The £100k childcare cliff edge - how is anyone meant to make this work?

[Saladleaf]

I completely understand that on paper, a six-figure household income sounds like a lot. I’m not trying to be ignorant of the fact that many people are struggling far more. But for anyone actually living it, especially in the South East, the reality feels very different once you factor in childcare costs.

We’re looking at full-time nursery fees of around £2,500 a month per child, and I honestly don’t know how families are supposed to make it work once you hit the £100k cliff edge and lose access to the 30 free hours. It’s completely unsustainable.

I know some people say you can get around it by putting more into your pension so your income technically falls below the threshold, but that just isn’t realistic for everyone. With the cost of living, mortgage, and general expenses, we simply can’t afford to take home hundreds less each month. We already don’t have holidays, don’t buy new clothes, and don’t even have a car. There isn’t any more to cut back.

It’s not even about wanting handouts, it’s that full-priced childcare in this country is so eye-wateringly expensive that it makes working impossible for many women. The system actually discourages the lower earner, usually the mother, from staying in work.

A friend of mine is a good example. Her husband earns over the threshold, and she’s just spent years retraining into a new career that she’s passionate about, but is now entry level. We worked out that if they have a baby, it would literally cost them money they can't afford for her to keep working once childcare, rising mortgage payments and bills are factored in. She’d have to give it all up. It’s so demoralising.

And the whole system makes no sense. Two people earning £99k each can claim free hours, but one person earning £100k can’t. Someone on £50k with one child gets support, but a couple on £100k with two children get nothing, even though their childcare costs are double and they are taxed more. It’s not unreasonable to have worked hard, built a decent career and want two children, but the government seems to penalise you for it.

Other countries manage to offer affordable childcare to everyone because they see it as essential. Here it just feels like you’re being punished for trying to do well. For those of us in the South East, it’s even harder. Living costs are sky high, childcare is extortionate, and it’s not realistic to just move somewhere cheaper when your jobs and lives are here.

It feels like you’re being backed into a corner. I find it so demoralising that the system seems designed to push mothers out of their careers, especially when you’ve worked so hard to build one in the first place. AIBU in feeling like this?

So why are childcare costs so much lower in other European countries?

Because I think in the UK they are treated like a private good and thus mainly private provision and privately funded by families (govt makes some contribution). But in say France it is seen more like a public good and the state makes a very significant contribution with families paying a lot less.

It’s a damn shame. Quality childcare is important national infrastructure and should be treated like that.

At £120k your take home is less in real terms than on £99k because you lose your 30 hrs childcare. I worked out the exact numbers but I think you have to be closer to 130k to actually be better off. Go the pension route or drop to 4 days a week.

This is nothing new. 20 years ago we were on £90k and I basically worked to pay child care of about £1,500 pm

and there were no subsidies

It’s even worse in Scotland. The SNP made a manifesto commitment to improve funded childcare, they have been given the money to match England’s policies under the Barnett formula…and yet children won’t get any funded childcare until they are 3-3.5 years old.

They can get it from 2-2.5 years old if you give up work though :)

They won’t go to school until 4.5-5.5 years old too, so we have another year of paying for childcare too.

My child’s nursery fees are £3,000 a month.

Why do the SNP hate women so much?!

Missing the point here again.

The presence of the subsidies (and being excluded from them) create an incentive for people to work less to claim the benefits, as they otherwise face a 100%+ tax rate on income over £100k.

As of September 2025 I went from not being eligible for £2k of childcare help for a 9 month old, to not being eligible for around £15k of childcare help for a 9 month old. To earn £15k over £100k, I need to earn £135k gross. This creates a very large incentive to ensure I can claim those free hours.

That is the problem.

and that is meant to make me feel sorry for you?

and how about, there were no subsidies for us and so our £90k was all we earned to pay for child care.

