Childcare costs

[LawyerMumAsia]

Good morning. My childcare costs are through the roof. Can somebody please tell me if this is normal. We are two full time working parents with two primary aged children and one toddler. Nursery is £1700 per month and nanny is £3,300 per month including taxes for 36 hours a week. Nursery is 4 days per week but we will be reducing that to 3 days in a few weeks time. We need 36 hours because of school drop off and then nanny comes back again to do school pick up and dinner and to be there during bath time. Her net pay is around £17 per hour. Thank you

Childcare is expensive but childcare for 13 hours a day is crazy high compared to the norm so yes your costs will be very high.

One thing I have gathered from this thread is that it’s more socially acceptable to drop your kids off when it’s still dark out for breakfast club and to pick them up exhausted and tired from after school club when it’s dark out (in the winter) than to have a qualified childcare professional bring them home at 3pm and take care of them until 7pm whilst mum is in another room on calls working.

Well yes I think most people would find it more acceptable to drop their kids off at 8am breakfast club and pick them up at 5pm than have a nanny look after them either side of the school day from 7am-7/8pm. Even the parents using the maximum wrap around their school provides will still see their children for 3 or 4 more hours a day than you.
It’s strange for you, in your position, to be criticising other parent’s childcare choices and trying to paint yours as more preferable.

It’s normal. Perhaps toddler goes to nursery as well would save some nanny fee.

The nanny isn’t a supermarket shop- any savings in her hours worked and therefore her salary would likely mean OP is looking for a new nanny. If it suddenly became apparent my employers had decided I cost them too much and expected me to reduce my rate or contracted hours they’d be in receipt of a resignation letter sharpish. Or it would be a redundancy situation but this has to be done properly unless you want a tribunal on the cards.

I trust OP knows the ins and outs of her arrangements with her nanny.

@Completelyjo thanks, it’s not 13 hours per day. That would be double the cost

I think you need to accept if you’re both doing full on jobs with no option to stagger you need a nanny and will be paying a premium for that.

We just about managed two London commutes with just nursery and after school club but it meant one of us doing very early starts with the other one doing drop-off and the first person finishing at 4pm to get back in time. Not every job will allow that flex and we were stretching it to the brink. I ended up scaling back my role as two lots of commutes and stressful jobs were killing us. You likely need a nanny if you can’t stagger your starts/have to do the long hours but at some point you need to think about whether it’s worth it. If you’re on a path to mega money then it may well be but if you’re not earning a lot then it feels like a hefty price when primary years are often cheaper.

If it helps, when I plan my childcare I think of it as “capex” not “opex” ie something you spend on for a short period time but over the next 30 years of your career is not nearly so meaningful.

Ok...12½ hours (you said you need childcare 7:30am-8pm)

@BlackOrangeFrog thanks sorry you’ve misinterpreted the thread. Two days a week my nanny drops my kids off at school. Then she comes back for pick up. Yes I work a 40 hour week and I have children. It’s not that weird :)

I’m talking about your total needed childcare hours for all three children which are spanning 13 hours. It’s an excessive amount of childcare by standard levels which is why your costs are so high. Most people use nursery for children younger than school age and normal school wrap around for school children.

You must work much more than a 4 hour week if you can’t do morning drop off and then the nanny is either there until 7:30pm or 8pm during the week.
You say it’s not that weird but it’s is, most parents aren’t both doing those sorts of hours.

@Completelyjo thank you for your input. Not the purpose of the thread but here goes (again). Two days a week there is an hour and 15 or 20 commute each way. Leave my desk at 6.20pm, get home at 7.40pm ish. Hence the need for childcare coverage. Three days a week I am at home the entire day. I see my children but I am also in and out of another room working. Yes I acknowledge I have chosen the most luxurious childcare option available but let’s not pretend that I’m the only mother using childcare for several hours a week whether that’s wrap around or grandparents. If your issue is the lovely 90 mins between 5.30pm and 7pm when I work from home and my nanny is still there whereas some parents have to go to pick up at 5.30pm for wrap around, that time is valuable as my clients are in a different time zone. We all have our own types of jobs. Hairdressers work weekends. I don’t touch my laptop on weekends. I wish I didn’t t have to work. I work because I am nervous about the costs of university fees/driving lessons/ the whole lot of stuff the kids will need in the future. If I could work part time I would but I can’t right now - the jobs aren’t there. Before you make a mother feel bad for earning an honest living I would think twice.

@LawyerMumAsia

Nursery and wrap around childcare has always been expensive and you needed to consider this when planning kids.

Your kids are only young once, and you need to decide what's best for both them and you and what you value the most.

My second child turned out to be twins, so I went back to work earning £20 a week after childcare and petrol and had to make the decision for my career to take a back seat (part time), partly due to finances/childcare costs, party due to childcare logistics, and partly due to the needs of my children and what was best for them. Yes, we were poorer financially, but actually that's ok. We adjusted. Made changes.

Don't worry about university fees - we have a loan system. Most kids use this. Most kids also manage their own way without having parental handouts.

Perhaps use this time to have a really good think about what you actually want from life.

I don’t really care what you work or what your set up is. It’s your family life and it doesn’t matter what anyone else would choose.
I’m merely addressing your point of your work hours being “not that weird” and your question about whether your childcare costs are normal - they aren’t, they are incredibly high but your childcare needs and the amount of time you need childcare for is very high and so per hour you’re probably on a fair price.

