Is anyone else slightly worried about childcare costs?

[Pootles2010]

Am having a mini-panic. Just starting to look at local nurseries - the only one which has a website (Montessori) costs £19 a session (which is a half-day). I'm going to have to work full time, my family live 3 hours away, so we're looking at full time nursery - £190 a week.

Obviously will get child benefit, and hopefully tax credits. I did a quick online assessment, and it said we'd be getting around £80 a week. We fall just under the tories' threshold so hopefully will still get something, but i'm not counting on it. Even if we do, thats still £90 a week. Thats still £360 a month - how on earth do people afford that? Please tell me i'm missing something!

Thats the thing - i know its not that unreasonable, so grateful i live in Yorkshire, the rates in London seem crazy! I just wondered how on earth people coped!

I don't know what the tory threshold is but I imagine I am above it. I am starting to rethink TTC to be honest. I will need very little childcare but am not sure where the money will come from.

Ours is £63 per day near London - DS1 goes three days per week, so it's almost £800 per month - we're going to have to find a completely different solution once DC2 arrives and is ready to go to nursery - like moving county, or giving up work!

Even though I was on a good salary of £43k before DS arrived, it barely makes sense to keep on working with all the hassle of commuting, the rushed days, the stress - I think eventually the cost of childcare (or rather the lack of gov help in affording it, as I don't really begrudge paying the nursery staff £6.30 per hour) will mean I drop out of my career for a few years

I am the breadwinner I cannot drop out of my career.

£190 a week for a full time nursery places sounds very reasonable. In London, can be double that.

Childcare for DS1 was £1000 per month (am in the south east)

I now have DD and we are going to be employing a nanny which works out cheaper than 2 nursery places

good quality childcare is hard to find, and is expensive wherever you are so you have my sympathies as well

childminders can be cheaper as well as nanny shares so that is worth exploring

you can get childcare vouchers from your gross salary of up to a maximum of £243 per month (IIRC) so you don't pay tax etc on that - me and DH both did this and it has helped us

why don't you ask your employers if they operate this scheme?

Where in Yorkshire do you live?! The cheapest Nursery I can find is £800 a month we are saving like mad at the moment and hope WTC will help (not due till oct). we earn around 35k between us so hopefully we can get some contribution x

remember you also get kids vouchers from your work place where you save money by not paying tax and NI on up to £243 a month. mine are with kiddivouchers.

OP are you saying ?slightly worried??? Terribly worried, that is the word! I am pregnant with No.2 and terribly dreading how we will afford the childcare for the two! To be honest I was so terrified that I will have difficulties TTC that eliminated the worrying factor of childcare costs in my mind. I will have 3yo and 6months to find childcare for, I am the breadwinner of the family and our monthly net income is about £3k. We currently pay £800 for childminder but obviously we cannot afford two places at childminder. It is a shame, because our childminder is brilliant. Nursery is not much cheaper. We will have to look into nanny options (maybe even unregistered?) but this is so complicated to find. The best way to would be for my hubby give up work and become sitting-at-home-dad but this is not something I would dare him asking, especially after he spent 9 months job hunting. The problem is so serious that it darkens the joy of my pregnancy? Urhm where my mind was when I was TTC?

I symphatise with everyone in this position!

I am in same position. We just moved to SE London and our childcare costs have gone up to £60 a day which is extortionate. I am off on maternity leave soon but keeping DD in nursery 2 days a week so it's going to be a real struggle then but even worse when we have to think about number 2 having childcare. We don't qualify for any tax credits either. Even though we both earn pretty well am going to have to seriously rethink if I go back to work as will not be earning very much after travel and childcare which is a real shame as I really like my job.

we had to have a huge gap between our two as we couldn't afford ft childcare for more than one at a time

CTC and child benefit help enormously but we aren't entitled to WTC, you have to be on a very low joint income to be entitled to that

neither of us worked for employers that offered the salary sacrifice childcare voucher scheme when dd1 was born, thankfully dh has moved jobs and his current employer offers them - be aware that not all employers run such a scheme

it is still going to cost £600/month for three days a week, nursery for dd2 and after school care for dd1

I am lucky in that I earn significantly more than the childcare costs but I have to say I think it is a feminist tragedy that childcare is so expensive that we are condemning half the population (and it tends to be the woman) from staying in employment when they want to which is LUNACY!
Makes me so cross and any government that made all childcare tax deductible would get my vote (seeing as a driver is FGS)

Childcare still costs more than my mortgage.

