Financial help for working parents

[RookieParent]

Hello all,

We're new parents first time posting on mumsnet and looking for advice on financial support.

We are currently looking around at nurseries for our 10 month old and shocked at the fees (~£1000 a month!). Both of us are working parents which seems to rule us out of nearly every type of government support apart from tax-free childcare.

Questions we would like help with are:

• is there any other funding support available?
• are there any alternative types of childcare that we can look into?

Regards,
RP

Hi, sorry but apart from tax free no, unless you qualify for universal credit. There is no government support until the term after they turn 3 or 2 if you are on curtain benefits. Childminders are usually cheaper and follow the EYFS just like nursery’s. But you will need back up if the childminder is sick or on holiday

You will be eligible for tax free childcare (which reduces the bill by 20%). And when your child turns 3, you'll be eligible for funded hours (which is 30 hours a week, assuming you are both working enough).

There is unfortunately no other help than that. It's just expensive, but it's only for a few years. You may find you can work a bit more flexibly to save on time spent in nursery or at a childminder. For example, I worked compressed hours (10 hours on M-Th) and had Fridays off. This saved us paying for the extra day in nursery. Or you can move around your working hours/days to work more in the evenings or on a weekend day, if possible, when the other parent can be home.

From a financial perspective, unless you're on a low wage, it's usually to your advantage to pay for childcare and keep working rather than taking more time out of work. So even if most of one of your incomes is eaten up by childcare costs for the next 2 years, you'll be better off after those 2 years than if one of you stopped working. So it's worth seeing how you can make it work if you both planned to stay working.

Unfortunately not. We are out of the other side of it now that we get the 30 hours for 3 year olds but it was a very expensive couple of years to get to that point.

No there isn’t any other help until 3 years when the 30hrs funded kicks in.

Childminders are cheaper than nursery in some areas but not in mine. Nursery is £51 a day (10.5hrs) at our nursery with a discount for full time. Childminders are £4-4.50 p/h inc food so not much in it.

No offence, but didn’t you research this when you decided to have a baby? We agonised over the affordability before TTC! But it’s only for a few years. Our nursery bill exceeds our mortgage. It’s very tight and why we can only afford one.

Is everyone eligible for tax free childcare?

We pay £1500. I knew it would be expensive but those first few visits were almost sickening. I justify it now though because he genuinely loves it, eats like a king and has already learnt so much even though he just turned 1.

@1940s

Is everyone eligible for tax free childcare?

No, there’s minimum & maximum criteria. Neither parent can be earning more than £100k, and both have to be working more than 16hr a week a minimum wage, if I remember correctly.

@NickyHeath thanks!

Yes everyone is eligible for tax free help, you just set up an account see childcare choices website .

it’s the 30 childcare hours where you have to meet certain criteria to get the additional 15 hours. (Both parents if you live together have to be working 16 hours a week and not earning £100k etc ) If 1 parent works and the other does not you will not get the additional 15 hours.

@Apple40

Yes everyone is eligible for tax free help, you just set up an account see childcare choices website .

it’s the 30 childcare hours where you have to meet certain criteria to get the additional 15 hours. (Both parents if you live together have to be working 16 hours a week and not earning £100k etc ) If 1 parent works and the other does not you will not get the additional 15 hours.

Am I mis reading this then? This is about tax free childcare and has the eligibility criteria:

You’ll need to expect to earn a certain amount over the next 3 months. This is at least the National Minimum Wage or Living Wage for 16 hours a week on average.

For example, over the next 3 months you expect to earn at least £1,853.28 - the National Living Wage for people over 23.

If you have a partner, they’ll need to expect to earn at least this much too.

If you or your partner are temporarily earning less than this amount because of coronavirus, you may still be eligible. You must be furloughed through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme or claiming a Self Employment Income Support Scheme grant to qualify.

If you’re self-employed and do not expect to make enough profit in the next 3 months, you can use an average of how much you expect to make over the current tax year.

