Ridiculous Childcare costs!

Spendless

Yes, I was going to say the same as Mrs Soup. Is there a way to reduce/change your hours so you don't need term time childcare of older one? 

Childcare costs have always been like this. My eldest is 21 and I ended up giving up my job because the childcare bill was equivalent to my take home wage with no option to work less hours. You'd think that 2 decades on things would have changed but my friend has recently had to do the same thing because her workplace wasn't able to offer her anything other than f-time work after maternity.  So, I would say if you've got a flexible employer try and hold on to that. 

kaMelo

Why is the onus, or at least the assumption it should always be the woman who has to change things?
As I said earlier on, reducing hours and going part time or giving up work has a much bigger impact in the longer term. Job experience is reduced, pension value is reduced, the potential for promotion or changing roles is reduced and despite legal protections to prevent this it still happens.
In ten years when you're still in part time work with a much reduced pension value and you look at colleagues who didn't do this, earning double/triple what you are you'll wonder what went wrong. 

billy2shots

kaMelo said:

Why is the onus, or at least the assumption it should always be the woman who has to change things?

Every individual case can not be answered in one thread. Therefore we will only concentrate on the OPs situation here. 

OP said child costs were £900, 'feels like all of her wages are going on childcare' 

Joint household income is £42k minus £900 a month for the OP suggests the partner earns significantly more.

Should the partner give up their better paid role and the family live on £900 a month?

Don't jump at the chance to be offended or  suggest discrimination, it's really a poor trait at the moment. 

JamoLew

Childcare costs are often overlooked when making the choice to start a family.

Theres really no excuse for not knowing the cost and then complaining about it.

kaMelo

billy2shots said:

kaMelo said:

Why is the onus, or at least the assumption it should always be the woman who has to change things?

Every individual case can not be answered in one thread. Therefore we will only concentrate on the OPs situation here. 

OP said child costs were £900, 'feels like all of her wages are going on childcare' 

Joint household income is £42k minus £900 a month for the OP suggests the partner earns significantly more.

Should the partner give up their better paid role and the family live on £900 a month?

Don't jump at the chance to be offended or  suggest discrimination, it's really a poor trait at the moment. 

Who was offended, where was discrimination mentioned and where was I suggesting either person give up work?

Misquoting is really a poor trait at the moment.

maisie_cat

As with everything else in this world you have a choice of doing it yourself or paying somebody else to do it at the market rate. But do not complain about the cost of something if you choose the former, you don't work for free so why should a highly trained and regulated childcare provider?
We see this all the time, tax returns, supermarket deliveries, car servicing, plumbing, childcare.
Take your salary, uplift by 300-400% to account for your employers costs and then divide by the numbers of hours you work, that is how much your company would charge for your time. Then compare that to services you are paying for, there will always be the problem that you are paying for services at a grossed up rate but if you give up work you are losing a net pay amount which is substantially less.