To think childcare is completely unaffordable?

[Sweetpea5]

i have 2 little ones and was hoping to send them to a childminder when I go back to work. I have been to see several childminders in my not very glamorous part of London and its going to cost between £50 and£60 a day which will be around £550 a week. So basically my entire salary will go on childcare. One of the childminders will also have one other child and 2 afterschool kids, the other will have one other childand one aftercschool.

How can it cost so much? How do people afford this?

What is the solution - to pay the childminders/nannies less? You are going to reap the benefits of staying in work - pensions, future earnings rather than taking 5 years out so you can't expect the government to help. You grin and bear it, move to another area with cheaper childcare, find a higher paid job, give up working for a bit there are lots of options.

re: the childminders coming to the house - there are general badges of trade, and a childminder could be self employed (even in your house) if most of the following applied

a) they dictated their hours and their holidays
b) they could send someone else in their place
c) they bring their own equipment
d) more likely to be self employed if short term assignments or lots of different families (eg like cleaner who does a few hours here and there)

b) and c) are possible, a) seems unlikely - eg my cleaner is employed to keep my house clean she can come when she likes - hard to see how this would work for a childminder, you'd want them to come at set times and would be annoyed if they were late surely. d) dependents on circumstances.

But its a balance, HMRC would look at all the facts.

link

I don't want to pay people less but I would like more help. At £1600 childcare costs per month, I don't think it's unreasonable.
I am looking to move to a cheaper area but both DH and self must find another job (not the right time anyway I am pregnant) together because we are unlikely to be able to live on only my DH's salary.

Hi, thank you for all the replies - loads to think about.
My salary is quite a way from 50k (still great though, I am not complaining).
Yes definitely it makes sense to work to cover childcare so that I hopefully can keep my career afterwards. Nothing is certain though in the current climate and the thought of being made redundant after working for years only earning enough to keep my children in childcare is not a good one.
None of the childminders I have spoken to have had a discount for siblings. As for the person who made the goldplated nanny comment - thats quite rude. I have been looking on the councils list of childminders and going to see each one who has a vacancy for 2.

I have asked about shifting our hours a bit so we need less childcare but the 2 childminders I said this to said their rate was daily so wouldnt change.
Just have to suck up the costs as someone said earlier. My kids are everything to me and I know I am playing the long game for them.
Good luk to everyone in a similar position x

There are around 11,500 day nurseries in the UK. If each nursery catered for 50 children (very optimistic estimate), that would be 57,500 children in FT nursery care (and we know most children are not in nursery FT). So we are not talking about "millions of families" managing to pay nursery fees...

bonsoir your maths are out. 11500 x 50 is 575,000. Plus there are all the children who go to cms or nannies.
Still, it's probably under half of all 0 to 5s

I think childcare is very expensive and it is one of the reasons we only have one child who is not dp's. We earn too much to get any help with childcare and have on paper a very good salary but there is no way we could afford childcare. We have adopted a "fuck it" attitude and are currently trying to conceive as I am past 35 with fertility issues so it is now or never. I know that I have family who will help and as a teacher can cover the holidays .

I do not understand how people afford children full stop.

Siamo £90k does reflect the general joint wage here, but I don't live in the UK, so different averages. All that I am saying is that a 'large' salary doesn't nec mean loads of extra cash to spare. For example out of our take home of £7k pcm about £5k is spent on mortgage, bills and childcare. We save a bit but must spend £1500 on food, clothes, activities, wine etc

EasyFriedRice - thanks for that info.
Looks to me that it is Ad-hoc childcare, not childcare which is fixed days, fixed hours. The info says Very Flexible. If someone were to have someone for fixed hours under contract then I feel an HMRC status officer would probably rule that they were an employee - as they would be doing the same thing as a Nanny.
To be self employed the person doing the work would need to show that they worked for numerous different families over a short period of time. That is how I interpret things, though ultimately it would be up to an individual status officer - not the council or anyone else.

IndigoBell - I think the figures you give for nannies are probably just salary, and possibly just the take home salary. There are lots of other costs of employing a nanny, such as Employers NI, the time/cost of running payroll, activities/outings, travel on duty - search my posts for details if you wish to find out more about nanny costs.