Hang in there OP. Those childcare costs are really high but as previously stated, on a per hour basis it's an ok rate. So your only option is reduce the hours where possible. I work in the city, live outside London. 2 days per week in the office. I have one in primary and one at nursery. Like you I didn't take much mat leave with my first. I had just been promoted. I struggled through the first year. I did APAC hours a few days per week as I had a team based there. I then had a nanny for 5 hours per day until I finished. I was exhausted but had a lot of mum guilt. Of course work was never really finished because I would then have to respond to queries in EMEA and US time zones. I do think that doing this at the time meant that when I had my second I was afforded more flexibility. I now work 8-4 but pretty much every night I am back on my laptop for a bit after the kids go to sleep. I could go elsewhere for more pay but won't have the flexibility. All this to say. It's tough now but hang in there. It will get better and we all do what we can for the good of our families.

@BusyBeatle thank you, this is really helpful to hear about. Makes me feel like I’ve got company in this crazy stage of our lives where we are pulled into multiple directions. It is really hard especially when I know my eldest needs me to be more hands on with homework now etc. Ideally I would take a few years out but if it’s hard now to get a permanent role then surely it’s going to be even harder if i
try and get back in after a gap.. who knows. Hang in there!!

I love that way of looking at it. You're speaking my language.

There is life and savings at the other end. Though you do have to remind yourself from time to time where all the money you both earned went.

A good nanny who takes 3 kids through the witching hour, home work done and baths is a godsend if you are both in a high stress job with employers/customers who demand high performance and long days. See the lack of savings as an investment but that said you might need to sit down with your husband and see if there are cut backs elsewhere. Cars, holiday, personal spends/birthday and Christmas budgets. Often when in a high income bracket where you frankly work your ass off for the return it is easy to justify to yourself why you should have some rewards. But if your mutual employment is precarious and your outgoings high by necessity then other cut backs might be sensible to build some contingency in.

I personally wouldn't cut back my hours, go part time or the rest. We started out very much like you both holding down long hours, high stress and highly paid jobs. A really hamster wheel when the kids were little. Keeping my job and my career has given us more resilience through periods of unemployment for my other half and looking back now it has been worth it all for both of us. Assuming your other half also pulls his weight at home.

A friends kids are year 5 & 7 now and she has moved to an au pair "plus" model. The downside is it's live in, so you need the space in London but it's more low key, the kids are supervised for homework and pick ups and some work dinners. Overall life is lower stress financially. She swears by antipodean au pairs, they can usually all drive, tend to have a more outdoorsy outlook [she has boys] and are more willing to get stuck in and have a go when there's a problem rather than make it hers.

We never did the au pair thing. Moved from a nanny to a great childminder with kids the same age later in the school years. As her kids grew and needed to study, so did ours so it worked for us. She had some small kids in the morning for part timers. You can find the right blend as time goes on and your kids grow a bit. For now, expensive as it is it sounds like you have the right blend now.

@TreadSoftlyOnMyDreams thank you. I love your post. You really seem to get it. Yes I think keeping my career will give us room to breathe when my partner’s career isn’t going so well (there’ve been ups and downs and even right now it’s not that stable). Main reason I stick at it all is for the kids ultimately. I feel like if I can work and give them opportunities I will. It’s certainly a balance though.

Sorry haven’t read everything, but we are in the exact same situation and would gladly give you some tips / figures we’ve worked out for alternatives if you’d like to DM me.

au pairs are definitely a no go. Impossible to find anything decent since rules imposed from brexit. And new rules mean they are paid minimum wage so works at similar to nanny.

Dont really feel like posting on this thread will go down well so please do DM 🤣

@Proudestmumofone1 au pairs are definitely a no go. Impossible to find anything decent since rules imposed from brexit. And new rules mean they are paid minimum wage so works at similar to nanny.

The horror of paying someone at least minimum wage to care for your children.

What about ‘working Dads’ or is it just Mums that should work full time, as well as doing the child care?

At the risk of ruffling some feathers. I often hear about how the kids are only young once and how guilty mums feel for being away from them. For me I see the role as a parent to be a provider just as much as to be emotionally present. If I don’t work, I feel guilty for not giving the children opportunities they may otherwise have (eg extra swimming lessons if they need/extra tuition if they’re falling behind/exposure to different experiences/a nice house to inherit in a good area with a lot of
equity, etc). Why do we not hear more about this side of things. Why do we not put weight on the fact that yes they’re only young once and then they become big humans that we chose to bring into the world and they need all sorts of things - is the right approach to say well it was important to stay home when you were younger so I can’t afford to support you now as a teenager? Maybe, maybe not. I realise it’s all personal circumstances but this attitude of don’t go for that full time job, take the part time less lucrative role because you have young kids isn’t necessarily the correct one.

Before anyone says that these are all material things : my view is that certain career paths are more challenging for people to access if they who huge student loans/need to work the minute they leave school to pay the rent (eg if one wants to train up to be a dancer) and I feel that if I work I can at least look back and say you know what I did my best to give them the best

It's all about balance isn't it? Every families sweet spot is different. There's a limit to how much stuff kids need, but you can never get the time back. But if you're all happy, then great.