yay I earn £2100 per month...

[CeceliaStrange]

into London, better paid job.

Nursery costs for 2= £2400 (£2600 at another)
Travel to work=£146

AIBU to be upset that the only option may be leaving a well paid job because whilst we can just scrape by on DH salary with certainly can't afford for me to pay £450 to work :-(

How do people do it? I'm proud of my job

Oblomov - I wondered that. Its the obvious solution to me, and what many people have to do with preschool aged kids.

When we asked about going onto interest only mortgage in 2008 Nationwide told us if we had 50% equity in the house we could.

Whilst half of MN apparently have paid their mortgages off by the time they are 25 there are a lot of people who haven't.

So I would be extremely surprised if many mortgage companies offer the option.

I think some do it for a short term, ours certainly does.

A nanny or CM may be cheaper but it cant have come as that much as a surprise that childcare for two in london would be very expensive but children come with costs.

Was your older child at a nursery before you started maternity leave? Could you discuss it with them? DH is a teacher. The nursery we use doesn't officially do term time only contracts, but we approached them when i went back to work after DS2 and because we'd used them since DS1 was a baby we came to an arrangement that we only use (and pay) for half the usual amount of childcare in the school holidays. So we pay for 4 days in term time, and 2 in the holidays which helps finances considerably.

I've just employed a nanny with ten years experience on £11 gross per hour, forty hours a week (over four days). It works out at £2090 per month, including all employers NI and what not. We're in n4. She's great.

her royal notness - gross includes employee tax but not employer ni contributions. but that isnt too big.

so a £450 net nanny wage is approx £590 gross, and £60 ni. so a £ 650 total cost a week would be £450 take home to nanny. average london nanny working 10 hrs a day london is around £500 net per week.

Could your hubby not be a SAHD?

YANBU -that sucks.

Tw1nkle - OPs DH is the higher earner.

I agree with Oblomov it is only for a year. It is the reason we have a big gap between ours.

Hi, I'm a teacher with 4 DCs in childcare (3 primary aged in wraparound care, 1 full time nursery). I only manage with Working Tax Credit help with childcare costs (single parent). I feel your pain :(

Not sure if anybody mentioned this but have you applied to be an examiner? On mat leave you could make a substantial amount of money over the summer and spread that out over the ten or so months you will struggle for.

I am also in NE London, OP. The nurseries around here would charge you between 1700-2100 per month for a baby and toddler. This is obviously very expensive anyway but less than was mentioned by you in your original post.

I'm in the same position - going back to work later this year with two children both at nursery age, one a very pricey baby. No hope of part time. No family help.

Would the above costs be do-able? I'm taking the view that until DS1 goes to school, we will be broke but at least I will keep working and hopefully that will be a boost long term.

We extended the terms of our mortgage by 6 years to have ds3 so paying less each month.

Switching to an interest only mortgage might not be a long term enough solution as banks tend not to sllow this for any length of time and I'd be very careful about taking a payment holiday on your mortgage. There are some lenders who mark this as missed payments, even though it has been previously agreed, and you then find your credit rating is shot to bits.

I hear you. We have 2 kids, one just started reception in September. The other one turned 2 in September which means 3 years more of nursery fees. I went back to work when they were 6 months old so I spent 1.5 years paying 2 lots of fees. At its peak it made no sense. My husband's income paid for the fees and because of his commute we still had to pay for petrol. A full tank every 4 days. Plus lunch.

Then he got made redundant. And we slashed nursery down to 3 days (to enable him to set him his own business). Our ISAs were used, we meal planned, stopped eating out etc etc.

It's v difficult. It still is because although his business is doing well, as he's self employed, it's not stable so there are months when he doesn't pay himself and months when it's not so bad.

I'm just counting down the months till my dd turns 3 and then we can get the 15 hr (if they don't cancel it or tell us we earn too much?) and we can breathe slightly easier.

I hear you.

There is no way I would pay to go to work.

OP, I know you want to keep your career but surely you'd be able to go back to it? I'm in the same career, so I know I could.

Could you do childminding yourself if there's a shortage in your area? I'd do that and stay at home with my kids with no childcare costs. Oh and do it for teachers, too, and don't charge in the holidays - you'll be the most popular childminder around!

I'm another one that says "look at the bigger picture". It's one thing if you physically couldn't afford to go back to work, if you couldn't survive, I get that. But I saw the massive expense that we had paying childcare as a short term thing. Yes it was a massive pain in the arse at the time.

If I'd have given up my job, I would never have got one like it again.

I'm in the same sort of position. I don't earn as much as you but we have a 3 year old and DD2 will hopefully be born in the next couple of weeks. I'm about to go on mat leave and hope to be able to go back to work towards the end of the year, but I have no idea how we'll manage to find childcare. We're not in London anymore so costs aren't as high but I reckon we'll end up paying a couple of hundred quid a month over my salary, for childcare.

No help really, just sympathy.

But the OP isn't in that type of job, SocialClimber. She's a teacher and there will always be jobs.

Why should she spend more than she earns to go to work when her children are tiny? It doesn't make any sense. Yes, if you had a specialist job that very few people did that allowed you to come home fresh enough to spend time with the kids, but teaching is absolutely knackering and to pay to have to do it is just crazy, in my opinion.

My childcare costs £1350 per month for 4 days a week plus £200 travel into London. I use Childminder who is v good & offers one to one care & variety of activities that a nursery couldn't offer. She is brilliant.

What about relocating to an area where housing/childcare are cheaper?

Yes, the job in question would be a deciding factor, I agree. I only spoke from my own experience in that I would never get another job like mine again, so for the short term it was worth forking out a fortune.

If the OP thinks it would be fairly easy to get another job, of course it would make more sense to take a career break. I suppose it comes down to whether the OP wants that break, or wants to be in a job she is proud of and loves. Quite unfair really.

Yabu. You chose to have two children so close in age that they would both need full time childcare at the same time, making it financially unviable for you to work until they reach school age.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm not sure why anyone expects the state to fund childcare, how would that be fair to those without children?

I don't see why anyone who doesn't have children should be looked after in their old age, when my children will be paying for it.

Of course I don't, but that's about as sensible an argument as you just made there Ratty.