Hang on in there until school age doesn't work?

[TwoTimesShoeShop]

Keep seeing similar comments about working with high nursery costs, to keep going and then it gets easier when they're school age.

DC starts school in September. At the moment I pay £297 a month with the 30 free hours for 3 days a week. For 50 weeks a year care, so I don't have to worry about covering any holidays etc. So £3,564 total a year.

I was counting down the days until we'd be better off. But, breakfast and after school club are £18 a day. So £18x3x38 is £2,052 a year. Great, just over half the cost. Except, oh wait, instead of covering two weeks of holiday I need to cover 14. I get six weeks, so does DH. Even if we never have any time off together except bank holidays and weekends (a bit miserable), we have two extra weeks we'd need holiday clubs for, at £65 a day, so £65x3x2 is £390. If we allow ourselves a two week holiday together, that's another £390. So now the annual total is £2,832.

So we're a whole £61 a month better off and only have two weeks annual leave together. If we wanted to take all our annual leave together (as we can now), then the total is £3,612, so more than nursery!

I can't spread my hours over more, shorter days, as I have younger DC. Childminders are more than breakfast and after school club. We don't have anyone else who can do pickups/drop off etc and no family or friends to watch them for a bit.

I'm just not sure why people say that if you can get through the nursery years then you'll be ok once school starts -actually we'd be either worse off financially, or worse off in time together.

I feel like I was on a countdown to September and now the goalposts have moved. Maybe secondary is the real cheaper point?!

AIBU that 'hang on in there until school' as financially it'll be much easier then isn't actually true? Or am I missing something?

So you'd only need the after school club 3 dats a week as you are at home 2 days a week. So find another part-time-working parent at the same schoolwgo has the opposite days off to you and arrange that you bring their DC to yours on the 2 days a week that you are at home in exchange for them doing likewise on 2 of your work days. Then you only need ASC on 1 day a week and can save £1,300 per year.

I don't think many people use holiday clubs for every week of the school holidays. Definitely not in reception. Generally dividing each holiday between childcare-swapping with other parents (so in some of your weeks off you have extra kids too), bringing in grandparents etc, and having occasional days where you and DH are both worling from home with the kids there and tag teaming so that between 7am and 10pm you have both achieved a full day of work.

It takes planning obviously. I don't say "it gets easier" - it gets different.

Don't forget all the wraparound and holiday childcare is also eligible for being tax free - I think you may have quoted your nursery costs as tax free but not included the savings for the schoolyears options?

Good luck!

Things changed when free hours were brought it. They weren't a thing when my dc were small so we were paying £40 per child per day so for one child I was paying £866 a month or £10,400 for the year. So things did improve massively when dc started school

No, as it makes things a bit more complicated, but doesn't make any difference to the comparison as both can be paid for with tax free childcare (the before and after school anyway, I think a lot of the holiday clubs too).

I have seen a couple of slightly cheaper holiday things but they're more one offs and also are like 10-2 which doesn't work for the hours we need to do. The ones with longer hours and most days a week available all seem to be pretty pricey.

Your costs now are the cost I dream off when mine in is school. As your costs are actually quite small then the savings arnt that much difference , for me however it will be a big difference that I definitely am looking forward to the school starting!

£65 a day for holiday club? We pay around £25, and I can use childcare vouchers. I know the childcare voucher scheme is closed now but can’t you use the tax free childcare account for registered childcare clubs, and surely less then £65 a day?

I agree with you. Wraparound care and holiday camps are very expensive. And the juggling is insane. People say "go back to work when they start school" but actually, like you, I've found that school hours are much, much more difficult than nursery hours. As you say, nursery is 50 weeks of the year, 8am-6pm. School is 38 weeks of the year, 9am-3pm. It's easier to work when they're at nursery than at primary school. I guess people then say "it gets easier at secondary school" but there's seven very long years before then.

Yep I think it’s this - our nursery was £2k per month full time (didn’t accept funded hours). Our ASC is £10 per day, so less than £2k per YEAR. So obviously we are far far better off than we were when DS was in nursery, even once you include holiday clubs.

Or am I missing something?

Children cost money 🤷‍♀️ I don’t think that this is a new thing. People have been complaining about childcare fees forever (well I know my mum complained about them in the 70’s). It’s an extra person who is much more needy and dependent than an adult and you (the global you) are responsible for everything they need.

I always wonder on these threads… is there someone out there telling people that kids are cheap or won’t have a financial impact?

3k a year doesn't sound that bad for all that childcare... I mean it's a choice to have kids and to work those hours, other choices were available... Presumably you're better off than if you look after your own children but don't go to work? So see it not as a cost but as you are better off by xxx because you chose to work

As others have suggested your nursery costs are extremely low.

We don’t qualify for the 30 hours or tax free childcare which means we pay maximum rates for nursery.

We are in a situation whereby when our DC starts private pre-prep school our costs will actually reduce significantly. That just doesn’t seem the right way round to me.

We also have no family support for any childcare, pick ups etc however both DH and I WFH a lot and have huge flexibility with our working hours. Without that I’m really not sure how we’d cope with the schools years.

My advice is to get a WFH job if at all possible.

Yes, you have exceptionally cheap nursery costs so the comparison is skewed. Wraparound care costs don't fall until age 7 or 8 due to staff ratios. Until then, holiday clubs are essentially nursery. After that age, they're activity clubs and many are a lot cheaper.

