Myself and my fiancé (marrying in March) have decided I won’t be going back to work after my mat leave for several reasons. It makes sense for us but it’s still incredibly daunting.
Our main reason is having no family support for childcare. His family are in Australia, my dad still works full-time and my mum is a full-time carer for my disabled brother. Our local nursery was involved in a high profile abuse case a few years ago in which a child died from neglect. the nursery went through huge reform I still don’t feel comfortable sending my baby there, especially when we’d be paying £800 a month for the privilege full-time. There’s a nursery a bit further away but that would be a logistical nightmare and involve me having to get a car, which then would add probably an extra £150 a month to our outgoings and further reduces the amount of money we would have left from our salaries.
I did ask for a 2/3 day contract at my work place but they declined. I know there are other part-time jobs but I haven’t found any that would really work as they all involve shifts and doing different days each week, and no way would I pay for a full-time nursery place only to barely send my child. Even an evening job wouldn’t work as fiancé has some weeks he works days and other weeks he works nights. I’ve tried all the supermarkets but they all want at least one day at the weekend, fiancé works weekends.
We considered fiancé leaving his shift job and getting a job with fixed days but this will involve a huge pay cut and having to start at the bottom of the ladder. He’s well established in his current workplace and working towards a promotion and it would be madness to give that up. Whereas my job is only a basic customer service role of less than £27,000 a year.
We’re lucky that we have done the maths and can afford to live of partners income with about £300 left over each month, I know it’s not much but we have a large investment pot if there were to ever be a huge emergency. He’ll have to give up one of his hobbies and the car he was saving up for (and keep our basic 15 year old car) but he’s fine with this. We’ve also considered my lost pension contributions and come to the conclusion that we will save the child benefit into my pension pot. I know some will judge for that and say it should be spent on the child but I will be able to be there every day for my child and essentially dedicating my entire life to them so I think it’s fair enough to use child benefit for my pension. I’m not concerned about isolation or loneliness, I’m high functioning autistic and find maintaining friendships exhausting and just don’t bother. I absolutely love my home but do enjoy social events if it’s for my baby like baby group etc so we do go to those.
We wouldn’t be eligible for any UC as we have over £30,000 locked away in long term investments. We ideally won’t touch that unless the car were to conk out etc, we’d rather just reduce our outgoings. We already have a joint account which DP will put the majority of his income (minus his car insurance, fuel which I don’t get involved with and a small bit of personal money) . I will be doing food shopping, baby shopping etc from the joint account and will also be able to use it for anything I need or play groups etc.
Is there anything we haven’t considered or any advice please? How did it work for others who have done it?