Nursery have increased fees by 10% and we can't afford it.

[Notveryxmasy]

With full time hours that's £100 a month more and we can't afford it. We don't have that money each month. We live rurally, I work from home and DH is a contractor so no one set place of work so DD has to go to a local childcare setting and there just aren't many to choose from at all. Her current nursery by sheer dumb luck is less than a mile down the road; I'd have to drive 6 miles to get to another one by which time the fuel using 24 miles every day would eat up any savings we could possibly make moving her. She's also settled and loves it there, I don't want to disrupt her. No chance of a pay rise as I'm public sector and DH is SE and already doing everything he can to earn what he does.

She currently goes 8-6 as I work 8:30-5. I pick her up by quatre past 5 but the nursery don't do half hours so we have to pay for the full 10 hours. I have sent an email to ask if they will please consider allowing us to drop an hour a day and let her do 8:15 to 5:15 but I haven't heard anything back and I'm not holding out hope. All our bills have increased so much these past few months and we're expecting another baby, we don't have this extra money. What can we do if the nursery refuse to let her drop an hour?

We don't have sky, we don't eat out, we don't have luxuries, I don't even have a smart phone these days as I couldn't afford to replace it when it broke. There's nothing we can cut out to magically find that £100 every month.

@Ozanj

How heavy is your workload Fridays? If it’s light then just skip them. When I wfh with 2 yo DS I just switch my camera off during meetings and use a noise cancelling headset so people can’t hear him in the background

Sure way to get sacked. Great advice. And you wonder why people discriminate against people who wfh.

Have you looked into eligibility for universal credit- the portion that would previously have been child tax credit/working tax credits? I was surprised to find that we qualified the tax years that my maternity leave fell in, and it was a big help. Worth looking into if you haven’t before.

Are there any roles with different hours. A local nhs near us was advertising a 4-8pm 5 day a week admin role (appointments).

I’m sorry you are struggling OP.

My answer, for my own life, is always to work more. It seems, if costs cannot be reduced, then income must rise. There have been plenty of times in my life where I have had more than one job, sometimes two, sometimes three. It seems to me that adding a few paid hours a week in a different role, for you or your DH or both, is a reasonable suggestion. It could be something you do for yourself at home you can use to generate cash eg surveys, market research, crafts etc, something you do relatively unofficially like babysitting, hedge cutting, etc, or something more official like an evening shift once a week in pub/cafe/cleaning/supermarket.

It’s always been the way I’ve done things when I need more income, and by the sounds of it you need just £25 a week for about six months?

Band 6 is a lot though, it's about 34k if you're middle of the band.

@ItsReallyOnlyMe

Have you investigated other childcare alternatives such as a childminder or using an au pair ? (An au pair can work out quite cheaply if you have a spare room and don't mind someone living with you). They also will help when the new baby comes along. Your daughter could then go to a local pre-school for half days for socialisation,

Au pairs don’t look after children all day, they mainly look after older children. Plus there are very few of them at the moment anyway.

Could you do 8.15 to 5.45 3 or 4 days a week and then work shorter hours or one or two days and therefore require less nursery hours on those days?

Can DH flex his hours at all? My DH finishes early one afternoon a week for school pick up but works Saturday mornings instead.

It's all a bit rubbish OP - will you manage on return after mat leave?

Being completly honest with your employer will help, they can only look into adjusting working patterns if they know there is an issue.

Public sector don't work like that re pay rises. They are all done departmentally with Treasury approval.

You need to ask for compressed hours, every Friday afternoon off and hope your nursery do half days.

8.15 - 5.30 x 4 is 33 hours plus whatever left on a Friday morning.

I’m presuming you’re already claiming everything like he wfh allowance and the tax free childcare. I know you’ve been asked but I can’t see a reply.

@BoredZelda

Confused, if a 10% increase is a problem, how were you going to manage to pay for two kids in nursery?

OP explains this if you read her posts

@SpidersAreShitheads

I agree with lots of suggestions here re flexible working and compressed hours etc for you.

However, you haven't said much about DH other than the fact he's self employed and work is an hour away. What's the situation with him? If he's self employed he should be able to set his own hours. If he's having to work set hours with no flexibility then is there any point to him being self-employed? Freelance workers don't have flexibility but earn incredible rates per day - but by your description it doesn't sound as if that's the case.

Could he not do some work on evenings/weekends so he could step in with DD in the week?

I think your DH is key to this.

You can’t afford to mess with your job if maternity leave is coming up as it’ll affect maternity pay. And in the longer term sounds like you’ll be OK.

So on a temporary basis how can your DH rearrange his working commitments to solve this?

OP explains this if you read her posts

I did. It still isn’t really explained.

I've never known a nursery to pay by the hour it's normally half day fixed price or full day fixed priced so not sure how it's gonna save you money by collecting her earlier.

I think I'm going to be disagreeing with the majority of posters here

I recognise that all the suggestions are designed to provide a solution to the £100 per month increase in nursery fees. And some of the suggestions might indeed achieve this.

However, in reality, your situation is a lot more stark.

Before I go on, I speak from experience - despite an ostensibly well-paid job, being a single parent of 3 with limited support & feckless exH has meant I've been in a similar situation (and actually am not out of it).

