To ask someone who is better than me at maths to help

[Jenala]

I have a tax free childcare account. Every £8 I put in, the govt adds £2 (or 80p they add 20p). The nursery and childminder bill is a little different each month e.g. nursery is £227.45 and childminder is £196.15 this month.

I find it much harder than I should to work out how much to pay into my childcare account each time for the government top up to make it the right amount and generally over estimate slightly. I'm sure there is some simple formula to work out exactly how much I need to pay in but I'm too stupid not good enough at maths to work it out. Someone help me?

Obviously if the bill was exactly £200 it would be easy but the random amounts stump me!

[UnaOfStormhold]

Multiply the total amount by 0.8.

[Fishfingersandwich3]

Whatever your bill is, multiply by 0.8 and that is how much you need to put in.

So e.g. 227.45 x 0.8 = £181.96.

[GlueSticks]

Do you mean you need your contribution and the government contribution to add up to your total childcare bill?

Is so, find your total childcare bill, multiply by 0.8 on a calculator and that is how much you need to pay in.

[GreenVoyage]

About £353.

You can't simply times by 0.8.

[choronzon]

You pay = 0.8 * (nursery cost + childminder cost)

= 0.8 * ( 196.15 + 227.45 )
= 0.8 * 423.60
= 338.88

And the govt adds 84.72

[OnTheRise]

For every pound you need to pay your childcare, you need to put in 80p.

So if you need to pay the nursery £278 (rounding up because it's easier) you'd put in 278 x 80p. Which is £222.40.

All you do is find out how much the bill is, then multiply it by 0.8 to find what your share of that bill will be.

[HawthornLantern]

Uma is right. What you are trying to do is to work out what 80% of your childcare bill every month is.

Another way of doing that is to work out what 10% is and to multiply that by 8. And 10% of your bill is just moving the decimal point.

So when the bill is 227.45, then 10% of that is 22.75 (or 22.74 if you don't round up).
When the bill is 196.15, then 10% is 19.61.

At the risk of giving you too many options, once you know what 10% is, you can double it to give you 20% (that's the amount the government pays) and just subtract the 20% from the childminder's bill. The answer is the 80% that you will pay.

[GreenVoyage]

The government match/pay 20% of what you put in, not 20% of the actual bill.

[Ihatemyclients]

@GreenVoyage why not? Surely if she's always responsible for 80p of every pound of her childcare costs, she just multiplies the cost every month by 0.8?

[Jenala]

I knew there was a simple way to do it. Doh! Thanks all

[Jenala]

There's been more posts since I posted. The 0.8 seems to work.

If bill was 100 and you multiplied by 0.8 that gives the correct amount of £80 to pay in

[SharkSave]

@Greenvoyage is correct, they pay in 20% of what you do. They don't 'top up' essentially.
With mine I just pay in what the bill is and every few months have a cheaper month. I feel like I 'see' the benefit more that way

[youngestisapsycho]

OP said she pays 80p, then the gov pay 20p... so that is 20% of the whole cost... so OP is correct that they pay 20% of the whole bill... not 20% of what she pays.... as that would be only be 16p out of 80p.

[SpeverendRooner]

OP seems to be correct about the policy - government adds £20 for every £80 you pay in:
www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs/tax-free-childcare

...so the multiply-by-0.8 that everyone has already mentioned is correct.