Most early educators are paid less than $15 per hour, and many of them report high levels of economic insecurity evidenced by their worry about meeting monthly family expenses or paying for bare necessities such as food and housing. Coupled with low wages, few early educators can expect to work in settings that provide basic professional supports including paid planning time, which is essential to effective teaching practices (Whitebook, McLean, Austin, & Edwards, 2018). Inadequate levels of public financing and a heavy reliance on families to pay the costs of early care and education (ECE) services has allowed these conditions to persist for decades with only limited improvement, despite the growing understanding of the impact that early educators have on the children in their charge (NASEM, 2018). In this report, the authors demonstrate how assumptions about what teachers need produce per child costs that vary by thousands of dollars. Recognizing that estimates are important points of information -- as they are often used to inform short- and long-term term decisions about early care and education services -- they examined a set of cost models with regard to assumptions about resources for teachers and their working environments. These assumptions drive the per child and total systems estimates produced for budgetary purposes and ultimately frame the daily realities of early educators.