High Childcare Costs - work for negative money?

[Camomila]

Just wondering how many people end up doing this?

I'm on mat leave atm, I earn £67 a day, a baby place at nursery is £63. Add in the train fare on rainy days and I'm going to work for zero extra money in the pot.
But...there is a massive recession and I should hold on to my job shouldn't I?

Please tell me what to do wise mumsnetters!

@minnieok - I’m not sure whether you intended to be rude but your decisions are no better than those made by someone else. Children are loved, wanted and cared for regardless of whether you are a working or stay at home parent.

I held on, through several years of earning no money and crazy schedules. It's paid off, I'm now in a decent well paid role that I could never had achieved if I hadn't stuck it out.

It's a very personal choice, but for me it was worth hanging on for the long term benefits.

I'd never advocate giving up employment. Its a huge privilege to be able to work as so many people are unable from ill health or lack of education, access to jobs for instance.

But on the flipside i did the whole preserve my pensions, skills, NI and promotion things with the eye on the long term. It didnt really work out for me as the long term held redundancy and complex special needs. My NI stamps were covered by child benefit. I cant use my skills around my sons SEN and the pension - well we were worse off in the short term - but we could have put that amount into a pension and been in a similar position. And i do still work in something ekse but all my colleagues took career breaks. I dont regret the choice i made but the long term pay off doesnt happen as a god given right. Its a risk you take that you hope will pay off.

I know plenty of women who have regretted giving up their career to be SAHM, including myself. It was great at the time (my DS is 19 now) I genuine loved being out of the workplace, I had no financial constraints as DH & I pooled his salary and I had equal access to anything I wanted, I had a wide range of interesting and stimulating volunteering commitments so I didn't miss 'adult company'. I did make sure I kept my NI contributions up to date.

But situations change, it was very, very difficult to get back into the workplace and although I do have a job that I love and is very interesting (to me ), it really doesn't pay anything like what I earned 25 years ago .. so think very carefully about your decision. If my marriage had broken up I would be in an even worse position, I know plenty of women my age (60) who are trapped in unhappy marriages for financial reasons.

When you are young you tend not to think about these things long term.

Staying in work at this time is short term pain for long term gain. I found working while they were younger has enabled me to get to a more senior role and be more flexible when they are older. Arguably they need you just as much (if not more) when older.

My pension is healthy, my CV has no gaps, I've been able to stay current in a fast moving field where only being as good as your last success matters.

I have financial independence i.e. if our marriage broke down I'd be able to maintain a standard of living. As a couple we have financial resilience 2 incomes means a tiny bit more stability in worrying times.

We're not rich but neither do we struggle. We keep up with tech (second hand) and have holidays abroad every 5 years. We're overpaying our mortgage. Saving for our children and saving into a pension for them.

Our children get to do lots of different things (far more than I did as a child with a SAHM).

We get sick pay, holiday pay, have a death in service benefit all of which I'd lose if I had stopped working.

I enjoy working. My children know what I do now and are really proud of me. I love the challenge and I enjoy meeting other adults.

The short term expense of childcare should be balanced against the long term income of working.

We've spent around £60,000-£70,000 in childcare but are coming to the end of that now. That's over 13 years BTW!

Professional childcare is an opportunity cost, which will enable you to enhance lifetime earnings. You wouldn’t begrudge paying for a professional qualification or a postgraduate education, would you?

Smug SAHM make me laugh. Not so smug when they’re left high and dry with no money and kids who show no signs of outperforming despite their mother’s martyrdom.

Can you get creative? And you /DH do compressed hours or similar to make it more cost effective? That's what we did

Worth bearing in mind that Tax Free Childcare can work out better than childcare vouchers if you have at least one higher rate tax payer in the household.

The equivalent of my salary came out the joint pot for childcare for nearly three years.
Worth every penny. They're now teens and I'm looking at early retirement.
Think long term.

I did this years ago. Nursery completely wiped out my wage. I had 2 in private nursery and I thought it was the right decision. Looking back it was just plain stupid. I had some sort of misguided loyalty to my career. It wasn't worth it time wise or financially

It’s short term pain for longer term gain. Resigning because you’re spending £20-odd per day rather than earning would be madness.

I just went back to work in a similar situation, for similar reasons. A contributing factor for me was the lack of toddler activities groups happening due to Covid. It was a hard decision, but I didn't know what I would do with her all day as a SAHM and my mental health was already suffering due to isolation of maternity leave. She loves nursery and has a great attachment to her key workers. I feel like I made the right decision, but am still taking it my month by month, I only need to give a month's notice, so can change my mind at any time. Would you be happy as a SAHM?

And whether you can 'just get a job when they start school' depends massively on what you do. I imagine there must be roles where you could find something after a break of a few years but I can't imaginE it's that common.

Plus there'll always be younger/hungrier new people entering the workforce who you'll be competing against.

In the current climate, if you can hold on and absorb a small cost (though you may be slightly in profit with the vouchers) then I would. There would have to be another significant negative such as being really unhappy for me to voluntarily go now.

I'd also go for the long term gain.
If you stay out of the workforce for 3 or more years, you're more likely to lose earning power.
If you stay, you can get promotions or move to better jobs.
Unless you're losing a lot of money, I'd consider it an investment.

I was just thinking of another way to balance it out. We've paid circa £70,000 in 13 years to childcare for 2 DC. My earnings alone in that time have been £312,000 (roughly £24K per year) plus I've had 6% of that paid into my pension.

I've also had childcare vouchers (as has DH) the entire time. So we've saved that way too.

I'd have missed out on all of that if I decided to save on the cost of childcare!!!

So many in my sector are being made redundant now. I wouldn't voluntarily leave.

I love our DC’s unconditionally but would have been so bored at home. Work was much better for us all.

It's rubbish isn't it, during our nursery years we have racked up about 5k debt as there was so little left after paying childcare costs- now we have hit the funded hours for 3 year olds and have a mountain of debt to pay off . Sucks to be working hard for literally nothing!

I found it very hard working and the cost of childcare but I would urge you to do so. Find out if your DH has childcare vouchers.

We 'paid' around £300 per month for DH to go to work for 3 years....
Bloody painful, we're on the other side now, thank God
But worth it, eventually..... we ate lots of eggs and cheese for years!

@NorthernChinchilla

I think we'll be in the same situation next year - I'm due twins and have an older DD and it's £350 a month just for before/after school for her plus double the fees for the twins 💴💴💴

Our plan is to take out a 10-15 year loan (the longest we can get really) for about £30k - and whack as much as we can into the tax free childcare account to get the 20% top up - to pay for the 3 years of childcare until 30 hours kicks in and spread the cost that way - it's just about affordable that way

Plus have the finance and loans we took out for IVF to get the twins to pay off 🤣🤦‍♀️

But it's only money (that's what I tell myself! 🤣)

@ivfbeenbusy that's really interesting about the loan. I was trying to see if I could set up some sort of social enterprise allowing families to take out childcare loans.

I really must think about it again. Do you mind telling me what your repayment is please?

Here we go again! Woman thinks she has to cover all chilcare costs

@SciFiScream

I've been researching loans to get ready for the twins arrival and currently For £25k from Tesco over 7 years the repayment is about £330 a month - when I come to do the final application I'll probably see if I can get £30-35k as long as the repayments stay below £400 which definitely should of extend to 10 year loan

I've always found this hard to understand but I know each to their own. But no way would I ever work for nothing, and never in a million years actually pay to work.
But people do and that's their choice.