moved from Portugal happy with this chance of a new life in a new country/the expenses of having someone in a payroll was another huge shock and we found no improvement in our taxes situation and the amount of hours by law that he could be in daycare without me were so few that I hardly felt any improvement of the amount of work and hours I have to do (we had just added another big expense to our already stressful financial situation and I found myself slaving to pay the extra bills caused by my own business that was supposed to support me/my contract with the state was overwhelming me with paperwork and trainings and QRIS demands and the “welfare” families were getting more and more challenging to work with so a ended my contract with Citizens for Citizens/invest thousands of dollars advertising to get a new set of families in my daycare/afraid to have not return in all the money invested in advertising, I accepted all families with no restrictions of schedule and a thousand little things that I see many of you terming families for/all these “punches” and the normal demands of this long hours demanding job made my level of stress so high that even taking a week break would not made me recover and I am busy and exhausted all the time/ I could not continue to pay my brother assistant so I “fired” him/my brother assistant found a job and I’m again without no one to take my daughter to school this April.
Sorry for so long… this was the most important facts (not all of them) in the “before reaching decision”

[lolaland]

I have a 3 year plan


We are working toward downsizing our house, possibly building a 500 sq ft micro house where we have almost zero monthly bills. And also learning gardening and researching sustainable living so we can save money and be more self sufficient so that will be handy bc we will be able to live just off one income. We should be able to do that now but Austin is so expensive!

.

Interesting that you mentioned this... I too have been researching about ways of downsizing/Choosing-Voluntary-Simplicity... Me and my husband have been discussing about our need to simplify our financial way of living! ... and that is going to be one of my "projects" when I close the daycare. Not sure exactly how we can simplify or how simpler can we go when we have a morgage of a 3 family house to pay and also have my parents and my brother living in one of our units... All I know is that spending all my time/energy in the daycare makes impossible to explore other alternatives.

Good luck for you! Your plan sounds awesome happyface

[lolaland]

I don't think I can handle having preschoolers in my home again for a long time. How is your countdown going?

:: Me too! My countdown... I have 2 weeks to go and until now each week has been very different: first week was extremely draining with all the parents questioning and trying to digest the news. The second week parents started looking for other daycares and all week just kept telling me how good my program is and how impossible it has been to find something that compares. One family called my licensor to ask some questions and when the parent vented how chalenging it was to find good daycares, my licensor told the parent that my home daycare was the best in our area and that the parent needed to accept that while looking for a new arrangment. Other parent went checking preschools and after some interviews told me "We were spoiled with you... we were having Filet Mighon and now we have to eat chicken". Other 4 families realised that other daycare providers are not very receptive to these families present needs/shedules/wants and so they are keeping their children with relatives. (I allways knew my set of families were a very hard "juggling act" to keep up, but still feels good to be validaded by these other providers great "back bone". No wonder I'm burnout). So week 2 was good for my ego but my energy level is VERY low and I want this to be over. So for the 3rd week I will still have all the families.

[lolaland]

Me! Me! Me! I will be done next Friday! I started my daycare last May and it was something I always wanted to do. I was really excited to be able to be at home with my kids and still make some money. I quickly realized that this is not the job for me! Oh man! I started with two school agers for the summer, a full time 2yr old and a part time 18 mo plus my own 6 and 3 yo. I had to term the SA after only two weeks because I could not handle them. Then it got a lot better and I enjoyed it for a bit. Then one of my families gradually started picking up later and later due to work hours changing and stupid me didn't say anything just let it fester until I couldn't handle it anymore. I got tired of being stuck at home until 5:30-5:45 every evening. I knew I did not want to be stuck at home all summer long so I decided I had to close for my sanity. I am very fortunate that we will be able to swing just having me SAH until we get our youngest in kindergarten in a year and a half. Fingers crossed. I actually applied and interviewed for a job back at my old office but DH and I really do not want to have to pay daycare with me making so little, when I worked I basically worked for free after daycare and gas getting there and back. Anyway, I am counting down the days and it is finally within sight!

I can totally relate to your disapointment and ups & downs when entering into this business. I felt the same way the first 2 years. But then I found this forum and after realizing that most providers at some point felt the same way but still managed to make it work for them after a few adjustments and lessons learned, I tried to achieve the same result... but only to fail!

Good luck for you happyface