This earnings limit does not apply if you’re self-employed and started your business less than 12 months ago.

If you or your partner have an expected ‘adjusted net income’ over £100,000 in the current tax year you will not be eligible. This includes any bonuses you expect to get.

www.gov.uk/tax-free-childcare

www.gov.uk/30-hours-free-childcare

This is the link for the 30hrs (which is basically the same eligibility).

We did tax free childcare. Dh full time under £100k, and I was part time, over 16 hours over min pay rate. We did that last year of nursery as got more back than the voucher scheme (which has now stopped anyway I think). Can also use tax free to pay for afterschool club. Only thing is that need to remember to log in every 3 months to confirm still eligible. And did have to allow a couple of days to make a payment as needed to put money into the account, gvt then top it up by 20% when make payment out of the specific account. Did make a difference though.

It is expensive, but it's only for a couple of years until you get the 3 year old funding. Our mortgage is the same as our nursery fees at the moment. We aren't planning a second child anyway, but certainly couldn't afford it until our eldest is in school.

We've been lucky in some respects with Covid, in that we're both wfh so are saving on commuting costs. It was worth it to us for me to continue working in a good job at a flexible employer.

I think the best advice for saving money on childcare is to try and reduce the number of days you need. If you and your partner could work condensed hours and both do 4 day weeks, you could reduce childcare to 3 days a week and that will be a big saving. Even if you can both work a nine day fortnight you can cut nursery days to four instead of five.

An au pair would be cheaper if you have space, but that won't be suitable until your child is older.

Childminders are registered and inspected by Ofstef and work to the same standards ad nurseries.....the same inspectors go into both settings. Often they are cheaper and more flexible and will charge by time needed rather than full days. They take the same schemes as any other registered setting..tax free and funding.
Some work with other childminders or assistants. Many will tell you their holidays at the beginning of the year so you can match them ...parents often take Christmas together, 1 week each of summer and that leaves them 2 or 3 weeks for their own refered dates. You can talk to existing families about reliability.....but most don't often take sick days and may also childminder contacts who are known to you and your child whocan offer cover.

Could you try a childminder instead? Usually cheaper.

A lot of parents do a mix of nursery and grandparent care
Also some parents work reduced days or hours so a full time place isn’t needed
Full timers in childcare are quite rare

Not helpful but surely you reasearch this before making the decision to have a child?

People l know have tried to reduce their childcare bill by working opposite shifts e.g. day and nights or opposite days. Or compressed hours e.g. you both do a 4 day week so only pay 3 days of childcare

When we had DD I dropped down to part-time (21hrs) so I could have her 2 days; DPIL had DD for two days a week & nursery for one. Once we got the 30hrs funding we increased the nursery days.
Have done the same with DS - but this Sept we're moving him to a preschool which is much cheaper than nursery (half the price!) plus we'll get the 30hrs funding from then too.
These first 3yrs are the hardest financially. Our biggest saving was grandparents providing childcare but obviously not an option for everyone.

@Doidontimmm

Not helpful but surely you reasearch this before making the decision to have a child?

So why say it then!

@Doidontimmm

Not helpful but surely you reasearch this before making the decision to have a child?

@Doidontimmm Circumstances can change greatly between deciding to have a baby and the child going to nursery.

Start funding your tax free childcare account from birth so you can take advantage of it fully. It’s designed to be used to ‘save’ for childcare from birth so you can send payments from it directly when needed.

Because I’m genuinely interested as to why!

@Ozanj

Start funding your tax free childcare account from birth so you can take advantage of it fully. It’s designed to be used to ‘save’ for childcare from birth so you can send payments from it directly when needed.

Are you allowed to do this? I know when we started to use TFC for my now 2 year old, it wouldn’t let us open an account for her until I had finished my mat leave

If you now have the option to pre-save that would be very handy for our 4 month old 🙂