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

So when you have 30 free hrs they charge even more for a half day than say if your kid was under 3 and on a half day if that makes sense, normally a half day is £30 but it’s £35 on 30 free hrs, the food though is the kicker, it’s something like £15/17 a day (with no option to bring your own). All of that was a shock to me, I thought it would be like a school lunch… but no… I’ll be withdrawing dc1 to some place more cost effective.

our house in on mortgage but it’s the change of interest rates and the COL, it’s obviously making a big dent in the amount of spare cash we have to play with

Parents who work full time should be entitled to 30 free hours of childcare for under 3s. This is something that’s really worrying me as I’m pregnant with my first and I don’t want my career to stall :(