AIBU- Can't afford to work

[MissRja]

Just trying to work out a return to work after having a baby In December ( also have a 4 year old in full time school ) unfortunately, my original plans for childcare have fell through, which now means we are looking at paid childcare. My current job have declined My flexible working request , which means I am looking for another job. Due to school pick up/ drops offs I am looking returning on reduced hours over 5 days or term time only. Have worked our I will be bringing home roughly £1200 after tax per month. Nursery fees will be £1100 for a four week month, or £1375 for a 5 week month. This does not include before / after school club fees. If I was to use my wages alone to pay childcare fees I would actually be losing money to work , especially when factoring in petrol , work clothes etc. Surely this can't be right. How in this day and age can I not afford to go to work !! Its ridiculous. The whole reason I am going back is because we can't afford to live off DP wages alone , but it doesn't seem like it will make a difference if i do go back to work. Am i missing something here ? What does everyone else do to work around this ? Would love to hear your experiences / advice !!

@BulletTrain

I've just done 2 years paying £500 (minus 20% tax free) to earn about £800 (minus commuting costs). Completely worth it. Now DS is 3 we pay £110 a month and I have been promoted.

Definitely keep working. I was in a relatively low paid office job, roll on 5 years working with my young son and I earn more than double that salary due to 2 promotions and now a high earner and in a senior job.

I believe that you are experiencing a dilemma that is the daily bread of single mothers. Unless you can get well-paid full-time work with predictable hours, you easily end up in a situation where you pay more in childcare than you earn if your children are pre-school age. That's why the denigration of un- or underemployed single parents as 'shirkers' etc is so disgusting.

I had a friend who persisted in working for about 5 years despite losing money through it (two children in paid childcare, at about 800 GBP/month/child) then, finally, she got a job that paid more than the childcare fees, based on the experience she had accumulated in the worse-paying job. She could afford to do this because her husband was well paid.

So it really depends on whether you can afford to make this kind of investment in the future, and how invested you are in having a career. And yes it really shouldn't be like this.

@PatientlyWaiting21

It’s shit, we have a childcare crisis and yet again it was ignored in the spring budget. How many times did Sunak say he wanted to support hard working families? Families can’t work without childcare, so who exactly is our government supporting? They want to look at how Canada, Sweden and Germany are running things!

Whilst I can’t get behind the spring budget statement, there’s no way we’re having free or subsidised childcare unless we’re all prepared to pay more in tax. Much more. In a time of rising food prices and energy bills, do you think that would have been a popular policy, if the chancellor had announced it?

It is difficult paying childcare but you have to remember it’s not forever. You’ll get some assistance at certain ages plus eventually your kids don’t need childcare. Might seem a long way off but time flies. If you give up your job remember you’re giving up years of pension contributions and it’s harder for women who take time out to get back to earning decent salaries. I just decided to suck it up and it was very expensive but glad I did as once both kids are in school it reduced a lot. Now we allow many of our staff to go and collect school aged children on a late lunch break and finish off at home for another hour or two. That saves them on childcare and on their office days they can do that too as long as they do their 40% over the month

Someone has to pay for the childcare, if it was really cheap it would be really crap. You are trusting these people with tour child's life.

@LabelMaker

Someone has to pay for the childcare, if it was really cheap it would be really crap. You are trusting these people with tour child's life.

It’s heavily - and I mean HEAVILY- subsidised across Scandinavia and in European countries like Germany and France and it is of absolutely superb quality. Those countries also have better early years outcomes and sex equality statistics. Obviously slightly different systems in each country, but we are really lagging behind the most successful countries in this area.

Do my answer would be that the tax payer should pay, because it is a profound social and economic good to support early learning and support the workforce in that way.

People don’t want to pay more tax to pay for their own nursing care. If they don’t care about their own individual experience, you’re gonna struggle to convince them to pay more tax to pay for the societal benefit everyone else’s childcare.

I’m not saying that this is right - I’d prefer to pay more tax for better public services (including ones that don’t directly benefit me), but the UK is generally very selfish.

The people who want free taxpayer-funded childcare for themselves are the same people complaining that they themselves can’t possibly pay more tax. No, everyone else can pay more. But not them.