OP - try a nanny share, we found this to be the best balance of economics and flexibility. Nursery was not an option for us given that we can't leave work every time the kids have a snuffle etc etc

Very worried.... that's one of the reasons I am now a SAHM, the sums just didn't add up.

I sympathise!! I've just stopped work - paying for a nanny for the three of them, three days a week along with my travel was 90% of my salary (which was a good one +60k pro rata for three days a week....) - just not worth it for the stress.

Even when we only had two of them in full time nursery, it was more expensive than the local prep school would have been - it's crazy...

Stokey I am also in SE London. We are determined to keep our jobs as long as is there is no financial loss to work. I hope when DS1 starts primary, it will be easier? And the job is not that easy to find.

I paid £600 per month for a childminder for my son from 6 months, got £80 every 4 weeks child benefit and £90 every 4 weeks tax credits until he was one then it was only £42 and both my husband and I got the childcare vouchers £243 each per month which saved us about £80 but we were still in a lot of trouble until I gave up my job to work as a childminder.

I am now earning less money but don't have to pay childcare so we are much better off. I love working with children so it wasn't a problem but it takes a while to adjust to not taking days off sick and to go from 6 weeks a year holiday to 2 (which is unpaid!).

Before I made this choice were trying to plan for when we could afford another, I'm now pregnant with no. 2 and DS is almost 3 but will only be taking 2 weeks off so everything has its pros and cons.

It's terrible for so many people and just because your income is higher doesn't mean that loosing a significant part of it is any easier. A lot of the parents I work for are working 16 hrs to get the most out of the tax credits system but only works if your OH earns a low salary or you are a single parent.

A childminder may work out cheaper depending where you are, I'm in Suffolk and charge £3.00- £3.50 per hour.

I know what you mean, it is partly for this reason that I'm not planning on going back for a few years yet so I'll cross that bridge when I get to it!

Roo - we're halfway (ish) between York and Hull. I know, we're really lucky. How on earth people afford to live 'down south' with house prices and childcare costs like that is beyond me.

I just wanted to make sure i wasn't missing something - some friends of ours promised us that once you'd included the government help you generally tend to break even with childcare costs. They lied.

i did a bit of research on WTC and it covers upto 80% i think depending on earnings, but I think with us we'll get around 40% which is great but I guess we'll just have to find out. I might look into childminders though, just not sure how many would take a 6month old??

I think childcare costs are a nightmare for everyone. Particularly where both of you earn similar salaries as it is very unlikely to reach a point where one of you earns enough to pay the bills so the other can have the option of giving up work for a while. Like tigerfeet our only option was to have a bigger gap between DCs. DS started school last September and DD is due in 10 days. The only way we are managing is to accept and budget, budget, budget for a certain level of debt which we know we can pay off by the time DD goes to school. Having done the same thing once we know it can be done but it doesn't make it easy or a nice situation to be in. Remember it will gradually get easier as when your DC us 3 they will start to qualify for some government funded childcare and if your employer does operate the childcare voucher scheme the tax relief amounts to about £900 per year per person.
Good luck working it out - I know how heart breaking it can be having to have your DCs care dictated by finances.

I think most of them should! Most the ones i've looked at take them from 3 months. 6 months is pretty standard time to start i think. I've been warned to start looking now (we're due in July - back to work in January) because waiting lists get a bit mad.

I think my biggest worry is if the Tories get in they'll overhaul tax credits totally and i won't get any/as much. Would prefer it if i knew what the situation will be!

All childminders I know take babies from any age required, although some charge more for under ones. My son was 6 months when he went and it was hard to find someone with a fulltime space as you are only allowed to care for 1 child under 1 at a time. One of the little girls I look after now I have had since she was 5 months so I don't think it will be a problem.

Cinnamon - have the rules changed? I thought it was 3 babies to 1 adult - or at least thats what the nursery's website said?

Toja55 - hopefully it won't come to that and there will be some kind of sibling discount at the new nursery. Fingers crossed! We were lucky at our old nursery as it was really nice and pretty reasonable.