Work Life Family relationship balance HTF do we balance it (really bloody long)

[worklifedifficult]

Is this unreasonable?!?!?!

Me and DW both work in IT. I'm a programmer, she's a project manager. She works for a eCommerce outfit, I work in the IS department of a Big Financial Services outfit. We're both expected to start work about 8ish and finish 7ish (that's desk time). Before anyone jumps to conclusions we don't earn the huge salaries that are the perceptions of the IT industry.

We're a nuclear family living in London - I have no family to call upon, DW's family are all in Oz, we don't have many friends to really call upon for help as neither of us are from this part of London.

Our dd1&2 are in reception and Y2 they start school at 8:30 and can finish at 5:30 at the latest.

We've had some difficulties with organising childcare to deal with our situation.

We don't earn enough or have enough surplus to afford a qualified nanny, we don't have enough space in her house for an Au-pair and don't have the savings or resources to move.

DW and I are sort of in agreement that one of us should quit work to do the necessaries to look after the kids - but one of us needs to get a job with a salary bump otherwise we will really have serious financial difficulties (we have them now but just get through it). As an example this is our basic breakdown house 1200 (double, big single, boxroom) council tax 250 energy and water 200 pcm. Oyster (* 2) 280. Fortunately, nothing goes on debt because we've been very careful to avoid it.

Everything left over seems to hemorrhage on food, clothes, children, childcare, a bit of weekend entertainment for the kids when its raining, books, learning materials and trying to have a nice comfortabe-ish life. You know the sort that you would expect to be a given our careers and education.

DW is better suited to getting a salary bump in her career than I am, but each of us accepts that one or the other may have to quit work as we don't see it becoming easier over the next 5-10 years, sustaining the work and family/school obligations. As an example DW's boss (double her salary, his wife has a very big salary, a nanny and weekend nanny) got narky that she was starting work an hour earlier so she could leave an hour earlier to collect the kids from school. My boss (no kids, unmarried starts work at 7am) pulls a face cos I don't get to my desk until 8:50 cos I do the school run in the morning (I drop them at breakfast club at 8am and if the underground is behaving its-self get to work 50mins later).

Problem is is that its starting to cripple me and DW relationship, the work constraints and obligations causes us a lot of stress on top of the stresses of running a household and looking after the children. We end up in a situation where I vocalise it, DW internalises it and we end up having a bit of an unhappy time, snipping snarking, snapping. Which neither of us wants, we don't expect it to be easy but it seems to be a lot harder than we both expected, especially as we are both knackered after a long day doing stuff and never seem to catch up over the weekend.

We are great-full for our incomes, and from my own background and experiences i know there are many people in much worse financial situations. but and I guess here comes the question. How do we manage all of this? because we suspect that we're not, what should we do to make it easier, bar winning the lottery (ain't never gonna happen eh!).

I feel that we live on a knife edge of destroying our relationship and our children's psychological health and well-being over having to work. ABIU I guess.

Why don't u visit Cardiff for cheaper cities? Near the sea, mountains etc ..

We moved form Londkn to Scotland last year. We now rent a massive four bed house with big garden, ten minutes walk from my work, for the same rent my sister pays for a studio flat in Raynes park

I love it up here :)

"It seems to be that employers, schools and everything in between is just not geared to two working parents with no additional support."

Precisely right. If you have no family to help out and cannot afford a nanny (or house an au pair), two FT WOH jobs are very hard to sustain if you have small DC.

Sorry, I am not adding anything useful, but, out of curiosity, how much would it be to have a baby sitter picking up the dc from school and look after them for 4 hrs?

(i am not in the UK)

Another thing is to just ignore those comments from your manager at work. As a part timer I have had to develop a skin of a rhino - even though I'm getting less money.

Employers always want more than you are prepared to give. That's just the way it is. However in IT I would imagine if you or your DW live you would be replaced by a much more expensive contractor, therefore provided you are getting the job done and working at least the hours you are paid to work then you just need to let the snidy comments run over you.

But two f/t with no family help is hard. DH is now a contractor and I went down a grade and dropped hours. Works on the whole for us.

I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned tax credits and benefits here.

Are you claiming everything to which you're entitled? If one of you were to stop working, tax credits, and benefits (which are paid net of tax) would go some way towards supporting the shortfall in income.

You could also freelance or retrain and work at or near home. Affordable childcare in the form of freelance day-carers and babysitters is very sought-after in London for the very reasons that are defeating you: nannies and nurseries are expensive and au pairs need to be housed and fed.

You could also resort to London's secret cash service economy. If you can earn £10 cash in hand with no operating costs you're earning about the same in gross terms as someone making twice that in a formal business.

Franca £8 per hour

We're in similar situation, but commuting into london (moved out to get a house and because DH missed the country, yet wanted to continue to work in the city ) and working shorter hours in the office, which pisses off our employers and outs us at risk of redundancy (calculated risk). dh does stuff at night at home, I cut corners as too knackered at night to log in.

Not great, but would be much better if one of us could get a local job. Childcare is cheaper and better here than in london (eg lots of SAHMs who are CMs with not many mindees, so nice homely after-school environment).

