Childcare costs!
 

I have 2 boys 3 & 7 both having gone through full time nursery with one still there, With breakfast club for my eldest and nursery fee's for my little one we are paying £640 per month!!

Now what really boils my p*ss is even when my youngest is not there for holidays etc (not that we can afford one at the moe!) we still have to pay £38 per day. :mad:

So not only do we have to pay £640 per month for other people to enjoy my kids me and the wife also cannot spend any of our time off together as we have to look after my eldest during the school holidays alternating weeks off!

I just love our government! They want us to all go to work or go back to work in some cases but it is clear to see I would better off on the dole! Yes i'd be very slightly worse of financially but I'd get to spend time with my kids and my wife!!

When will someone in Westminster have the bollo* to sort this out just like they have in Denmark! They have state run fantastic nursery's capped at £250 per month, now thats what I'm talking about! they even do an over night stay once a month so parents can have a quiet night!! :norty:

What I'm getting at it their government understands the family workers are the back bone of the economy and need helping out more than the lazy B****ds!

I just seems to me if your a doley and have no aspirations, lay on your back pop out kids you can't afford and make sure they have an "ism" then your life is sorted! Free house, dental, food, clothes NHS, have loads of kids and get a people carrier!!

These tables really need to be turned, working families should be given more help than doleys full stop!!

Am I wrong??

Absolutely bang on.

This is why we cope on my modest income (as a 3rd year apprentice) and child benefit/a little tax credit, whilst my Mrs looks after our 16 month old son :)

No way in hell could I afford a few hundred quid a month just on childcare. Not unless the Mrs got a job paid much higher than nat. min. wage to make it worth while.

There was talk about nursery costs on the radio and the people who staff them were saying they are struggling to make a profit, so its doubtful the government will do anything about the costs. Its easy to see why people don't work when costs are that high.

We pay £600 a month and it also pisses me off we have to pay if we're on holiday and she doesn't attend. Do we struggle ? Yes . Do we regret it? No !

As I feel it's helped ellie develop a lot quicker and interact with other kids brilliantly.

Our 2nd is due around January.

My wife runs her own hair salon Monday to Saturday. She won't get any maternity because we can't actually afford for her to shut the doors and can't rely on the other girls to run the place. We can't afford for her to take any time off really so god knows how we are going to cope. For the first month my wifes mum is going to help out then the creche will take the child.

The creche our daughter went to charges per hour - some charge per day - I think its about £5 an hour. If she works 10 to 4 over 4 week days its about £120 a week I think. Fortunately we just qualify for childcare costs as its our 2nd. We wouldn't get anything if we didn't have a child already.

For us, I think child care cost isn't going to be a big issue. Our main issue is having a business that can't afford a week or two without its main earner.

Once you're qualified Andy will nat be returning to work?

With regards to paying when they aren't there, there is a reason for this. That child holds a place in that nursery with limited numbers of places available. This means that even if they arent there, the place is still there and so must be paid for.

Did you not realise before you had kids that they don't come cheap, and maybe when you are off it may be a nice idea to spend some time with your own instead of palming them off to someone else to look after.





They also pay a hell of a lot more in taxes in Denmark compared to us in the UK to fund things like this.

Do you not get child allowance and child tax credit then??

I fully understand that but 2 weeks for a annual holiday would hurt especially if notice is given its not like she's not going to return after.

Here's the judgmental users.

What business is it of anyone to tell someone what they should do with their kids!

I'm not. I would just like people to take more responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming others.

And my wife childminded for 15 years whilst ours were growing up as we didn't want them brought up by people that we didn't really know.

Won't help you just yet with your youngest, but we have a 7 and 9 year old and, as we have the space in the house, we've used au pairs for the last 5 years or so. Much cheaper solution - we used to send ours to Nursery pre school and in London its even worse @ £800 per kid per month...

They stay with us from September to the end of July and their daily routines are along the lines of give the nippers breakfast ( we're still there but at least we get the chance to chat to the kids rather than run around like a headless chicken), she takes them to school, brings them home, gets them their evening meal, does homework etc, plays with them, bath & bed- if neither of us are back in time- and does all their washing etc - circa 24 hrs of work a week . They also are expected to do two days a week babysitting - not that we use that much - for no extra cost. My other half doesn't work Fridays so the au pair is let off that day and we both spend all the time we can with them on weekends.

