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?

If you each earn below £100k a year, you’ll get 25% off your childcare costs as long as your childcare settings are registered for tax-free childcare.

I know how shit it is. We get 9 weeks’ annual leave between us but both have to keep a week for Christmas. We never take time off together and I have to sneakily work from home during half terms so I can look after my son. Holiday clubs here are 4 days a week at best and are usually just 9am-2.30pm.

It got easier for me when mine left school for good took so much stress away.
No advice sorry.

In my case, I wanted more time with young children, and, as DS didn't consistently sleep until he was 3.5 I physically couldn't have coped with full time work.

Whereas by school age they can do much more on their own, sleep through the night and they can attend clubs etc at school (if your school offers this). DH and I were also able to work flexibly (some mixture of early starts, and short and long days) to minimise the amount of wrap around care we needed - you can't do that with full days at nursery stage.

The hard part at school stage was being about for the random school things that you are expected to attend during the day (at least DC went to a sensible junior school that minimised this). None of this at nursery.

Thank you.

the build I would add is:

the government and society really need to be encouraging people to have more children to stop our economy tanking due to aging population not punishing them for having them in the first place.

they should be making it easier and providing more support, and Uk society should stop hating on parents and children. The attitude that children are your “fault”/“choice” so sit down and shut up is ridiculous.

That’s dirt cheap. Is that 7.30-8.30am and then 3.15-6pm for wraparound care and then 7.30-6pm for holiday clubs?

I’ve said this on similar posts previously and been pooh-pooed.

Thanks for proving it with your calculations.

Thanks to those who have shared their thoughts. I think I'm suffering a little bit of mum-guilt over the toddler being at nursery so much, when that doesn't seem the norm. We do spent lots of time together in the mornings, evenings and weekends - I don't have any family support, so all other childcare is me or her dad. In effect, the nursery staff provide what many others have from grandparents. The baby was also an easy one- she sleeps through the night as often as she doesn't. Very fair point that if you don't have one as straightforward holding down a FT job is tough - I've had some very rough days when she's been ill and up 8+ times in the night!

I hated primary school myself, so I think that's why I dislike the idea of extending school days with wrap around care.

It's also partly to do with my career stage - I'm in the process of being promoted, which i suspect/ would not have happened if I'd not got back FT (was applying when I was pregnant, but one they knew I was pregnant... there was no way it was going to happen!) However, I'm approaching the point of being as senior as I'd ever want to be (who wants to manage 100 people and have to deal with all their issues - one toddler is bad enough :D!?!) so going part time once I've reached a career point where only sideways steps are of interest, seems like the more logical thing to do.

The little one is growing up so fast though. I can see why people want to watch and treasure every second by being at home with them as many days as possible.

I'm wondering if it's because of the discrepancies that exist across the UK. I'm in a part of the UK where we don't get 30 free hrs childcare and it would be life changing if we did. I pay £1000 a month for one child to be in nursery 5 days a week and it was one of the cheaper nurseries we looked into. For us we'll only be able to consider a second child when ds is ready to start school because right now a second would put us in debt and likely me out of work.

Your wrap around and holiday club fees are similar to mine, OP, I'm not at all surprised.

It must depend on location - I'm on the outskirts of London and holiday camps are around £35 per day for 10am-4pm (which doesn't help many parents working FT) or £70 for 7:30am-5:15pm with a top up of £7 for a 6pm pick up.

I live in London and there are plenty of holiday clubs that are significantly cheaper than £325 per week. That’s definitely the higher end of the market.

Also, parents tend to help each other out during the holidays. If you have a week off to look after your child, you take someone else’s child too, that way they have a friend (or 2) to play with. The parent of the friend then reciprocates another week during the 6 weeks holidays.

No, I'm quoting 100% of both figures. Couldn't trust myself to not go wrong if I added in the tfc reduction and as I haven't done it for either it doesn't change the comparison.

I'm hoping I can get holiday clubs through tfc, got to look into that.

Just to make it clear again, I'm not complaining about the cost as such, but more that I was lead to believe that I'd see a difference when DC started school which won't happen. Even when I got my mortgage last year my advisor was saying 'fix until all DCs are in school as then your costs go down' and that's a financial professional!

