> £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 wasn’t suggesting “move up north”. There are easily commutable options near to London. I’m simply saying that choosing to live in a very expensive part of the country is absolutely a choice. Many people work in central London and live on the outskirts in more affordable housing. In fact, most people do. It’s not a hellish commute either. Even if one doesn’t want to move, @MidnightPatrol is making choices. How do people Cope? They plan ahead and don’t buy in super expensive places and push themselves to the max.
Childcare is extremely expensive and I do have empathy for how gut wrenching it is to pay that much but equally, it seems she and her husband are unwilling to make any compromises so it is what it is.

But we should be outraged at the costs. Not just shrugging and saying ‘it is what it is’. Well it isn’t like that in other countries and this problem is impacting women’s careers.

We shouldn’t be saying ‘move, freeze your eggs, work part time, pay more in to your pension, only have one child’ as this just allows this issue to persist and nothing is done.

It’s an outrage that the workforce and the government are losing thousands of talented women every year.

I’m not into getting at high tax payers (the VAT policy is shite for example as it’s just a gimmick) but I do question if out of all the things that need funding a household on £250 to £300k need free hours childcare

I don’t actually want to take more if given the choice, but for this one thing I think funding is tight and I’d probably choose something else

I genuinely think the underlying point to this thread is not "woe is me, I have so much money I have to spend 4.5k on childcare monthly". I think its pointing out how flawed the system is that anyone has to pay a large proportion of their salary in childcare in order to work.

Are we supposed to not work? If one parent for every family stayed home, what would that do for the economy? What would it do to businesses who couldn't get staff? What about the nursery staff who would no longer have jobs (although as most of them are women I presume they'd have to stay home breeding?!).

The government are always banging on about getting people back into the workplace. But, for me, even with the tiny bit of help we now qualify for, FT hours just make no sense. My salary for two extra days a week would be eaten up by childcare fees and commuting costs. If childcare was more affordable, more women (and the men who are SAHDs for the same financial reasons) would go back to work. They would progress in their careers further. They would earn more money which would mean they both paid more tax and spent more in other businesses.

Wherever we live, whatever job we do, if we do, it should be a choice we're allowed to make. We should be allowed to choose whether we work, whether we stay home, whether we do PT or FT, where we live, how many children we want. And we should be able to do it without factoring in losing a high percentage of income to childcare costs.

Being outraged doesn’t really help the OP.

I don’t agree that egg freezing is even vaguely sensible but why not pay more into your pension? You get it back and you are eligible for the childcare. It’s only temporary. There are options that will help the OP now. Obviously something does need to be done about the childcare costs but on a personal level, OP could consider some changes but she doesn’t want to. This is clearly absolutely her decision.

I don’t think the OP wanted all these random solutions though - moving up North! She wants to offload and for others to say yes it’s shit and it also happened to them.

It’s like when men offer solutions and you haven’t asked for them….

Don't overlook the advantage of being outside of London for so many other things that come with family life and critically, right now, the ability to get more bedrooms for your money which would allow you to bring in a live in nanny.

However, that is not as straightforward as it seems !

I moved out of London after living in my house in Angel. I was in the City and later the docklands and I could not understand why anyone would live outside Zone 1 or Zone 2 at a push. Richmond possibly, but the trains were awful and tubes worse.

Other places came along and "became gentrified" and highly sought after despite awful transport simply because they had good schools and options for bigger houses for your money (back then).

Childcare when toddlers is only the start of it. If your local state school is awash with all manner of lower end immigration then your child's future will be curtailed unless you pay for a private school. That will make your £50k a year on childcare look like a charity event. £30k a year each is ballpark after junior and more if you want boarding, which you will discount totally now but revisit in your thoughts many times over the years.

When you move out of London, your London house money can buy a far better place and whilst you may be taking a one way trip in terms of house prices, you won't want to move back anyway.

The downside is that commuting can mean a first class train ticket and train station car parking, often necessitating another car purchase. My commute was an hour and first class was about £8k a year and parking another £1500 or so. If you opted for standard class then you may not get a seat and on some trains they have gone to 3+2 in the the Ryanair of train services so you are squashed all the way to work.

But you can get your child into one of the country's best state schools for free and that stays free until 16/18. Otherwise you are going to be ploughing the best part of £100k a year into schooling and perhaps not getting very much back from it.

I would weigh up the options. Saved school fees, live in nanny, larger house, versus a longer commute (often easier and you do get your "commuter legs" after a while). A nice 50 minutes into London on the train can be a nap, some work or just reading the paper. It is quite ok actually.

Inside London, unless you can afford the larger house and the live in nanny, then you are permanently compromised. It is hard to consider getting out but until you write down the numbers, now and for the future, it won't make sense.

What should make sense is that you should be able to retire 5 to 10 years earlier if you live outside London and don't have the private school fees.

I totally understand not wanting to move when you're settled in an area and the commute isn't massive.

But i get your point too. I got offered a job based in London. I live in the Midlands. It was supposed to be two days a week in the office, but with hybrid working they were willing to offer me remote with one day a month in the office, two at a push if I was needed face to face more. It was double my salary here, because London.

I didn't take it because the commute up and down even infrequently, didn't fit in with our childcare, when couple with the fact DH drives an hour to and from his on site job and it would have meant sometimes he was an hour away from DD and I was 2/2.5 on public transport (depending on whuch train was running) which isn't reliable. We weren't willing to take that risk. If we had family who could take her at the drop of a hat (if she was ill at nursery for example) it may have been different. But we don't.

