seriously, how do mums afford to work??

[omaoma]

am currently on ML and wondering about getting back to work. looking at what the cheapest childcare might cost me in London, once i factor in travel, i think i will be left with approximately £4 a day. i am not exaggerating. what on earth is the point? am i missing something??? £4 for all the hassle of rushing to drop off/pick up in time, deal with sick days, deal with work stress, and miss my gorgeous daughter for 10 hours a day. how do you all manage?

i work opposite to dh so don't need childcare, though dd does still go to nursery two afternoons a week.

you have to look longer term. will you be ok to scrimp a bit for 3 years or so and at least keep your hand in at work? then after the 3 years you'll be paying less out so it may be more worthwhile plus you won't have had 3 years out of work so harder to get back in?

Remus - I'd love to make the sacrifice but we'd starve and lose the house!

I know. This is the crap situation so many women are forced into. Do you claim all the benefits and credits you're entitled to Annie?

But all is not doom and gloom. The past 1.5 year has been awful, but DD1 starts school this Sept, so I'm going back to work in Oct. I'm also trying to start a business from home, so if that looks viable by the time I go back to work, I'll just work the 4 weeks I need to do to not have to pay back my maternity pay, and them be my own boss!

Remus - DH "earns too much" for us to be entitled to anything except child benefit. We live in the Surrey commuter belt so our mortgage is crazy, but DH doesn't work in London so his salary doesn't match up to what our house cost!

This is why I get so cross that childcare tax credits are calculated on joint income. Why should I not get help with childcare because of my husband's salary? If someone doesn't earn enough to cover childcare for their children, they should get tax credits to enable them to work, no matter what their other half earns. Why should I have to stay at home just because my DH earns a fair salary?

I was in a very similar position at the end of my ML with dc3. As a primary school TA, my salary wasn't brilliant but I enjoyed my job but when I looked into going back to work it was going to cost me £49 per day for nursery and breakfast/afterschool club for 3 dcs. It simply wasn't worthwhile going back to work

So I decided to register as a childminder (I'm in the process of doing so now) so I can earn some money but won't have to pay childcare. It wouldn't have been my first choice of career but I still get to work with children / avoid gaps in my CV / keep up to date with early years practices and policies and hopefully I'll be able to get a job in a school again when youngest is at full time school. Lots of compromise but it seems to go with the territory when you have kids....

Didn't notice what type of work you do, but is there any way you could work from home some or part of the week?

I was in the same boat and very nearly didn't go back. It was the company agreeing very nice part-time terms that swung it for me (i.e I worked part-time for nothing rather than f-t)

However, now the boys are at school and childcare is therefore much cheaper, we are far better off than if I had given up then. My friends who did stay at home are finding it difficult to find even min wage jobs, where I am now (more or less) back where I would have been if I'd worked straight through and not had the DCs. It would have been very difficult to pick up again if I hadn't kept that p-t job up for 8 years.

I begrudged it a lot at the time, but now see that that "unpaid" time was really an investment. Also kept me sane to be able to go and do something child free a couple of days a week.

Fio - I take it you're happy in your role as WAHM or SAHM then? Cos you might disagree if you were forced into a situation that was seriously damaging your mental health.

BTW, I had no idea I would hate being a SAHM when we decided to have DD2, so could hardly factor this into our decision.

i work in the arts where hours are office hours, plus extra wherever it's needed. shifts or evening work aren't really an option unfortunately. best choice for me would probably be to go freelance if i was going to work at this stage if i don't want to abandon that career - i'm just grrrrring at myself for not thinking this through properly before handing in notice and potentially giving myself some extra time (although there were extraneous pressures not worth going into here that made it seem a good idea at the time).

Annie - if you said that on the moneysaving website people would get all huffy about you choosing to live in a certain standard of house in a nice area... I say PAH! I also have crippling mortgage, have chosen a relatively cheap area but we had to live here to be in commutable distance of Heathrow. DH also "earns too much"

I am going back to work for £23 per working day. Just worked it out. Thats after £725 per month childcare, and NOT including petrol for 45 minute commute to Oxford.

I can only just afford to do that now after 5 years of being a childminder. Childminding gives a really decent income - I was earning about £800 or more per month with no childcare costs. So I am choosing now to go back at huge loss just to start career again on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Its hard! But I reckon it must only get easier.

I've been a SAHM for 7 years now and i've learnt MUCH more and had lots of learning experiences in that time.
I was in the insurance industry for 14 long years and it was just, get up, catch train (2hr journey), sit in stuffy office for 9 hours, back on train, cook dinner, eat, bed.
Still can't believe i did that for 14yrs!
Since being a SAHM, i've done lots of volunteering for Age Concern, done befriending, gardening help, meals on wheels.
I've done a p/t Home Carer job, helping the Elderly and dissabled in the evenings and weekends (meant i did not have to pay childcare costs).
I've been on the pre-school committee for 4 years and i've set up a website for them, done advertising, sorted out a new committee last year when the previous Chairman just left with no warning.
I've set up as an Ofsted Registered Childminder and redecorated the house, built an aviary and a chicken run.
My next goal is to do an NVQ3 in childcare.
So if you can manage on one salary then it does not mean you are NOT working.
I've done MORE work in the last 7 than i did for the previous 14.
Best of luck in your decision. Being a SAHM is freedom! If you make use of your time.

