DH and I going part time to deliberately reduce wages

[Bucketheadbucketbum]

Just working out the free childcare hours and actually DH and I will be muxh better off if we both dropped to 3- 4 day week to deliberately reduce our incomes. Would obviously be nice way to live too! Anyone else doing same? Seems mental but we've looked at it 100 times over and it's true!

They'll still be net contributors even after they reduce their hours and qualify for childcare.

There's got to be a threshold somewhere though hasn't there.

And while I also wouldn't blame someone for dropping hours to qualify for free school meals (even though they are clearly earning enough to just pay for them), I also wouldn't advise it as for most careers it would be quite shortsighted. Dropping hours often means less chance to progress further up the payscale.

If you can afford to drop three working days between you, I assume you'll also drop three days of childcare which will make it cheaper without making other people pay for your kids to be cared for while you have days off.

Exactly, I see it as a privilege to be able to run a household on my own and accept it's going to cost a bit more. Totally worth it not to have to share with the ex!

I think high earning single parents need to keep in mind that those financially benefitting from sharing household bills etc, in a lot of cases are also having to put up with sharing a house / life with someone they might actually be happier without..

If you really want to benefit from sharing your house / bills, then look into getting a housemate maybe?

Most healthy childless people earning a decent salary are net contributors. Why this obsession? Sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not. The element that has the most impact is having children. Childcare, education and demands on the NHS cost a lot of money. We make the most use of state services at the beginning and end of our lives.

@Ilikepinacoladass or maybe they could
go to a country that has decent public services and low cost childcare. My DS1
is excellent at German. I am encouraging him all I can because as well as far better healthcare if he moved to Germany he would also be able to take advantage of childcare at €70-150 PER MONTH. His old day nursery here is £1350 per month. He might pay a little bit more tax but he’d get an awful lot more for his money!

You are so naive if you think people
won’t leave. Many of the children as DS2’s private school are born to highly skilled first generation immigrants. They decided to move here, they can decide to move elsewhere. The local hospital would be fucked without them.

Many of the children as DS2’s private school are born to highly skilled first generation immigrants. They decided to move here, they can decide to move elsewhere. The local hospital would be fucked without them.

What an excellent argument for allowing more immigrants to settle here.

Don't drop your hours, increase your pension contributions or donate to charity via Gift Aid instead. Otherwise you're just shunning what is essentially free money.

All or nothing thresholds aren't essential, no. While the withdrawal rate is probably too steep IMO, we don't have that situation with child benefit - it's tapered. Likewise for many benefits.

As soon as they introduce hard income thresholds in the system then they create bottlenecks where people are incentivised to remain below the thresholds until they can clear them by a significant margin.

And often the decision to do so is career limiting - and that's why it matters, because these issues are very heavily skewed towards having a negative impact on people with caring responsibilities - the hard threshold for Carer's Allowance is similarly shit. And the reality is that most of the people taking these career limiting decisions are women.

It's poor system design really.

For this to make any sense you must both be earning way above £100k each as the free childcare requires a net adjusted income of below £100k each. That hardly makes you the 'squeezed middle' as you claimed. It puts you in the top 2-3% of household income.

It's not an obsession, but I think it's relevant when people post saying op wants other people to pay for her children.

The gist here seems to be ok for the op to work for no personal gain for herself and to support other people who are unable to earn as well as she does. And she should be happy about it and not try to reap any benefits from the tax she pays or have ‘a day off’.
Is it ok for a lower earning mother to work part time while she’s getting 15 hours of childcare, even if she could work more. Is that also depriving the tax system of money?

@Blossomtoes but with a highly punitive tax system and worsening public services, the highly skilled are less likely to want to come. They’ll go somewhere else that offers them a better deal. That’s the problem.

Exactly. Times are different now. So many countries are looking to attract people like us, so many more remote working options- it's harder and harder to justify not leaving.

Half my husbands team are now based abroad, everyone was in london in 2019.

Their team alone = millions of tax each year being paid to other countries because the UK is too spiteful against high earners to sort the ridiculous tax system out.

On a scale accross the UK it must be an insane amount that's moving out. The studies show this is true, the government know but don't act because mumsnet average reader says "good riddance greedy people!!!" without thinking it through to its logical conclusion or bothering to educate themselves

The more the haters post on this thread, not daring to be honest with themselves about what they would do in my situation (the exact same as me, unless they've lost their minds) not even bothering to read the thread and the facts about the embarrassingly antiaspiration UK tax set up, the more you think- what the heck are we doing here.

Its not a country for people who want to work hard to earn more. You just get resented and peanlised. bizarre and absolutely not the case in other countries

If they are paying over 100k on tax per year they are earning about 260k between them, so clearing about 12k per month. Unless there are major issues with managing finances, a gambling problem or suchlike, that should be quite adequate to pay for childcare. Some people have to do it on quite a bit less.

I am not really going to read through 26 pages of responses but this seems nonsense for several reasons.

1. This will only come in in two and half years time.
2. You will both need to earn more than £100, 000 before you lose your entitlement.
3. This £100,000 is after pension contributions, which will have a new limit of £60,000. So really you can each earn £160,000 before you lose the childcare.
4. If you both only work 3/4 days a week, you do not need this much childcare.
5. There will not be enough places to accommodate all the extra children.

Do you mean because anything over 30hrs, you'll obviously have to pay when you could look after them yourselves and still get the same amount of income? Because otherwise you're only working those extra hours to pay a childminder and you're not really losing out?

It's something my husband and I have done. I work compressed full-time hours over 3 days and the other 4 are for kids and studying.

If it's benefit wise- I work for the DWP. UC doesn't work like that. It's not worth the hassle from them.

Genuinely interested though. :)

On a scale accross the UK it must be an insane amount that's moving out.

Given that only 2% of the population earns £100k+ and most of those live in
London, that seems unlikely.

Yes child benefit is tapered over 50k-60k. But essentially if you are earning that much you are not going to miss it and it is petty feeling hard done by missing out on the benefits. And generally quite stupid to limit your career purely to qualify for benefits that are meant to be there for people struggling. If people want to reduce their hours to enjoy spending time with family absolutely do that, but own the decision rather than claiming it's based on saving petty amounts here and there.

*Petty amounts relative to their earnings

No, on the amount they are earning they will be making a lot more by working and paying a childminder to look after the children.

They are saying if they reduce their hours / wages they will then qualify for the free hours, where as earning over £100k each means they don't get the free 30 hours.

I meant that CB is better - because it's gradual so you are never in a position where you earn more and have less because of it. You might not have much more, but you do have more.

If it was a hard limit and you were a single parent earning near the threshold you'd be very careful about not doing the odd hour of overtime. CB for two kids is about £35 a week, I think a single earner just tipping over the threshold might well notice that loss.

Carer's allowance where you lose it as soon as you earn an extra £1 is another one. And that hits very low earners.

@Ilikepinacoladass £60k after tax is £3575, less if you make pension contributions. On the basis that average rent where I live is £1500 per month and a nursery place is £1400 per month, I think single parents on £60k would miss the child benefit.

They're currently over the 100k threshold for the 30 free hours.

By dropping hours (and dropping income under 100k) they'll

1. need fewer hours overall - from 5 days to probably 2 if op does 3 and her dh 4
2. the hours they do need will be basically covered by the 30 hours (aware of top ups etc...keeping it simple)

@messybutfun that's inaccurate - you're not entitled to the 30 free hours if either parent earns £100k (not both)