Holiday club is between £25-£50 a day, £25 for a standard sports/crafts in a school hall/community centre type club. £50 for the forest school/outdoor pursuits/drama/dance type club. Pick one that's Ofsted registered and you can use tax free childcare/childcare vouchers to reduce costs.

Yes you do have to accept that you can no longer have 6 weeks a year off together as a family, you need to take school holidays in turns in order to reduce childcare costs. We have 2 weeks a year, 1 in summer, 1 over Xmas, plus bank holidays.

My DC are teens but last time I used a holiday club (pre covid) the cheapest ones were £25-30 for a full day. Just looked up and the cheaper one is £36/day but some are £70/day

I think you are in a very unusual position of having both incredibly low Nursery costs but then incredibly expensive wraparound care.

There are lots of things that people do - many of which have been shared on this thread - to make things work for their families. Including things like swapping childcare favours one night a week after school, and certainly in the holidays. Some folk are lucky enough to have family who can take them for a week in the holidays. Many people flex their hours so one parent goes in later (to drop off at school time) but then works later and the other parent starts very early, and finishes early. Some have some flexibility in terms of "as long as the work is done, we don't mind when you do it" and will have a 4 hour break in the afternoon but work in the evening.
The fact you only work 3 days gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of sharing care with other parents.

As everyone else said - your nursery costs are cheap and your after school club / holiday club costs are expensive. (My eldest is 14 now but when you was little there was only 15 funded hours not 30 and I think breakfast club was £2.50, after school club was £8 and holiday club was £20! Dd starting school reduced our bill massively.)

Things which helped:-

When is your holiday year from and until? Mine is 1st July - 30th June which meant that dd’s first year at school I was able to cover pretty much all the school holidays up to 30th June as I hadn’t used any of them for the summer holidays (as she was still in nursery then.) No use longer term but helped the first year.

A couple of swaps with the parents of friends of dd’s over the first lot of summer holidays meant we needed to do less holiday club.

Parents lived far away so no help from a day to day basis but they would come to visit for a few days in the holidays and help out. As the kids got older they would also go and stay with the parents.

Get chatting to the breakfast / after school club people and find out if it is allowed to book your child in “ad-hoc” and (most importantly) which days they are not full. Then for each half term (roughly 6 weeks) you can each work from home a couple of times and have a couple of ad hoc breakfast club sessions. Which is cheaper than 6 breakfast club sessions.

Remember that a week of your husband’s holiday is worth nearly 2 weeks of “childcare holiday”. So if you agree to have 5 weeks of holiday together and 1 week each covering childcare then your husband’s 5 days are only needed on your working days. So 8 days (or nearly 3 weeks) in total from the two of you.

Once your younger child / children are also in school then you can use your “3 days a week” to reduce the hours you need childcare by. So just keep on keeping on!

This is why we’re probably going to be one and done

People say, have your second when the first is in school - as if the costs of the first reduce to zero!

That’s not the only reason they say that, it’s also because then you don’t have a toddler at home whilst on mat leave.

If your nursery allows the 30hrs to be allowed to used across 3 days, not a maximum of 6hrs a day, that might explain your lower cost. Because from September, you will still get 30hrs free childcare/education... but its school hours!

Considering my youngest is now 11 (and the last cohort of only 15hrs funded)... 3 days nursery including the 15hrs would have been about £150 a week. 3 days wrap around at her school .. £21 a week (£2 for breakfast, £5 for ASC)

I pay £1600 a month which includes my 15 free hours (not entitled to 30). I will make an enormous saving when school starts. £1600 a month plus massively inflated mortgage costs (5% interest) is truly crippling right now, even for a family with a good income.

This won't help straight away but once we got to know parents and kids formed friendships, we would help each other out, especially to stretch out annual leave.
So in the summer, I'd have friend A twice and friend B twice. Then those friends' parents would reciprocate meaning I've only used 2 days holiday but childcare is covered for 6 days.
Apologies if I missed it, I saw that there's no continuity for WFH, but is there any chance at all for amended hours? So one of you does drop off then works late, the other goes to work early and picks up at 3?

Sorry, poor maths! I'd use 4 days holiday but 8 days childcare would be covered!

It was the logistics of one in school wrap-around and one in nursery that finished me off. Fortunately school holidays weren't an issue for me, but in the terms, both jobs had long hours and were inflexible and after my contract finished I had no mental energy to seek another post. Not helped by it later emerging that one child is autistic. Now DC2 is approaching secondary and gaining independence I'm reviewing my options but it's been a long time.

The nursery years were much more managable for us.

it’s also because then you don’t have a toddler at home whilst on mat leave.

I thought having a toddler at home while on maternity leave (and so not paying nursery fees) was one of the advantages of having children close together! Can't imagine anything worse than getting through the preschool years then going back and starting again. And you have kids who are constantly at different stages while living at home. And (from the financial viewpoint) many women will be PT and so earning less for much longer if they choose to space out their kids that much.

I don’t have DC so don’t know about actual costs, but interested in parents (usually mothers) being able to afford to work if they want.
Question to others - does it only get cheaper when all the children are school age as op says she can’t change her hours?

Could either of you make a flexible working request to at least cover WFH FT for part of the school holidays, and/or negotiate at slightly later start time in the week so that you could do drop-off and avoid breakfast club?

When you say you have no family or friends, is that at all, or just not nearby? If there are darling GPs, can they help in the school holidays, either by having the DC for a week, or by coming to stay and taking them for days out/entertaining them at home while you are in the office?