To ask you how you manage childcare costs?

[Lalalalawhitenoise]

Specifically with 2 nursery aged kids and both parents working.

my eldest has 30 free hrs but with the wrap around care and then the out of term costs, it is eye wateringly expensive, roughly £2k per month full time. I earn just shy of 40k and take home shy of £2300 per month and with the rises in everything (we’re expecting £500+ extra on our mortgage if things stay as is, mortgage is up end of next year). I’m freaking out. No childminders in the area with spaces either and this is one of the cheaper nurseries

Do you use tax free childcare? It's £2,000 a year per child (or 20% of childcare costs per child, if that's lower).

Give up work for a bit? Career break? Ask family or friends to help or work opposite to your other half I.e one works nights and the other days?

I managed by not working.

I don’t know. Most unhelpful answer I know!.
i have a secondary school child and my DH has a primary school child (whom we pay maintenance for) the sole reason we haven’t had one of our own is childcare costs.

tax feee child care is good but doesn’t touch the sides imo

DH and I both work compressed hours - 10 days in 9, alternating Fridays off so DC are only in nursery 4 days a week. Tax free childcare maxed out at £500 a quarter for each.

But with 2 DC under 3 so no funded hours yet we are using some savings to contribute to nursery fees. Short term pain for long term gain.

I went freelance and work flexibly around school hours and holidays.

I accepted I was pretty much working for nothing but saw it as an investment in my future working life. I wanted to work at least part time for my wellbeing not just for money. I was also getting decent pension contributions from my employer.

Went part time and family had the kids

I wish I had some clever advice but I don't, we have two who will soon be in full time childcare. No family help that could be classed as regular and no way of compressing hours to improve things that way. We use TFC and it's still brutal, I've resigned myself to it being like this until school. Whilst also bracing myself for more increases in cost in the near future due to COL crisis.

It feels relentless currently,

I think giving up work won’t work in terms of mortgage affordability and income multiples, plus in pension terms it’s a bit crap, and whilst dh is lovely I don’t want to be reliant on him for money, my mother is elderly and lives 2 hrs away dh mother isn’t particularly good with kids but both might be able to in a pinch, shifts aren’t options in our line of work :(

it’s all so shit

We saved before having DC2 and had a big age gap so we don’t have two in nursery at the same time. We use TFC. DH and I both work 4 days compressed which saves two days of nursery fees. I had to change jobs to do this. We pay quite a bit for after school childcare but not as much as nursery costs.

Agree with this.

Can you ask your work for condensed hours? Working full time in 4 days so you have 1 day off. If you and your partner could both do this that would save 2 days childcare. Even if it was a temp arrangement. Lots of employees are more willing to look at flexible working these days.

It's hard.

Some people just have the childcare costs as debt and pay it off over a longer period of time.

Such as buy everything you can on a 0% credit card and keep shifting it onto 0% balance transfers and pay it off over an extra 3 years.

It is miserable to be in that situation.

Presumably you can't extend the term of the mortgage?

I went part time with a job that has 100% flexible hours, it pays a lot less than my old career but I’m better off overall because I only need two days childcare! I work evenings and nap times mostly.

Is your mortgage due for renewal soon? If not then don't worry about it, also if you stay with the same lender and just choose a new rate they don't check your affordability etc again anyway.

Also I didn't say you had to give up work, your husband could?? You could both go part time/compressed hours.
What did you plan to do when you decided to have to nursery aged children instead of waiting for one to go to school.

I saved in advance, then spaced them to minimise time in nursery together - obviously not a retrospective fit for you!
I would look at compressed hours, one or both of you moving to shift/weekend jobs (if not detrimental to career), accepting “working for nothing” (because it isn’t) and the big guns: remortgaging over a longer period to bring your mortgage right down, then as soon as the childcare cost reduces putting the money as an overpayment.

End of next year…so iffy on what things look like then

hubs is the bigger earner by about £10k

our 5 in 4 requests have both been rejected and we’ve asked for 10 in 9, but I’m not sure how that will be received.

our second wasn’t planned, but we thought condensed 5 in 4, plus we were quite comfortable before al the price hikes, if the kids were in nursery full time and the extra energy and mortgage and food it’s an extra £1800 a month… minimum. It’s mind blowing

I thought so so which is why we were both floored when our requests were rejected:(

I picked up a few shifts at the local. Would recommend xx

If you're on £40k you must have been working for 10+ years. That's plenty of time to save up for childcare.

Or you space them out so you don't have 2x childcare. Or don't have 2dcs. Or get into debt. Or cutback on other things. Or stop working.

I've told both my teens how much childcare is so they can factor this into career/ family/ life plans.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It's been £ 200+ pwkpc for 20 years!

This is why we don’t have a second child.

I work 4 days a week; we only qualify for 15 hours free childcare. It takes up a great deal of our income.

We have two in nursery too. I went down to part time hours and my mum has them for one of the 3 days I work.
There's absolutely no way we'd be able to afford to have them both in nursery full time, we just wouldn't have nearly enough money even if I did work full time.

When dc were preschool age we both worked condensed hours (4 days a week each) and one of DH's regular working days was Saturday. So I was off Friday Saturday Sunday and DH was off Sunday Monday Tuesday, leaving just two days of childcare needed.

Tbph we'd never have afforded to put the dc in childcare for 5 full days a week.

When mines were nursery age, I worked nights or weekends. Now at school I work 9-3 Monday to Thursday. I work min wage. Partner aprox 40k.

This. We are waiting until there’s a big enough gap before our second DC so that we only pay one lot of nursery fees at a time.