If after putting your baby into nursery.....

[Ilovenannyplum]

.... You were only left with £11.90 a day once the nursery fees are paid. Would you go back to work?

Say for instance, you made £100 a day but nursery was £88.10

Depends on lots of things, what job you do. Hm your dh earns. How old you dc is because when they reach 3 you get funding. Have you thought of going p/t until school?

£88.10 a day?!?

Yes. I'd play the long game - pension etc and they're not in nursery forever. Plus, £10 a day is £200 a month. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Is a childminder cheaper?

Mrs Derek I don't think that's the actual cost- I think OP was just illustrating based on a wage of £100 per day as £100 is a round number!

OP if that's just nursery can you afford travel (and any clothes/lunch/similar expenses) involved in going back?

It's not actually that much but I thought id use £100 a day as an easy example, I don't actually earn that much but the £11.90 is really what I'll be left with
which won't even cover my travel costs to get to bloody work

Yes.

1. it's a shared expense so even though in theory nursery took a large % of my salary when I first went back, it was a smaller % of our total income.
2. I got promoted fairly quickly after I went back
3. 2 years later the govt funding kicked in - by which point I felt positively rich!
4. During all that time I was building my skills, experience, career and pension contribution.

If it doesn't even cover your travel costs, then surely there is no point in returning to work unless you have a long term career plan that won't sustain a short break at home?

However, if you want to return to work, do it. Even if the child care costs are shit, because it isn't something that is shouldered by you alone, it is a combined income of you AND your partner.

I probably would tbh. There's probably a good chance you can ask for a pay rise in 6months time or you could be promoted etc to a higher level so you would make more then.

I left work for a little while when I had only one child as I was losing £100 month by working. My friend in similar role carried on working whilst losing money. She now earns a shedload more than I do because even being a SAHM for those two or three years meant I had to do some retraining to get back in to work.

She saw it as an investment for the future and she was right, but I was damned if I was losing time for with my PFB to be poorer. I think it is very difficult when contemplating leaving your first child to think long term, and only very sensible people can manage it. Basically it depends what your job is - if you can get back into it easily when your child is 3 or 2, whenever you get free funding that would make a difference, then you might as well leave. If you can't and would have to retrain, or you would be significantly damaged in your career by leaving, then you really should stay.

Yes, I have 2 DC that aren't at school yet and I just about break even but I work for my sanity! Ill be rich when they got to school :)

It IS shared but will come out of my account, DP pays the other bills and it's already a struggle, whilst £200 is not to be sniffed at, it won't cover the monthly cost of my travel (I commute into London for the job)

Oh I just don't know!

Have you checked if you're entitled to anything like child tax credits?

If it's a 'career' where staying in work now will mean you will have a reasonable long term income then do it.

If it's shelf stacking in tesco on nmw then no.

It really, really depends on the long-term effects to your career, and how much you want to work.

If you would be happy not working for a few years, if you think you could get back into your job/career after a break, or retrain to do something else, if your DP feels comfortable being the sole earner and you think his job is safe enough that you don't run a risk of redundancy...

As everyone else says - it depends if your job is a longer term career, or the sort of job you feel you could just pick up anywhere, at anytime (which seems unlikely if you are commuting a long way for it). It's for such a short time out of your working life (in terms of your household budget) but if you resign from your job now, it's very, very difficult to just walk back in to the same T&Cs, seniority, and the right to ask for PT etc, let alone continuity of service and so forth.
You do have to think of the expense as being a family / household one though, not just your wages.

I worked 2 days a week for about £10 a day after childcare costs. I enjoyed the job though and it was a nice break from looking after a very demanding 1 year old. I also qualified for maternity pay so when I had DD2 I received maternity pay. Sadly I had to leave after that as the cost of 2 in childcare was way more than I earned there. They also introduced a parking fee for staff at the same time so that alone, without the extra childcare, would pretty much have made working unaffordable.
It's not a great situation is it when you can't actually afford to work. We qualified for no benefits at all. My wage was too low for childcare vouchers and DH's company refused to offer them.
I did enjoy working though and would do it again in the same situation.

It's not shelf stacking and tbh, it's something that I could leave and come back to without the need to train again, it's office based.
I think I might look into something more local to massively reduce travelling costs.
It's not a "forever job" iyswim so I don't have an overwhelming urge to return to that particular role, I'm not due back until 1 June so I have a little bit of time to decide what to do

If I liked the job and needed the extra money then yes I would.

Based on your last post op, no I wouldn't. I wouldn't work to be financially no better off if I could go back after a couple of years at home.