great help the maid debate is to the OP.
my son currently goes to a pre-school run by a british woman and for 3 mornings a week it is $1500 a term - 3 terms a year following the brit school holidays i guess to coincide with older children. i'm not working at the moment so it's okay but obviously as you're working you won't want to be taking all those holidays off. so you have a choice of going to pre-schools that have a large portion of expats which mostly will do am or pm programmes although our one does a range including 9-3pm but obviously it's quite expensive.
there are no british type nurseries around with, you have to go local to get the full day care and i looked at a 3 and there was one i really liked but it was just a bit clinical...quite a bit cheaper though. your 4 year old is going to be old enough for school and if you check out some of the
International School websites you will see that 2 or 3 offer french as a second language from age 4. the canadian school is one of those and i've never heard anything negative about the school by the way which if you check the archives of this site is not to be said about most of the others. for your one year old there's not really any options except i've heard of a place called Babies Inc and another Pat's Schoolhouse that has a baby branch. most pre-schools start taking in when children are 18mths.
maids will cost about $800-900 all up (incl. medicals, one trip home every two years etc) but it seems that unless you and your spouse have flexible working hours it's the only way you can meet your children off the school bus or have them walked to school etc. also, take advantage so that when you get home you can jump straight into your children and not have to worry about dinner, cleaning up etc. if you take your time and choose carefully you can find a filipino with a good command of english and also i know of two myself who have early childhood learning degrees so their employers are lucky!!
as far as $220k goes, i guess that's nearly what comes into our house if you include our housing allowance and we live comfortably and are saving more than we did with us both working in London. medical care is expensive here but ours is fully covered (which i hear is very unusual) so i don't know about the public healthcare system but it's meant to be very good as well. you will get on ok but check out some of those school fees - ugly!!
you shouldn't have trouble finding a 3 bed including a maids quarters on a ground floor. with two young children you probably want more space so go for something pre 2000 to get larger rooms and more family oriented facilities. we live at palm spring and all of the ground floors have patios (lots of french kids too if yours want to be immersed!). check out the
property section on this forum website it will give you a really good idea as to what you can afford in your budget.
good luck - feel free to ask any more questions
