> £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 also think a nanny would be cheaper for you at least until child 1 goes to school. My friend’s nanny (in Central London) earns 35K. No car, the nanny uses public transport with the kids or sometimes taxis. Do you need a car in London?

plus the quality of childcare and food (nanny can cook healthy meals) will be much better especially for a baby and you have more flexibility around hours.

At 35 I’d wait until free funding kicks in

I stopped working as more than 1 wasn't worth it. Went back when they were a bit older and loved being a SAHM

I thought the 30 free hours were universal from 3 and are going to be universal from 9 months from September 2025, so presume your new baby will qualify for them?

Just wait a while.
Get pregnant 1 year and 9 months before your child starts school.
A year on maternity and then the baby can start nursery as your older child starts school.

Ave. £8ph per child for childminder. Works out about £3,100 pcm for 2x dc 45 h per week.

That's the London average.

@CrispAppleStrudels I know it's mental!

When we viewed the nurseries, their fees were <£2k a month, so they've increase quite dramatically in two years.

We can't really go further afield for nurseries without making getting to/from work very difficult. Getting in a car would add a lot of time, and I have actually looked at nurseries near my office and they are similar (and - we both do some WFH so that would actually be v inconvenient...!).

I've accepted if I want two kids it's going to cost me a lot for a couple of years. I'm just intrigued what this looks like for parents in a similar situation - it feels so extreme for something so ordinary...!

They're only for working families where both parents earn less than £100k (of course, if both parents earn £99k they'll still get it, but if one parent earns £101k and the other £19k they won't, so it's not exactly fair...)

If neither of you earn over 100k

It suits men to have women thinking like this, rather than sharing the care costs for their own children - then they continue their career path, pay and pension unhampered by being fathers. Indeed fathers do better on the career path than single men, especially those who do the "new man" talk in the work place but think they are doing their partners a favour if they "babysit" their own child, or take them to sport on Saturday morning. Once a woman has stepped out of work "because it makes sense" there is a high chance she will spend the next twenty+ years as the default parent and housekeeper, juggling some part time work when they are at school. That is a huge loss to the family income.

The reality is you need to look at childcare as a temporary shared household expense or you risk losing far more money in the longer term when you may need it even more.

If someone suggested spending X thousand on a further degree for a man, to protect or promote career prospects nobody would say "but that means losing household income" - its an investment. Somehow though "spending a few thousand on protecting the woman's earnings, career and pension" is frequently met with "makes no sense, it will be a few hundred quid a month for a year or two".

None of us know what the future holds. However secure we feel in our 20s, 30s any of us can hit illness, divorce, redundancy - including the men.

It'd after pension contributions so anyone earning 101k would be fine once pension is deducted.

It's why some parents stop work temporarily.

It's not always mothers. It shouldn't always be mothers. I know plenty of fathers who have.

You'll get free hours (15 at least)? Unless very small age gap should kick in by end of mat leave, give or take?

look at the Norland nanny NQ scheme if you have space for a live in?

if you have a nanny for the younger one then you can use a Montessori or non full time nursery and have nanny do the wrap around, usually loads cheaper.

also nurseries attached to primary schools are cheaper and it can be a good segue into school for the older one.

take a loan for childcare or add an amount to mortgage for a defined period as probably cheapest debt to have. It's temporary.

It would be utter madness to go down egg freezing route!!! Will cost you a minimum of £10k, loads of drugs and hormones you don't need. And you'll still have to pay for childcare anyway, the same amount just not all at once. Don't do this! I say this as someone who had to have ivf and still has to pay for London nursery fees.

I never knew that! It does look as if the baby would get 15 free hours regardless of wages from next September though.

Can either of you or both work compressed hours so five days compressed into four. This is what most people I know with young kids do.

@Iwanttowantto Just to make it absolutely 100% clear, I am not going to be following the advice to get my eggs frozen and do IVF once the eldest is at school 😂

We worked out what our total income would be if we both worked five, four, three days etc and then calculated nursery costs for five, four and three days, then worked out which essentially gave us the most money left over. Dropping one day a week at work actually worked out better for us financially.

Not read the whole thread but I suspect a lot of families use grandparents for some childcare. Is this a possibility?

Sounds like you have been given plenty of options but choosing not to go with any of them, it's one of those situations that a lot of people go through and something unfortunately has to be sacrificed, whether it's a desired age group, change of work hours, role, location, or just put up with being temporarily "poor" if you're not willing to compromise on anything.
Nothing is guaranteed with fertility, no guaranteed you will get pregnant when you want to, so it might all be a moot point anyway ......... harsh but true unfortunately

It's so depressing to see people act as if these costs are normal and justifiable in such a wealthy country, as if OP should have considered egg freezing, or putting off having children to an age where it is more likely to cause difficulties if she had infertility issues, all to accommodate the ridiculous state of childcare!
I'm from a Scandinavian country and can confirm that state-subsidised nursery works really, really well (and Scandinavia isn't an outlier, rather the UK and US are). There's a load of research showing it actually ends up net benefiting the public purse, and that this would be the case in the UK too, because subsidised childcare = more parents returning to work = higher productivity and more people paying taxes.
Nannies and compressed hours sound like good solutions for OP, but long term this just isn't viable for the majority.

@C8H10N4O2 I don't think women should quit their jobs to look after the kids. I have not said that.

I have said that in the situation where a household ends up financially worse off because it is a dual-income household with high childcare costs, it is little surprise people (and yes usually women) end up stopping work.

For a great many households, they cannot afford to lose £500 a month. They need every penny they can to pay the bills right now.

The solution to this is properly funded childcare - hopefully the new 'free hours' will improve the situation.

I mean you have a number of realistic and achievable choices

1. Pay nursery fees
2. Find another setting (childminder, nanny)
3. Wait until youngest is older
4. Decrease or change work hours

As someone in a similar position, earning over 100k it's lacks perspective to be all "woe is me" about nursery costs when there's are lots of solutions that would involve comparatively little change to your life.

I would just pay them

It's a clear catastrophe for the whole society in my opinion. With the median women take home of about £2k/month in this country. Even one child in full time nursery you will be struggling two kids are unthinkable.

I think you need to compromise somewhere, eg one of you dropping hours on a temporary basis. This may mean you are entitled to the "free" 30 hours and also mean less childcare needed.