How the hell everyone is supposed to cope?

[Oink38]

Having a bad day of mass anxiety.

so, hubby and I earn ok wages. Not huge but we both work for charities so probably earn between 50k between us

childcare is killing us- nearly 1k a month for 3 days a week. We have no family or friends support. Now that the new funding has come in people who aren’t entitled due to being 3 shortly and not getting that funding until September will have to no doubt have their nursery fees raised again.

no pay rises in sight. Meant to be putting into work pension and also saving but honestly where the hell are we supposed to find the money

desperate to move but can’t cos nursery fees are too high.

fed up with this government. Not entitled to any benefits barely surviving month to month. Haven’t had a holiday in 9 years. Drive old car. No fun days out. Barely have anything left to do anything with. Utterly fed up of working for basically shit.

no can’t get other jobs I am specialised in what I do and hubby earns well for the field he is in.

and no we don’t buy take away coffees or avocados

just a massive rant really. Suppose aibu in thinking how the hell people are supposed to survive when everything is going up and no positivity anywhere

The Govt would go full Gilead within five years
If they thought they could get away with it, but I dont think they could.

Are you joking? It's impossible to WFH properly with a young child!

The heritage sector is incredibly middle class because those are the only people who can afford to work in it!

Tell me about it, I used to work in it!

The heritage sector is staffed by low paid workers, mostly very young and still living with their parents, on temporary contracts. It also relies heavily on highly qualified retired volunteers who used to get paid reasonably well for the same work and now have decent pensions and a side hustle in academic writing.

Give it a decade and the sector will implode completely.

My child's nursery is £1700 a month for 5 days a week 8am to 6pm

I’m with you. I had a cry yesterday when my husband came home about the fact my friend has casually asked us if we wanted to go for lunch after meeting with the kids the other day and I just thought please everyone say no because I physically didn’t have the money. I thought look at yourself, at 33 years old and you can’t even afford one lunch with friends.

The childcare fees are horrifying! Totally pointless working for a lot of people. Our nursery is £73 per day! I work in a similar field and actually now seriously thinking of becoming a childminder as there is such a huge demand for it near us. Would also mean I could actually see my own kid!

Its half term here and two of my closest friends are away weekends away while we spend another boring weekend at home because we can’t afford to go anywhere. Can barely afford a food shop at this point 😩 It’s utterly impossible to try and struggle through. I have a side hustle type ‘job’ as well as a part time job and I’m now putting the kids to bed and rather than getting one hour a day where I actually relax or enjoy myself, im just going round the house trying to desperately find any clothes, old baby items etc that I could sell or put on vinted. If it’s not nailed down at this point it’s going 🤦🏻‍♀️

Wow! I dream of having that much left over each month! I have £190 left for food, going out, everything that isn’t mortgage and bills basically. Also a single parent. You’re going to be able to provide such a lovely time for your child/ren. I’m kind of jealous!

Might be worth remembering before dismissing it as low that in a certain areas of the country (ie Yorkshire/North East) that £50k is a good wage.

I could afford mine when I had them. Then my partner left, and I developed Parkinsons and stopped being able to work FT. Should I perhaps just shoot my family as I can’t afford them?

We were in same boat years ago. Dh took second job in the evening as a takeaway delivery driver and I got a second job in a shop on the weekends. Horrible but only way to pay the bills

I was paying for nursery in a very ordinary part of London until 5 years ago, it covered 8am-6pm, and was £2,000 a month. So your daughter is paying less half what I was paying back then!

It’s partly income dependent, and also up to a certain maximum. When DD was in nursery it helped with the first £470 a month of the £2,000 a month bill, and was reduced further due to my (really not high at that point) earnings.

@Beezknees how come you're in social housing when you earn that much money? 😵‍💫 Genuine question

Agree with this. Yes, cost of living has stung most of us but each person has to take responsibility for their own prospects. No reason at all why, with the right choices, @Oink38 husband can't move to to higher paying job if he truly has the motivation to do it. You do what many did when choosing their degrees/further study in the first place - pick the subject and career wisely that brings steady job with higher income and you're made. I made a trade off in choosing a career I love which enables me to live fairly comfortably but I've always known I won't have the level of disposable income others do but i dont expect other taxpayers to compensate me. If I was really motivated , I could get a job that gives significantly more but I'm not in the position of OP's family so I don't have that motivation to do so.

UK is one of the very top places in the world for opportunity and so many people just waste opportunities (which is their choice, but you can't complain when you experience the consequences of that). You can't expect everyone else to fund everything for you to compensate for all your life decisions.

So if two working parents can’t afford to have even one child what will the answer be in thirty years time when there’s no one to work in the NHS and there’s not enough tax being paid to fund state pensions?

Love it.

Solution is for the op to work harder, or her husband to work two jobs.

But everyone says just suck up paying £60 or whatever PER DAY for childcare.

I give up.

With those childcare costs, even with no rental costs to claim for you'd have to earn 3473.60 a month NET between you to not be awarded anything. If you divide that in 2, that's a minimum of £50k for your award to be wiped out. If you pay rent, that figure will go by 145% of your LHA. It sounds like you're either understanding your salary, have a mortgage, or have no rent costs.

If your child isn't in school yet I would look into stopping work yourself. If your husband earns under £40k then you may find you then are eligible for UC and not have any work commitments due to your child's age. I would run a benefits calculator based on you not working and just your husband's wage and see what it fires out.

The UK has very high childcare fees in large part because the ratios required are unusually high by global standards."

^^

I'd love to see the source of this info.

And 'outcry' so it was abandoned??? Outcry by whom??? Let me guess... The Tories?

:
The Gov tried to change this a few years ago, to bring it more in line with other countries, and presumably make childcare fees more affordable. However, there was such an outcry that I think the plan was abandoned

This is a question I genuinely don't know the answer to as all my friends parents had a mum or gran around or whatever but what did people 20-30 years ago do? Was this just as big a problem then? If not, why not? What could we learn from the recent past to make things better now?

Land Value Tax.

They wouldn't give us a choice. They would start by using the press to manufacture popular approval, same as they manufacture approval for overseas wars.

There's a lot of disaffected incels and other manosphere types who would vote for a political party who made it easier for them to possess and control women.

Why should op be the one to give up work?

Grandparents were generally not working due to earlier retirement.
You could get a mortgage without a huge deposit, and housing costs were lower proportionate to wages. Social housing was also not a pipe dream.

@DonnaBanana As living costs have increased instead of having 1 full time & part time/SAHM partner both parents need to work full time and then some. Also the change in the relationships, which means either party can walk away and get away without having to financially support children from the union. Leading to both parties feeling the need to have established careers.

The knock on effect has been the horrifying increase to childcare and elderly care costs, as these are both private industries, there is no chance that the government will do what is necessary.

It will be messy to undo the damage that has been done but realistically if the government want the birthrate to increase then the costs of early years care, afterschool and holiday care will need to tackled. Has Labour announced their intentions on how they plan on dealing with this issue as yet?

£60 per day is really not ridiculous when you look at the ratios plus the overheads.