To be frustrated that I’m worse off work working more?

[Financialfrustration]

Name changed.

My husband and I both work. I’m part time just now, but plan to go back to full time by gradually increasing hours.

Currently we are managing without paying for childcare because I have holidays to use which I accrued while on maternity leave, plus using family. These holidays will run out soon, so we are going to pay for nursery.

If I remain 3 days we are entitled to £95 universal credit and £50 Scottish Child Payment per week, which leaves us of a balance of 79p per week which we have to pay towards childcare for the three days we require it.

If I go to 4 days per week, we are entitled to £64 universal credit and £50 Scottish child payment, leaving us £77 to pay for childcare for the 4 days we require it.

Working 3 days per week I take home £338 per week, working 4 days I take home £466. That’s £108 of a difference.

In other words, if I work an extra day per week, by the time I pay £77 towards childcare, I am only £31 better off. Off that £31 I also need to sort after school care for my eldest, and get everyone to school/nursery/work on time by public transport (possibly taxi as it’s going to be impossible to do with the drop off times otherwise, and my partner is already at work by the time we leave)

I find it absolutely crazy that working more actually doesn’t pay, even for someone who has a “well paid” job.

If he's the lower earner, would it be better for him to do 3 or 4 days and you do 5 days?

My partner works compressed shifts already so isn’t there to do pickup either. I don’t have option to change my working pattern (I’m a teacher)

Yes - right now I’ve opted out of my pension, I don’t feel comfortable doing that for another year if I don’t have to but might not have a choice.

Have you looked into childcare vouchers?

I’m in a similar boat and will be heading back to work in a few months time once my maternity leave finishes.

We have a joint household income of £90k and we are going to be struggling due to the increase in absolutely everything (thanks Truss for the insane interest rates increase!). I would consider our household income better than most people, but it’s the childcare costs and our mortgage shooting up £800pm that will be crippling us.

I don’t really understand why the free 30 hours of childcare doesn’t kick in at the age of 1, when most people go back to work, or even at 9 months when statutory maternity pay ends.

It's disheartening to feel like you are paying to work for a few years.

Avoid opting out of your pension at all costs. You may save a few pounds but you loose out on your employers contributions.

Partner works 12 hour shifts - he might be able to do an amended shift pattern but it would just be transferring the issue to evenings and I’d need to do dinner and bedtimes alone. Although it would save us some money obviously, it wouldn’t save me stress as the baby tends to be a nightmare between 6pm and bedtime.

What are the sums if you work full-time ?

I’m a teacher so I can’t work weekends. OP doesn’t work set days, he sometimes works weekends and sometimes works midweek, so frustratingly we are paying for childcare we don’t actually need every week!

Fair enough - I didn't mean to suggest you were work-shy.

Universal Credit will pay up to 85% of childcare costs. If you factored that in you should be better off working more.

What type of work does your partner do?

I’ll need to look into them; I think we might save around 20% of childcare costs using these but I think then we need to tell UC and they reduce their entitlement too.

"It’s actually my partners earnings who make us eligible for UC as I’m the higher earner. It’s him who would be claiming, not me."

You have to make a joint claim. He can't claim on his own.

I'm not work shy in the slightest, worked hard to get where I have etc etc. But I'm not sure I'd see a point in working the extra day for free at the moment! I'd prob wait until I'd stopped paying childcare before doing more days.

Id need to look into it but we definitely wouldn’t get any help financially (understandably, as I have a well paying job) so it would just be a case of my FT salary minus childcare costs. We may only need to use childcare for 4 of the days though, hence I’ve not fully calculated it yet.

OP if you're a teacher that pension will be worth so much more than most others. Try to get back into it ASAP.

No, I know that - but what I mean is we are only eligible because his earnings are lower. In the past when he was out of work for health reasons, we didn’t get anything because of my earnings.

There is tax relief for childcare, its called tax free childcare

Yes. Seems we have similar salaries. I had a gap of 5 weeks in between jobs and discovered we were entitled to around to nearly £700 a month..we ended up not claiming because I was looking for a job and had savings but no wonder why some people chose to have less stress and work part time only. I decided to work full time because of career prospects and pension contributions. Now my kids are both in primary school we are better off but for the time we were paying for childcare we weren't.

Op, I think if you need more money, doing one day extra as a teacher that’ll fetch you less than £31 is not going to cut it. You need to look for an extra work you can do that you won’t need to pay childcare. So like if it’s looking for some part time evening or weekend work, a time when your partner is not working that’ll augment your salary. Even working just one night shift in a week (let’s say you pick a day where you can rest in the morning after) will fetch you more than £100. It won’t be forever, it’ll just be for the time when you need to pay full childcare. If your partners job isn’t paying that much and it’s not flexible, I don’t see why he can’t look for another job that has one or the other. Even if it’s just a job where he has set shifts so you’ll know the days he’ll always be available for childcare and you can pick up more work on those days.

I know - it was only supposed to be for 6 months that I opted out to allow me to drop my days temporarily, or else we would have had to have me go back 5 days from when my son was 8 months old. Teachers maternity pay is rubbish.

£31 a week would still be over £120 a month.
it may not sound like a lot but it still balances out. You can also claim the help towards childcare costs for your older child too.

I'm still not understanding. They will calculate your entitlement based on your combined earnings. Are you saying that your DH's part-time earnings and your part-time earnings combined are less than your full time earnings on your own?

Would you be better off if you are full time and your DH drops his hours?

I did factor that in - they cover the childcare costs completely aside from 70 odd pence if I work three days, but by working four days it pushes us over the threshold and we no longer get as much.