Not paying for childcare this autumn as bills go up

[Essenceandvibes]

I've just had an epiphany.....I absolutely won't be paying a penny for childcare this autumn as bills increase and I won't be made to feel guilty about it either. I can work from home and watch my baby and pick up my 10 year old from school without the assistance of anyone else and if my employer has an issue with it, he can pay an extra £2000 per month post tax to cover the cost of full time help.

Our bills are going to be about £800 a month just electricity and gas alone for our detached 4 bed house, this isn't even thinking about the increase of petrol or groceries.

The mortgage has also gone up a few hundred quid too....childcare and commuting is now a luxury not necessity and I really hope every parent joins me in asking for employers like it or lump it

Shameful the government have let everything get this far, the knock on effects will be huge

@PEDRO12

Agreed. I live on a close knit council estate, we’re all
pretty bewildered at the state of “fear” out there. I don’t doubt it for a second that the middle will struggle but these sorts of mumsnet scenes are really quite incredible. Me and my neighbours already live within our means and paying the extra bills simply just means picking up an extra shift or two. Totally doable.

Trust me someone will find out.

For someone else saying OP's on a wind up. Ha ha! Not.

Not sure why so many people think OP needs to downsize?

I'm sure they are probably financially tight but there is a very long way to go from being in that position to having to downsize!

I'm sure OP is quite capable of downgrading their general lifestyle. They just don't want to because their boss is rich and life isn't fair boohoo type attitude.

However if they can balance out work with childcare, then its probably a better alternative for them than having to potentially quite drastically cut back.

Far easier to find an extra 1700 for bills via child care than try and find 1700 worth of savings via lifestyle cuts.

I keep hearing about how much it's costing for gas and electric blah blah. We are on pre payment metres with bulb. We have smart metres and it's easy to top up online on the app. Last month we used £52.83 electric and £12.66 gas.

The shower is electric our hot water cools down too quick to do the washing up so I boil the kettle to do that. That's for a 3 bed end terrace. The only gas I use is the hob mainly. I use the air fryer more than the oven so that's electric as well.

I'm not really following why you are choosing childcare as the focus of your civil disobedience. You say you are protesting about energy costs and stagnant wages. The childcare sector doesn't create these issues but it does suffer from them. You say the intention is to create a focus so government will intervene - how do you think this will happen? The government are well known for undervaluing the childcare sector, so if your idea took off and childcare settings began to close as a result, they are highly unlikely to intervene. Are you planning to wait until enough employers complain about poor performance from employees who are looking after DC when they should be working? They'll do that through getting rid of the staff long before the government steps in! Genuinely, I don't see how this would work even if it did take off.

But you can’t afford your detached house OP can you. You simply can’t. That’s how it is. Make better financial choices, including downsizing to free up some cash, if you need to.

@FinneusMum *SEO and Paid search are skills shortages within marketing functions

She is unlikely to be fired for this*

Except that's not how employment law works. You can't commit gross misconduct (as WFH and having childcare responsibilities would be in many organisations) but then caveat that with 'but there is a skills shortage'.

In my Company it's likely that OP would get instant dismissal. Possibly a final warning if there were extenuating circumstances, but that would be followed by instant dismissal if there was a repeat occurrence.

So in short, she would get fired for this.

I've just had a £25,500k bonus payment as they were worried I wouldn't return after my next mat leave, plus promotion
Your indispensable, worth £25k bonus, clearly earn a fortune for little work, and you would be prepared to defend in from of a judge that you had to keep your children at home because you couldn't afford childcare. I can imagine the laughter, especially if sane judge has their own children in childcare earning less than you!

You live on another planet! In the end, either your employer doesn't care and is prepared to pay you crazy amounts for doing substantial work, in which case, they are not a salvy business, or they will be pissed off and will find a way to make your life hell if not fire you.

If every parent did it....they wouldn't get rid of us all

Um... why not? You do realise people with children in childcare are a small proportion of the workforce and it would not cause most employers a headache to let them all go?

Not that they would all do this, anyway. Most have more sense.

I cannot get my head around the absolute state of people showing off about how much harder their life is now and how they aren't complaining.

People are proud they are propping up businesses that make millions by picking up extra shifts and cutting back. Taking time and resources away from their own kids to support the rich getting richer.

It's one thing not engaging in civil disobedience, I get that it's scary.

But proudly boasting that you are happy to go without to enable the status quo?

You all sound like absolute mugs.

I work for the government. Are you telling me that you would be happy for me to WFH with my DCs here, meaning I don't work as efficiently and therefore don't give as good a service to the public until the government give in and give me a pay rise, which is turn will mean a raise in taxes for everyone?

My DDs physio sometimes brings her 6 year old DS along to physio with her, he happily plays games with the DC and will do things like exercises first to show DC how to do them. He's quite funny as well.

I can understand picking up your 10 year old maybe during your lunch break and saving on after school club costs because they can entertain themselves for your last working hour or so but how do you plan to work from home effectively with a baby. You are being so unreasonable in that respect.

If every parent did it....they wouldn't get rid of us all

Not every parent has a baby. And when you say parent, you mean every mother really. Working in construction we’ve worked hard to attract women in to the industry, this would be a backward step.

My husband and I shared the load. I worked four days a week when my daughter was a baby, but they were very poor at making sure my workload was a four day workload. So, I said I’d do four in the office and WFH one day. The reality was, looking after a baby/toddler on my WFH day meant nothing was done except when she was napping. I got maybe 4 hours of work done during the day. But, I made up the time at weekends or in the evenings and managed it that way. There is absolutely no way I could have permanently worked from home with a baby. Once she was at school, it was easily do-able, even in the holidays, but no way would it have worked when she was pre-school age.

I was just thinking as @CastleCrasher nited if enough people wfh to cope with costs rising childcare will close and/or become more expensive.

id also be thinking that come the autumn I’d much rather be in the office. And not using and paying for my own heating….

I know. It’s crazy isn’t it.

The mind boggles as to the OPs thought processes here.

You think a payrise of circa 10% for everyone is going to help this?? Think again!

The problem with this plan is that not everyone is the parent of small children, so they absolutely could just sack anyone who did this and just stop employing parents of small children to avoid the possibility of this.

unless you work in a very niche industry or have very sought after skills you are very replaceable so this won’t work.

My DDs physio sometimes brings her 6 year old DS along to physio with her, he happily plays games with the DC and will do things like exercises first to show DC how to do them. He's quite funny as well.

We’ve had this as well. The OT brings her kids if we have an after school appointment. Works better for everyone here, otherwise our daughter would have to miss school for the appointments and drag her arse to the hospital or council offices.

@ememem84

My cousin manages a chain of nurseries and they just cannot recruit. She’s never known it so bad and as a result there are already a lot of nurseries closing.

@Essenceandvibes

So you have the means to sort your situation out by being an adult, but you are just choosing to be a child about it? Sounds about right. Hopefully you find your dummy soon.

Our nursery are struggling to recruit too. They're using agency workers. The old nursery was the same - and used a lot more agency staff. I don't know why the agency's aren't struggling or why they're not all pushing apprenticeships more as this is the perfect opportunity.

Again, where would that leave our patients who need us?

Fortunately I take my duty of care to the vulnerable people in my care seriously and won't just down tools and walk out in a strop.

Also, you have no idea what I'm paid. You do realise NHS pay scales range from less than 20k to more than 60k? How do you know where I'm at, and that I'm desperately in need of a 20% pay rise?

Either way, it's irrelevant. I don't agree with your attitude and that's that.