> £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.

I am not in your scenario but have my third baby with an age gap of 5 and 8 years from her siblings. The reality is that an age gap, even a relatively small one like mine, makes life more complicated. I will have babies in three different childcare/education settings next year and the one after. They need different care for holidays and wraparound care. If you can, I would totally suck it up and life will be easier with two in a similar phase! The childcare fees are heavy but they don't dissappear when the kids go to school and you still need to pay for lunches, uniform, swimming, music lessons, breakfast club etc.

in this case nanny does 40 hours not 50 as one parents works 35 hours a week.

I don’t think both parents working 50 hours a week is normal.

I have asked, but what are the nursery hours at that level.

I fully support mums working, but at 50 hours each a week. I would like to understand more.

is that full time.

what are actual hours

what happens when child sick? Or have you been blessed that way. I have not.

@tdino

50 hours of available childcare a week =
8-6 five days a week.

Commute + normal office hours = easily 50 hours a week in a full time job.

This is the norm for all of my friends in terms of required childcare!

Ideally we pick up a bit earlier, but need it to be available in case the trains stop working or similar.

If my child is sick I stay at home with them - or my partner, depends what our day looks like. Same as any parent.

The very obvious answer is that unless you earn over £65k whoever earns least or fancies it more stays home and looks after the kids yourself. Then you get the fun of raising your babes yourself too.

Or just drop to part time to bring your wage under 100k

I think you need to nanny share, or see if you can change work patterns to cut down on the hours that childcare is needed, or potentially see if family can help even a day or two per week.

This is a big part of why I stopped working outside of the house. It just wasn't feasible financially.

The crippling financial reality of having 2 in nursery was quite an effective contraceptive for us! 😂 When DC was in nursery our household income was not particularly high (for the south east) but because of how it was split the only childcare benefit we were able to claim was the 15 hours - which I think was actually around 9 hours per week. Obviously it helped but it was pretty galling that friends who had similar or actually much higher household income got the full 30 hours… and obviously then this only started the term after turning 3… and from what I hear from friends most nurseries aren’t offering the new free childcare for 2yo as they can’t make the finances work.

So many posts on this thread aren’t based in reality. Au pairs - almost impossible to source since brexit plus can’t leave them in sole charge of 2 under fives for 50+ hours a week. Plus who in the south east just has a spare room waiting to be filled! Live out Nannies in london earn upwards of £50k (NI and tax on top) and childminders are non existent.

OP I wish I had a smart solution but I don’t other than to say having a child at 38 is not the doom it’s made out to be.

People manage in various ways. Some have family help one or two days a week. Not everybody is lucky enough to have this. Or stagger age gap by waiting till one child gets free hours or goes to school. Two full time at nursery is very hard on finances.

We live in south east London. As there’s no tube the houses are cheaper, but pretty good overground. Zone 4 makes the commute cheap… and you still have nice places like Greenwich and Blackheath. Nurseries can be expensive round here but… loads of childminders as the housing is cheaper or they’ve been here for years… and that’s what we use. Managed to have three kids by not changing our car and luckily fixing the mortgage for 5 years on 2.2%.
But as soon as all my childcare costs come down we come off that mortgage deal and won’t really see a benefit… it has really squeezed us more than I thought it would really. And also the juggling the illnesses of all three alongside work has and is really challenging.

You do get 15 hours from 3 regardless of income I believe, have you accounted for that?
Otherwise I would consider a nanny simply for the similar pricing but sickness being covered (even if you do have to take holidays when they do)! Also if a nanny will do some housekeeping and especially laundry then definitely do that. I get so annoyed at the amount of my non working time just sorting out the f*cking laundry when ai could be having some quality time with the kids instead. (Husband too before anyone asks why I’m doing it all, I’m not!)

Wow, this is awful. I have no advice to give but you have all my sympathy. I hope you can figure it out without having to compromise on what you really want, it shouldn't even be an issue IMO xx

We went for a small age gap (18 months) so got a part-time nanny so I could return to work faster the first time. Got spontaneous twins with the second pregnancy 😂 so definitely the best decision for us.

We have a nanny 30 hours a week (3 days) then myself and my husband are responsible for one day a week whether that’s ourselves taking leave or wfh and having a family member come over for the day.

It works for us but requires a lot of juggling. The nanny is invaluable as can do laundry/wash bottles/cook food for the babies etc. You can also work longer hours when wfh as you don’t have to drop off/pick up.

