Tell me how I can afford to go back to work when I have three children o/w 2 under school age?

[drowninginlaundry]

I can't, can I?

I have just done some sums and I can't afford childcare

so if I have a 9 month old, a 3 year old and a 5 year old, my cheapest option is a F/T nanny, but at £25,000 gross p/a I'd have to earn, what, over £40,000 to cover it? There's no way I can get paid that in the South West, after 7 years out of the job market. So does this mean that I can't go to work? How do you people do it who are not a) bankers b) lawyers c) other so that it actually makes sense financially to work and that you don't end up out of pocket?

I am in a bit of a panic at the thought of a decade stuck at home sorting lego and picking raisins off the carpet

Was hoping for some bright ideas from this thread as well. If I go back to work after having DC3 (unplanned so didn't feel the need to consider economics Podrick) my childcare costs for two in FT nursery and wrap around care for school age DS will be around £18000 pa. Now although I earn a good gross wage (c £35K), after tax, NI, pension I would be left with less than £6K take home pay. By my reckoning I will earn more working part time in Sainsbury's when DS is home to look after the DCs and it irks me slightly that I went to Uni and trained for many years to get my professional qualifications and end up working as a checkout girl.....

drowninginlaundry - there's no magic answer. I earn £27k but work 4 days a week so pro-rata is about £21k I guess. We get childcare vouchers and are just about to have our second child as DS is due to start school in September. This was timed specifically as there's no way my salary would cover childcare for 2 children. Pretty straightforward really (albeit harsh), I guess that's why our mums didn't really work in their generation.

Know what LDC means. £500 doesn't seem much for the all the hassle I will have (on mat leave for now) for ferrying 2 kids around and then doing a day at work. The thing that keeps me going is when they are both at school I should be clearing about £1000 per month plus my pension and other benefits. However, there will also be at least 4 weeks of the school holidays not covered but I should think I am not the only one with that problem.

Ha ha ha I have 4 boys, 3 yrs, 2 yrs, 1 yr and about 5 weeks and the other day had someone doing a survey say, "I don't suppose you work"

No I don't suppose that I do!!

glutton for punishment

The 5yo will be at school soon and then the 3yo before you know it and then you'll only have childcare (and after school) for one and it'll be easier.

woulkd you even cover your costs if you worked? And if not how much out of pocket would you be as a family? Could you treat it as a loss leader, i.e. you take the pain now for long term gain, eg future earnign potential? Did you like your job?

Fwiw, I had 4/5 years out of the job market and am now about back to the amount I think I should be earning.

And it is tough but if you do want to work at some point the sooner you go back the better.

LackaDAISYcal - I too worked out the Sainsburys thing!

ever thought of setting up your own business? what kind of skills have you got? I dabble in bits and bobs where I could take my baby along (French classes/usborne books) and do some evening teaching work which pays ok as well. now ds1 and ds2 are in school I'm about to start a part time job where I only have to pay childcare for dd1. maybe you could do a swop with another mum for part time childcare so you look after each others kids for a few days a week for free? creative thinking required in this situation!! whatever you do - don't give up on the idea of work if it's what you want to do.

I didn't know about the childcare vouchers, must investigate.

It seems that I should treat working when children are before school-age as an investment in a career rather than an income. I did calculate that when all 3 are in school the numbers start to make sense more, but I'd have to basically be out of pocket/work for nothing for three years. However, that's still preferable to becoming deskilled, I am conscious that the longer I am out of the job market the harder it is to get back. Wait, let me get this straight: I'll have to miss my children's early years in order to go to work where I will not earn enough to pay for the childcare, just so that I will not be written off as unemployable in 5 years' time. Okay then, sounds reasonable

My sister back home in Finland pays EUR250 per month for a full-time nursery place for her DD, where she is looked after by qualified, well trained staff. Subsidised childcare.

I worked in the City before, but there's not much demand for equity research analysts in Devon... I guess I'll see you all in Sainsbury's on Saturdays

aah morocco, the holy grail: set up on your own, work around the children mainly from home....

swap with another mum? I wouldn't wish my kids on my worst enemy good ideas though, and I am hoping that there's a solution beyond the Sainsbury's Saturday job...

I'm back at work after number 2. Both are in nursery. I work 3 days and a half day at home. The nursery is great stimulation for the children and I get a break and feel better for being at work. For each day I'm in the office I take home just under £20. We're on a knife-edge financially, but I just can't stay at home full-time. It would drive me crazy. Still, I'm not that challenged at work, but can't move on. Part-time fantastic jobs are impossible to find. We're desperate to bring more money in...Then going back to the office after a break you find that colleagues have taken advantage of your absence and moved up the ladder trampling all over you...

drowning, i have started selling usbourne books too, and am considering starting a nappy advisory/selling business as well. I'm dabbling in the second hand nappy market at the minute and have made a bit of a profit buying and selling. I'mm even thinking about training as a baby sign language tutor and doing sing and sign classes as all the ones around here are oversubscribed. But, I'm pretty sure that the first thing people will do if this recession hits any harder is stop all non essential activities so that is still at the thinking stage.

there are some good ideas here

teaching assistant would also be a good option when the younger two are actually at school, but it is pretty competitive these days with lots of people chasing not that many jobs.

