> £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.

You're not eligible if one parent earns over £100k, which OP and many other London families do.

There's a lot to be said for a 3year + age gap..you stagger the GCSE and A level/Higher Ed years giving you more ability to focus on your child at that stage and stagger the cost of tutoring if required.
Also it allows for the Uni years funding to be spread out a bit. By the time you top up your child's student loan, it can easily cost £10,000 a year per child. Just consider the longer term implications too.

Here we go again.

AN AU PAIR CANNOT HAVE SOLE CHARGE OF A BABY. They are NOT cheap nannies. They are for wraparound childcare for school aged DC ONLY. And since Brexit it is virtually impossible to have one legally anyway.

We tried a childminder when I went back to work after DC1 but I found it unreliable and I hated having to wake the baby up early to drop them off. We then had a nanny for DC1 (four days a week) and it worked out much better for the children (not for the bank balance). Very small gap between children as I was older than you having kids. I returned to work after having DC2 and realised I barely saw them so took voluntary redundancy and the nanny moved on.

Good god! I thought mine was bad at £1,600 pcm peak for 2 children for 4 days a week 11 years ago…. But the minimum wage has probably doubled since then, let alone energy costs, let alone the London factor.

Even then I was unusual having two close together and working. My colleagues did, like me they earnt enough to cover it, but all my other friends didn’t go back to work or waited 4 years to have a second.

Don’t have an autumn baby though OP, go for a summer birth. Almost a year less of nursery fees! I remember particularly congratulating a colleague on a late August baby and he didn’t have a clue what I was going on about, and then he realised a couple of years later.

I hate to burst the bubble, but what they're actually doing is using tax-payers' money to pay the shareholders of the nursery corporations.

The independents and childminders are being deliberately closed down by a combination of Ofsted and lack of funding.

£18/h is nothing like £4.5k a month, not sure where you're getting that from. We pay our employees more than that and it doesn't work out as anything close to that per person.

Our 2nd child turned out to be twins so that’s something to think about. According to some posts on here that I’ve read that needs to be factored in when planning children! No twins our in family history and we were stuffed as 2x nursery fees and wraparound after school and holiday care would have meant I was paying to work together with no sleep and all the extra work of two babies. I was a SAHM for 5 years.

I was 30 when I had mine but apparently older mums have a higher risk of multiples.

Just saying!

Because if you factor nursery fees that are lost, AND the loss of the personal allowance, people are PAYING to work. Once you breach 100k- 124k it costs YOU to work.

It’s insane OP. More insane would be to stop work. It’s lucrative to stay employed.

On reflection might have misunderstood the quote!

I just can’t believe that a nanny costs £4500 a month unless you want them 24/7…..childminders are cheaper too.

Our 2nd child turned out to be twins too. We decided to go for one more close in age to DS and now will have 3 under 2! 😱😂

The nursery fees will be enormous but neither of us want to be a SAHP so we'll take the hit. Thankfully we can.

@moomoomoo27

18p/h gross

x 50h = £900 a week

• employers NI = £100 a week

• employers pension = £23 a week

= £4,435 a month

A nanny's day is typically 10 or 11 hours.

OP keeps quoting this figure which is nonsense. My friend in Central London has full time nannies and they are around 3500 a months. The nanny cooks meals and tidies and obviously has more flexibility re hours than a nursery. Lots of advantage. Plus nobody ij London needs a car (Op was sayinf nanny would need a car). My friend’s nanny goes to park, library, playgroups etc by bus. Outings don’t have to be expensive.

@SouthLondonMum22 I mean… I suppose twins is efficient if you were planning on 3…

One less mat leave to contend with.

Bloody hell, is this what it's coming to now.

Love this idea! Hope it takes off in the UK!

OP I hope you don’t work in finance 😂

£3600
plus £400
plus 92

is not £4435 a month

London nannies earn around 40k btw

We were planning on just one more!😅

@Sonora25

A nanny that cost the employer £35k a year at 50 hours a week (normal) would be paid £12 a hour.

Thats less than the London living wage.

Maybe live in, but I haven’t seen any live out nanny’s at that cost.

I had my first at 34 and fell pregnant again (unexpectedly) at almost 37. Sadly it didn't stick, but it shows 35 isn't too old to have a second baby in a couple of years.

I also know several woman who had first or second babies at 39-41. So you have time.

Also, add on another reason for not living in London.

Could you move to a more affordable area and commute in, if that would save money?

A month has more than four weeks in it.

The sums above are a salary of just over £40k. The employer ends up paying quite a bit more in NI and pensions (and of course holiday, which is coated into the above).

We sat down and worked out what we could afford. Dh was a sahd to start then I reduced my hours after dc2. We went interest only on mortgage and lived incredibly frugally. Super tight budget, free days out only, ditched cable TV, cheapest Internet, clothes from charity shops, kept old mobiles with sim only - We literally shaved everything off we could

If you want the second child you and or dh may have to sacrifice career progression in short term to make it affordable

You’ll be broke, you may even find you end up with some debt, but you will survive and it will be worth it in the end. You’ll have kept your career on track and costs go down (even if you go down the private school route at those rates).

As people have said, some wait and have a gap large enough that one is at school when the other one arrives, but ultimately you are spending the same amount, so if it is doable (even if tight then it’s an option to do this). Career wise it can’t often be better to have children close together rather then have one get back and established then another.

You are entitled to 15 hours though and rates generally drop from pre-school (3) as ratios increase quite a bit so you may want to leave a bit.

Opfions to help:

• consider increasing mortgage term even going interest free to just reduce your outgoings for a few years (you can always increase later)
• consider taking the eldest out of nursery (or reducing hours to the minimum you can do to hold place if needed) while on mat leave to save money.
• If your partner gets extended parental leave consider sticking that on the end of your mat leave so nursery costs don’t kick in straight away.
• If you have family who can maybe do blocks of care (I’m presuming no one local) then consider asking if they can also do a couple of weeks end of mat leave.

Also 4,500 for a nanny in London is about right (once you include paye, pension, insurance). You sometimes can find junior nannies cheaper. I paid 3600 in the Home Counties (without kitty money) 5 years ago and salaries have sky rocketed in the last few years.

The problem is once her eldest gets the 15 hours then nursery becomes cheaper and then she has to make nanny redundant.

It tends to be 3 children where nanny more cost effective then nursery.

OP my late Mum always told me there was never a “good time” to have children and she was right, there will always be something: work, money, training - you will manage - it’s just tough, no magic answers.