Childcare support/costs

[luki1]

I'm a working mum. Full time. DH works full time. We both work our arses off every single day. Struggling to pay bills. Stress with work. Raising a child. And everything else that comes with life.
Childcare costs are more than our mortgage payment. DC is 2 but won't be eligible for 30 hours until the September after his birthday???!

But it's not that...
What's bothering me the most is.. I would be better off reducing my hours at work and claiming UC. My childcare costs would be covered and therefore what I would be saving would even out at what I would be losing if I reduced my hours. So I would be in the same financial situation but with a much healthier work-life balance working part time

Am I missing the point? I don't mean to offend anyone by this. And I am all for trying to get people who are on UC back into work which I'm assuming this new scheme is aiming to achieve. But I can't help but think I would be much better off mentally and physically reducing my hours and claiming UC?!

Do whatever you need to do, is what my advice would be. It’s wrong and flawed that the system is this way, there’s no incentive for working. Don’t work yourself to exhaustion if it is not benefitting your family, don’t worry about what’s morally right to do I say - no one else is. Can always increase your hours again when your little one starts school.

It’s appalling. Do what your conscience says you should.

Do what is financially best. If you can drop your hours then go back up again then do it!

They get 30 hours the term after they turn 3. E.g. if they are 3 in September they get 30 hours from January.

Could you maybe find work at opposing hours to your other half or is your job not like that?

It depends on your job and whether it's just a job or something you plan to develop end want to be promoted in I think.

If you go part time, as much as it shouldn't, it probably will limit your ability to gain promotions.

I worked full time from when DD was 9 months, nursery was 2.5 times my mortgage, money was incredibly tight at first. By the time she was 3 I had doubled my salary and her childcare costs came down because of the 30 funded hours. Since then my salary has continued to increase, she's 9 now and I'm earning more than 4 times what I was when she started nursery.

It's meant we now have a really comfortable financial situation.

My job unfortunately won't allow me to do night shifts. Neither will my DHs job.
My job is a career that would potentially lead to further promotion (already recently promoted). That's the only thing that's stopping me at this point. Im afraid it will hinder my career but I'm also all for enjoying life a bit more than I currently am. I don't particularly enjoy working (in fact I hate it most days) but worried that if I left I would be stuck later on

Do you use the tax free childcare scheme?

@red78hot yes and it's a huge help

When you say "part time" how much part time? Like .8 FTE? Or lower?

From my experience (ie: mine and my friends, working in a variety of sectors in London), in most professional roles you can get away with .8 and it will not ruin your chances of promotion (assuming you just accept that you're paid 20% less to do the same job as everyone who works FT for a few years) but if you want to cut to .6 or lower then it might, but it depends on your sector and how family friendly it is as to whether it "damaged" your career progression in the short/medium term. I know it shouldn't be like this and it is primarily women who end up doing this, but that's a whole other thread.

But as other people have said, you need to do what's right for your family now as there's no point in working yourself to the ground now to lessen the impact on your career in a few years if doing that will mean you're less likely to be in that career/want to progress anyway due to burn out.

Also, I would say that the comments about childcare being more than your mortgage payments are obviously region/area specific. We are in SW London and have a "high" mortgage to reflect that and whilst I know that childcare does cost more than in other places, as a percentage it won't be as much as the difference in mortgage payments. For example if your mortgage payments are below £1000 a month then I would certainly expect full time childcare for a 2 year old to cost more than that whereas if your mortgage is more like £2500 a month then it would be more surprising if your childcare costs were more than that per month.

If you can get your child into a state run nursery/pre school for the year before they start reception then that will lower your outgoings because it is free whereas private nurseries often add extras to the universal 15 hours so you end up paying for the free hours anyway as the funds they get back from the government are pitiful in comparison to what it actually costs to deliver those "free/funded" hours. We topped up our childminders funding to her standard rate whereas the hours that he did at the school nursery didn't cost us anything.