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While plenty of people may celebrate an additional week of summer vacation provided by the latest-possible Labor Day on Sept. 7, it’s giving some parents a headache.
In places like New York City, school doesn’t start until after the holiday. But many summer camps have finished by then, leaving parents of young children to figure out child care until the school year begins. The first day of school is Sept. 10 for New York City public schools.
Most public schools in the U.S. have their first day before the end of August, according to education data company MDR Education. But many schools, especially in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, open in September. Minnesota has a state law requiring schools to start after Labor Day, though it has suspended that regulation for the 2026 and 2027 school years due to the holiday’s late timing.
Calendar conundrums can be costly for parents whether they mean an extra week of summer child care or an additional year of toddler care for children who turn 5 after their district’s kindergarten cut-off date. If parents aren’t vigilant, what seem like scheduling quirks could turn into costly surprises, says says Lindsey Stanberry, a certified financial planner and family finance advisor at Babylist, a registry, e-commerce and content platform for families.
“With most things related to kids and money, the key is to plan ahead and try to build in some flexibility,” she says. “It seems crazy to people without kids, but families start planning for summer camps as early as January or February — six months ahead of summer.”
Other parents plan take time off work to stay home with their kids or take a family vacation during the gap between summertime activities and the school year, she says.
Next year, Labor Day falls on Sept. 6 — another occasion for families to plan around a few extra days of summer. If you have a young family, you should likely look even further ahead, financial experts say, because the calendar may have a bigger impact than you think on your family’s child care spending.
Your child’s birthday could mean a larger total child care spend
Generally speaking, parents who have to pay for day care can expect to be paying those bills for up to five years before their child can start kindergarten at a free public school. Only three states — Florida, Oklahoma and Vermont — and some cities like New York and Washington, D.C. offer universal free preschool for four-year-olds, according to Care.com. If your district doesn’t offer free preschool and your child turns five later in the year, you may be on the hook for an additional year of full-day care or private preschool.
States have various cutoff dates for when children need to have turned five for the year they will enter kindergarten, usually around September 1. The cutoff dates can be as late as October 15 in Maine or as early as July 31 in several states, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
In some school districts, a child who turns five in late September may have to wait until the following year to start kindergarten just before their sixth birthday, for example, whereas a child who turned five in August could start that year. For parents of the later-born baby, that could mean nearly an additional year of day care costs which average $17,264 per year, nationally, according to a LendingTree study.
As such, it may be somewhat financially advantageous to aim to have a baby earlier in the year. But as plenty of families will tell you, it’s not exactly easy to plan a pregnancy down to the month you’d expect the baby to be born. And regardless of when your child is born, “It’s always expensive to have children!” Stanberry says.
When you’re expecting a child, it’s a good idea to look into your school district’s options for preschool and its kindergarten cutoff age so you can plan accordingly. That could mean exploring a different area or starting a dedicated savings account.
“You can plan for it! And the earlier you start saving, frankly the better,” she adds. “I don’t think the cost of kids should deter people from starting families, but I also think you need to be realistic about what it will cost.”
Child care can cost nearly $30,000 a year
The cost of child care varies widely by state and by the child’s age. In Mississippi, where costs are the lowest, families pay an average of $7,220 per year for infant care and $6,571 per year for 4-year-old care, according to a 2025 analysis by Economic Policy Institute. Families in Washington, D.C. have the highest annual costs at $29,809 on average for infant care and $23,877 for 4-year-olds. Though D.C. offers free preschool for three- and four-year-olds, EPI notes that not all families may be able to access those programs due to availability or other barriers.
There isn’t really a cheap or easy solution for child care costs, Stanberry says. But having a proverbial “village” of friends and family members who are able to help out can make things easier, especially during in-between periods like the end of summer.
“People often bristle at this suggestion because it takes work to build this community, and it doesn’t happen overnight,” she says. “Also, there’s usually some quid pro quo involved. But it can be extremely helpful in saving money and your sanity.”
For some families, one parent is able to stay home with the child or children full-time, and the math works out with the other parent’s income. But the best financial solution may not be the best emotionally.
“Everything has a price, and it’s not always what you’re paying,” Andy Smith, a CFP and executive director of financial planning with Edelman Financial Engines, says. Whether deciding between different child care providers or weighing a parent staying home, he encourages families to think of the non-financial costs like the quality of care provided, distance to a daycare and impact on the parent’s career.
“Your price isn’t necessarily a dollar function. Your price is that mental and emotional response that you have to [your decision] as you’re seeing it built in that plan in front of you,” he says.
He and Stanberry both emphasize the importance of planning ahead to the best of your ability. Unpredictable costs are sure to come up, but for big-ticket items like daycare, try to get a sense for the cost as early as you can. When Stanberry was pregnant with her son, she researched local daycare costs and started moving that amount into her savings each month.
“It allowed us to get used to our new budget before the baby came and had the added benefit of helping us build a little nest egg for upcoming expenses,” she says.
Everyone, regardless of whether they have children should have a general idea of how much money they bring in and how much they spend on essentials, Smith says. And if you don’t have a plan for keeping your goals on track after having a child, the period when you’re expecting is “probably a really good time to get that, because now all of a sudden you have these additional needs that you have to to consider,” he says.
“But it just comes down to testing to see what happens as you build in these additional [child care costs].”
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