We have had to space our children out to ensure the oldest is at school before we have another. Otherwise we’d be paying in excess of £4k for nursery fees which despite me being a high earner (my partner isn’t) we don’t get help. We can’t afford that when the mortgage on our 3 bed terraced house in a London suburb is now £3,500 a month.
I appreciate I earn well and am lucky to do, but it does sting that friends have a higher collective household income than us and receive 30 free hours.

Whether you have a point or not, couching it in faux concern for women who earn vastly less then that astronomical amount is gross.

It’s not about ‘feeling sorry’ - its about it not being rational and incentivising people to work less / earn less / pay less tax - which has a broader impact on productivity and growth and overall tax take.

You need to think about this beyond ‘that’s more than I earn, so what’s the problem’.

This.

I haven't had to pay nursery fees for about 6 years now but shudder at the thought. With the cost of living right now I can't even imagine having to pay this as well yet I earn much more than I did back then. It is completely unsustainable and the system is as usual all wrong.

this was us 20 years ago. £90k income, £3,500 mortgage.

We had to have a 4 year gap between our DC for the same reason and so sorry if my heart doesn't bleed for those who have to forgo a £20k salary increase in order to get childcare subsidy

What was going on 20 years ago isn’t really relevant to the impact of policies which are impacting behaviour today.

It’s not a ‘who has it worse’ competition, it’s a discussion about the peculiarities of the current tax / benefits system, and how that’s impacting people’s choices about work.

Totally agree, OP. I have done absolutely all that I can to stay under the threshold - dropped to 4 days a week, put all my bonus and more into pension. Work asked me to go back to 5 days a week recently and I calculated that they would need to pay me >£80k more just to "break even" (i.e. for me to end up earning 25% more after tax than I do now). Adding a 5th day would make me close to £2k a month worse off. How can that make sense??

There's usually very little sympathy for a "woe is me" attitude from high earner, but this is a case of "woe is the economy". I'd be contributing a lot more into the system in all respects if this threshold wasn't so distortionary.

This and piss poor maternity pay below min wage needs to be urgently reviewed. It’s keeping women seen as the SAHP doing a task that is not valuable while the husband goes out to earn the money.

See I don’t understand this because on one hand you want to avoid paying more tax on earnings after your first 100k but on the other you want the tax to pay for everybody’s childcare, not just the lower earners.

Try being a single parent where your income is over the threshold for child benefit but two people each earning half get to keep it, and you also get taxed more at the higher rate. The system is full of anomalies which don’t make sense.

Agree. Its mad that we have a system where someone earning 99k is worse off, if they get a 10k pay rise. Doing well and being promoted should never lead to a net loss just because you have nursery age children. A system that's designed to make people earning just over the threshold, better off if they work part time, is fuckinf nuts

Yes and we also pay more tax here. I often question exactly what for.

It’s an incredibly negative nudge and caps aspiration. When you think how long we are expected to be economically active in the UK, I have now been paying NI for over 47 years and tax for over 45 years, we should be able to make help with pre-school care universal (beyond just the 15 hours from 3). I think part of the problem is some low - medium earners do not appreciate the cost of the public services they use in relation to the tax they pay. Many will not be net contributors but don’t realise, whereas the 100K plus earners will be paying a lot of tax but likely getting very little in return.

I’m sure they felt huge, but in reality people had more money left over then. Salaries have stalled, house prices and rent have gone through the roof, as has the general cost of living.

may not be the most popular choice but I had a European nanny who was young and learning English over here. I paid a basic wage and NI and then topped up with cash in hand… so about £1,800 - £2000 per month net for her for 2 kids but one was in school. So after school pick up in addition to the baby. I also had a cleaner so she didn’t have to do any cleaning. Her hours were 8.30am until 7pm or when I got home if my work held me up. I paid holiday pay for her and she had food at my place. Throughout this period of my kids being young I was in 95k - 115k pa as a single mum.
Couldn’t afford to do it correctly via a nanny agency so went cash in hand nanny. Both kids have now graduated with first class degrees and are fab.

Out of interest, if you don’t go on holidays, have a car or spend money on new clothes, what do you spend your money on?! Is your mortgage massive?