45k salary entirely eaten by childcare

[Sofiewoo]

Granted salaries aren’t what they were only a handful of years ago but aibu to be shocked that my 45k salary is now entirely eaten by childcare and getting to work??
I figured if you are earning in the 20s you would assume that but not mid 40s!

I’m trying to weigh up whether to just take the next year and a half off instead of working for nothing. I know, pension, career blah blah but it’s mentally very difficult to juggle drop offs, work schedules and sickness but be no better off financially at the end of the month.

Did anyone else not realise it was a bad as this?

Is it just one salary in your household or two? If two I look at childcare as a cost against the household not just one income. But personally had I had kids I probably would have done everything possible to try not to work outside the home at least until they were nursery age.

In your position I would take the 18 months if my household could afford it.

I had the same issue when my kids were in nursery, I was working four days a week and received precisely £100 a month once childcare and travel were accounted for. I stuck with it though as I didn't want to fall out of the job market, and it was the right decision for that reason, but it's SHIT. And it's always women who face this dliemma (I know someone will bleat 'it's men too' at this point but it really isn't, not in any way the same numbers).

Agree with PP who suggested a career break if that's possible. Also, you've not mentioned your networks, what are these and could you make more use of them? E.g.:

GPs/extended family/nieces/nephews, e.g. one friend I have covers all her June to early October childcare with another friend's university student daughter! Paid above minimum wage but cheaper than nursery and it's 1-1. Of course not everyone will have this, but worth asking around friends if they have a child at uni/college. Flexible part-time jobs are hard to get these days, so I guess many students would like this.

Create your own network - a bit messy, but do you know other mums/dads in similar situations? Can you work out a rota of some kind between two or three other families/couples? My NDN are doing this at the moment - they do like-for-like food and entertainment so very little extra cost, and it's saved them a lot of bother over Easter because their local schools have overlapping school holidays.

Just some thoughts. Trying to be helpful. Childcare is so expensive!

No. They have no resilience for the frankly ridiculous reasons you gave for why you didn't want to move them.

Odd to see you're resorting to name calling after complaining about other people posting aggressively.

After tax, NI and pension contributions her take home pay could be £2,700 per month maybe. Where I live a season ticket to London is £7,000. Childcare costs could then easily leave her with nothing.

Bit of a leap there. Perhaps try and avoid too much Netflix.

18 months put of your career us nothing in terms of development for the vast majority of jobs. And yeah 1.5 years of not contributing to pension has an impact but once again not insurmountable if you think will he contributing for decades (even with the power of compounding.)

I would also expect my partner to contribute to my pension while I am doing unpaid work.

Plenty of women take time out and return without too much loss to save their MH.

Use your time off to take on a few short free courses for the cv gap.

Our DD’s nursery bill was £1,600, which was the same as the mortgage on our 3 bed house in London. I believed childcare fees to be high when DD was born in 2017, based on all that we knew by the time DD was 3 years old, we decided one kid was enough for us. People don’t seem to understand that having more than 1 child is an incredibly expensive endeavour that very few can properly afford. Unless you have limitless pockets, don’t assume that there is a tax break that will cover you - there isn’t.

Have you thought about both of you going part time? My DH and I both work 20 hours a week so get lots of time with the kids and each other. We can't afford fancy holidays but otherwise our standard of living is good. I know noone has a perfect live but ours is pretty close.

I was obviously referring to retired grandparents who are fit and healthy. It's wrong to assume everyone in this age bracket is unwilling or incapable of childcare as is proven by many. It keeps them young and relevant.

At first I thought “surely not it can’t be THAT expensive” but my kids are 8 and 11 and when they were in nursery it was about £50 a day - which full time would be £26k. And that’s 4-7 years ago.

Even if you got a nanny OP and paid them NMW you’d only be saving pennies.

It’s a fucking shambles. YANBU. I’d hate the thought of going to work simply to pay one massive bill - if you have the energy and will to be a SAHM I’d just do it! But ear in mind one day you won’t pay nursery fees and it sounds like your eldest is almost school age?

This is a crazy leap. Children now are coddled and their needs considered more than ever, and yet issues such as the ones you outline are more prevalent than ever. It seems like society is never capable of balance in anything, it's always an extreme of one thing or another. Reality is that moving childcare setting once is unlikely to have a profound impact on a child, but if the parent doesn't want to that's also fine.

