What are his options? Best 10 pts!?

You are a support staffer in a small but popular and successful business/consulting firm. Your hours are 9 to 5 Monday through Friday and you have a thirty minute lunch break usually around noon. In addition to you there are five additional staffers of about the same age and general socio-economic demographic grouping. Seniority among the six support personnel varies from ten years to less than one year. Salary is determined, in part, upon years of successful service and yearly evaluations and reviews. You have five years of seniority. Recently your company has acquired the consulting contracts for a British conglomerate based in London and having European interests. This valued contract has added to the excitement and enthusiasm among all the employees.
You have two children. They are 7 and 5 years old.

Recently your spouse received a promotion that is necessarily going to modify the child care arrangements. To this point your spouse has been able to drop the children at school and pick them up after school. That will no longer be possible. Your spouse will be able to take the children to school but will be unavailable in the afternoon for child care.

What about a part-time, live-out nanny type person? Often times, this would be an ideal job for a university student, as it would only be a few hours per day, but would cover your needs and give them a bit of spending money without using up their entire evening -- when they need to be doing homework, etc.

Also, you could see if one of your friends has an older child who would like to look after your children after school -- this could be a cheaper option than day care and/or nanny.

Also, what about another family that you are close with who has children about the same age? You could possibly make some type of arrangement with them for caring for your children for a few hours a day. You could either pay them or trade them for something they need that you could fulfill. When I was young, I always had to go to my one friend's house after school because her mom had to babysit me. It worked out pretty good.

Another one would be if there is any family close by, are they available? I don't recommend expecting them to do it for free. You should offer to pay them a certain amount, just as you would any sitter. Family tends to start feeling taken advantage of if you just expect them to do everything for free because they are family.

Also, is there a possibility for changing your hours at work? What about 7 to 3 instead of 9 to 5? or something like that?

There are all kinds of options, but it all depends on what resources you may or may not have. Write down all the ideas that you have -- even if they seem like dumb ones. I have found that often, out of the dumb ones, comes another similar, but different approach, which turns out to be the best.

So, write down every single idea you have. Don't disregard any of them. Then go back through and take a look back over them. Something truly unexpected may jump right out at you!!!

Best of luck. Always remember that children are more important than pretty much anything else. You need to do what is in their best interest and making more money is not necessarily where it is at. I have known plenty of unhappy people with plenty of money and many of the happiest people I know are the ones that live frugally. Keep that in mind. It is not all about the money. Yes, you need to have enough to keep a roof over your head and feed the family, but the biggest, most expensive toys are not what truly makes a child happy.

It is the time spent being loved and paid attention to by their parents.

A) - ask about adjusting your hours ... come in earlier , leave earlier.

B) -ask for a raise to off set child care expenses for after care.

C) -Do you know a trusted person where you live where the children are welcome after school until one of you parents gets home.

D) relitive child care ... family live near by?

What ever you choose ... work the problem out as you would at work ... weight the pro's & con's and discuss it with your partner ...... make the decision a joint one.

Kids & Safety always come first . . . . .

Good Luck !