For the record though, I do have other DC with no free hours so my total childcare spend is about my salary at the moment. I'm not asking for sympathy about my specific situation as I'm managing, more trying to expose the myth of school being cheaper!

It seems from lots of the posts that it's really 'when 30 hours kicks in, it's cheaper' and then it's fairly stable until juniors or secondary. Although individual circumstances obviously vary.

I completely agree op! Me and my husband essentially work opposite days to each other to make it work and it's tough, but it means we don't have high childcare costs and we can make more efficient use of our annual leave.

I found school a bit tougher too in that some of our annual leave now has to go on things like sports day, Christmas play, school picnic afternoon and all the other events that school have on! It's knackering!

We decided to stick at one, and this was one of the reasons why 🤣

Thanks, I was beginning to think I live in a very strange place! I definitely can't work with 10am starts or finishes earlier than about 5:30, and that's what all the cheaper ones I've seen do (although I will ask around as advised by other posters).

I would describe our jobs as flexible- if there's an emergency ie sick child we can work around it. But we both have stuff 9-5, and have commutes of 30 mins/ 1 hour when we're in the office. I have 8am meetings a few times a year too! So while we could maybe have the odd day where we could do drop off or pick up, we can't rely on it in advance as neither of us can just block out our availability on a regular basis. Most of the time I'm not in control of when stuff is that I need to be in the office for.

I'm actually surprised that so many people seem to have more flexibility than this and could just say that they're never available until 10am/ between 3 and 4 etc. I'm not aware of anyone that works like that where I am, apart from one person who has officially reduced hours to part time to just cover school hours.

We have two grandparents but neither would look after DC on their own, and no other family support. I don't know any school parents well enough to share care (and would probably struggle with my kids plus extras on my own) but maybe that will come in time.

DC will be 4 in school for a while and unless there's a big change between now and September I really couldn't imagine WFH and doing childcare. Again, I assume that will change at junior age possibly?

Have you factored in Tax Free Childcare? The government will pay 20% of your wrap around care.

I don’t use holiday clubs but I think you can use Tax Free childcare on those too.

What would your bill be if they went 5 days a week?

About £660 I think, so I guess that's the difference that the impact is only for FT people?

I was also shocked by the cost of before and after school care. I changed my work hours so I start late and finish late so only need after school care and we do one week of school holiday club then one week off with a combination of AL and help from my DM who works term time only. I cannot do my job with the kids at home even I am WFH.

If I worked five days I would also need wraparound five days, plus holiday clubs five days though.

When mine started school I switched from long days to school hours, which I appreciate not everyone can do, but lots of people are able to ask for some flexibility. Especially in a couple e.g. you could do 2 pickups each and then you only have to pay for 1 after school club. Or DH could do all dropoffs and work a bit later so you don't use breakfast club. So I only paid for holiday clubs but we did also have grandparents who wouldn't have been able to help all year round due to distance but could do a few days every Summer so that helped too.

Ok new figures (everything without tax free childcare taken off as it's just for comparison and I'll get confused otherwise).

3 days a week working
Nursery £3,564 per year
School with two weeks holiday together £2,832 per year
School with all holiday together as we currently have with nursery £3,612 per year

5 days a week working

Nursery £7,920 per year

School with two weeks holiday together £4,720 per year

School with all holiday together as we currently have with nursery £6,020 per year

So if I did work 5 days, we'd be £158 better off a month to have the same family time off as we do now. On three days, it costs more to have the same time off.

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

Because we never used to get 30 hours paid. Be thankful you do.

But you are better off though. Literally no one I know has the same time off as their partner when they have school age children.

The cost of childcare and/or loss/reduction of a salary remains the biggest cost of having children up until ALL children are school age, not just the first. Two FT parents will pay more nursery costs and therefore will see more of a difference when their children start school. Those working part time will see less of a difference but they will be earning. I pay for more childcare now that my two are both in school than I did before, but that's because I'm working more and earning more as a result.

Before my eldest started school we only got the 15 funded hours, so we were still paying £300 a month for 2 days in nursery. The 30 hours has made a big difference to people.

That should say Those working part time will see less of a difference but they will be earning less