Why isn't the father contributing half of cost of childcare?? Shouldn't be all your responsibility just because you are female! Look at it as a joint household cost.

Look at options for going part time and both of you dropping to 4 days so you only have 3 days childcare.

Please don't forget the impact on pensions and career etc. it's worth it to keep career going.

Why is not wanting to move nursery settings for no tangible benefit ridiculous or anything to do with resilience?

People moving area isn’t remotely relevant because that’s not my situation.

Nursery fees within the same area are all largely the same, waiting lists in my area specifically are over 12 months.

You haven’t given me any reason why changing setting would be of any benefit and instead went on some utter rampage about the resilience of my kids, who you don’t know, and some utter ramblings about kids of today nonsense.

Wow!
claiming to know that it would be beneficial for the OP’s children if she were to give up her job ..

How weird to think you know other people’s children better than they do

OP if you have a good idea of the school your kids will go to could you look at their preschool for your eldest perhaps? That may alleviate some of the financial strain!

All of this.

Obviously if you have a career that would be nearly impossible to get back into you need to think carefully - and if you have a shit partner that is a factor too. But 18 months out of a 40+ year working life is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I know people who have taken anything from 6 months to 3 year sabbaticals - no kids involved and their careers and pension are fine.

NRTFT just original post

I did, we were £10 better off a month with us working with DDs were in nursery from 8am to 6pm. They were exhausted, we wee exhausted, no time with our DDs, add on days we had to take off when they had tummy bugs, fevers, chicken pox and so on, we decided it just wasn’t worth it.

Best decision we ever made, I loved being at home with them.

Every professional switched on woman I know that took 3-6 years out for kids is back in the work force in the same or better position. Employers like us. We are calm sensible and won’t take mat leave.

I didn’t go back but started up a “mum business” using my old skill set and now out earn Dh who is a high earner. Soooo glad I did it. Teens are off doing their own thing. You can’t get those years back.

Every professional switched on woman I know that took 3-6 years out for kids is back in the work force in the same or better position. Employers like us. We are calm sensible and won’t take mat leave.

Sure....

What options do you think you would consider? Would you consider at all writing pros and cons in respect of which option? (Not here of course, but in your own time). Something like - Option 1, change nothing, pros, cons. Option 2 - change nursery, pros, cons. Option 3 - not work for x number of years, pros, cons. Would there be any more options that you could consider - move out of London, involve grandparents, something like that? Don’t hesitate to add cons like - “I just hate the thought of it!”

...but if nursery takes up OPs entire salary, effectively they are living on one wage anyway?

Not saying she should give up work btw

I’d definitely consider taking unpaid parental leave for a period of time if that is an option but I’d also be wary of whether you’d really be better off overall being at home.

On a pure cash basis
£31k net and after the tax free child care element you pay £24.5k in childcare.
Is your travel card at £200 monthly or weekly? If weekly the value equating to your entire salary is spent on childcare and travel to work and you still haven’t quite covered your travel card. If monthly you have about £350/month after accounting for nursery/work travel. Whichever it is you should add the value of pension contributions to it and see how much worse off per month you’d be in cash terms if you didn’t work. Also worth considering if there are other savings you’d make not working (buying lunch/coffees for example) and other costs you’d incur (baby/toddler groups, passes for child friendly attractions etc). That way you have a very clear idea of what it would cost you and if you feel like it’s affordable on a pure cash basis.

Then you consider do you want to stop working and if so do you want to do it for a very fixed period of time?

If you want to do it then if your travel pass is monthly what would be great would be to request a year of parent starting from mid September year before eldest starts school, save that £350/month to that point and have it for a mix of spending on fun stuff during your year with the kids and paying to get youngest settled into childcare. Take the year off unpaid and enjoy it. Once eldest is back in school and youngest is sorted in childcare go back hopefully rejuvenated after a change & a break from the office.

If you don’t want to do it then don’t. It’s a short term cost and it’s going to get easier as they get older.

That’s not been my experience of friends that have gotten out for a spell - 18 months extends as you’ve still got the younger one at nursery and you’ve then got two drop offs with the older one in school, the awkwardness of the school holidays, homework, projects, the fact that you have got all of the non work chores and the distribution has become unequal and then you decide to wait until they’re both at primary, and it builds...