Tutoring, babysitting, even vacationing—There are more ways to contain the cost of an nyc childhood than one might think

By Hillary Chura 

You don’t need to move to the suburbs to save money. (In fact, that usually doesn’t work, but more on that later.) In my experience, there are ways to reduce the cost of almost any good or service you and your family enjoy as part of living in the city—it just takes a little creativity and moxie. I’ll get you going with some of my favorite money-saving tips for New York families, but once you start noodling it over, about I’m sure you’ll come up with some of your own.

Travel 

New York is the country’s top tourist destination, so the next time you start planning a family trip, consider a home swap. For about $10 a month, websites like HomeExchange and Intervac can connect you with members in places you’d like to visit. You stay in their home (usually complete with washer/dryer, kitchen, lawn and sometimes even a pool and car) while they stay in yours. No additional money changes hands. Tip: some co-ops don’t allow swaps, so be sure to check with your building beforehand.

Neighborhood Goods and Services

The big lesson here is to look farther afield. Take storage, for example. If you live in Manhattan, you’re likely to find it cheaper (and just as safe) to use a reputable storage facility in Queens or the Bronx. The same lesson works for birthday cakes, children’s clothing, car washes, dental work, groceries, manicures, kitchen cabinets and almost anything else you’re looking to save money on. Also, never assume that prices within your neighborhood are uniform. I recently was stunned to discover I could pay $19 for a pound of wild-caught salmon at Fairway, $30 at Agata or $40 at the local fishmonger—all within a mile of one another. And don’t even get me started on price differentials in overnight parking! You never know.

Child Labor

Nowhere is it written that you need a 30-year-old CPR-certified, tax-paying professional for a babysitter. Especially if your children are somewhat self-sufficient, consider asking a responsible and smart younger teenager to watch the kids on date night. They can stick a frozen pizza in the oven, help the kids with their homework and be infinitely more entertaining and energetic than an adult who’s babysitting after a full day in the office. Expect to pay $8 to $10 an hour—did I just hear you gasp?—about half of what high school seniors, college students and professional sitters charge. If you’re queasy about leaving a 15-year-old in charge, remember who watched you on those Love Boat-Fantasy Island Saturday nights when your parents were out!

Teacher Tutors

This is New York, so even academic rock stars will need a private tutor at least once before they go on the grand college tour or start applying for financial aid. If you can’t or don’t want to spend $150 an hour for established tutoring services, try connecting with one of your child’s former teachers (a good one, of course) or ask friends for recommendations. Many full-time instructors are already tutoring on the side, and guess what? They’re usually really good at it—they’re teachers! (Plus, they’re often familiar with the specific tests your child will be taking.) Since you’re enlisting just their expertise with no middleman, expect to pay one-third to one-half of what established tutoring agencies bill.

Camps 

Think outside the tent. Some of the more affordable day camps are sponsored by nonprofits like the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, the Van Cortlandt House Museum, Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, YMCAs and other local community centers, New York Botanical Garden and Greenwich House. Likewise, many neighborhood churches offer week-long half-day programs where kids do crafts, sing and play outside, with some Old and New Testament stories sprinkled in. A week-long program rarely tops $80 per child, and many churches offer discounts for siblings. Though technically not a nonprofit, the Parks Department itself offers a $500/summer program via a lottery.

Student Practitioners

If you or your child needs a service like a haircut, dental work, ADHD or speech therapy or even a family portrait photography session, make a call to a local professional school. To get the practice they need, student apprentices will knead your muscles, snip your locks, address your lisp or drill your cavities under the watch of a veteran at a cost of next to nothing. You can also call the school’s placement offices and ask about how to hire recent graduates. Believe it or not, I did this to find my most recent (OK, only) home decorator. She was young, but kept me from making some headache-inducing mistakes.

Outsource Parenting

If you can make it happen, ship the kids to the grands in a cheaper ZIP code for a week or two of intergenerational bonding over this summer. Even if you enroll the kids in camp, living expenses go down radically when you’re almost anywhere but here. And if you can’t accompany your kids on the drop-off or pick-up trip, consider the fact that you generally pay only an extra $50 to $100 for an unaccompanied minor (aged 5 to 11) to fly solo on nonstop flights.

Negotiate

New York is full of mom-and-pop businesses, and just about everyone, from dentists to the proprietors of kids’ activity and enrichment centers, may lower their bills if you ask. One friend with three kids tried this for summer camp and was so stunned at the discount offered by the camp that he told the owner he didn’t expect that much of a break. Given the economy, even big businesses like hospitals may offer after-the-fact rebates if you receive a bill that’s higher than you expected.

