Nursery fee increase to £100 a day

[WildWhippet]

£100 a day.

The nursery is fantastic but that’s almost £26,000 after tax. £2,125 a month.

How on earth do people afford a second child in the South East?

I have twins so no choice on age gap :/
my childminder fees per day exactly match what I earn. It sucks but I didn't want a years long career break and the boys get so much from going.

To think I used to wonder if I’d ever be able to afford private school fees.

Its more (considerably) than the local prep schools.

Christ I’m in NI and thought we were being shafted when we got notice the fee was going up to £38 per day.

Honestly don’t know how people in England do it. It honestly feels like inaction to address this is a direct attack on women’s ability to retain a career, progress up the payscales and ultimately have a decent pension.

I’m a cm in London and I charge £90 a day with everything included. Nurseries around me charge between £100 and £115 a day.

That’s nuts. I’m in midlands and paying £58 a day, my two are just under two years apart. It’s not really worth me going back to work in a financial sense and I get paid around £40k so above average wage for the area. It’s disgusting how expensive it is and the staff gets paid peanuts as well.

Perhaps Jacob Rees Mogg needs to take note when he says people should be having more children.

No longer in London but I had 3.5 years between my DC for this reason, and also university fees (assuming they go and do a traditional 3 year degree).

If I were having DC now though, I’m not sure I could afford more than one.

Im in West Yorkshire, we pay £42.50 for a childminder a day. £100 is more than I earn in a day, what a disgrace this country is.

I’m in the south and we have gone for private school - we were shocked it wasn’t very much more than our (not that great) nursery. 🤷‍♀️

For one child??

Jesus! I thought 74 quid up north was bad.

@Emelene it would be about £500 a month cheaper to send him to our local prep school, which is a feeder for the big public schools.

@EmilyMayishere yes just the one child. £0 discount if I have a second there. So then it would be £4,300 a month.

Is it worth considering a nanny or nanny share?
They usually do the kids laundry and meals so may be cheaper than nursery.

Not in London but close. I stopped working, it costs more than I was earning. I did eventually get another job that fitted around them so no fees to worry about.

I pay £6 an hour for 1 currently and my 2nd is about to start next month as there is an 11 month age gap and my maternity finishes. Another nursery i looked at was £70 a day so i couldn't afford that for 2! I'm near london and luckily they're only at nursery 5 hours a day a relative x a drops them off and picks them up and i'll pick them up from them when i finish. £100 is alot i thought £70 was steep.

We pay £55 a day. About to qualify for 30 hours 'free' that'll take our bill to ~£450 after tax free childcare. It's not free, it's subsidised. Badly. I have friends/family in Europe who's children are in nursery for longer and pay less than our 'free' hours bill.

I stopped working after we had DS1. The plan was I would take the full year of maternity leave but towards the end of that the chance of redundancy came up and I took it. DD was born when DS1 was 2.5 yrs. Then DS2 when DS1 was almost 5. They have all just gone to nursery for 2-3 days a week for socialisation reasons. DS2, now coming up to 4 in a couple of months and he goes to nursery at the primary school he will go to in September.

It has cost us in terms of my career and financially- we couldn't have paid 3 full-time nursery fees. I know MIL would have wanted to help- she has helped with DS2 when I have been working part-time the last year and a half.

It's madness what nurseries cost. The issue is they are private and owners have to make a profit. If they were state run they would be cheaper but the state wants as little responsibility as possible for anything to do with important public provision- education, water, energy, adult-social care, health.

Prep school is generally 9-3.30 for only about 36 weeks a year, you need to add the cost of additional childcare to that!

average earnings in the SE are much higher than the rest of the country. Realistically nursery fees are for a short period and there is 30 hours funding when they reach 3! I can see that it’s a problem with multiple births but otherwise have a gap of at least 2 years and pull them out of nursery whilst you’re on maternity leave.

from what I can see nursery fees haven’t increased in line with inflation over the last few years. An increase of £7 on £93 is significantly less than inflation

DS1's nursery is £90/day, but with 30 free hours and tax free childcare it works out at about £35/day to us.

DH and I both work a four day week so we only need 3 days a week childcare.

Our DS2 is starting with a childminder soon who charges £7 an hour so that's £48 a day with tax free childcare. (He's only just one so no free hours for a while)

It works out as around a grand a month for both of them. Obviously not ideal but thankfully we can just about afford it in the short term. 18 months of this and then DS1 starts school and DS2 gets the "free" hours.

I left London because childcare would be too expensive. Honestly my only suggestions would be:

taking a loan/remortgage to spread the cost over more years and thus lower your current monthly spend.

a large age gap between children

praying these magical free hours from the government kick in soon.

I’m also planning to save up in my current child’s tax free childcare account so that there’s money saved in there once my second arrives. I don’t need childcare care for my older child during the year I’m on MAT leave and can’t save up for DC2 as you can’t open the account until you return to work, but I can put money in DC1s account that’s already open and this means I’ll have money saved up in there so he won’t cost anything out of my monthly spend when I return to work and DC2 goes into childcare that’s more expensive.

FYI where I am in the midlands my childminder has only just increased her rate to £5 an hour. Now I have 30 free hours and as I am termtime only, my monthly bill is only £160 a month after the tax free. Before this it was £620 and that was a lot, so I really do empathise with you paying 2k a month would be pretty much my whole wage.

That's crazy.

Do you or your partner WFH? If so, can you use a preschool instead? 9-3 and have them home with you for the last 2 hours of the day? And use family to bridge the extra non-term time?

Ours is £6.75 per hour so around £40 a day. (Granted it's trickier than a full time nursery in terms of hours and not having the school holidays covered).

Any option to condense hours and work FT hours over 4 days? That helped us a lot for the year my two DC were in nursery at the same time. We're also in SE with very high nursery costs.

When I lived in SW London my nursery fees were £110 per day back in 2017. I'm now in Yorkshire, on a higher wage than I was on in London, and pay £300 per month, everything included. This is wrap around care, including transport to and from school. When she was in nursery, it was still "only" £650 per month. Way cheaper, we definitely wouldn't have been able to afford more than 1 and still retain the same standard of living.

Maybe it would be cheaper for one parent to stay at home.

Wow! I'm in the NW but paid £40 a day for DDs nursery before she started pre school 18 months ago.
That's so expensive. Is that average for the area? I suppose you've already exhausted these avenues, but is there any option for condensed hours or family help?