What is your household income, how much is benefits, and how are you coping?

Well obviously, you aren’t paying an au pair anything like a nanny’s salary or full time nursery.
It’s literally the entire point of an au pair is not to pay them appropriately! They are young women working in a foreign money all but being exploited for childcare in exchange for basic living expenses, of course you pay them less than a nanny 😂

You also can’t compare the childcare prices you paid decades, that’s a totally stupid and redundant statement.

@littleorangefox , genuine question here … how are you entitled to universal credit of 1700 if your partner brings home 2200 a month ? That’s above minimum wage as you say and after his pension contributions so his actual must be even higher.
How can they class that wage as needing topped up by £1700?

I've had au-pairs that never cost anything like that. Not that I give a shit about your opinion, obviously 😃

And I can't imagine parents on a household income of 90k claiming full CB is particularly uncommon? It is possible not to be eligible on that income, depending on the split, but there are more permutations where you'd get it than not.

DP is on 43k. I'm part time on 15k. DLA for autistic child is 4800/year. Child benefit works out at £2040/year. After tax, it's about £4000/month combined including benefits.
Mortgage is £800/month.
Bills combined are about £ 1200/month (car loans, DVLA, cars insurance, gas,electricity, water, TVLicence, subscriptions, mobile phones, various insurances).After school clubs/kids lunches/ swimming for both kids work out at £150/month.
Son's counselling is £250/month (private).
Dog minder is about £ 150/month.
Food shopping is between £600 and £800/month.
All of this amounts to about £3450. We have very little left . We want to enjoy life too ,so have booked a holiday this summer. It's on the credit card.
I dread when DP will need to replace his 10 years old car. We need two cars where we live ( school and work commutes, different start and finish times).
I'm sure we could streamline somewhere but I'm not willing to stop counselling for my son, who struggles with everyday life a lot. We could sell the dog, I suppose, but we're quite fond of her. Without a second car, I don't have an income. I can't WFH.
Anyway, we're not on the breadline but it wouldn't take much to knock us down. New car, something major needing replacing, one of us losing their job, becoming ill ...

We have a mammouth benefits bill, not just direct payments but housing etc…..we also have an international health service that NO govn will
do anything about, its a vote winner/ loser…..it leaks money, it doesn’t matter how much money is poured into it.

Its bad times when its better for people to not work than to work…..and that is the situation we have in the UK.

The British people are generally, not all, rather lazy with lots of jobs beneath them, hence the need for immigration for service jobs and caring jobs - and why would they work when it’s more beneficial to not? I am NOT a Daily Mail/ far right voter- it just is what it is. No idea how to solve it, can’t afford the pay cut to run for public office 🤣🤣🤣

Not really inflated if we're entitled to them.

It’s a hell of a lot closer to minimum wage than the inflated money you receive in benefits.

90k and penny pinching 🤣

Your friends can’t possibly be paying a nanny a full time wage, pension contributions and national insurance if it’s “much cheaper” than a nursery.

I am just stunned when I read about incomes of that level, what does someone do to earn that amount of money? That is significantly more that the PM! I don't know anyone who earns anywhere close to that even couples who combine both salaries.

Mainly finance or law in London. I'm a chartered accountant on 150k, DP is on £210k in investment industry. Both of those are before bonuses which add another 20% or so on average.

Becuase their salary is 90k combined, if individual salaries are under 60k they can claim

How do you still get child benefit on 90K??

Most people can live quite well at £460 a week , unless they have childrens or mortgage .... My priority should be pension contribs - ( a guarantee of future indexed Income for me would be preferable and safer than accumulating capital or assets ) . I have mortgage + expensive woman-child offspring , and I struggle to save on £280 a week .. ( constant debt and overdrafts at 39%). Being single doubles my feelings of poverty and impending destitution in retirement ........the UK state retirement being the worst in the civilised world , in spite of the NastyParty's efforts

I get it OP similar income (both public sector workers), our outgoings are slightly less so have more disposable but on paper £90k seems a lot and like we should be jetting off on foreign holidays twice a year, the reality is different.

To all those who think £45k per annum per person is pauper money and sneered at and should have more ambition to to increase their earnings…. Let’s see your stance when there aren’t
Teachers, police, nurses, care workers, social workers, physiotherapists … the vast majority of public sector workers because that’s literally the pay of the experienced members of those professions, which are usually in some form of banding which is capped and then they get the 2% or whatever the government decides that year.

Usually pay above is management posts, not frontline therefore a) limited posts and b) not everyone wants to do management (and we would be buggered if they did)

It's not a minimum wage salary. Minimum wage at 37.5 hours a week (not taking into account any pensions contributions) is around £1700 a month. My partner brings home £2200 a month after pension contributions. So not minimum wage at all.

Your DH probably needed to consider whether he could afford more children in addition to the ones he already had. A large family is a luxury and yes most people with 3+ children are watching the pennies a bit.

I have 3 friends who all have nannie’s, it’s much cheaper than nursery.

Way outside of London!

DH is a sales director on £150k and I’m an accountant on £80k. Both in London so higher salaries than the norm. To be honest, neither of us add much value to society through our jobs, bar taxes.

I feel like earning more can be very worth it long term but it’s a balance and it’s also ok to decide you’d rather live with a bit less money and a bit more time. In your kind of income bracket it’s probably good to review your budget and spending every now and again and stop spending on anything you are not getting good value out of.

I'm on about £1600 a month (net). All bills and food etc come from that. DH is technically self employed and earns about £4-5k a year, just trying to cover his costs and keep the car running, while working around DS.

£400 a month DLA for DS.
£102 a month Child Benefit.

So approx £30226/year

We have no rent or mortgage to pay, and I WFH so have no travel costs or we'd be struggling a lot more. As it is we end most months in our overdraft and DH often has to use his credit card to buy petrol.

We need to try and claim Carers Allowance, but want advice as DH tends to get paid in a lump sum irregularly and we've not had time to do that.

@Spooky2000 my kids have grown up but £3k for nursery fees and a mortgage??! My Mortgage will £967 p/mth and I still have enough to enjoy life with. I would look to employ a nanny or find cheaper services if it's that expensive.

Nothing says you have zero awareness of the current economic climate more than thinking a mortgage and nursery bill totalling £3k is laughable and suggesting a NANNY to save money on childcare!!

So we have gross income of £120k between us including child benefit.

Monthly of that 10k our big chunks we have to spend are:

Tax/NI 1,700
House cost. 1,500
Pension 1,300
Shopping 600
Utilities. 350
Car/transport costs 200
Childcare 150

So to me the above are really non discretionary but that leaves us about £50k a year that we can choose what to do with. We have about half that earmarked for regular monthly spending on cleaner/gardner, kids activities, entertainment, charity donations, new clothes, weekends away, theatre tickets and similar. The rest goes on a mix of longer term savings, holidays, home improvements and similar.

Our kids are a few years older now and between pay rises and their childcare going down we are definitely better off than when we paid full time nursery fees but we are not noticeably better off now than right before Covid when youngest had free hours and our joint income has gone up by close to £30k in that time. Cost of living is noticeable for everyone and I really feel for people who have seen costs go up while their salaries haven’t. Whatever you earn that’s hard.