School Auctions

To raise money, many local schools now feature some of the items from their annual benefit on their websites prior to the actual benefit. These are great ways to find big breaks on local children’s classes and birthday parties, among other things. And you don’t have to buy a ticket, dress up or go somewhere to participate; they just want your money. Also check out biddingforgood.com, an online auction clearinghouse where schools, foundations, religious organizations and other charities across the country auction off summer camps, trips, memberships, jewelry, sports tickets and other donations all year round. This spring, I snagged a local museum membership, baseball class, professional consulting, dolphin watching and chess camp for less than half the price I had paid in the past.

In case you’re pondering a move to the land of lawn care and shopping malls to cut costs, you may want to reassess. Assuming you move close enough to the city to keep your day job, chances are your monthly outlay is likely to remain similar to whatever it was in the city, if not more. Soon enough, you’ll wonder where it all goes at the end of the month (much as you probably do now) thanks to paying for niceties like lawn care, garbage collection, snow removal, commuting, heating and cooling, lighting for an extra 2,000 square feet, a car (or two), insurance and higher real estate taxes. On the positive side, with your extra hour (at least) of commuting each day, you’ll have the plenty of time to figure it out.

Hillary Chura is a freelance writer, longtime business reporter and New York City mom of two. Look for her work on newyorkfamily.com, where she’ll soon be starting a blog about, yes, parenting money savers. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council reached a budget agreement on Monday that increases city funding for child care and after-school programs, but it may not be enough to help the Bloomingdale Family Program’s Head Start program on the Upper West Side, which is projected to shut down in the fall.

The budget agreement adds about $150 million in combined funding to the Administration for Children’s Services’ (ACS) child care program and the Department of Youth and Community Development’s Out-of-School Time program, a significant increase from the levels proposed in the executive budget released in May. Instead of losing 6,500 child care spots and 30,000 after-school slots as originally projected, the city will actually have more child care spots in the new fiscal year than it did this past year.

“Working parents need to have their children protected and cared for while they are at work,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in a statement from the mayor’s office. “Children need to receive a high-quality educational experience at an early age. We are creating a program that responds to both of these needs.”

But it is not yet clear how the budget will affect the ACS’ EarlyLearn NYC program, which ACS says will increase quality standards for children enrolled in the city’s subsidized centers, home-based programs and Head Start and expand the capacity of infant and child care programs.

ACS tentatively determined which programs would be awarded seats through EarlyLearn, most of them located in “targeted ZIP codes”—low-income areas—while those located in non-targeted ZIP codes—wealthier areas such as the Upper West Side—could lose seats. Bloomingdale’s Head Start program, located at 171 W. 107th St. is one program at risk, set to shut down in the fall.

Julissa Borday, whose 4-year-old daughter, Skylar, attends the program, said that EarlyLearn’s ZIP code-based funding distribution is unfair.

“You can’t generalize,” Borday said. “That’s a logical fallacy right there. You can’t assume that everyone who lives here is high-income. That’s not the case.”

José Velilla, Bloomingdale’s executive director, agreed, noting that he doesn’t know if this week’s budget agreement will help at all.
“There are still major funding issues with EarlyLearn in and of itself,” he said. “It’s a good thing for those parents who were concerned about losing those slots in after-school, but how the restoration dollars affects EarlyLearn is still unclear.”

Tia Waddy, ACS director of communications, said that the matter is still under consideration.

“The Administration for Children’s Services is grateful for the funding added to early care and education by Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Council,” Waddy said. “Once the budget has been finalized and voted on by the Council, we will review how the additional resources will be distributed among centers eligible to receive EarlyLearn NYC funding. The City Council will also be allocating money to centers of their choosing via their own discretionary funds.”

Adriana Carrera hopes to enroll her 2-year-old son, Ismail Abuzaid, in the Bloomingdale Head Start program in the fall. If the center closes, however, she won’t be able to afford another day care for her son and will have to care for him at home during the day. The news of potential closure startled her.

“I was thinking, what are we going to do now?” Carrera said. “To look for a place for him is so expensive.”
“They’re being hypocritical,” added Paola Padilla, whose 4-year-old son, Jaden, is in the program. “They’re saying that they’re helping when they’re actually cutting seats.”

EarlyLearn will also not fund half-day slots at city-subsidized child care centers—only full-day slots will be available. But Stephan Russo, the executive director of child care programs at the Goddard Riverside Community Center, said he is not too concerned about tit.
“It services less families, but those Head Start children will have a full-day experience,” Russo said.

Other programs on the Upper West Side that could face cuts are the West Side Montessori School, the Mabel Barrett Fitzgerald Center located in the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center and the Polly Dodge Day Care Center.

