How much do you pay a month in child care, be it for pre-school children or after school/school holiday babysitting?
Is it worth your while working when balanced against child care costs?
If you don't work at the moment would you like to if child care was less expensive?
Would your husband consider staying at home to look after the children or would you lose too much money?
How much is covered by benefits or subsidies?
I pay my child minder about 1100 euros a month. We get 500 euros in child benefit and 350 euros to help to pay the child minder. The first is available to almost everyone, the second is means tested. We don't have to pay the employers charges for the child minder, the 'child benefits agency' pays.
We can't do without my salary. I earn more than my fiancé and we can't do without his either. Taking into account what we pay out of our pocket for the child minder (about 250 euros a month) it is definately worth our while financially to work. If either one of us had wanted to we could have worked at 80 or 60% for a few hundred euros a month (as well as our reduced salary), or not worked at all until our youngest is 3 for about 500 euros a month. We did the calculations, we can't do it.
I remember when my sister's children were small (they're teenagers now) she worked to pay the child minder's salary and to stay in the picture at work.
Olly only does 3 days a week at nursery, and currently has subsidised hours, so we pay £147 a month on top of that.
Before we moved here, I was working full time and he was at nursery full time, which cost £850 a month. As a single parent the WTC and CTC bumped up my salary so that I could afford my mortgage and bills, but with roughly £200 a month left over for luxuries like clothes. Moving in with the OH I lost my CTC and WTC, so we agreed I'd take him out of nursery and work from home until he starts school.
We're in the position where OH's income more than covers the loss in my income. I keep on working at home to keep my bank account and my brain healthy, and I can't see me returning to full-time work til the Walnut is at school, which will be another 5 years.
YS costs me around £528 a month in nursery fees, but then I get a discount during term time of up to £150. ES costs £25 a week for two sessions of after school care, and £28 a day for holiday club (he usualy does 2 days a week durign school holidays.
When I went back to work after ys was born, ES just qualified for the discount, but it was hard as I was then paying between £900 and £1050 a month in nursery fees. I never got the child care element of tax credits, so just the child benefit. At worst, there were months when I covered child care fees, petrol etc, but not much more, but gradually I've been able to come out with more money in hand.
It would have been much harder to try to get back into work after dropping out for a while.