If you are both able to take the risk, might be worth challenging the employers a bit more, eg working shorter hours, requesting a day a week from home.

My mum says when she was in this situation she and other people just paid nannies/friends illegally, cash-in-hand, suspect some people still do this to get by.

franca "babysitters" as you describe are classed as nannies in the UK and subject to full employer tax (25%).

More like £11-£14 hour in london with tax etc.

Dozer, I'm afraid it still goes on. Hence the £8 figure.

Ah ok. Not surprising really, lots of people not well paid enough to pay london costs and nanny and want children looked after at home.

Thanks. I used the term baby sitter as I find it friendlier than nanny, sorry!

In English, "babysitter" usually means casual employment (the odd evening when parents go out to dinner or the cinema), hence cash in hand to teenagers, whereas "nanny" is regular employment (hence tax and NI).

I have a lot of sympathy for both sides Dozer. All very well for David Cameron and George Osborne to get uppity, but I'll bet with all their allowances they don't struggle to pay their childcare in the same way. And they live above the shop.

More annoying for me is big jobs where I'm out of contention because I'm VAT registered and the others pitching are not, but that's another story.

Something else occurred to me. You will not be struggling like this forever. The children will grow up and the costs of their care will recede. Do you own your own home? Could you remortgage? I realise you don't want to go into debt but it's pretty bloody impossible to manage without debt at this stage in your lives, and you may have to suck it up as an opportunity cost, the way women must do when they employ nannies whose take-home pay exceeds their own.

If you are both able to take the risk, might be worth challenging the employers a bit more, eg working shorter hours, requesting a day a week from home.

There should be no 'risk' involved in such a request, as per my previous post every parent is entitled to make such a request. A manager ignorant of the law might look askance at such a request; HR should know better.

My DH became a SAHP when DC3 was born. I went straight back to work and he took up the domestic reins full-time.

Best decision we ever made.

It did have a huge impact for me as it meant that I could concentrate wholeheartedly on my career - staying for ad-hoc meetings, travelling and for a few years we lived abroad as well.

This would not have been possible if we had been trying to juggle two careers. DH retrained for a new career recently (DCs now all at secondary). Unfortunately the slump in the economy has hit us but DH should be well placed when things start to pick up.

How would it be for your DW to start looking for that big bump up salary wise? As soon as she finds it you can hand in your notice.

Grimma I am sure as shit not a shining example, just a regular fella trying to make things right for his family... if they're happy I'm happy. Sheer selfishness, they have enough cash, time and fun - I can have cash time and fun myself.

I'd love to make a case to management for home working. I've done it in a number of jobs and it still seems to hit a wall of dumbness... On we only allow Citrix access... or you have to use a certain restricted account. Or you can't use your own kit cos its not "standard build"... or the saddest chestnut of them all security... I haven't been in the job long enough to put forward a case for flex working....

Anyway the vast Majority of supervisory/management have a negative opinion of working from home. I'd say a good 90% of technical leaders don't even know that Microsoft have a free piece of software called sharedView... which magically allows things like sharing applications and remoting them so that I can collaboratively work with my peers (I've used it on OS projects to pair program in the early hours with US Buddies).

The security excuse grinds me so much, most security breaches come from poorly configured boundary servers and unpatched systems and firewalls. Sadly, there are lots of technical IT staff who are unaware of basic security.

I'll tell you another thing that galls me no end... my contract stated 35hrs per week. The time-sheeting system states 37.5 hrs per week and of course the expectation that I should be there an hour before core hours of 9-5 and two hours after... cos of all the co-workers sitting there until 7pm... My annoyance is that the company gets around three+ hours a day extra (lets not forget the work through lunch culture too) so my salary has a gross worth less than it has on paper... hurumph!!!! But thats an entirely different type of gripe

Grimma, there shouldn't be risk, but it feels like there is, especially with large london private sector employers .

OP, think tbh you could get away with a bit more work-wise!

Both DH and I are IT as well. He works from home the majority of the time and I work 3 days in the office and a half day from home. This means we use after school cub for the DTs 3 days per week (reception year).
Sounds like your employers have an issue with flexible working. Have either of you formally requested this at all? Are you able to finish up work at home in the evening or even work from home one day a week?

Ah, I x-posted with you there OP. My company are not great for working from home but I exploited the situation that my boss needed me to work the extra and I said I would on the condition it would be from home. I guess my advantage was that I have been there quite a while so was known to put the work in.

most londoners I know in your scenario use a childminder, as follows

school drop off (then you can get to work on time)
school after care
holidays

curious why you have not mentioned? as many people cant afford a nanny

due to the recession there are ALOT of CM with space too

much cheaper than nanny

I guess I'm lucky that I work for a company with two main development sites so they have to have a good VPN and remote access in place anyway. Though when I first started workign from home - long before having DD - there wasn't anything like that...there was a dialup modem and magnetic tapes to transfer data but we still made it work! I'm amazed to hear that in the 21st century you meet such attitudes.