When she was pregnant with her daughter over a year ago, Brooklyn-based writer Erin Bried found herself up to her eyeballs in sometimes confusing, often contradictory advice on parenthood. But she put her zest for research to work, and the result is the practical, yet tender book How to Rock Your Baby: And Other Timeless Tips for Modern Moms (Hyperion).

The heart of the book flows from Bried’s interviews with 10 extraordinary mothers including Sunchita Tyson, mother of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson; Elaine Maddow, mother of Rachel Maddow; Betty Horton, who at the age of 102 is America’s oldest mother; and of course, Bried’s own mom.

What inspired you to research and write How to Rock Your Baby?
When I was pregnant, I read as much as I could. But rather than feel empowered, I felt totally paralyzed. There was so much conflicting information. Let the baby cry versus never letting the baby cry. Always wash hands before touching baby versus germs are good. It was overwhelming, and I found myself not trusting myself. That is why I wrote this book: I wished there was a book with advice in it that hadn’t changed over the years.

How did you decide which mothers to interview?
I wanted to talk to moms of all backgrounds and all ages, and I wanted to interview moms of extraordinary kids, so we could all agree [that] they did something right. I wanted the best advice, and I figured these moms would offer it to me.

There are so many books about pregnancy and parenting newborns out there. Why do moms need another one?
What I wanted to offer with mine was perspective. You can get so wrapped up—what brand of pacifier should I buy? which crib?—but in the end, you won’t remember any of that. You will remember the sweet memories.

How would you describe your overall parenting philosophy?
In a nutshell, love your child and let her find her own way. And it’s equally important to do the same for yourself and trust [that] you will find your own way, too. Ruth Alsop [mother of Marin Alsop, the first female conductor of a major American orchestra] said that there’s a strength in each of our children that needs to be nourished. That also resonated with me as a mother. We are all stronger than we know. … We got the strength from our mothers, and they got it from their mothers.

What was the most unexpected piece of advice you received?
One of the moms confessed that she let her kids watch television and eat junk food from an early age. That gave me so much comfort! You’ve got some wiggle room. If they eat a cookie, you haven’t ruined them.

When should parents start trying to get their baby on a schedule?
Parents should be at their baby’s beck and call for the first two months. … Your job is to make them feel loved, safe and comfortable. After that, start establishing loose routines like at bedtime—give the baby a bath, a massage, read a book and put her down. Establish that ritual. This will help you in the long run.

You make several mentions of encouraging moms to get help and support. Do you think there’s still a stigma against moms who need help?
Yes, I think there is absolutely a stigma. There is an aura surrounding motherhood. On one hand, I say trust your instincts; your gut will not steer you wrong. On the other hand, people expect you to have all-knowingness once you’re pregnant. But it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes the best parenting decision you can make is to get help.

You include chapters on things that some people probably think are instinctive, like how to sing a lullaby. Have you found that some moms today have lost these instincts?
You’re going to remember what songs you sang to your kid for the rest of your life. I found so often at 2 a.m. when I wanted to sing to my daughter that I couldn’t remember a single song. There’s so much pressure on mothers today to be perfect. This chapter is just a reminder that perfection doesn’t exist. You don’t need to have an award-winning voice to soothe your child. Your baby just needs to hear your voice.

If you could give just one piece of advice to a new mom, what would it be?
Overall, worry less. When I was breastfeeding, I was so paranoid that my daughter wasn’t getting enough milk. Of course she was—I wish I had worried less!

Describe your perfect Mother’s Day.
My perfect Mother’s Day would start with breakfast at home, because restaurants are tough with a 1-year-old in tow! I would treat myself to a caffeinated coffee. Then my husband and I would put our daughter in the stroller and walk to the carousel under the Brooklyn Bridge. We’d have a picnic and play, then walk home, put the baby to bed and have a glass of wine.

Jenna Helwig, founder of Rosaberry, is a culinary instructor, personal chef and freelance writer. She blogs for Yummy Delicious at newyorkfamily.

Aziz Ansari, a cast member of the comedy Parks and Recreation, ceremonially makes the first mow of Sheep Meadow to celebrate the seasonal reopening of Central Park’s lawns.

STANLEY ISAACS RALLIES 

Parents, children and local officials gathered to protest proposed cuts to the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center’s Beacon Program on Tuesday. The mayor’s preliminary budget would defund the program entirely; the Department of Youth and Community Development has notified the Center that it would have to close the program July 1 if the cuts are enacted.

The Beacon Program provides child care after school, on weekends and during the summer. It works to prevent students from dropping out of high school through attention to academic enhancement, career-oriented training, health and fitness education as well as through a focus on arts and culture. Isaacs Center Executive Director Wanda Wooten called the Beacon Program “a critical part of the efforts of this community to provide role models and quality programming,” and said that the young people it serves would be devastated if the program ended. The budget is still being finalized in the City Council.

