To think the extra working day isn’t worth it?

[planningchildcare]

Expecting first DD any day and we are just putting down our deposit for our childcare place.

I was planning on returning to work 4 days a week.

We’ll be eligible for 30 funded hours when I return to work next autumn. We asked the nursery for a breakdown of what the cost will be and they have said they spread the funding year round so if she attends 2 full days a week, this is totally covered by the funding and we’d just need to pay a top-up for consumables which is £6.50 a day. That means our total bill would be only slightly over £50 for the month - which I think is incredible for two full days of care!

If we wanted DD to attend for 3 full days a week, the third day would not be covered so we would have to pay for it. This would be £75 extra each week, so £300 in a 4 week month. After tax and contributions I probably bring home only a little more than £100 a day. So 3 days of my work would fund 4 days of care for her. I could decide to lose one day of pay every month in order to have an extra day off every week with my child and drop to 3 days instead.

I know in the grand scheme of, £350 is still cheap for 3 days a month. My bug bear is that in this situation £300 is just for that extra day a week.

Is 3 days a no brainer?

I understand how important it is to contribute to pensions and stay in the workplace but equally think I would have a better work life balance working PT.

Three days a week is a great balance with small children. Even better actually is 2 days and they are in nursery 3 days but doesn’t sound like you can do that!
Keeps your hand in, tops up your income, keeps pension ticking over and you can go back up later in life. Sounds like you probably have the sort of job where you leave it at the end of the day and you’re done and you probably won’t be asked to actually work full time but be paid for 3 days!
Good luck and enjoy your lovely new baby.

That does sound ideal! And yes, it’s just like that, thankfully.

Thank you for the well wishes :)

Also sorry if OP isn’t totally clear, I was struggling for ways to phrase it

Having a similar discussion with DP, wondering if it's worth putting DD in an extra day so he can increase his hours. The extra take-home after covering nursery, his commute and any extra costs (even a coffee!) is so minimal, it really doesn't feel worth it for another stressful day in the rat race rather than a day where he takes DD out, gets DIY or housework done... We've yet to work out what impact it might have on his pension contributions though and that will probably be the deciding factor.

This is it, isn’t it? It’s the stress of the commuting and monotonous rat race. I don’t understand the point in transferring the money earned from that straight to nursery

I would base this on whether dropping the extra day would have a further impact on career progression or not and also consider whether you are planning to have any more children soon (if so, what would mat pay look like).

As far as big picture goes, are keeping your hand in work and maintaining pension contributions, I personally would not worry about the extra pension contribution you make from working one more day - the short(er) term is more important to me. But if dropping the day has impact on future mat pay plus career progression, my opinion is better to do it and pay the nursery as benefits are bigger.

Remember you can still use the government's childcare tax free scheme to help with the bill

Thank you for this. My workplace allow us to review part time hours every 12 months and pick up more again if we’d like, which I think is fab and solves the future maternity pay worries.

Forgot about that!

Personally I’d go down to 3 days. I’m a bit biased but I am 3 days part time and like having 4 days off. Like you I genuinely can’t imagine paying a top up fee to send my son to nursery for the extra day. Life’s a juggle with DC and working anyway so 3 days for me is good. I also bring home around 100 a day too so think it’s pointless working to pay most of that on the extra day

It just all feels so wrong, and unfair, though doesn't it?

Your joint salary is contributing to the full cost of childcare – not just yours. Take the tax free off too.

This is why I dropped my hours after mat leave with DC2. I worked out on my low wage it only made financial sense to work on the two funded days that DC1 had. Even then I was barely earning anything whilst I had two in nursery but I'd be making a loss if I worked more which we just couldn't afford as a family (and I wouldn't want to do anyway, it wasn't a 'career' job or anything worth investing in).

So I say go for it and work 3 days.

3 days is amazing. I have done 3 days since my DC were little and they are now both at Uni. Luckily I went from 22.5 hours over 3 days to full time over 3 days (Nurse doing long days). It is a lovely life balance

Where's the extra day coming from? Is your DH also planning to do 4 days per week? If so, you doing 3/5 and him doing 4/5 might shift the balance so it's not equal and you end up becoming the default parent rather than equal parents. I'd try to stick to equal if at all possible for a whole host of reasons.

I've done all sorts of different part time working arrangements in my time, and actually my favourites were either 2 days p week (screws progression and obviously low pay, but home life ran like clockwork) or 4 days per week with a Wednesday off (only 2 days at a time, a nearly full pay, progression back on the table). I actually think 3 days a week is the worst of both worlds, and you end up feeling like you haven't got enough time at work or at home to get everything you need to do done.

you're thinking about it in very short terms, what will your job look like in 3 years? if you'd still be on the same pay/at the same level because you don't work enough hours, you're screwing yourself out of a lot of extra future money, as you could be on significantly more than you're "losing" now in the long run. if it wouldn't have any impact that's different.

I know that. Still doesn’t make a difference to my example though.

Thank you, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. Did also consider 4 days with Wednesday off

I'd give serious consideration to dropping the hours, and always liked 3 days myself.