Nannies can be a viable option especially if a family has 3 or more children, or if the time that childcare is needed isn't provided by anyone else - nurseries and childminders have opening and closing times, a nanny does the hours they are contracted to do.

Childcare is expensive, yet as a childcare worker if I got a full time job in a nursery in my area, I would be on about 17000. That would not cover my bills - I'm in Surrey.

What is the soluition? A few generations ago people lived near family. These days many of us do not have family living near - is that the change which means parents these days need to use various forms of non-family provided childcare?

sweetpea5 a poster has mentioned nanny with own child and some of us mentioned nannyshare. Imo it is madness to pay 2 sets of cm/nursery (and have the extra commuting) when you can have nanny for even less. Too many advantages (not commuting with dcs in the morning, you dont even have to dress them, laudry done etc, more flexibility if you are late from work, more control over what your dcs are doing). Once you have 2 or more children this is better option ime.

You said earlier that children dont get to go out if they have nanny. Thats not true ime.

Also, if you have spare room you can have live-in nanny (not au-pair, nanny). Thats cheaper and many advantages.

Ah x-post, nannynick is here. Ask him anything, he is your man

I have just gone back to work after being a SAHM/student for the last 5 years. ELdest is in full tiem school and the youngest has just started half days.
£700 a month this will cost. add the fact that my job is a 45 min drive away and the rest is lost as I lose my tax credits we are looking at pretty much breaking even.
Next year when they are both full time it will drop. To £400.

It will be worth it though.

Ah thanks Laquitar
I agree, a nanny brings benefits that other forms of childcare do not. A live-in nanny can be a way to lower the cost but does mean having someone else living in your home.
The more children the more viable a nanny becomes as unlike other forms of childcare it isn't costed on a per-child basis.

Discussing nannies does not solve the initial problem though... childcare costs what it costs. The job market, location, and probably some other factors I expect affect childcare costs. Some areas seem to be higher/lower than others even in local areas, so I do wonder what causes that.

Laquitar - thanks for that. I am looking at nanny websites again at the minute, maybe it would be better. No extra room for a live in nanny though, unfortunately.
Nannynick - yes the fact that people are living far from family must be making a difference. I think my parents would help out maybe a day a week if we lived anywhere near them. Wish we did, but no jobs for us there. Agree about childcare workers needing to be paid a good wage though.

Spongebob - yep, it will be worth it. I am telling myself the same thing.

its a difficult balance I find.
On the one hand I have to work. We can not survive without my wage.

On the other hand a third of my wage goes on childcare costs. Ds goes to a relatively expensive nursery for our area (£41.50 for 2 years and under, generally £35 a day in the area) but it is convenient for where we live, it is small and very homely and it has a really nice atmosphere and good outside space. And he is very very happy there.

Sadly childcare costs have had a real influence on whether we try for another child.

I'm with the OP on this one but I think its part of a wider problem that the cost of living in London has got pretty much out of control.

My DH and I have two young DCs. We pay £3k/month rent (4 bed townhouse), £2.5k/month childcare, £500/month for utility bills/council tax/tube fares. So we get through £6k a month before we eat! We basically spend £8k per month without doing anything very luxurious at all.

We can afford this comfortably but I get the impression that a lot of people are really struggling now with rentals up 10-20% in London, childcare up 5-10%, utility bills up to 20% higher etc etc.

They say inflation is 5% but that is a total crock of s**t!

I agree, the cost of living is crazy. I would be embarrased to say to my non-London friends what our combined salary is now as it sounds amazing, but incrementally our costs have gone up, we are on a fixed rate interest only mortgage so haven't benefited at all from the drop in interest rates, whilst watching all other bills go up. Childcare is well over £1000 for one child.

Whilst life is a little less stressful than a few months ago when we were earning less and DH's job was under threat, the fact is that what life should be like on our salary in mind, and what the reality is are very different. A second child is definitely out of the question until DD starts school (unless I quit working).