But, it does show the options available.

Agree that the system is 100% broken.

As it doesn't look to be getting fixed any time soon, we cut our cloth accordingly and have only one child.

Posts like this one typify what a lot of us are saying: if you’re struggling not to go over £100k because the tax will apply, and your bonus is only £0 - £70k and you get to spend plenty of time with your children, what is the gripe? Are you complaining that childcare is skilled work that you have to pay for for a few short years, while other people care for your children? Because what you are saying is that you can work FT exactly as your husbands do, and have lots of quality time with your child/ren and the money comes from both of you, absolutely equitably. So what exactly is your problem? Are you struggling to afford holidays, new cars, city breaks? I’m not grasping who you expect to pay for your lifestyle and ambition.

Outraged at what costs? I take it you believe that your own industry shouldn’t have to halve income so as to help your customers afford the things they want. Childcare is something you are choosing to purchase, and the (mainly women) in that industry are in high demand. Aren’t you saying that your work and choices should be subsidised, but that other women’s should be paid less than it is?

Well she’ll be paying a fuck load of tax, because of that ambition. Deterring high earners from working at their full potential is a big own goal. The negative earning band above £100k is a stupid tax wasting error. If you can’t work that out, you’re perhaps not grasping how these things work. Few people (most recently doctors), refuse to pay to work. The doctors negative earnings had to get sorted as they were stopping work.

Honestly people on here get wind of high earners and lose all sense.

Wow. Is it 1954? What a shame. Expensive childcare mainly penalises women. When women speak up about this they get criticised by other women, for daring to have ambition!

And this is why nothing changes.

Other counties manage it just fine.

Is the general view free hours should be extended to over £100k?

Wow. Is it 1954? What a shame.

I agree with you on childcare but I also have the same reaction to posters who are the only women in their workplaces and not a single person works part time, that also feels quite 1950s

Why? If you earn 100-120k then divert more money into your pension. If you earn 120k plus, then usually you can pay a full time childcare place and still come out over 100k.

Well yes it all needs to change - including inflexible, sexist workplaces. But what we don’t need to do is criticise women for being ambitious, or wanting to work full time.

Yes because paying to work is INSANE

If you earn 100-125k the marginal tax rate is 60%
You also lose a further 2% NI
AND then you lose £000’s in childcare allowances.

Madness

We had nursery fees for one child that were more than our mortgage. It was too much for us to be able to afford to have another child in nursery. I returned to work when our daughter was 5.5mths and we did not have another child at all. I feel very low about this every day. My parents believed people who wanted children should work full time to afford all the material things a child might need plus more. My advice is to find a childminder (not a huge nursery chain) who looks after a few other children as well. If you are paying out more than what is coming in, stay at home and if you hope to work, find a job you can do from home but that's not as easy as it sounds. It's better than carrying the sadness and heaviness that I have in my heart most days.

It shouldn't be one woman's responsibility to demand part time working as the norm. One woman can't change an entire work culture and she certainly can't magically stop the ingrained sexism.

She also can't demand that the men who are at her level, who mostly have SAHM's at home so are entirely responsible financially for their family to also go part time.

All that would happen is that her request would be denied and she'd be seen as difficult or her request would be accepted on the basis she has less responsibility but she would just be the part timer, not taken seriously (which can already be difficult as the only woman) who never gets promoted because she simply can't compete.

Society needs to change and one woman alone can't do that.

I agree but one woman can also not magically make childcare cheaper either.

It doesn't make sense to be all "it is what it is" about your employer being stuck in the 1950s but up in arms about the cost of childcare. Care about both, do what you can with your employer. As a senior woman, you will have influence.

You’re not helping the cause at all when you ignore the valid points in the question and rehash victim tropes that are clearly as outdated as 1954. You have the exact same ability to access and pay for childcare as your husband. You have the exact same ability to choose to work. Your gripe seems to be that taxpayers or childcare providers should be going without to fund your choices. And show no awareness of your privilege.This is why feminism has become a dirty word in some circles. You’re using it to raise the ‘struggles’ of your own choices above others.

@Numberfish I’m largely ignoring what you said to me specifically because, aside from it not being helpful or constructive to the conversation - making stupid jibes about holidays and cars (neither of which I indulge in as my financial priority is skilled childcare), you’ve gone on to make another comment to another post saying ‘childcare is something you are choosing to purchase’. The alternative ‘choice’ is being a SAHM and not having a career.

So, we should work really hard at our careers to get ourselves into a comfortable, secure and sensible financial position ahead of starting a family and then immediately give that career up, because we’ve decided to start a family..?

If the fees are to remain the same, at the very least pre-school age childcare should be tax free and directly payable to a registered childcare provider out of your gross income. Without having to jump through the hoops of the workplace nursery scheme.

I do care about both. I just have to be very careful in how I go about it, like I said before I pick my battles and address issues as they come up such as the outright sexism when I was overlooked for a work trip simply because I'm the only mother but not the only parent.

Going in guns blazing isn't going to solve anything and would hurt my career.

I agree that one woman can't make childcare cheaper either but I never suggested that was the case in the first place. I certainly don't blame working parents for having a bit of a moan about it.

@DifferentView Tried to rewrite this a few times but can’t really find the right words. I’m sorry and thank you for your refreshingly honest post. I wish the heaviness gets lighter for you.