To restrict my husband from low paid job?

[toja555]

My 16-month old DS is currently staying with my husband at home because husband is unemployed. I earn 30k a year and this is our all family budget. My husband is an accountant, but has been unemployed for 8 months and is desperate to take any work even paid 12k a year (min rate 5.95). I checked government website based on this assumption (42k a year) and average cost of childcare £200/week and it came out that the child/working tax credits we will get is roughly £40 a month? With this presumption I want him to stay at home instead of choosing a low paid job because it is just does not pay off!

My question is, am I right in my presumptions? Because my DH is very upset with me restricting him from work.

FioFioFio : he has taken a job as a mail sorter.

I think if he wants to go back to work, even if it means you are financially worse off then as long as you can still pay bills, buy food then he should go to work. And I don't think it should be up to you to "allow" him.

When my DD was little I staretd a full time degree course which meant we had to pay money for childcare for DD. If I'd stayed at home we'd have been better off by £100s a month. Not once did my DH ever say he didn't think it was a good idea as he knew it was something I really wanted to do.

Taking a low paid job for a while may mean that he gets a much better paid job in the future. The alternative could be that he spends the next 3 years at home not working and then really struggle to get back into work. Would you like to see him still unemployed in 10 years time?

SomeGuy, unfortunately that is the case. I have not invented the childcare prices.

sorry i missed that bit. Isnt mail sorting shift work?

toja555: what borough do you live in? I have some experience of Greater London childminder costs and £4.50/hour seems high to me.

StripeyKnickersSpottySock... Taking a low paid job for a while may mean that he gets a much better paid job in the future.

I can?t see how mail sorter job will contribute to his accountancy career.
While DH?s wish to pursue qualification has been always supported but now he seems to be heading away from this.

Zone 4 is most defintely not central London. You can get as others have said far cheaper child care.

It just looks better on a CV to have been in work, doesn't matter what the job is. It will give him up to date references.

SomeGuy I would not like to specify here, but it is SE next to the border with Kent.

If you're in London and he is a pq cima then he should be able to at least get temp contract work well above £6 ph and get study leave for exams. Who is currently funding his course? There are plenty of agencies such as Robert Half who recruit on that basis.

Hi toja555

I do sympathise with you. YANBU. I understand where your husband is coming from - was not legal, is now legal. Was working as accountant illegally so now his past experience does not count as he cannot get references etc. There are many good people in London like this - I have employeed nannies in similar circumstances.

I am an accountant. It is pointless him getting a non accounting role in preference to obtaining qualifications. It is very difficult to get accounting roles without any form of qualification or legal reference. Particularly with the financial circumstances it would be more cost effective to stay at home and pass his exams. If he then needs to get work experience he could do this in evenings/ weekends by doing voluntary work for a charity which would help him to get paid work in an accounting role.

Childcare is so expensive in London that it will cost you money for him to work and your child will be looked after by a nursery or childminder - not a family member.

8 months is not that long to be out of work esp in the current ecomnomic climate. If he can demonstrate that he has used his un employed time gainfully on obtaining a qualification this will be worth more than having held down a job as a mail sorter.

However a word of caution - studying is hard. You will need to support him by doing the eveingn and weekend childcare & he will need to get his arse into gear and reallly work hard at his studies.

FioFioFio
sorry i missed that bit. Isnt mail sorting shift work?

DH hopes it can be, but he was called for daytime 9-5

toja555, you already did say where you live in one of your other posts.

I did a quick search, I only found one place, which has a fancy website: www.samstots.co.uk/, and the listed costs are £35-£40/day for 10 hours. I am sure you could get cheaper, given that somewhere with a website is not likely to be the cheapest option, South Norwood is not Chelsea.

Your vocabulary is very unfortunate (you are paying for things and restricting him from work), but I have some sympathy for your position actually. If you are on the line between managing and going under, any reduction in family income, for any reason, needs to be justifiable to all parties. It is easier to get work when you are in work, but I don't know how that works between very different sectors. Could you have a trial period to see how it goes?

Incidentally as an employer I tend to be a bit [hmmm] of skilled workers coming fresh from an unskilled background. I don't think mail sorting is going to be a boost to the CV of a would-be accountant.

OTOH, HR types might think differently.