I am a childminder because I have the same problem as many others : no family nearby to help and cannot afford to pay a childminder before, after school and holidays. We don't get the childcare element of the tax credits (we don't get the tax credits anymore either but don't get me started on that) so even if I worked I would not be able to afford childcare for my youngest. Funding has run out now so I cannot even further my qualifications. We also have a lad at University and a girl at college (who is trying to find a job) so we are supporting her while she lives at home.

I charge £30 for 0-4 years all day/£4.50 per hour and for school age children it is £28 per day in the school holidays, £50 per week before and after school or £12 per week (before or after school only) which includes snacks, pays for fuel/bus fares, pays for resources. I try to keep fees to a reasonable level (for Tameside, Greater Manchester) for parents and offer sibling reductions and can take vouchers but we also have to make some sort of profit otherwise it would not be worth doing.

Some people think childminders sit around all day but many of us look after children from 7 am (sometimes earlier) till 7pm or later plus doing courses which we have to update every 3 years in the evenings or at the weekend when we have our own family commitments. We are expected to do observations on the children and get no extra money when we do NVQ's or Foundation degrees.

I agree with you porcamiseria, some don't think of the expense that comes with having children.

Well.... we did consider the costs of children, but a lot has happened since then.

When we were TTC we lived day-to-day on just DH's salary, and saved mine. So it wasn't an unreasonable assumption to think that we could afford to have children. Since then:

Moved to a really expensive area (due to work)
Bought a house (reasonable thing in our financial situation, but obviously we bought when houses were expensive - much easier for friends who bought 10 years ago to afford childcare now)
Petrol costs up massively
Childcare costs up way ahead of "official" inflation
Food costs soaring
Loss of CTC and CB for higher rate earners
Tax brackets moved to catch more people into the higher earner bracket

To be honest, our second child was a bit of a miracle and we were exceptionally lucky that I conceived. We hadn't really planned as such, as it was so unlikely that we would have another child. I was already a SAHM though (due to circumstance) and getting on a bit, so it was our only chance to have another child. Waiting for 4 years until the eldest was in school would have meant that we had no chance at all for another child.

My friend does get help towards childcare (she has 4 children) and when she had to ring them up the other week the man on the other end of the phone told her it wasn't worth her working cos her salary didn't even cover the tax credits they give her for childcare. I told her to make a complaint!! The idiot obviously didn't realise that working tax credits towards childcare were introduced for exactly the reason that a lot of people's salary didn't cover childcare costs and the government wanted to keep parents in work, instead of leaving work until they were done having kids and the youngest was in school.

You say that the childminders who cost less don't have the same level of experience or qualifications, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are not as good. Having worked as an after school assistant I can tell you that I would not leave my kids with 2 out of my 3 'qualified' colleagues because they were complete fucking idiots, with 3 and a half years training, and about 30 years experience between them.

Nappyaddict I think he was wrong to say it but you must understand how frustrating it is to see some people choose to have four children , they choose to have the state pU for these children at a higher rate than they pay in when people in our situation will probably have to make do with one child.

I will openly admit that I am very jealous of people who are able to have more children. It is not something I am proud of and it is unpleasant and illogical but I do not think I am alone.

childcare is very badly paid

That's why I work weekends. I do fri-sun and on the friday my entire day's salary goes on childcare for 2 kids (£55 for 1yo and £48 for 3yo).

It sucks. I just feel incredibly lucky I've found a job in my profession that is part time and weekends, before I found it I was seriously considering the local supermarket despite having a masters. Which is what I suspect a lot of women end up doing!

Some posters have suggested that the OP would be better off looking into a nanny/nanny share. Not true in my experience. In Surrey, a newly qualified, inexperienced nanny will be looking for a minimum of £8.50 per hour. Once you add in the tax you have to pay on that, plus employee and employer NIC, it comes out at a lot more than the £11ph we pay for both DCs to be in nursery. Nannies are only a cheaper option if you have at least 3 children.

Your cm should be giving you a sibling discount though - 10% is typical.

And re the childcare vouchers - you'll get some help, but on your salary (which is most definitely NOT £50k gross as stated by another poster - you should gross up at 20% not 40%) you will only get basic rate tax relief. Rules changed on this from 6 April this year - previously you could get higher rate tax relief if a HR taxpayer. From 6 April it's limited to BR tax relief unless you were already in the scheme before 6 April).