Costs in excess of 30 free hours

[Katiek987]

Hi everyone

I am after some help with what childcare costs in reality look like. I’m a single woman looking to have a baby on my own but want to be realistic about whether this is financially possible. Say I was eligible for the 30 free hours from 9 months from September 2025, and I needed full time childcare, what should I expect to need to budget? I live in the SE. Am really struggling to get a true idea with the 30 hours only being over 38 weeks and all the added costs (food, nappies etc). Could be nursery or a childminder, nanny would be too expensive!

if anyone could please give me a steer or point me i the direction of another thread (I did look but couldn’t see) x

Thanks for flagging this. I would be getting close to it so if any bonus pushed me over then I would be putting it into a pension to keep under the 100k

Interesting point about time of year, I always thought that autumn would be a plus as being the eldest in the year

We don't stretch our hours as DH is a teacher so use the full 30 hours a week. DD is in nursery from 8-4 with a hot lunch, and on a funded day it costs £23.50, which includes the extra two hours and lunch and the consumable charge. If we didn't have funded hours it would be £65.50. Also, if she went for the whole day (8-6) it would be another £15.50 a day on top of the charges above. This is all before tax free childcare contribution.
I'd say on average now we pay around £400 after tax free and before the funded hours we paid around £1150 and we also had to pay for the full year - we didn't have the option of term time only. It's all the same nursery / pre school.

We are in Hampshire, and DD nursery is very reasonable. I don't think a lot of private nurseries (or not attached to a school) allow you to do the term time only.

Even if the funding for 9 month olds comes in, the indications are that it will be the term after your child turns 9 months. So for a child 9 months old on the 1st of September the funding won't kick in until January when the child is actually 13 months.