Childcare costs: Parents now pay £67,000 per child in total

[KateMumsnet]

According to a report released today, the cost of raising a child and supporting them through university has risen to £227,226, with childcare costs showing the biggest annual rise at 3.7% - almost twice the rate of inflation.

In total, parents now pay an average of £67,586 per child for childcare - and, according to the report, mothers believe that they need to earn an average of £26,000 a year to make returning to work worthwhile.

Does this chime with your experience - and if so, how has it affected your family? Have you had to make difficult decisions because of the cost of childcare? We'd love to know what you think.

Our nursery costs approximately £11k per year for a full time place. We both take advantage of childcare vouchers making the cost nearer £9k but have deliberately held off having another child until DD is out of nursery.

I would agree that £26k sounds about right for the amount needed to justify returning to work. However, I had no desire to be a stay at home mum, would have been terrible at it so I'm just thankful my salary gives me the choice.

Absolutely! Managed with 1st child but looking at options for returning to work after 2nd child. Even though DD starts school in September, we'll be paying around £16000 a year for 2 children.

I'm looking at costs of returning to work as a job share versus the reduced childcare costs but I'm worried about the long term financial impact on my pension and our ability to remortgage for a better deal.

Oh, and if I return full time we'll have no spare money for savings, holidays, emergencies, days out or even visiting grandparents. I know that's the reality for a lot of people but it seems ridiculous when both parents earn a bit over £20000 p.a.

i am a single mum and fulltime childcare costs me about 10,320 a year. with rent costing me almost 14,000 a year. I manage with some help from tax credits and child benifit i receive, but i only just manage if you take into account other bills, such as travel costs, days i have to take off work unpaid if my little one is sick because quite honestly i cant afford emergency care. They really need to do something about childcare costs, i can understand why it makes sense to be a stay at home parent. it is quite a frustrating situation. i battle to get to work on time sometimes as i can only leave my child at 8am...which gives me an hour to get back to the train station and get a train (which is never on time) to be at work at 9am. i have to leave a little early sometimes to to make sure i can pick him up on time or else i incure a charge of 1 per minute you are late.

I've been trying to get back to work. Before/after school care (plus holiday clubs) will cost me in the region of £7.5k per year for my 2 DCs.
So by the time I factor in the other costs of working (primarily transport costs), I have to be earning quite a lot to just break even. It is hard to make a case for returning to work when everyone in the family seems to have to make sacrifices to make it happen - for only a small amount of extra money annually.
During the summer, I would actually be slightly out of pocket each month as the holiday club costs exceed my potential monthly wages.

I find the cost of childcare almost crippling for my family. Our nursery is great but costs 11k a year for a full time place. My husband and I are lucky that we are both on good salaries. I'm due in the next month with our second child and we had to wait until at least some of our sons costs were covered (when he turns 3). But once I go back to work it will be really tough. I don't think people without children (or who have parents/relatives who are prepared to cover childcare for free) understand it. I try to put it into perspective when I moan (far too frequently about this!) that it costs more than our mortgage every month. My MIL would love me to stop working and be home all day as she did then go back when they start school. In my career this is completely unrealistic - I literally would have no job to return to. What drives me mad about it all is that someone is making a lot of money and it sure isn't the wonderful women who look after my child so well everyday.

Coming at it from the opposite angle - I would hope this stops people bleating about how a SAHP does not contribute financially to the family.

When you see the figures you think it can't possibly be that much, but then you think about it and wonder how you manage sometimes.
I'm quite lucky that my DH is really good at his job and covers our costs.
My heart goes out to the single parents that are struggling out there, without much support, financially or otherwise.

when our youngest starts school in sept we will have paid a minimum od 110k in childcare costs since our daughter (11) was born... we spaced our children so that we'd be paying no more than 1-1.5 fees at a time. still crippled us. I had horrific PND after each which impacted on my ability at work.

I felt for some time that we shouldn't have had our third child and felt awful for it... we had decided to have him after all .... and the quicker I accepted the consequences of my actions, the better.
That coupled with the recession and redundancy has ensured we will be in the mire financially forever.
Although I am glad to have a job and get out of the house . .. helps my wellbeing, albeit for a short while!

My DTs cost 1400 per month, plus they have an older sibling. We use childcare vouchers but I work fulltime in a relatively well paid joIn (high rate tax payer, just) and I have NOTHING left after childcare and half the mortgage. How does it affect our lives? Well we have huge credit card debt, we buy and sell things second hand, we are always overdrawn and we have cut back on everything yet still struggle. The recent cut in petrol price helps slightly and I shop at Aldi where possible. My kids do no outside of schoiol activites and we are having our first holiday this year in 3 years.
What I hate most about it is that I work hard. Really hard and always have done. I wokred hard to get qualified to do my job at night school whilst working full time and I feel that life should be easier.
I employ a nanny for the DTs as this is cheaper than 2 full time nursery places (quotes were 3000 per month ) yet we get no tax relief on employing her, despite the relief rates that the Government have put in place for small employers it doesn't count if you aren't a business.

In summary, it's a huge struggle and a constant worry.

I have just returned to work and we are essentially paying for me to work as we pay our nanny £300 a month more than I earn (nursery for our two would have been £700 a month more than I earn - we are in London) But we take a long view which is that I will continue to progress and earn much more as our childcare costs reduce so we're taking the pain now for gain later on. But it makes bad days at work hard to deal with when I know I'm not actually earning anything.

