To not understand how couples who work can afford a second child??

[TheAngelofNitshillRoad]

Without waiting until the first child is in school, anyway!!

DD is 13 months. I work part time (3 days per week) - we pay approx £600 per month on nursery fees.

I worked full time before I went on mat leave. Only got statutory maternity pay after the first six weeks. I took 9 months off and by the end of it we were completely skint. We're building back up now but it's hard because the nursery fees are high and obviously I've had a significant salary reduction. We've stripped back our outgoings as much as we can, so we cover our outgoings and have a little bit of disposable income each month, but it's hard to save.

We had always considered starting to try for another baby towards the end of this year. I didn't want too big an age gap between DD1 and DC2 and I'll be honest, I'm really beginning to feel that broody feeling. But I just can't see how we can do this.

It seems to me that while I'm on mat leave, we will need to pay the nursery to keep DD1's nursery place open (although I don't think I would put her in for three full days each week, I wouldn't want her to feel pushed out at home with new baby). If I go back down to statutory maternity pay, we physically will not have the cash available to pay these nursery fees. So we have no option but to out DC2 off for....ages really! I've been trying to save where I can, transfer the odd twenty quid to my ISA but it's a slow, slow process.

Am I missing something?? Are we approaching this the wrong way?? How do people afford this??

We couldn't. DD is 5 in the summer and DC2 due in june. So I'll have two months with them both before DD starts primary.

My sister however only has a 2 year age gap but doesn't pay for childcare.

I quite like the fact I've a larger gap though. Dd has had lots of experiences as an only child and is now fully understanding of the new baby.

I think you answered your question in your first sentence tbh. DH and I both work full time on reasonable wages, I'm currently pg with DC2 who will be born a couple of moths before our 4yo starts school. No way could we have afforded it before now!

while I'm on mat leave, we will need to pay the nursery to keep DD1's nursery place open

This is what we didn't do. Ds1 was 2.3 when we had ds2, there's absolutely no way we could have kept paying ds1's cm fees for the year I was on mat leave!

When ds2 was born, ds1 came out of childcare which saved £500 a month. I got full mat pay for 5 months but we kept to our previous income and put the £500 a month in savings so had £2.5k saved by the time I went to statutory pay. That £2.5k just tided us over for the 7 months I was on statutory/no pay.

Then I went back to work after a year, by which time ds1 was 3 and had his 15 free hours so his childcare bill had dropped by a couple of hundred a month. The childcare for both was a massive struggle for about a year ds1 turned 4 and went full time, then it was manageable again...after school care is peanuts to pay by comparison when you've been used to paying for two nearly full time places!

Now they're both in fulltime, childcare costs are a breeze again (again by comparison) and the cost is more than viable.

It is doable, but I would end the nursery place for dc1 and take your chances after mat leave.

I think a lot of people now do go for a bigger age gap.

We have a 9 month old and we're very lucky in that we only need 2 days a week childcare (I work 4 days, DH has a day off in the week, and my mum has her a day too). So we're paying about £330 childcare per month on average. I think if we had a second we'd manage, just about.

It might sound obvious, so apologies if it is, but does your partner also claim childcare vouchers?

Do you know...this childcare voucher thing might be a bit of a gamechanger. So they'll keep paying £243 per month towards it and I'll still get my SMP?? That's mad!

We'd still be utterly skint but if we can save a little bit this might actually be doable...

No grandparent childcare. My DD loves her nursery, I'm reluctant to take her out or change it but it definitely is something to think about.

Are nursery fees any cheaper at 2 years old?

I effectively worked for nothing for 2 years. Shared costs obviously but it was the equivalent of my salary!! But I wanted and have an age gap of less than 2 years. We were completely skint for one year until DC1 got age 3 EY funding and 15 hrs free...then started school nursery (cheaper), then school ...

We have a two year gap but both sets of grannies are local and did a day each. Both children are in nursery now for two days a week but my son gets his 15 hours and last year we bought as many childcare vouchers as we could whilst grannies had my youngest and we banked them to spread the cost and ease the pain of this year's fees.

We did wait until our eldest was at school. Secondary infertility then meant we actually ended up with a gap of nearly a decade - not ideal (considering how broody you feel already!) though it's worked out amazingly well for us.

Know lots of people who worried if they could afford one but then had two or even three close together.The thing is, if you have to manage, you just do, somehow!

Thing is as well, it depends massively on your other living costs too. If you're paying a hefty mortgage then your situation is vastly different to someone who isn't. I don't think there are any solid answers as everyone's situation is so different.

We pay the same to our nanny as dh earns, as he didn't want to quit. I guess don't assume that people are not simply breaking even or making a loss- there are good reasons to stay in work beyond the fact that childcare would be pricier than one or other parent's income (where the couple can afford to absorb this for the pre school years).

Yes, and your OH can salary sacrifice too... we had 2 under 2 and stopped childcare as soon as my second lot of mat leave started. We're living off savings.