The cost? £75 a week plus their accommodation/food, plus we pay for their gym membership etc. Plus annual registration fee with the agency circa £350 IIRC.

Wouldn't work for everyone I know, but it's great for us and the kids really like them - basically its like having an older sister for them. We have had exclusively 19 year old German girls and they have been great - very punctual to and from school, very well organised and no bother/good fun actually.

In Germany kids are encouraged to take a gap year before applying for Uni and , if they go overseas and successfully do a daytime foreign language course while away then they get a +5 or +10% or something boost to their exam scores as a reward to help them get into uni, plus their parents get a tax credit. Very far sighted of them and partly explains why most Germans can speak better English than I can...

We use a firm called Childcare intl - again very well organised - you tell them what you're looking for and then get like a 60 page CV from each potential au pair with everything you need to know plus photos and a letter from the girl explaining why they would like to come to the UK so you get a feel for what they're like.

We tend to pick high achievers at school and weed out all fussy eaters /vegan/clearly mad/ party on types before interviewing 3 or 4 over Skype and finally picking one.

Downside - you need to have the space and not to mind having someone in your house- although they usually make local friends at the language school and we hardly see ours out of work hours once they get settled down. It's easy for us to get a wide spread of candidates - we live in London and the kids school is walking distance - may not be so easy somewhere out in the country or whatever. Most of them have driving licences but haven't driven abroad etc.

Upside - the last but one was stopped by a leading fashion agency and asked to model for them (which Puff the Mod on here can testify to as she babysat for his kids last year) - although that could also be a downside when your other half is a lawyer like mine... :D

Anyhow just a thought.

Will pm you Ant. :)

Yeah but you get paid holidays, essentially this is what it is for the "nursery".

Mrs T and I decided that she would pack in work to look after our kids when they were born, she was self employed at the time. We always had a plan to have two kids, what we weren't expecting was two at one time.

I empathise with the OP's view point to an extent, we have started to look at pre-school options for our kids, we were advised that those in receipt of benefits would be given priority over anyone else. I understand that the aim of this approach is to give the kids of persons on benefit the best start in life, but it is the discriminatory nature of how this is executed that grinds with me. Basically if there are a large number of kids registered, whos parents are on benefits, then my kids will be turned away, the assumption being that I can afford to pay for private pre-school services.

The other thing which I find a bit sharp regarding private nursery placements, if the kids are ill, the nursery take the decision to send them home, yet continue to charge for their placement.

it's a business not a employee with rights so comparing it their holiday pay is absurd.


We effectively give them £300 for nothing when we go on a 2 week holiday, how can you see that as being fair? I wouldn't mind if they did a reduced cost for these weeks say £50 a week.

It's not like the kids will all be going at once.

As for not making a profit ours must only be rolling it they've got 25 kids £600 full time £350 part time and pay the staff minimum wage.

It is a business, yes but i don't think it is absurd to compare it with holiday pay at all as that is essentially what it is in my eyes.

They are a business that can register a limited number of kids. Now if they can register 25 kids then thats the maximum their business can earn for the whole year. If you didnt have to pay full price for holidays then whats to stop you taking them out for long periods of time and therefore costing the business money as they cannot bring another kid in to fill that place and make up that deficit.

You also dont pay them for nothing, you pay them for the ability to leave your kids in their care. If you dont leave the kid there then thats your choice, they are still available to look after your kid and therefore deserve to be paid for that as they are still providing that service, you have just not availed of it. I guess a better way of representing it is paying for someone to be on call, wether they are used or not they have to be ready to work and therefore get paid for it.

I meant we don't get time together as a full family it's either just mum or just dad, of course I don't palm my kids off but some family time together would be nice, I'm always at work earning money to pay for child care days when he's not even there!!

No we don't get tax credits just family allowance we missed out by about £5.

When you have kids it is the mothers duty to stay at home at look after the children after all this is the most important job of all and the most rewarding.

It is the father of the child and husband of the mother's job to go out to work and be the breadwinner and provide for the family.

It is not the job of the tax payer to subsidise childcare so greedy, selfish and heartless parents can abandon their children so they can drive around in his and her's performance motors, have two holidays abroad each year and live in the latest new build stocked with the entire Ikea catalogue.

please show me where it says anywhere its the mothers duty to stay at home and look after kids?

i think youll struggle to find that documentation tbh - but try away.....

what if the mothers salary is greater than the fathers?

chilcare providers must run a service, pay wages and remain operational - and as for heartless selfish parents lol, is that really what you see in every single example of working families that use childcare? really?