MALONEY TAKES ON GOOGLE

The National Association of Human Trafficking Victim Advocates, along with 37 other anti-trafficking organizations, applauded Upper East Side Rep. Carolyn Maloney earlier this week for her support of the investigation of Google’s role in perpetuating the trafficking of women and girls through the sale of online adult services advertisements. Many advocacy groups say these ads are barely disguised endorsements of prostitution and trafficking—they are often used to sell sex and traffic women—and are working for their removal from major publications and online companies.

Maloney, a Democrat, and fellow Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, wrote a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, urging him to seek cooperative solutions by addressing some of the company’s advertising policies. “Their letter demonstrates that this issue is not about politics,” said Phil Cenedella, executive director of the Association. “It is about victims—and corporations like Google that need to take responsibility and behave ethically.”

WALK IN THE PARK

The City Parks Foundation will kick off its spring season of yoga instruction and walking classes for seniors the week of April 30. The classes are free and designed for those 60 and older. In Carl Schurz Park, at East 86th Street and East End Avenue, walking classes will be held Mondays and Wednesdays at 8 a.m., while yoga takes place Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 a.m. In John Jay Park, at East 77th Street and Cherokee Place, yoga is on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. At Thomas Jefferson Park, at 112th Street and First Avenue, yoga is on Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Call 718-760-6999 for more information.

VOLUNTEERS OF THE YEAR

The Vanderbilt YMCA named Andrew Curtis, a vice chair of the branch’s Board of Managers, their volunteer of the year for his work in bringing positive changes to the youth programming there. Damisha Fraser, 17, was named the youth volunteer of the year. Fraser has been involved with the Y’s early childhood, after-school and summer camp programs, as well as helping out in the administrative offices. Both honorees were recognized at a ceremony at the Marriott Marquis in March.

“We are so proud of Andrew and Damisha’s ongoing commitment to the Vanderbilt Y,” said Executive Director Anita Harvey. “Their work, their commitment, their energy, their spirit of goodwill is an inspiration to all of us.”

ISLAND CHERRY BLOSSOM WALK

Even in Manhattan, you can still escape to an island for a spring getaway. On Saturday, April 21 at 11 a.m., the Roosevelt Island Historical Society (RIHS) will be leading a 75-minute tour of the cherry trees on the island while they’re in full bloom. Judith Berdy, the society’s president, will lead the tour and lend her botanical and historical expertise to the experience. To get to Roosevelt Island, take the tram from 59th Street and Second Avenue; the group will meet at the visitor center kiosk at the tram plaza. Email rooseveltislandhistory@usa.com or call 212-688-4836 to make reservations. A $10 donation to RIHS is requested and can be made via PayPal on the website.

SECOND AVENUE BUS STOPS RESTORED

As the Second Avenue construction saga continues, Upper East Siders can begin to savor the victories of small improvements that point toward a distant but construction-free future. Claudia Wilson, the community liaison for the Second Avenue Subway project, recently announced that contractors and the MTA are now able to reinstate two major bus stops along the construction corridor thanks to the completion of work that had directly interfered with the stops. The crosstown westbound M86 bus stop has been reinstated on East 86th street between Second and Third avenues and the local southbound M15 bus stop has been reinstated on Second Avenue between East 86th and 85th streets. The express southbound M15 bus stops on Second Avenue at East 88th and 79th streets. Here’s to one more step toward a normalized Second Avenue.

Nannies and other domestic employees in New York have been working in the shadows of the city’s economy. They cook, clean and watch children so parents can pursue careers—all without a guarantee of needed time off or other job benefits that many employees take for granted.

Last week, all 32 Democratic State Senators and one Republican voted for legislation that guarantees the 200,000 domestic workers in the metropolitan area paid holidays, sick days, vacation, a day off each week and overtime pay. Employers would be required to give their nanny at least two weeks notice if they want to fire them. Domestic workers would be allowed to sue if the new regulations are violated, and their bosses could face criminal charges.

“This law is, in a sense, a message that domestic workers are real workers, that homes are workplaces and that these workers deserve to have rights and deserve to be protected like other workers,” said Priscilla Gonzalez, director of Domestic Workers United, a group that lobbied for the legislation.“What we hope comes out is a law that guarantees basic labor rights that they otherwise wouldn’t able to negotiate for themselves.”

The Assembly passed a bare-bones version of the bill last year that provides overtime pay and a day off per week. Now that the State Senate pushed through a more robust legislation, the two chambers will reconcile the different pieces of legislation for the governor to sign.

Gov. David Paterson has expressed support for such a bill, but his spokesperson said he is uncommitted to signing the legislation at this point.