Telling Parents Where Your Money Goes
Some parents may think you make a lot more money than you really do. They look at what they pay you each week, multiply it by the number of children in your program and falsely conclude that you make a lot of money!
For example, if you charge $175 per week for a full-time child and care for six children, your income is $54,600 a year ($175 x 6 x 52 weeks). If you receive the lower rate from the Food Program, that's an extra $3,400 per year, or a total of $58,000.
Parents, however, don't realize all of the expenses you have to run your family child care business.
One way to give parents a more accurate idea of how much money you make is to create a pie chart that shows where your income goes.
Your pie chart will show how much you have left over for yourself, after your business expenses. You can use the expense categories from your last year's tax return (IRS Schedule C) to create your pie chart of expenses.
Your expense categories could include: food ($7,000), supplies ($4,000), car expenses ($1,500, toys ($1,000), business liability insurance ($600), office expenses ($1,000), household items ($3,000), activity expenses ($2,500), employees $5,000), and house expenses (property tax, mortgage interest, house insurance, utilities, house repairs, and house depreciation - $8,000).
Your list of expense categories may be different. You may want to lump together categories so the total number of your categories is less than ten, to make your pie chart easier to read. You may want to leave out any depreciation expenses after the first year from Form 4562, as these don't represent actual expenses in the current year.
Here's an example of what your pie chart might look like using the above numbers: Don't share the dollar amounts in your pie chart. Instead, show the percentage of total expense each category represents. Using the income from above ($58,000), the chart shows that this provider spent 67% of her income on expenses, leaving her a profit of 33% of her total income, or $19,400.
So, you could tell parents, "For every $100 you pay me, I keep $33 after paying my business expenses. "
If you work eleven hours a day, five days a week, caring for children, and work an extra ten hours a week doing other business activities (cleaning, activity preparation, etc.), that's a total of sixty-five hours a week. With a profit of $19,400, that represents an hourly wage of $5.74 ($19,400 divided by 65 hours, divided by 52 weeks).
So, you could tell parents, "Do you think I should be earning minimum wage ($7.25 federal minimum wage) for my work? If so, that means I'll have to raise my rates to $186 per week to reach that goal ($10 an hour x 65 hours x 52 weeks = $24,505 + $33,600 in business expenses divided by six children = $186 per week, per child)."
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Tom Copeland - www.tomcopelandblog.com
Image credit: https://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/wooden-tile/e/expenses.html
