Jay-i agree, i think just baby company would drive me eventually lol but my earnings would not cover childcare and the whole point of me returning to work is to have an income which is essential. Not sure if there are any benefit type things to help with childcare, i will check it out i think.

 

One more point to consider, generally the more popular/reccommended the childcare, the longer the waiting list, get your name down on a few of your prefered places as soon as you know what/where they are.

 

we've settled on 3 days a week in the creche.. Vonnie gets thu-sun at home, ellie 3 days socialising and interacting with other kids. Seems to work well.

BTW we found one in Ewell charging 1200pcm and FULL

 

Steve tell me about it, we are seriously considering a childcare based business venture, most round here are IMO below standard charging £1k a month!! per child!! on average 30 places!!with 6 month waiting list!!

I did the maths and fell off me chair

 

But who would want to look after 8-10 1 year old's all day every day...... just one of them is enough for me ( teeth no. 9+ are a fricking nightmare btw )

I'd like to see how much the liability insurance is for these places though.....


S

 

Shame i'm not a qualified child minder really.....

 

You could be.

Two good friends of mine both got pregnant at similar times. They basically agreed that one would qualify to be a childminder and the other would go back to work, leaving the two sprogs together at home #1. It worked fairly well. Might end up being a sore test of friendship though....

Don't like any idea concerning benefit fraud, you'd never be able to show your faces in NSR again, you know what people here think about it

 

Our nursery in Northampton charges £ 544.00 per month for full-time (5 days). We can drop little one off from 07:45hrs and collect upto 18:00hrs, later in required but at an additional cost.

This seemed to be an average price in Northampton.

 

Sorry for asking the obvious, BUT....

If he's above the threshold for tax credit, then I assume your not-so-poor partner will be contributing to childcare costs???????

Puzzled as to why this would not happen?!

 

I'm sure it will happen but W69 is obviously stuck in the catch22 situation where they need the extra income to make ends meet but can't afford the childcare to allow W69 to go out to work enough to pay for it & get the extra money.

 

.....which you would have thought they would work out BEFORE committing to bringing a child into the world....

Some people seem to think the goverment should be bailing them out when it comes to childcare. Not so. A bit of budgeting and cutting back here & there, and some lifestyle decisions. If, as a couple, you're above the thresholds for state help, there's no excuses.

It's tough, I admit.

 

fair point, but I would rather see the tax I pay go to someone who wants to return to work, build a career and eventually pay something back, rather than to someone who has 57 kids and gets their income support delivered by securicor that has no intention of ever working in their life

 

Well if you're going to bring your discussion onto here, it seems fair enough to question it.......

Honestly....if you're going to moan on about childcare, why the hell did you have one in the first place? People have been having children and coping for millions of years without state help - what's changed now?

 

Imlach, whilst I understand what you are saying in your inimitable way, having a child is often more of an emotional choice than a rational one. When we had ours I just assumed "I earn a decent wage, we'll be ok". In truth, we *are* ok, but it came as a bit of a reality check when I worked out how much was left out of my salary after paying *all* of the mortgage, and other household bills and expenses. My wife has gone back to work part time, and even though she is earning a good wage as a teacher, childcare still takes up the majority of her take home pay.

And no - we don't qualify for family tax credits!

 

Of course. It involves cutting back, budgeting, and compromising. Which is what you've done. Of course you won't have the lifestyle you had pre-birth, but no-one is dumb enough to expect that are they?

 

Agreed, although it would be a little ironic if we ended up having to move to a smaller house on account of starting a family.


<says prayer to the Gods of Railway contracting>

 

Assuming that one salary can cover mortgage & bills, I think EVERYONE can cut back enough to cope with remaining in the same house.

Of course, if one salary couldn't cover the mortgage & bills BEFORE the birth, then you'd be in a similar situation as regards moving, baby or not.

Aside from childcare (which you wouldn't require if one of you was unemployed), babies don't need to be very expensive at all.

 

Who said I'm well off....we cope as does everyone else.

 

Basically, that's right. We *can* survive on my salary, with or without baby. The thing is that my position isn't as secure as it was before Network Rail came along - obvioulsy this couldn't have been predicted at the time we starting trying to conceive. The issue now is that before we could have struggled along on my wife's salary while I tried to find work (assuming the worst comes to the worst) whereas now that wouldn't be an option.

Fortuntely, B2Z has given me an idea and I will be suggesting that the wife and daughter move into a bedsit down the road and put the CSA onto me.

 

PC

And that's often the problem - people often have kids without thinking of the consequences. Kiddy is born, the stresses (financial and emotional) get too much, parents split ..... and I (as one of the nation's taxpayers) have to pick up the pieces. It happens all the time, hundreds of times a week.

Having a child *shouldn't* be an emotional thing, or at least not to the exclusivity of all else. I knew before our first kid was conceived roughly what it was going to cost - we'd moved to the size of house we would need, done some rough sums on childcare/nappies/clothing & equipment, and knew that we could cover it. Several months before the birth, we started to look for childcare places, specifically a childminder who would take our screaming brat from 3 months.

It all takes time, but it's better to plan and be over-cautious than to think "it'll all be OK" when there's a fair chance that it won't. And I'd rather get the financial bit sorted, because the one thing I really underestimated whas just how awful the lack of sleep (feeding/crying/nappy changing) really was.

 

The other option is, of course, some redundancy protection insurance. I found some cover which was £28/month for £1500/month of cover. Having just changed jobs (having just been made redundant!) and having no potential huge redundancy payout in the new job, it seemed a good option. It's not *too* expensive.

 

that is cheap - does it cover you for accident&sickness or redundancy only?

 

Redundancy only. May review that sometime.

 

I take your point about resale, but I run three cars (all needed) and one of them is a Saab 9000 - cost £1000, has 150k miles on it, totally reliable, and I'd rather be in it than a Scoob if a really nasty crash happened. It's cost the square root of sod all in the two years I've had it. You may not want to sell the Scoob, which is fair enough, but it's certainly not a sensible choice for the budget-conscious motorist!

 

Would I be able to get this sort of cover, being as it's my own business? I would have thought that the insurer would take the fact that I am seeking cover as an indication that I might well need it!