My issue is that my actual job is so incredibly stressful that I'm not sure I could do it with three kids to look after and an absent for part of the week DH. Still, my maternity leave starts officially on Monday, so I have another year to think about it.

Good luck with whatever you do

DIL, it is depressng I know. There was a thread long ago where someone said something like "one of the dinner ladies at our school has just gone back to her job as a pharmacist now her children are a bit older".

Hmm, not much demand for that in Devon, I can see! Is there anything you could do freelance? From home or one day a week or something, just to keep your skills up?

I don't earn megabucks and never have but I have always worked (mostly full time).

CM's was a lot cheaper than nursery until the DCs reached 3 and we got NEG. For part of the time DH worked shifts which cut costs. And then one by one they all started school. For a while I was part-time to do the school run so didn't need after school care.

Somehow it worked out.

I certainly cannot afford to go back to work 3 children under 5 and no family that would help out with childcare and a DP who is out the house 6am - 6.30pm 5 days a week. Well I could do weekends I suppose but what about our family time?

I gave up working in the SE so we could return to Scotland and buy a decent house on one salary so I wouldn't have to work but I will never get a job up here doing what I used to do so am completely unemployable now, will have to go back to college and retrain sometime later.

I'm afraid to say the answer seems to be to get rid of your dp - I'm a lone parent with childcare costs of £487 a month and get nearly double that from the state - income last year was approx £11,000 on a p/t basis
I have a low mortgage and can manage reasonbly well financially

and if dear exdp would pay maintenance that wouldn't even be taken into account

Maybe if you actually find out the local childcare options and costs it might be worth it. I don't earn a huge salary but have always found it financially worth working with 3 small children (though I'd have probably worked anyway as I like my job), both in Manchester and now in Devon.

Your 5yo would be in school, the 3 year old could be in subsidised/free nursery place for 5 sessions a week. So it's only really the 1 year old who would need a full nursery or childminder place.

We used a tax-free workplace nursery in Manchester which was very cheap and good, I realise this is a rare option but it's worth checking out jobs which might have similar perks. We also use childcare voucher schemes, for a while we both claimed these but now our youngest is 3 we don't need both our allowances.

really, sometimes it's not as expensive as you think. We both have flexible jobs which is probably saving us a fortune in childcare but can you consider something flexible? So you can do school hours and then maybe make up time in the evenings.

zookeeper i know you're not doing anything wrong but that doesn't half p!ss me off!

DH earns over the threshold for WTC/CTC so no help there
DH's company don't do the voucher scheme, as it is too time consuming to administer, so no vouchers there.
FT nursery place here (SW London) is £2000 for 2 children per month
Nursery grant is £130/month for 10 months of year. Only covers 5 sessions a week, a session is 2.5 hours.

To earn anywhere near enough money to pay childcare for 2 pre-school children requires a professional job. You don't get many professional jobs where you can do nursery runs, no travel etc... After all you're taking on a commitment rather than a set number of hours.

But at least with pre-school there are nurseries. How do people manage when they start school and are off 14 weeks/year on holiday?

I'd honestly like to know the answer.

drowninginlaundry - Just read your thread after I posted my headache thread a moment ago.

DH just came in and apologised for screwing my career up in NO way has he done this, he will always be the breadwinner due to his type of work and I have always supported him, sometimes I find the whole balance thing hard, I am a crap SAHM me thinks!

How do people manage in the school holidays? Oh it's a breeze let me tell you:

1. You take as much holiday off during the school holidays as you can, including unpaid leave if possible

1. You develop a sudden passion for relatives who do not work

1. You take them to holiday camps which start at 10 and finish at 4 and there is no morning or after school club

1. You hire a holiday au pair or nanny and pray they are halfway normal

1. There is no 5. I have run out of ideas.

Well that's just the thing isn't it amidaiwish - to afford good quality childcare you need a professional job, but what professional job allows you to arrive after school drop-off and leave at 5 to pick up the rest from nursery or childminder, and requires no travel?

What do you do when one of the children is ill, which is sure to happen throughout the winter? They can't go to nursery/school/childminder. Does your employer allow you to take a day off or do you have to hire a temp nanny at some exorbitant rate?

And let's say you work out that the cheapest option is Ds1 at school, DS2 at nursery, DD1 at childminder who also picks up DS1 from school - do you have to leave your house at 7am to get everyone to their destinations in time for you to be at your desk at 9am? In our house this would become a nervous breakdown waiting to happen.

Okay, so far I've got 1) potentially clearing a hundred quid per week after tax and childcare 2) likely nervous breakdown

not a very good deal at all is it. But I have to take it.

I'd love to work from home, I would really love to get into financial journalism (I used to write about companies/industries in my previous job) but the sheer effort of getting something like that going is making me exhausted and reach for another biscuit

It's good to know I'm not alone in struggling with this, thanks for posting.

I meant a hundred quid per month - that much per week would be fab!

Quattro, good list.

No.5 is you make reciprocal arrangements with other working parents in similar straits. So you take their dc for one week, say, and they take yours for another week. I have not pulled this one off yet but planted the seeds for this one with dd's best friend for next summer!