LIZS ? I am funding his course ATM, it is not that expensive. We agreed that until he finds a job it is worth studying ? and he does it with devotion.
As MsJoanSmith said, it is difficult to get even temp job in this economical climate. He registered with number of agencies only to be told that there are plenty of candidates with Cambridge or Oxford degree happy to work for 20k.
DH would do any accounts job but as a matter of fact he has not got one.
SomeGuy ? my mistake, I considered central London was is surrounded by outer London, but I was probably wrong to do that.
As for childcare costs, I had a chance to look at it when my DH was still employed and I was to return to work ? there were a couple childminders with £3.5 rate but they were horrible. I would not wish my child to go to those ones. Now I am considering nursery i/o childminder because DS is older and nursery is cheaper, however the better ones have waiting lists.

I cannot believe that there is any serious will to pursue CIMA qualys. It is a difficult set of professional exams, and requires practical experience in a heavy duty accounting environment.

Playing around with mail sorting jobs and book keeping work in someone else's name is not the route to this kind of qualification.

Lets face it, there are some basic personal qualities to do with trust and probity when you handle other people's money.

So I'm guessing CIMA is a complete red herring, and somebody is kidding themselves here.

STick to your guns Toja555 - I have looked at childcare in SE London for £4 ph - you can get it but its generally very poor quality. ANy one who is any good will be charging more. Also I would ask myself why would you want to pay someone less than the minimum wage to look after your child when your husband could do it?

Even if he doesn't like it much it can't be much worse than doing a low paid mail sorting job which will not further his career in a profession. He might meet some interesting people who could help him - I do feelance bookeeping now for people that I met at play groups.

C in H 2 - agree with what you say about CIMA although also appreciate that there are plenty of good overseas candidates who have been unable to work legally. Maybe the OP's husband would be better off getting AAT first which you can get without practical experinece and then moving on tho CIMA.

WHat work did he have 8 mnths ago - legal or illegal? This will make a difference & if he is relying on her to make him legal he will have to just swallow his pride and get on with it.

I am a CIMA accountant and yes the exams are hard work, I did mine bc and still found it hard going. But it was the best thing for my career, once you have those qualifications your dh will have no trouble finding work. Even if he was part qualified he should find his job prospects improve - what stage Cima is he at?
I would support him in studying but would be concerned that he is taking a job that would prolong the process as he will have less time to study. I did my final exams by attending college full time for 3 months (the others I did at night school), it was hard financially at the time but it got it over and done with more quickly.

you'd all be chewing your right arm off in anger if this was a working father saying that he didn't want his wife (who had previously worked, but lost their job) to go out to work.

Maybe you need to look at this in the longer term.

If your husband is unemployed for over 12 months, he may become unemployable and never get a job. Assuming that you are mid 30s, you stand to lose out on a total of £360,000 before retirement. (This assumes he stays on £12k and never gets a pay rise).

See the job an investment - you lose at the beginning but so you can win in the longer term.

The other aspect you need to take into account is pension: how do you plan to finance your old age? If your husband is not working, it is going to be very difficult.

The costs of childcare will decrease when your child hits 2 years and the ratios of carers to children are allowed to get bigger.

Also look into Childcare Vouchers - this could save you £2400 a year in nursery fees.

In 18 months you will also get help with the childcare fees from the government with 15 hours free.

So why not let him try it out for a year, with the understanding that this time next year he will look for a better paid position.

He sounds like a decent guy - he genuinely wants to be useful when he could sit around doing nothing, so isn't he worth making a short-term sacrifice for?

Am now going to contradict myself and say that if I was recruiting I would certainly be happy to take on someone who had got off their a**e and got a job, even if it wasn't in accounts while they were studying as I think it shows a commitment to improving themselves. I don't think employers would see the fact that he was working as a mailsorter as a negative once he gains some qualifications.

Childcare doesn't always get cheaper at the age of 2 - mine certainly doesn't

Royal Mail do have a good pension too.
The wage will and does rise quite generously and the holiday entitlement is good too.
Once he is in the job he will have the potential to alter his shifts and do shift work as well and there is often loads of overtime and christmas is coming up the overtime then is always begging for people.

And I said it before get your DH to ask about transport at least to work from a Royal Mail van either another worker going that way at that time or someone out and about heading to the sorting office.
They are usually pretty good at finding out where this is possible honestly.