Hang on in there until school age doesn't work?

This is why we’re probably going to be one and done

People say, have your second when the first is in school - as if the costs of the first reduce to zero!

As everyone else said - your nursery costs are cheap and your after school club / holiday club costs are expensive. (My eldest is 14 now but when you was little there was only 15 funded hours not 30 and I think breakfast club was £2.50, after school club was £8 and holiday club was £20! Dd starting school reduced our bill massively.)

Things which helped:-

When is your holiday year from and until? Mine is 1st July - 30th June which meant that dd’s first year at school I was able to cover pretty much all the school holidays up to 30th June as I hadn’t used any of them for the summer holidays (as she was still in nursery then.) No use longer term but helped the first year.

A couple of swaps with the parents of friends of dd’s over the first lot of summer holidays meant we needed to do less holiday club.

Parents lived far away so no help from a day to day basis but they would come to visit for a few days in the holidays and help out. As the kids got older they would also go and stay with the parents.

Get chatting to the breakfast / after school club people and find out if it is allowed to book your child in “ad-hoc” and (most importantly) which days they are not full. Then for each half term (roughly 6 weeks) you can each work from home a couple of times and have a couple of ad hoc breakfast club sessions. Which is cheaper than 6 breakfast club sessions.

Remember that a week of your husband’s holiday is worth nearly 2 weeks of “childcare holiday”. So if you agree to have 5 weeks of holiday together and 1 week each covering childcare then your husband’s 5 days are only needed on your working days. So 8 days (or nearly 3 weeks) in total from the two of you.

Once your younger child / children are also in school then you can use your “3 days a week” to reduce the hours you need childcare by. So just keep on keeping on!

I think you are in a very unusual position of having both incredibly low Nursery costs but then incredibly expensive wraparound care.

There are lots of things that people do - many of which have been shared on this thread - to make things work for their families. Including things like swapping childcare favours one night a week after school, and certainly in the holidays. Some folk are lucky enough to have family who can take them for a week in the holidays. Many people flex their hours so one parent goes in later (to drop off at school time) but then works later and the other parent starts very early, and finishes early. Some have some flexibility in terms of "as long as the work is done, we don't mind when you do it" and will have a 4 hour break in the afternoon but work in the evening.
The fact you only work 3 days gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of sharing care with other parents.

My DC are teens but last time I used a holiday club (pre covid) the cheapest ones were £25-30 for a full day. Just looked up and the cheaper one is £36/day but some are £70/day

Holiday club is between £25-£50 a day, £25 for a standard sports/crafts in a school hall/community centre type club. £50 for the forest school/outdoor pursuits/drama/dance type club. Pick one that's Ofsted registered and you can use tax free childcare/childcare vouchers to reduce costs.

Yes you do have to accept that you can no longer have 6 weeks a year off together as a family, you need to take school holidays in turns in order to reduce childcare costs. We have 2 weeks a year, 1 in summer, 1 over Xmas, plus bank holidays.

Yes, you have exceptionally cheap nursery costs so the comparison is skewed. Wraparound care costs don't fall until age 7 or 8 due to staff ratios. Until then, holiday clubs are essentially nursery. After that age, they're activity clubs and many are a lot cheaper.

As others have suggested your nursery costs are extremely low.

We don’t qualify for the 30 hours or tax free childcare which means we pay maximum rates for nursery.

We are in a situation whereby when our DC starts private pre-prep school our costs will actually reduce significantly. That just doesn’t seem the right way round to me.

We also have no family support for any childcare, pick ups etc however both DH and I WFH a lot and have huge flexibility with our working hours. Without that I’m really not sure how we’d cope with the schools years.

My advice is to get a WFH job if at all possible.

3k a year doesn't sound that bad for all that childcare... I mean it's a choice to have kids and to work those hours, other choices were available... Presumably you're better off than if you look after your own children but don't go to work? So see it not as a cost but as you are better off by xxx because you chose to work

Or am I missing something?