We just split the childcare, we both work full time , but we just made sure that we worked different hours. We had to as the children have medical issues that meant that childcare wasn't an option and no near available family.

Yes my husband also claims childcare vouchers

Don't leave DC1 in nursery while you're on maternity leave!

By the time maternity leave's over you won't have that long with 2 sets of fees.

Do you get childcare vouchers through work? Once I went down to statutory my employer continued to pay them but they weren't deducted from my mat pay

Hmm. This isn't right, don't bank on this op.

Childcare vouchers are designed to save you tax only. You can get up to £243 a month to spend on childcare which is deducted from your gross pay instead of your net.

It's not free money and employers don't cover the cost when you're on mat leave - you can keep the vouchers going if you want, but they still get deducted from your gross mat pay.

To the poster who wrote this ^ how long ago? This is a mistake on your employers part and in your shoes i'd be nervous of them discovering their error and clawing back the money from you.

We managed a 23month gap with one day a week childcare by grandparents and two days nursery with childcare vouchers and me working three days. We still had a savings buffer from pre-DCs and also I went back FT between the two DCs so my mat. pay for each DC was based on FT salary, but the amount above statutory was paid as a bonus over the tear after I went back, not while I was off. After six months DC1's free hours kicked in and it gradually got easier from then on. I'm glad we bit the bullet and did it, we're ten years on now and it was really such a short period of being skint, it has turned out to be a really good age gap.

Can I just point out that a two year age gap means GCSEs and A levels both at the same time. Three years is a better bet.

I have two DC two years apart, who did not get along at all when they were little. They do get on, now, in their teens. The two with the three year gap always got along much better. You can't assume that children closer in age will be closer to each other, so don't go with a two year gap for that reason.

If you have a three year gap, your 3yo will at least get 15 free hours at nursery. I think charges may go down, due to staff ratios, too. And it's only one year until school, then.

5 year age gap. I returned to FT work after having DD and she went to a childminder. We couldn't have afforded 2 x childminder fees hence the large gap. I didn't return to work after having DS due to the difficulty of after school childcare - DH's pay had increased slightly and we thought we could afford for me to stop work. After a year I found a 9 hours a week job in a primary school, my Parents did one day childcare and we paid a childminder for the other 3 hours. Would have loved a smaller gap and perhaps a DC3 but it was out of the question.

Well I don't pay for childcare when I'm not working for a start.

I just think that is madness.

The pattern has changed I think in recent years. Twenty years ago it was much more normal to have two children really quickly, as lots of women would leave work and plan to return when the second started school. There just wasnt the nurseries.

Could you drop another day to keep your skills alive? But it reduces your child care needs but you will bring home more than 2/3 of what you do now.

Are you sure lilac? I've understood that the employer pays the same amount as usual into childcare vouchers too.

Childcare vouchers are a non-cash benefit, technically.

This means that you have chosen to forgo some of your salary (which is money, and taxable) in you receive instead childcare vouchers (which are not considered to be money, and are not taxable).

(you are not taking some of your salary in the form of a different kind of money - it is not considered money at all)

what this means - and it is FUCKING BRILLIANT - is that by law they cannot take them away when you are on mat leave even though your salary has practically disappeared. Just as by law you keep all other non-cash benefits on mat leave - your phone, your company car, anything else that comes with the job - they have to continue to provide you with childcare vouchers.

We timed it so DS2 arrived shortly before DS1 got his 15 free hours at age 3. We used the free hours to keep his nursery place open. While on maternity leave with DS2 both DH and I accumulated childcare vouchers so that when I went back to work we had enough to cover the additional care of two in nursery before DS1 started school. Without the accumulation of the childcare vouchers we would have struggled and DD1 who arrived two years after DS2 would never have been born.

Remember there is also an option to take parental leave. At one point it was near enough cheaper for me not to work than work and pay childcare but I didn't want to give up my job so took about 6 weeks parental leave on top of my maternity leave.

It's a nightmare isn't it? We had a 2 year age gap and it's nearly broken us financially.

Dc are 2 and 4. The 15 free hours do help a bit, but our childcare bills are still high. 15 hours is less than 2 days, and it's term time only. I only work 70% but to be honest if I worked full time, the extra money would be mostly spent on childcare.

We decided to aim for a 2 year age gap despite this because. ..

• we thought it would take longer to conceive (I was 37)
• we wanted dc to be close in age
• we didn't know how hard it would be to have 2 boisterous preschoolers!
• we are older parents - we were 37 and 49 - and didn't want to leave it too long as we'd never have any more energy. Also all our parents are late seventies and struggling physically
• I had a prolapse and wanted to finish my family so I could get it fixed

It's hard if you want another baby now but genuinely can't afford it. I totally get it.

Lilac, I think you are wrong but I did all this about 2 or 3 years ago, so the law may have changed.

OP this is well worth looking into BUT DO SO INDEPENDENTLY. Do not just ask your employer.

(yes I did this and nearly lost the lot, higher rate tax too - fortunately saved it in time when a friend tipped me off)