If you can't afford £100 increase, then regardless of what juggling you do, you will be in a very difficult position.

Because you could be hit with another unexpected outgoing, appliance breakdown, DH illness, car problem and so on.

So really you need to resolve this as a matter of urgency, which may need help from an expert. DH may need to look at a different job or way of working, or you may need to make a significant life change, like moving.

This won't happen instantly of course, so you would also need to look potentially for a loan or similar while you make the change.

But you can't keep going with so little leeway. I've been there.

@BoredZelda

OP explains this if you read her posts

I did. It still isn’t really explained.

It is. She'll move to the top of her grade (extra pay) and an old loan will be finished (extra money). That plus free hours would have worked with new baby.

As it is a change with a definite end date, I think you should explore options with your employer. It is genuinely temporary not something for all time.

@BoredZelda

OP explains this if you read her posts

I did. It still isn’t really explained.

I’m assuming the OP would be on full salary for the first six months of maternity leave or close to it with no childcare costs then, which will mean over 1k a month saved. I saved an absolute fortune on my second maternity as my nursery was closer to 2k even then (dread to think how much it would be now!).

Are work flexible with lunch time? If you pay by the hour would it help to pick her up at 2.15 with your lunch 2 till 3. Get her settled with a snack and cartoons at 3 and then any local teenagers who do baby sitting? Pay for one to do an hour from 4 till 5.

My neighbour with 4 under 5 years used to pay a girl doing A level to come in from 4 to 6 every night to help her. The girl was going into nursing and she liked the money, the children and it was good on her reference that she held down a regular job for 2 years.

If you have a mortgage, have you considered extending the term to reduce the payments? You can always change back/make extra payments once you are through the squeeze years.

Agree that what the DH is doing also needs to be examined.

My DP was feeling sorry for a family near us whose kids my DD knows. They had no money....because the dad was doing wafty occasional 'lifestyle' SE work, while the mumdespite being qualified as a solicitor and having previously had a good job in thishad decided she wanted to be a 'FTM'. I lost most sympathy at that point.

I doubt dropping nursery to 4.5 days would save anything. Ours offers a discount for a full time place that works out the same as paying for 4.5 days. OP I think your only option is to increase your earnings.

My nursery is paid by the hour, I'm aware that's not necessarily common but I'm not mistaken about that.

I already work 4 days a week but because of the way the nursery charge DD has to be in nursery full time as we need to pay for 8-6 which is 40 hours; I can't be at work at 5 and pick her up at 5 so we have always had to pay for 8-6.

I can't work weekends or nights because my specialty runs 9-5, that's just the way of it but I will speak to work about trying to arrange it so I can pick her up for 5 and do an extra half hour admin later in the evening. It seems to be the best solution if I can get them to agree. DH does help with pick ups but he doesn't ever get home before 6 so collecting her is the issue, not the drop off. He already does do some extra work at weekends to try make up some extra money but that is dependent on where he is working and if they will allow him to be there at the weekend as he works for private landowners and many don't want workers there on the weekends so he will try but it's not something we can consistently depend on.
We have no family nearby who can help with childcare.
I will look into local childminders but I am very reluctant to disrupt DD this close to her being disrupted anyway as she'll have to come out of nursery when I'm on maternity leave anyway.

We have considered how we were going to pay for DC2 and I am aware that 30 free hours is only for 38 weeks of the year, I had done all the maths before we even started trying and yes, we knew it would be tight but we want another child and we worked it out that we could afford it and it would mean struggling for a few years but that was worth it to have our family.

I bring home £1600 after tax, pension and student loan, DH brings home £1900. We currently have our mortgage, £1100, current childcare, £865, council tax, £125, electric and gas, £250, loan, £300, car fuel and running costs, £400, groceries, £300, insurances, £100 and that leaves us about £50-60 each month for anything else that might crop up which it always does with a toddler. There is no spare £100 and there's nothing I can cut out from there either as my DH needs his car for work and we need to eat but there's no luxury I can cut out. It's just tight. I can't take a break from paying the loan because that would mean having loan payments during maternity leave when my income will drop, by the grace of God it is due to end the same time that happens.
I know on paper we can't afford a baby but we are entitled to nothing because according to the government we should be able to afford everything ourselves but we just can't with everything rising as much as it has and our income not budging.

We also can't take another mortgage break as we needed one during the first lockdown when DH wasn't allowed to work. They won't grant us another one.

I do compressed hours so work full time but only need 4 days childcare. I do 4 longer days (8:30-5:15 with a half hour break) plus a Tuesday evening when DH makes sure he is home to have Ds. Could you ask for something like that, especially as it’s only for 6 months?

we had hoped that we could just make it work and make it to the other side of childcare and then actually have some disposable income again.

You 'hoped' , didn't create enough of a buffer in case some unexpected costs come up - and they did.
Sorry but you shouldn't have planned another child when you can't afford it. It's just how it is and we have to deal with our circumstances, not just have another baby hoping for the best.
Speaking as a mum of one kid.

I’m sure there will be other places around the trust with shifts that need filling. I do my extra shifts on wards, l usually do community