Omaoma - do look at freelance options if you're working in the arts. I starting freelancing six years ago, after having DD1, having previously worked in orchestra management with lots of crazy hours and touring etc. I've been pleasantly surprised at the amount of freelance work I've found, and am now doing a range of interesting things, adding up to about 20 hours a week, mostly from home.

Fio - sorry, I assumed you were asking the OP. No, I can't work around DH's hours as we both work in 9-5 industries. I'm a microbiologist. Yes, I could work in Sainsbury's etc, but I don't want to do "busywork", I want to use my brain and work in the career I spent 8 years earning 2 degrees for.

It's the stagnating of my brain that is driving me crazy. I want to be able to think, rationalise and reason about something other than whether I've packed enough nappies/milk for a day out and what to cook for dinner.

It's not that being a SAHM is isolating - I have a great social life now. Better than when I was working. But it's just so frustratung spending most of the day trying to think at the level of a 1 and 3yo!

I am always suprised and a bit shocked when people don't work out what they will do regarding work and childcare before they get pregnant!

How can it be a suprise that if you are in low paid work it is likely to cost as much for childcare as you can earn?

What I don't understand is why the government doesn't realise that women often have fewer children than they would like because of the rediculously high cost of childcare in this country. And then they fret about the shrinking population! People who moan about people having children they can't afford should consider that these children, who "they are being expected to support with their taxes" are going to be the people paying taxes and supporting them in their old age.

And I'm not talking about people who make benefits a lifestyle choice. I'm talking about people like myself. I'm a low earner, I would like to go back to work, but I would actually have to work at a loss after childcare. As such, I would like a temporary respite in the amount of tax I pay, by receiving childcare tax credits. In return, I am bringing children into the world who will pay taxes in the future. If I can't work, I don't pay tax at all. If I do work, I pay tax, albeit a reduced amount. But the government still gets a better deal by enabling me to work by helping me with childcare. I don't expect a handout - it seems like a fair deal to me.

Why is this unreasonable?

We have a rising birth rate and a rising population so you are wrong in thinking that the government want you to have more children. Increasing population is very expensive if there is high unemployment .

The arrangement you suggest would result in the government giving you more back in subsidies and benefits than it gets back through taxing you. The policies are economically driven.

Not necessarily Podrick - rising population also increases demand for goods/services so creates jobs

My DH works in a shop, I am a PT civil servant on about £7500 a year. Luckily/thankfully we get ehough tax credits to cover all of our childcare costs, so my DS goes to nursery 3 mornings a week while I work.

We are lucky I suppose in that we are young, and therefore always had to live within our means - never got a massive mortgage/car/highpowered job.

erm... i know where you're coming from podrick sometimes circumstances force your hand... im' sure you quite right that i could have planned more in advance but what can i say? i wasn't sure if it was going to happen at all. i decided to start a family after :a) it wasn't until my 30s that i found a man i loved who wanted to have a family with me b) i had by then changed careers to a lower paying industry for my wellbeing as working in media was killing me, this necessitated taking a few steps back on the career ladder c) my partner had done the same thing and we hoped/expected he would soon find a better paid job (as he didn't want to stay at home) but the recession happened d) we turned out to have low fertility and the pressure to conceive before it got too late meant that became the overriding priority, took up our savings and put me into emotional turmoil where forward planning became difficult e) i simply didn't know how i would feel about going back to work as afirst time mum (having friends who had raced backto 4 days a week within months and others who wanted much more time out and a flexible role thereafter) and it was quite conceivable that i would have wanted to return full time and thus could progress quickly to better paid roles. poverty does not mean you aren;t allowed a family - it's a basic human right after all

I am lucky that my work offer the childcare vouchers whish means I can do 3 days a week and have about £400 per month left after childcare. I pay about £70 for childcare for 2 DCs. I think the vouchers save us about £170 per month between DH and I. I am not sure I would have gone back if we didnt have those. We don't qualify for tax credits so its the only help we get as such.

I haven't read all the answers but I think that only Mums who earn above a certain amount OR have a doting grandparent can afford it.

I wouldn't be a high earner, and I'd have nobody willing to look after children for peanuts.... so I haven't a choice.

it's been OK though! Getting a BIT tired of it now! At times anyway. When youngest is at school in 2 yrs then I can look into it.

I am driven mad with people saying "how can you afford not to work?". Iwas very nice but now I verge on sarky, "thought that question through have you, sit down with a calculator!". Or, wanna look after two kids all week for half the going rate???

I am lucky enough to be in an okay-ish paid job as even being home on ML has been hard for me.

We qualify for just over a tenner a onth in tax credits but do both claim the full £243 pre-tax vouchers from our salaries to go towards the £729 we pay our (wonderful) childminder for our 6mo and 2.20yo. My mm lso has them both once a week and the oldest goes to pre-school 2 days a week that we pay for until her funding starts in January.

On top of this, my DP has a 90 minut each way commute to the mainland - his employer provides a interest free loan to buy his boat ticket which is paid back from his salary post-tax. Luckily my commute is only 15 minutes each way.

So yes, children are expensive but we chose to have ours close together so that, even though childcare takes a huge chunk from our salaries, it is a short term thing.

I know not everyone is in the position we are in - we pay out a lot but hope to get the rewards in the long run. And there is no way my mental health could cope as a SAHM.