Wibu if your childminder did this....

[Neverhaveenoughmoney]

Said they couldn't offer a term time contract anymore.
I've NC for obvious reasons. I'm a CM and work with my husband. We are very busy but with all the increasing costs the business is really struggling. The main reason for this is in the school holidays we lose about two thirds of our income due to the fact that so many of our children are term time only.
When we first opened we had some older children in the holidays and some little ones and it was all ok. We earnt less but because the normal months were better financially we could always save for the lesser months.
However now this is not the case. Despite cutting back as much as we can without it effecting the quality of care most months we go overdrawn. I've done some costings for the summer hols and we are not even going to have money to pay half our bills let alone shopping etc.
I've been so worried this week I've barely slept and we have both looked for 2nd jobs.
So the term time parents only pay £15 per day during their contracted days in school holidays to retain the space for term time weeks. So instead of a daily rate of between £43 - 47 it's a big loss for us. All our school children are also tto and no one needs school hol care as they are teachers.
I'm considering saying I am going to have to stop this off and start charging half or full fees all year round.
I imagine this will cause so much upset but I don't know what else to do. We tried having older children in the hols last year and it was a disaster. They were so demanding and it took 1 of us to look after them and the other left with the little ones. Outings were a nightmare too when we could get out as it was hard to fit in the car.
Would really appreciate other parents views on this.

Can you explain to me what I said that was rude? Here's my post. It's factual, I said I was sorry that it doesn't seem to be viable, and I suggested a way they could make it work.

If your business is making a loss, it's not a viable business, sorry. I would scale right back and just offer after school /before school care for those children who make up the bulk of your income with only one adult caring for them. So 6 kids I think is the limit?

And the other one of you get a full time job.

@Clymene - have you ever been in a perilous financial position? Or sunk everything into your own business? Then someone you don't know says your business isn't viable. You may think your words were just factual, this is someone's life.

Here year round childminders are like hens teeth, you'd be snapped up! Ours was term time but did close for x number of agreed weeks they let us know at the start of each year and of course didn't charge for those but meant they got a holiday etc and we had time to book annual leave. Could you offer a summer club? Also very rare around here and people end up paying £££s- this includes for little ones who are at term time nurseries.

I run my own successful business.

I'm a single parent and before it took off, I was living on income support and writing SEO content for pennies to try and survive.

Any more questions?

I cant see how it would pay more than 25k or similar? If that?

And I apologise OP, this spat can't be at all helpful.

I'd get an excel spreadsheet and run through some different scenarios.

Start with your break even number and then work out what you need to make to turn a profit that is enough to live comfortably.

What are your overheads? What costs can you cut?

And then you need to work out how many of the different kids you need to have have to make the numbers work:
Under 5s
Term time only (after school and/or before school)
All year round school aged kids
Etc.

A simple sum function would do the calculations for you.

I'm sure you can make it work but you have to think of it as a business, not a kind service. As a pp said, I suspect the fact that you're cheap for teachers has spread by word of mouth and now you've got into a situation where loads of your kids are TTO which isn't financially sustainable.

There will be a way forward so I would plan for launching whatever it is you need to do in September.