Where is it documented that i as a tax payer have to pay for the upkeep of other peoples kids? Nobody subsidised my children, my wife and I brought them up and we made sacrifices to make sure we were always there rather than abandoning them with strangers for the sake of another wage and more money. You only get one chance with kids, because they grow up in a blink of an eye. What kind of mother would want to miss that.

Earning extra money or being on some sort of power trip with a career and high paid job just isn't worth not being with your kids when they need their mother the most.

Also society in general is the loser due to greedy absent parents who want everything even if it is at the expense of sacrificing family life and being there for their kids.

That's a pretty big brush tarring all those families.

Unfortunately in days gone by families would scrap by or even live comfortably on the fathers/husbands wage. Nowadays with higher aspirations/expectations on standards of living, you see many "double earning" families. Me and the Mrs are doing it the old fashioned way as it were as what's the point of her working part time just for it to go on childcare (unless her potential work worked around my steelworkers shift pattern?). She'd be going out to work, to pay someone else to spend time with our son :lol1:

Eventually it will be different but personally in our situation it would be easier for me to do a couple overtime shifts a month on a skilled craftsman's wage then say her working every sat/sun (my only two guaranteed days off) and us not seeing each other - for benefit of more expendable cash, not child care costs.

Daycare is rather expensive. we pay about $1600 a month, though it does go down a few hundred when he moves from the toddler room to the next one up. It is a pretty good daycare, situated in the same building where my wife works.
We do joke that the price it costs could be a mortgage on another apartment!

I am told that you can put daycare costs down on your tax return, so we will do that and see if we get anything back. I also know that if he is enrolled in music or art classes (when he is a little older) those costs can be claimed back.

How is life in the 1950s? :cuckoo:

:lol1: I was thinking the exact same thing.

And as for his taxes paying for child care thats just hilarious. So by the parents going back to work they are paying no tax in the system at all are they ? Or would you much prefer it all to go on the jobless banging kids out for fun. :lol1:



I don't have to justify why my kid goes to nursery to anyone especially to
Knobheads on here :thumb:

Exactly work hard and try to do things the right way and get penalized, be a doley and get priority, and get more time with your kids!



My wife is the chief breadwinner in our house as times have changed, what I am getting at is in this country it seems that if you try and better yourself you get stung, where as you can spend your entire life on the dole and get everything with no responsibility!

[quote/] Where is it documented that i as a tax payer have to pay for the upkeep of other peoples kids? [quote/]

we already are!!!!! there are thousands of people who have never had a job being paid to have more and more kids by us every day!

Where our household makes the effort to work thus paying tax and gets nothing!

It take 14 families of 4 paying in into the system to offset just one family of doleys!

he is right, its just how it works, otherwise your kid will lose his place for sombody that does. Same as work holidays really they pay us for getting wankered in magaluf.

Anyway ive just cancelled mt childcare vouchers as my princess goes to school in sept so im 230 quid better off now, yehaa

what did boil my piss though was i cancelled on the 1st and they cant stop augusts salary going in, so i will have a pot of money that i can only spend on childcare, i cant cash it in as its a tax thing.

So unknown to her im gonna send her to afterschool club till the pots dry :)

I don't see the issues with childcare. My Mum runs a childcare company and the amount of financial support you get from the government is staggering! Some families get the majority of their fees paid by the government. It's all income assessed so if you are on a good wage you will get less, seems fair.

The point with still paying if you go on holiday, of course you should pay. You are paying for a place, if you are not using your place then nobody else is. The company still has to earn their money and places are a premium. My Mums company works on a term by term place so if you don't want to have a place over the summer holidays you don't have to but you have to decide that at the start of the school year to allow other children to fill the place.

Also your prices seem very steep. I forget exactly how much the prices are but it used to work out around £40 per week or £60 if you have two children. There is an inflated rate during the holidays though.

So are nurserys being greedy charging a fortune because they know majority of it will be funded by the tax credits?

Possibly, I know costs sky rocket in major cities because people can afford to pay and they are fighting for places. My Mum turns people away weekly as there isn't enough space.

One person even complained that she was expensive. They went away, 2 weeks later she came back after finding out that everyone else charges nearly double. Needless to say, the place got filled and she had to lump it.