A few things my husband and I have done. We both work full time and get a discount now our eldest has turned 3:

1. I work Tuesday to Saturday so that I do childcare on Monday and my husband does Saturday. That cuts us down to needing only 4 days of childcare.
2. I have a deal with work that I work 8am to 3pm two days a week and then make up the hours in the evening once children are asleep. My husband will do that same pattern on the two other days. This means we can pay for fewer hours, work from home on those days.
3. we have a term time nursery for the eldest so we don’t pay for holiday apart from a 4 week summer camp. This was doable because of my maternity leave - you have extra holiday due to accruing it while on leave and then obviously now am on my second mat leave. Looking after baby and a toddler is v v tough though. Not so easy with a second child obviously.
4. For youngest we have a childminder so cut costs that way. Also registered for tax free childcare - ask your provider to do that if they haven’t,

obviously am exhausted but this won’t last forever and we actually get a lot of time with our kids. our mortgage has gone up hugely though post Liz Truss so we are v squeezed.

Just suck it up

its tough but not forever

Depending on the ages of your dc you might be able to get a nanny share.

OP (and her DH) will be raising their children no matter what. Nurseries care for children during work hours but they don't raise them.

It also isn't obvious if neither of them want to be a SAHP or when you look at it in the long run and consider loss of potential earnings, pension etc it's definitely an investment to stay in work but can be financially painful short term.

The free childcare cap at 100k doesn’t include pension so if you are over you can increase your pension payments to bring you under 100k and get the funding. Also it won’t apply when you are on mat leave (unless you get full mat pay) so you could claim funded hours for the year off.
could you/your partner do 4 in 5? Or drop to 4 days for a couple of years. I’m a high earner and part time (4 days not 2) is very acceptable in all the industries I and friends work in (finance, legal, civil service etc). Assuming you take a full year maternity leave and your eldest is 2 and goes to school at 4, You only have 1 year of double fees. And take the eldest out of nursery while you are on mat leave and save the fees.

I had (unplanned) twins. We also live in London (Dulwich).
Even only returning to work part time (3 days a week) was costing £1600 a month in nursery fees.
I did get a "sibling discount", but it worked out as costing too much for the effort of going to work.
I probably won't be working again until they qualify for free hours, but I am doing additional training to increase my earnings for when I do start back. I'm really not used to not working and I feel like cabin fever may set in.

Ok. But I do think life and circumstances impact decisions and experiences.

I've never had a child just sick for one day.

It's constant.

Had I had my children when I hoped to, I wouldn't have the wonderful souls I do.

Personally, outwith London, I maintain that I do not know two parents who work those hours. Crikey my DH is a farmer and works those alone, but I'm here.

All my other colleagues and friends have paused career or shared at least one week day to reduce costs.

As many others have said.

It's such a personal and difficult subject but almost calculated with good luck here. The comment about twins only being one maternity leave to contend with. Twins nearly killed my friend mentally. In the end she went back to work to save her life but her partner did not.

I wish you well

There is no need for you to scream...are you okay?
Difficult does not been impossible. Calm down btw.

That's true.

DS is 1 and since starting nursery at 3 months hasn't had anything more than the usual coughs and colds so far.

If he can't be at nursery for whatever reason, DH and I take it in turns to take the day off so it isn't just one of us doing it all of the time but we can also be flexible and WFH, I WFH more than I'm in the office.

These fees have such a negative knock on effect I really wish government would do something about it.

Exactly the same position OP, quite daunted by it but think we will just take the short term hit. It is more tricky trying to work out affordability for houses though

It's really challenging to manage two full-time jobs and two nursery aged children. Another option to consider to minimise childcare costs would be for you to take your eldest out of nursery once you are on maternity leave. I did this with my second, and really valued the additional time I got to spend with him as well as the baby.

I know you mentioned not wanting to lose the nursery place - but how about your partner then taking the next year out - would his organisation be open to a sabbatical? My husband was forced into this by redundancy and actually turned out to be wonderful and meant our kids have had equal amounts of both of us. Yes it was financially stressful but 15 years on we have had broadly similar earnings over their childhood. It would mean your eldest would be in school and your youngest would have some funding for their place if you could manage on your salary for that period. Can you overpay/save mortgage payments over the next year to cover this?

Exactly what PP said - if wage is less than childcare fees then someone needs to take a career break. We had twins so you can imagine the fees would have been astronomical and this
was in 2016. Don’t envy anyone trying to cover it
now. I (mum) was the higher earner so their dad quit his job and was at home with them FT for yr2. He then retrained to earn more and we did PT nursery PT nanny (uni student) for yr 3. Then we got the 1100 hours free nursery (in Scotland) which was an absolute god send.
We made the decision not to have a third even though I would have loved it, the hardship again would have been too much for us all plus the cost of living and pandemic fallout. They are
now school age and we can do activities have holidays and start to plan for our retirement.
If say id accidentally fallen pg with no.3 we would have been forced to move to a cheaper area/smaller house and or taken a loan out to cover the gap.