@Iamthewombat

The people who want free taxpayer-funded childcare for themselves are the same people complaining that they themselves can’t possibly pay more tax. No, everyone else can pay more. But not them.

Well that’s nonsense. I’ll never need childcare again but I think heftily subsidised early years care is a good idea. I won’t benefit from it directly, but I will indirectly.

It’s possible to have a view that isn’t busy about grabbing something for yourself.

I didn’t say that it wasn’t possible to want things that don’t personally benefit you, for the greater good (I assume that is what ‘busy about grabbing something for yourself’ means).

And, what I said isn’t nonsense. Read any of the wide selection of threads on Mumsnet complaining that childcare is too expensive and should be subsidised or free like in Europe. Or any of the threads moaning about income tax being too high.

95% of the people with children who are calling for childcare subsidies also say, without a hint of irony, that they can’t possibly pay more in tax, because they can’t afford it, but that other people should pay for them to have free childcare.

If you aren’t willing to pay more tax personally, how can you expect everyone else to?

A similar group want the NHS to be better and for nurses to get a 20% pay rise, without any tax increase. Or for all care of elderly people to be free so that they can inherit their parents’ house without it being sold to fund care. Or for the state pension age to be moved back to 60. Who’s paying for that? Anyone except them, is what quickly emerges on those threads.

I agree that the request for subsidy is likely to targeted at people like me - HR taxpayers who don’t have kids or whose kids are grown. That’s likely to get some backs up, as in the former case many of us have been net contributors for a long time and already fund a great deal of things we don’t directly benefit from (as opposed to those who benefit personally and via increased societal benefits).

I’d be happy to pay more tax for better services including childcare but I can see why someone else in my position might be like, hang on, I seem to spend my entire life paying for everyone else’s maternity/child healthcare and education and I’m not thrilled at the prospect of paying for all the childcare as well.

What’s always going to be difficult is convincing those people that you want the subsidy as a societal benefit when arguably it’s actually because you don’t want to pay so much money on childcare (because they don’t particularly want to do so either, especially for children that aren’t theirs).

Agree with @Iamthewombat many want more public services but few want to pay for them (I am not saying me in particular- I personally wouldn’t object to paying some more tax). People want the “rich” to pay which is inevitably someone richer than them.

Either that or they have some fantasy that it can all be fixed by taxing some very wealthy bogeyman type eg Jeff Bezos even though he doesn’t live in the UK. Some easy loophole to fix as if no one ever thought of that.

People often don’t want to pay more tax for their own benefits never mind other peoples benefits. I don’t even think we are currently paying for all the public services we use from current year to year expenditure. We are relying on borrowing and future generations to fill the gap.

But why shouldn't super rich people be taxed more? People need funded childcare. Nobody needs billions sitting in the bank and the tax would be a drop in the bloody ocean for them.

It's going to end up like Victorian times soon, poor can go to the workhouse and fuck it if their poor malnourished children die as long as the rich get to keep looking at their full bank accounts.

I'd happily pay more tax to fund it, because it would have been fucking amazing for us when we had a child in ft nursery. I'm not even close to being rich.

@Getyourarseofffthequattro

But why shouldn't super rich people be taxed more? People need funded childcare. Nobody needs billions sitting in the bank and the tax would be a drop in the bloody ocean for them.

It's going to end up like Victorian times soon, poor can go to the workhouse and fuck it if their poor malnourished children die as long as the rich get to keep looking at their full bank accounts.

I'd happily pay more tax to fund it, because it would have been fucking amazing for us when we had a child in ft nursery. I'm not even close to being rich.

You were doing well upthread but now you’ve veered off into polemic.

Super rich people who are (1) U.K. resident and (2) not tax avoiders or evaders already pay loads of income tax. The additional rate above £150k is 45%. Denise Coates, the founder of Bet365, has been the biggest taxpayer in Britain by a mile, for several years. She’s paying more than £100m a year.

As @Villagewaspbyke notes, you can’t just pick on a random rich person and decide that they are going to pay income tax in the U.K. Jeff Bezos is a good example. Or people demand that we should just take a billion or so from Roman Abramovitch, yeah, he won’t miss it will he?

The only sensible way to raise significant extra income tax revenue is, and will always be, an increase of a few percentage points on higher rate tax, so from 40% to 43% for example. Imagine the howls of rage if that happened, from anyone who has borrowed too much on a mortgage.

