Would appreciate your advice

Motherof1

Hi, I work 16 hours a week and my manager would like to increase the hours I work. I could certainly do with the extra cash but when I meet to discuss this with him next week I need some facts and ofcourse advice on how to make this worthwhile.

While I am at work my daughter goes to pre-school. She is in the care of a childminder before and after preschool until I fetch her. My child care costs are around £250.00 per month which is more than half my take home pay.

Would it be worth it to consider extra hours? If so what would be the best way to ask for a pay rise? A friend of mine claims benefits and is better off than I am!

Any tips on what to say? what to ask for? what to avoid etc, would be great.

Thanks.

Scarlett1

do you claim tax credit ?

www.entitledto.co.uk is a good site to have a look at, put your wages in and see what you will be entitled to, and then put another figure in if you get the pay rise

Savvy_Sue

Another thing to ask about is salary sacrifice. It's been discussed in other threads and I don't have direct experience of how it works, but basically if your employer will give you some of your salary in childcare vouchers you get more in tax credits. And pay less tax and NI.

It does mean that your actual salary is lower for pension purposes, if you have a scheme that your employer pays into. And some other small disadvantages like that, so you'd need to read up on that.

Astaroth

I guess it depends on how your pension is calculated. We have "flexible benefits" with my employers where you decide what benefits you want to "buy", some of which come out of your gross salary (so you make a NI and Tax saving) and others from your net.

As we have a contribution based pension scheme even though childcare vouchers come from the gross salary they still take the "original" gross salary to work out your contribution and therefore how much they put in too.