New Funded childcare hours - 100k limit?

[Diamond345]

Hi all

Is anyone aware of the limits of getting the funded hours? DH recently got a new job with a 100k salary, we pay £1500 a month on nursery which is a real stretch for us, due to mortgage, bills and other outgoings.

I appreciate that we are fortunate to have a higher salary in our house, but feel like with DH new salary we are loosing out massively as he is just on 100k so I'm not sure if we can still claim or not.

If you are bang on 100, does that count or is it only above 100k?

I'm obviously doing something wrong.. how are people struggling on £85k+ incomes?! Myself & fiancé work full time, both earn about £30k each. Little one in nursery, not yet old enough for funded hours. Plus a secondary school child. Mortgage, car etc... we have nothing left at the end of every month but we manage. I'm confused about how others are struggling! And we live in the south where house prices are a joke! :( I would be absolutely loving life if either of us earnt above £80k!!

Our mortgage is £1900 a month.... we got totally hammered by interest rates. Bought our first house in 2021 and when the fixed rate ended, still a huge amount of mortgage and ridiculous interest rates.

After all that, nursery fees, car, bills our £100k combined becomes a very small pot
..

How much are you paying for childcare?

One set of fees costs me >£2,000 a month which I think is the entire take home on £30k.

We pay £900 a month childcare which I appreciate isn't the worst it could be. That and the mortgage (£1200) is just about more than my monthly take home wage, so then partners wage pays for everything else, bills, food, petrol,.. just don't have any left at the end of the month! We don't even have any 'luxury' bills like sky or Netflix. Youngest child has swim lessons, that's about as much as we can stretch to! Maybe we eat too much 😂

£2000 nursery fees is insane! I sympathise!!

At one point, DH and I were paying just shy of £2.5k for nursery fees. It’s insane, we appreciate the government help given we are both high rate tax payers and putting a lot in.

£2000 mortgage, £1600 nursery fees (that's not even full time 😭) £600 a month season ticket just to get to work.... That's not including bills, food, council tax, cost of running two cars. 100k take home pay works out about 5k a month so that's all gone just in that list.

Twenty years ago?!? Oh for gods sake. As if inflation, mortgages or private school fees are anything like they were in 2004.

And no OP shouldn't give up work for hundreds of reasons.

I really hope so, as a single parent with £1000 nursery fees pm (this includes 15 free hours) and earning under £50k it's quite annoying to hear high earning couples moaning about childcare expenses. If you guys can't afford to pay £1,500 between you then you need to sit down and work out where you are pissing your money away!

They could start by making it fair across the four nations. In wales you lose all 30 hours at £100k, not just the extra 15!

What a bitter and pathetic attitude to have. You hope others have support removed because you don't have as much? There are people on a lot less than you I suspect if you're mentioning under 50k, I'm sure you'd judge them for being spiteful wishing you'd get less support (BTW those higher earners pay more tax towards initiatives such as funded hours).

Means testing based solely on, on paper salary is pretty unfair it takes no account of housing cost, actual disposable income, area of the country, inheritance etc.

I wish they would find a fairer way!

ODFOD

He’ll be paying FAR more tax than most, and this is perfectly legitimate.

Under £50k you get family benefit, the OP won’t.

They also pay much more tax than you. We need high earners.

@Jammedchakra family benefit? Not sure what that is, I don’t get any benefits apart from child benefit which is about £20pw I think.
Yes we need high-tax payers, we need nurses, cleaners, shop workers too. We all contribute. I have no issue with people claiming any benefits they are entitled to including ‘free’ childcare.
As a single person I who has a pre-school child I am getting more aware how much more expensive it is to run and home and raise a child solo. Yes my choice, so I don’t moan about it. If you are in a high earning couple there are so many advantages and privileges you should be aware that you have, but I do appreciate not everyone has the ability to do that.

Just because a couple or single person earns £100k vs £50k doesn't mean they have plenty of excess cash they are "pissing away"

I can absolutely guarantee you myself and DP who earn £100k between us are pissing nothing away. Nor do we live a luxurious life style in the slightest. Barely affording life to be honest with you.

I don't doubt it's hard for you and I have the upmost respect for you doing this all solo. It's hard work! To come on the post and write such a sweeping statement isn't right though. You don't know anything of peoples circumstances or outgoings.

Life is hard for about 85% of the population right now.

Rather showing my age - now called child benefit.

This whole system is a massive mess. I support childcare subsidies (would also like to see support for families that choose to care for their children at home in the conversation too) but I do twitch slightly at the idea that families need support because of their London mortgages - this is an asset that is appreciating in value after all & continues the huge wealth disparity across the country.

If a manageable amount of pension contributions keeps salary under £100k, it is worth doing even without child care issues, as the personal allowance begins to be tapered away at £100k.

My PHI is on my payslip each month as an income item - have a look, yours might be too.

Er we can easily afford £1.2k (and private school if we desire), it’s just not tax efficient for us to do so, so I’ll be salary sacrificing to ensure we don’t. As I said, if they remove the cliff edge and make it tapered I will willingly pay more tax, I’m just not willing to be worse off for earning more, which we would be, I’ve done the maths. I’m well aware of how it works and have already got our nursery bill, I don’t need to “sit down and work it out” 😂 we already have.

I don’t want to be a SAHM, I know some people seem to find this hard to comprehend but I have a really good career and enjoy my job. I’ll be going part time, but I will still be over the cliff edge point without paying extra into pension.

It’s not about budgeting, we both earn well and can easily afford things, I’m just not willing to be worse off if I don’t need to be, common sense surely?

I completely understand this point of view if you don't live in/near London. But what's the alternative? Move away from both our families and whole support network with two young kids to have a smaller mortgage? That support network is worth more than a smaller mortgage right now.

I agree. What a nasty post!

I’m not bitter, just would ask anyone to check their privilege, so many people I know were in the red in the nursery years, it’s part of the deal you know you are signing up for when you have children.

Being a higher paid tax-payer isn’t the only way you can contribute to society (as useful as it is).

I adopted my child, I read somewhere this saves the state millions. I don’t need a fucking gold star, I get £20pw child benefit, and the free nursery hours everyone else gets. I’m perfectly happy with this as I knew what my finances were going in and how I would be budgeting once I had the child placed with me.

So no, not bitter. Just have a different perspective and probably a bigger picture mentality than you do.

If you find it so annoying to hear someone earning 100k trying to get some funded hours, why did you click on a post that makes it very clear in the title what it's about? Scroll onto another post that won't annoy you so much no?

Btw it's not just funded hours... We also don't get tax free childcare 💣

"I get £20pw child benefit, and the free nursery hours everyone else gets."

...That's the point of this thread. £100K and you don't get any of that, or tax-free childcare. Simultaneously, you also begin to lose your tax personal allowance, so by the time you're at about £125K every single penny you make is taxed (including on savings, as you also lose savings allowance too). It all hits at once and means people earning just over £100K have a marginal tax rate of 100% in some cases.

You can go on about people checking their privilege as much as you like. But would you HONESTLY not use a perfectly legal way of keeping your income just below £100K so that you're not WORSE OFF? Would you happily work more for nothing? This is often about workers being genuinely better off (in terms of money in the pocket) on £99,999 than they are when earning £100-125K. In what world is it sensible for someone to have genuinely less money in their pocket for earning more? It's not. And this is why people throw money in their pensions to reduce their income level, or go part time.