Children cost money 🤷‍♀️ I don’t think that this is a new thing. People have been complaining about childcare fees forever (well I know my mum complained about them in the 70’s). It’s an extra person who is much more needy and dependent than an adult and you (the global you) are responsible for everything they need.

I always wonder on these threads… is there someone out there telling people that kids are cheap or won’t have a financial impact?

Yep I think it’s this - our nursery was £2k per month full time (didn’t accept funded hours). Our ASC is £10 per day, so less than £2k per YEAR. So obviously we are far far better off than we were when DS was in nursery, even once you include holiday clubs.

I agree with you. Wraparound care and holiday camps are very expensive. And the juggling is insane. People say "go back to work when they start school" but actually, like you, I've found that school hours are much, much more difficult than nursery hours. As you say, nursery is 50 weeks of the year, 8am-6pm. School is 38 weeks of the year, 9am-3pm. It's easier to work when they're at nursery than at primary school. I guess people then say "it gets easier at secondary school" but there's seven very long years before then.

£65 a day for holiday club? We pay around £25, and I can use childcare vouchers. I know the childcare voucher scheme is closed now but can’t you use the tax free childcare account for registered childcare clubs, and surely less then £65 a day?

Your costs now are the cost I dream off when mine in is school. As your costs are actually quite small then the savings arnt that much difference , for me however it will be a big difference that I definitely am looking forward to the school starting!

Things changed when free hours were brought it. They weren't a thing when my dc were small so we were paying £40 per child per day so for one child I was paying £866 a month or £10,400 for the year. So things did improve massively when dc started school

So you'd only need the after school club 3 dats a week as you are at home 2 days a week. So find another part-time-working parent at the same schoolwgo has the opposite days off to you and arrange that you bring their DC to yours on the 2 days a week that you are at home in exchange for them doing likewise on 2 of your work days. Then you only need ASC on 1 day a week and can save £1,300 per year.

I don't think many people use holiday clubs for every week of the school holidays. Definitely not in reception. Generally dividing each holiday between childcare-swapping with other parents (so in some of your weeks off you have extra kids too), bringing in grandparents etc, and having occasional days where you and DH are both worling from home with the kids there and tag teaming so that between 7am and 10pm you have both achieved a full day of work.

It takes planning obviously. I don't say "it gets easier" - it gets different.

Don't forget all the wraparound and holiday childcare is also eligible for being tax free - I think you may have quoted your nursery costs as tax free but not included the savings for the schoolyears options?

Good luck!

Are you taking the tax free childcare into account when working your numbers? That might bring down your costs as well.

You're seemingly in an area with relatively low nursery costs compared to wrap-around care costs.

For us, our childminder was £50 a day. Breakfast and after school club together cost £8 a day. Our cheapest holiday club is £15 a day (though only for school hours)..

Your nursery costs are low and you're getting 30 free hours. It's been many years since mine were in nursery, but at the time we were spending £950/month (with 15 free hours if I remember correctly) and wrap around care when they started school was £50/week. Huge difference.

When my ds starts nursery later this year and dd start school we’ll be paying £1100 a month for nursery plus wrap around/holiday cover, that’s including the new 15 funded hours for ds and tax free childcare for both. It’ll be a huge saving when both are at school.

Your nursery costs sound very low! “It’ll get cheaper once they’re at school” is usually true as people generally pay a lot more than you are currently doing for nursery.

Most people taking loans will be the ones paying lots for nursery, I doubt there will be many taking loans for just £270 a month nursery costs. You don’t pay much for nursery at all, that’s why you aren’t noticing a big drop with school starting as there’s not much to drop.

Can't believe I'm paying more than you for after school club Vs nursery. That's painful.

Yes, working 3 full days when dc are in school for 5 short days does create a mismatch that you don't have at the moment. And your nursery is cheap (are you using all 30 hours in 3 days? That is unusually generous) while your wraparound and holiday club are definitely at the expensive end.