by Ali Koomen

Created on: June 07, 2008   Last Updated: June 12, 2008

School's out. . . for summer. For parents of teenagers, it's not so bad. Most kids over 13 should be able to stay home alone, once given some hard-and-fast rules. Even better, have your teenager find a job. It keeps them out of the house, out of trouble and they'll earn money for those absolute teenage necessities such as Ipods, cell phones, laptops. . . .
However, parents with younger children are now facing the summer scrimmage. Daycare costs can run $125 to over $200 per week, per child, and for some families it creates an extreme burden on finances. Here are some creative ways to make sure your children are safe and cared-for during the summer:

*Take a three month leave of absence. If you're automatically thinking that this step would be impossible, think again. Factoring in the cost of day care, gasoline, toll road and parking fees, plus work expenses such as coffee, lunch, dry cleaning bills and the like, it may be sensible for one parent to stay home during the summer. Belts may have to be tightened, but the upside is having the ability to stay home with your kids and really enjoy them.

*Stagger vacations. In a perfect world, both parents would take their two week's paid vacation at the same time and they'd take the whole family to Disneyland. In today's economy, that's not a very viable choice. Consider having Parent A take the last two weeks of July and Parent B take the last week of July, the first week in August. The family can still have one week together and the upside is that when managed this way, it's three weeks less of child care woes.

*Work opposite shifts. One parent can work the standard day shift; the other can work nights. The sacrifice here is to the night-shifter, as he/she would also be responsible for taking care of the kids while the other one works, which doesn't leave a lot of time to sleep. Some benefits to this method are that many employers offer a shift differential to employees that work nights. Also, traffic is much thinner for the night-shifter, saving both gas and time.

*Change the days worked. If both parents normally work Monday though Friday, change it up a little. The other parent could work Wednesday through Sunday. The drawback to this is that the only time the couple has together is in the evenings, the pluses are that instead of five days of daycare, only three would be needed.

*Shorten the number of days worked. Instead of working five eight-hour shifts, work four ten-hour shifts. The drawback, of course, is the longer

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