As for ‘cracking down on tax avoiders’: we can’t make other countries enforce our laws. Why do you think so many greedy selfish rich people sod off to live in Monaco? Lewis Hamilton, Philip Green, even Paula Radcliffe. Because there, they can’t be made to pay U.K. income taxes.

And, even if we could squeeze more tax out of those people, you’ll have a tough time arguing that it should be channelled towards free childcare rather than care of the elderly, or schools, or health, or any other cause that needs money.

Do my answer would be that the tax payer should pay, because it is a profound social and economic good to support early learning and support the workforce in that way. you want people without kids to pay more for people who have decided to have kids so those people can go to work and also be taxed more to pay for their own childcare? Why not just get people who need the childcare to pay for it.

Might be worth taking a break until they're both at school. It's only temporary, it just wasn't worth me going back. Seems daft paying someone to look after your kids when you can do it for free. Tighten your belts for a few years, that's what we did, it's do-able.

@NameChChChChanges1

Your calculation is wrong (unless you're a single parent). 50% of childcare costs should come from your salary & 50% from your partner's

Doesn't really make a difference to the overall household income though - the household income will still be less if one parent is working than not.

Use a childminder - they usually work out cheaper.

@Iamthewombat I said super rich not people paying 40% - as for "doing well" it's literally just my opinion, I'm not trying to make people agree with me.

the problem is raising tax by 1% on all tax payers raises about 100x more money than increasing tax on super rich by 10%
it doesn't matter how you share expenses out 50/50 it is overall expenses versus overall income that matters, so if the overall net again for OP and her DP per month is £100 - her transport to work costs - work clothes say £60 so she could be doing 30 hours a week 120 per month for less than 50p per hour

And this is the exact reason I had 7 years off. Not worth getting out of bed for. It’s unbelievable isn’t it!

It's hard and expensive granted but worth it if you don't want to stop career progression,I went back FT after each of our dc and ours are 15mth apart but we both did flexi and took every other Wednesday of each to accommodate only 4 days in nursery FT it still cost us £18500 per year for them to be in nursery but it meant I didn't lower my chances on career progression, I still kept up my NI contributions which means fingers crossed retirement has a helping hand, my private pension kept up to date and tbh the kids had fab routine transitioning to school was no issues and non of the getting tired because they were/are used to getting up and out of the house 7am back in late on. It did mean that technically it was a big lump of my then take home wage the rest then of transport upkeep and work clothes so yes work to pay that and then DH wage covered everything else in life though never technically split like that as all accounts are joint so alone big pot.

Again what helped was DH did the 730am nursery drop as I left at 7am but he didn't need to leave until 8am and I would collect at 545pm.
If they were ill it wouldn't always be me to drop and run to nursery either it was a 50/50 split now its more me as new employer allows working from home so just easier for me though they are rarely ill.

Child care voucher or whatever the equivalent is now is a massive help so make sure you do that, speak to DH about him requesting flexi, but don't decide its easier not to work as you come out with nothing think of the long term and discuss all options /routes with DH you will are it work for your family x

I think best way around avoiding childcare costs altogether is to work opposite times, like if dh works mon- fri, then you work weekends and or evenings or vice versa.
Of course this depends on what you do, but this is how myself and many I know have managed this situation.

It's a bugger as you are paying to work but ny husband stopped working to be a full time sahd 10 years ago and has massively massively struggled to re enter the job market.

He had a decent job before in IT now we are looking at apprenticeships for him .

With hindsight it killed his career. I wish we had both remained in work and taken the hit on nursery fees. Think carefully

I haven't read through everything as there is a lot of replies so maybe repeating.

Me and my partner both go to work neither of us are on a particularly high salary in great scheme of things, but where we live it allows us a comfortable way of life, if your down south maybe living costs are expensive too.

We have a combined income of £47k a year both our little ones will be in childcare one already is, we both work four days and alternate a day in the weekend both of jobs allow this luckily.
Our childcare costs are £245 per week and we get help from universal credit towards childcare costs, at a estimate 60% towards costs without that it would be harder to go to work.

No idea of your combined income but have you thought of going to citizens advice or speaking to UC on the phone to make sure your calculations are correct.
For reference we use a childminder rather than a nursery due to costs again.