> £4,000pcm nursery fees

[MidnightPatrol]

For those of you paying this, how bad is it? How do you cope?

I am hoping to have a second baby but it’s going to cost ~£4,200pcm (ignoring any future fee increases…!) in childcare for a year or two.

Slightly terrifying, particularly in context of higher interest rates / higher cost of servicing a mortgage when I come off my low interest deal next year.

Well unless you have unlimited money, you can't have it all. As women with careers, we try but it's not possible.

It's either your career or be a SAHM, and have a second child - it's that simple.

I'm expecting twins so will have 3 under 2 which will be £6.9k per month in nursery fees. Crazy! We adore the nursery though and prefer it over using a nanny just because it might work out cheaper.

I didn’t realise a nanny is over £18 per hour

It is a lot

If you’re over the free hours your salary is quite good? What about a dh

I think most people do one or more of:

Part time/compressed hours - of course that may impact career progression but it doesn't have to if you are well respected in your role, we have both done it and had multiple bonuses and promotions

Loans/mortgage refinance

Spacing out their children

Only having one child

Moving to somewhere they have some free family childcare

--

There's not really a magic no compromise solution

Christ!

I think I’d get a nanny at that point.

Theres no way I could make £6.9k work. There really should be more help
for parents of multiples.

I didn't meet anyone and someone suggested having a child alone
I desperately wanted children but the crux of it is I can't afford it
People say oh you'll find the money/shouldn't base having children on that etc. But on 24k a year... there's no way I could afford childcare so that was that

I had one at 35 and one at nearly 39. So that helped.

remember if you take a year’s maternity leave you will be a year of no nursery costs

This is exactly our situation, plus 2k on mortgage. No secret to it, our entire salaries basically just go on nursery and our house, no room for holidays or fancy dinners etc. Counting down the days till they’re in state school!

Of course it is down to cost. Also, a lot of people move out of London prior to having kids, mostly due to being priced out of housing, or not wanting to pay ££££s in mortgage for postage stamp sized house. I'm quite baffled that you are surprised at costs of living and childcare when you're living in the most expensive city in the UK.

So, to answer your question - most people cope by living in cheaper areas. Obviously it won't help you right now, but that wasn't your question.

At the costs in London I think I'd be a childminder for a few years. I'd be able to stay at home and earn good money

The problem with being a childminder in London, is having a house big enough to do it!

We don’t seem to have any local childminders, and I suspect it’s down to the cost of housing.

Honestly I would be asking for my and my partner's salary to be made just under 100k so you become eligible for free hours. If either of you are earning so much more than 100k that such a move is crazy, then it shouldn't be that painful for you to pay 4k a month for a couple of years

I spaced mine out to avoid two in childcare - bear in mind that because you’ll have mat leave it isn’t as long a gap as you think.

Condensing hours is also a good idea, but if you both do it you’ll both have long days which might not work with drop off.

I think you can put in pension to offset

Childminders don't necessarily make crazy money. I'm in a decent part of London and my childminder is £65 a day. The council run nurseries (the ones that are part of schools so you do still need to pay for holiday club which is £30 a day) are a bit cheaper than that and the free hours are completely free, there's no top up.

This is a really depressing outlook though..if we lived in other countries having 2 young children and holding down a successful career would be completely doable and normal. What has become if this country that people believe this is the only option ? Something has to change.

I agree.

Especially since it is almost always women who end up sacrificing their careers.

We're fortunate enough that we can take the hit short term and think of it as investing in our careers for the long term as well as making sure DC have excellent care since it is our ideal childcare and DS is happy and settled there.

OP is there any way you could negate the need for full time childcare between your two jobs? Even just temporarily until your oldest starts school?

We have friends who have just done this, their oldest turned 2 just as their second was born, she took 12 months maternity which then left just over a year between end of mat leave & oldest starting school. With their mortgage hike (which all hit once she was already pregnant, couldn’t have known how much it would end up being) they couldn’t really afford to pay for full time childcare for 2 children so they have essentially adapted their work temporarily to bring the nursery bill down.

They have:

Mum: Flexible working request accepted to allow her to condense 5 days hours over 4 days, so her working days are longer HOWEVER she has an extra day off each week meaning no childcare payable that day.

Dad: Flexible working request to change one working day each week to a weekend day, so he also has a day off midweek week but then works either Saturday or Sunday.

Dad also works an hour extra 4 days a week so that on one midweek day he only works until lunchtime meaning on that day both children are only in childcare half a day instead of a full day.

It’s not ideal but for the sake of a year until their eldest is in school it was preferable to paying crazy money for childcare. Doing it this way means their bill hasn’t actually really changed from previous full time childcare for 1 as it’s double the kids but also half the time in nursery.

Obviously depends on your workplaces though!

I had a 2 year 9 month gap between my two. Youngest started nursery in the May and eldest started school in the September. It was manageable for that short overlap, although I might as well as just signed over my whole salary to them!

I'm a similar age and just waited until first child school age to have second, not possible to pay two sets of fees for us so had to consider other options

This. And you've delayed TTC to build career, so have years worth of good earnings behind you. Have you saved any money which can now be used for childcare? In your scenario it's likely not got to come from monthly income.

I am in Australia but have just taken 3 years out of the workforce due to this exact reason. Our childcare costs were more than the equivalent of £4,000 per month. We have one higher income in our family (my husband’s) and one lower/average income (mine) which means we aren’t eligible for any government childcare subsidies. I am only now looking to return to work as I will only have to pay one lot of childcare fees as my older child is about to start school.

My options were to either continue working and accept that I would be paying more than my entire salary to childcare or to stop working until only 1 child required care. For us we decided that the extra stress of me working wasn’t worth it to our family.

We looked into hiring a nanny and it was the same cost as daycare. Nanny rates have gone up significantly since Covid.

We did it by earning a lot of money. We earn around $250k, fixed expenses outside childcare around $5.5k/month. Our nanny (no nursery spaces for love nor money near us) was $4-5k/month for one child (and that was a share!). It’s not the only reason we only have one but it sure is part of it. Also don’t get a bloody dog or even a cat, we’re about pay the vet $3k to have their bloomin teeth pulled out.

Opps