Soup

Ditto. That is some financial contribution from a sahp.

I can't believe people have this sort of money to spend on childcare.
Some have cleaners too.

Not a judgement at all, but how the other half live can be an eye opener when you aren't familiar with their life.

"How the other half live" - is a bit of a sweeping statement. Most are struggling with the costs, only a lucky few can afford this without making serious sacrifices elsewhere. We are using money we've saved over the last 7-8 years to fund the gap. It's a short term investment for a long term gain. From a personal perspective I would rather be short on cash for a couple of years than lose the career I've put 6 years work into. But I wish it didn't have to be like this.

PassthecremeEggs

As this isn't my lifestyle choice and I have no idea how much cc costs over time, as I have never been particularly interested.

People who work and pay cc are "the other half", to me.

There really was nothing but surprise in my post.

Fair enough morethan.

We estimate that once dc2 goes to school in September, we would have forked out approx 100k for both children (dc1 is 6 years old and dc2 is 4). It was an age gap of 2 years 7 months. So it was a relief when we did have 2 in nursery for that 1.5 years that it was when dc1 turned 3 and we had the 15h free. They both go/went full-time nursery as we both worked.

During the 1.5 years when both were in nursery, it was a 1600 bill monthly. Our mortgage at that time was thankfully very very low. At the moment, our nursery fees are similar to our mortgage.

During that time as well, my dh was made redundant from his professional job as he was in the construction industry and that got hit very badly during the economic crisis. I was the sole breadwinner for a long time and thankfully I earned comfortably - having said that it was a huge shock to go from double incomes to one.

In terms of how it's changed our lives - well, we shop at Aldi's (thank goodness for them), and we have a lot of second-handclothing.

nothing wrong with that, except that we are supposedly earning the sorts of income that the goverment says 'should pay more tax' and 'shouldn't get tax credits', 'should have lower child benefit' etc. I don't have a problem paying more tax, if I am ABLE to pay more tax.

We managed because we used money that we'd saved up for many years. My ISA went from 5 figures to a very small 3 figure sum. I do not have the money saved for a 'rainy day' (supposedly 6 months of salary?).

We are very much looking forward to September - we will have to pay for afterschool club at school, but that's 9/day compared to the current 48/day at nursery!!

Three children under 10 here. I work 70% FTE, DH is full time and (barely) a higher rate taxpayer, so no child allowance any more.

All our childcare is paid for - no family within 80 miles (we moved around for those higher paying graduate jobs...). It is our single biggest expense.

I think it costs 15-16K annually, though it's hard to be exact with holiday club costs etc.

Result: living in a house that is way too small and which I would love to move on from, running two old cars, children wearing a lot of hand me downs, and we have yet to have a family holiday anywhere other than a UK cottage or campsite. We don't save anymore, though we do pay into pensions.

We're not struggling, but we haven't got the 'nice' things in life either. I feel economically pretty much where my parents were when they were 15 years younger than DH and I are now, and far lower earning.

Our childcare bill is 10k per year (1 DS age 2), it's such a short period of time in the scale of a career, but it's very important that you consider the cost split between two parents (unless you're a single parent ofc), it makes such a huge difference to the 'how much do you have to earn to make it worthwhile' question.

I have three children under five. Oldest is in reception. when my eldest was an only we put her in nursery at £70 p/d 4dpw. £14.5k per year.

I had DD2 and DS1 in very quick succession afterwards. When i went back to work we hired a nanny. We pay her £18k per year gross. My youngest is september born so we will have an extra year of childcare to pay for. I think by the time all three are in fulltime education, we will have spent close to 90k on childcare.

I bitterly resent the fact that all of that is paid out of our taxed income. As it is now my nannys gross salary takes over half of my net salary which is disheartening.

I love our nanny and i wish i could pay her more but i cant at the moment and still put food on the table and a roof over our heads. If her income was taken from my gross salary there would be much more wiggle room for the payrise she deserves.

at some point, something has to give.

some of the figures quoted on here are eyewateringly high. where I live childcare isn't anything near the figures quoted on this thread - in most cases its not even half, even in some of the expensive nurseries which feed private schools they are as expensive as the figures quoted here.

these figures must be for the SE of the country and as they definitely aren't the norm where I live.

Christ, that sounds like a bargain to me but twins in London and a full on city job means that that figure just about covers our childcare for 2.5 years... (and that's for a 4 day week)

I earn well and so does my husband but if you told me that we could earn this much and still think twice about having a holiday (in the UK! self-catering!) I would think you were mad. But that's the reality.

I am a single pregnant mum who pays £10296 for childcare per year, which will double when baby number 2 is born as I can not afford to take a full year's maternity! It costs me approx 800/850 per month for bills and rent, never mind ensuring my children have decent clothes and days out. I am desperate to take LO on holiday but this is out of question as of yet. sigh :(

The figure I quote is for the West Midlands. Approximately £50 per day, with a small discount for full time. I don't know anyone who pays less than £45 per day for a nursery place.

We do now get the 15 hours funded during term time which makes approximately £300 difference per month in term time.

I can't afford to go back to work now that I've had no2. Nursery for 2 days a week for 2 children would be £300 more than I earn. Tax credits still wouldn't help.

£26k sounds about right. I'm on less than that.

Since DD1 was born, we have spent, £6000 on nursery fees. No surprise we drive a 14 yr old car and haven't had a holiday really!