Having a second child- can you make it work costwise? (work v nursery etc)

We are doing ok with one and both of us working (hes in school- 4.5yrs old/she works 4days fulltime).

A second child though- is it possible to have a second AND do the same (work 4days). Nursery costs are going crazy aren’t they? Is it still 3yrs when the freetime kicks in?

I’ve got quite a few more children than two, and we make it work on one salary.

Go on. You can do it! 🙂

EDIT: I have no idea what child care costs, as we have been fortunate enough to find that it is more economical for one of us to (in this case, my wife) to stay home.

It’s very expensive Mrs S is trying to drop to 3 days – makes money sense but that’s not the biggest issue in the big sceme of things is it? Milloins of others seem to manage.

You could always go on the game to make up the shortfall?

We opted to sort our lives so we didn’t both have to work, made a lot more sense. Very few people get the chance to do that these days. We were lucky.

Good friend of mine spent ALL his earnings on child care and his 60 mile per day commute. His wife earned enough to pay for the rest, including fancy foreign holidays. The kids were in nursery 10-12 hours a day. Never could get my head round how that was family life.

You could always go on the game to make up the shortfall?

Have you seen my Chevy-chase? 😀

Our local nursery is £40 a day

Depends how much you earn 😉

We have two in nursery now that we have to pay for. Mrs Blobby works three day weeks which covers the cost and leaves a bit over. It’s not much financially but we are taking the long term view that she has a specialist job she likes in a very convenient location (5 mins from home and across the road to the nursery) which she would be unlikely to get again if she gave it up and looked again in a few years time.

Edit… 40 quid a day! Ours is 55 quid a day 🙁

3 kids here, but as above, we’ve been lucky enough to not have to pay for childcare. My OH does 3 days a week, so has the kids for 2. I do 4 days a weeks and have the kids 1 day, Grandma has the kids the other 2 days. We do live reasonably frugally though, no keeping up with the Jones’ for us 🙂

All that said Hora – do we really want to encourage you to breed further? 😉

Depends on a lot, but if you really want a second, then JFDI – you’ll find a way to make it work when you have to. Or waste a load of time wondering if you can or not.

We did it with a 15 month gap. Both of us work full time. Childcare costs were about £1800 a month for a while which is the equivalent to earning 27K to cover it. Then we went and had a third after 3 years. We still work full time but the older two are now in school and the fees are slowly coming down the 3 year old will be getting 15 hours paid for.

The hardest thing was we were really getting sorted with the two kids and my middle boy was /is old for his age so it felt like a massive backward step to go back to having a baby again. You just have to enjoy it for what it is and not worry about what you could have been doing.

I still mountain bike 2-3 times a week and road bike once a week. My wife does loads of gym classes but its hard work to co-ordinate work, biking and running the house.

^ What Deadly said…. money should not really come into it.

All that said Hora – do we really want to encourage you to breed further?

Hora MKII – bi-weekly he wins trophy of the week at footie for 20-30 kids 😀 so we need to restock Manchester United’s squad for the next time they win a European trophy 😀

Do I/we really want another? Hes full on but we do worry he wont have a sibling/growing up.

There is definitely a balance to be struck between how much you are earning and how much you are paying for childcare so you can go to work.

We have a 4 year old in school (9am-3pm with wrap-around care at a childminder till 8am-6pm) and a 1 year old in nursery (8am till 6pm)

We both reduced and compressed our hours so MrsGrahamS works 3 days a week and I work 4. This means we only need total childcare on 2 days a week (plus we get a bit more time with the kids which is nice).

Not sure how long we’ll keep doing this but it is working well for now even though life is obviously fairly hectic!

^ What Deadly said…. money should not really come into it.

Really? Need to know how/if you are going to make it work surely?

Hora, tough decision, get it wrong and you can’t get rid of it on the classifieds 😉

No one can actually afford it, but many get by.

You just have to re adjust your expectations a bit.

Really? Need to know how/if you are going to make it work surely?

Of course it takes a bit of planning and I’m not suggesting recklessness. If you want another child, but are not prepared to make the sacrifices needed, then, well, I dunno, you don’t really want another child.

True, and I suspect with Hora it’s a case of an adjustment of lifestyle and a few less shiny bike bits.

Toughest thing will likely be going from a 4 year old to a newborn again. You only remember the good bits and forget how awful it is 😉

….and the newby being like the 4yr old who is very intense/full on. We’d prefer one thats placid/calm not known as a character by everyone.

😆

In the big group of friends/children (who all have two)- theres only one other like ours who is full on (he gets into fights at school and they are nuclear when together- running off, hiding, falling out of trees)..

Depends on a lot, but if you really want a second, then JFDI – you’ll find a way to make it work when you have to.

This. It’s a pretty expensive time for us with two sets of nursery fees plus reduced income, but we get by. We run an old car, have a small mortgage and don’t take fancy holidays. Some may view that as sacrifices but I don’t see it that way.

The way I look at it – even if one salary is entirely consumed in childcare – that person is still in a job, still progressing (hopefully) and when the kids finally are in school it’ll be much easier than if they had quit. Possibly. I have no experience of this!

I’ve got a 9 year old and an 8 month old. Mrs Jay has recently started working 2 days a week (Weds and Sun) but will soon be working 4 days a week (Mon-Fri with a day off at random).

It’s tough, childcare for the Lad is cheap – £60 a month covers him for a couple of days afterschool club) but the Baby is a lot – I work from Home Friday mornings and my Mum has her Friday afternoon which means 3 days a week full-time – £120 a week £520 a month – we get back £150 a month using both out Childcare Voucher schemes so £370 a month – it’s a lump of cash, but crippling.

Due to the work I do, and the person I am I leave no stone unturned when it comes to planning so I spent days working out which nursery to use, which child-minder (we use both) and explored every avenue – the working from home Friday was a real boost, it’s a quiet day for me, I work in IT so it really doesn’t matter where I am, and at the moment little Baby naps from 9-11 and then from 1-3pm so I’m Dad from 11am to 12 (Boss is cool with it) and then I’m on Lunch till Mum gets here. Saves us £160 a month.

Baby naps from 9-11 and then from 1-3pm

Yeah, mine used to be like that…

if you really want a second, then JFDI – you’ll find a way to make it work when you have to.

Got to agree with that really. If having kids was a cold sensible logical decision based purely on finances and such then no one would ever do it! 🙂

Decide if you want to have another and then worry about how the hell you’ll make it work.

We’d prefer one thats placid/calm not known as a character by everyone.

Just order a GM one,but make sure you get the right size or it may handle badly and be scared in side winds.

I was reasonably happy with 1. Mrs DBW wanted another. People kept reminding me of a lad at school who was a bit odd and was a single child. So I shoved another bambino in her as I didn’t want mini-DBW #000001 being weird.

a) money never really came into it
b) it was the best thing we could have done. Its absolutely awesome having two.

It’ll be loads easier now Hora that mini-Hora #000001 is at school. We timed it perfectly (unintentional) for Noel starting to get his free 1.5 day a week at about the same time Oscar started nursery.

Do the deed.

It’s hard, but we do it. Just. 1 and 3y/o get a lot out of nursery 3.5 days a week. Wife works 4 days, me 5 (making up the hours for the .5 day I look after the kids). No ‘serious’ fixed outgoings other than OH’s professional indemnity, childcare and mortgage. And holidays at home (we enjoy being at home and have a lot on the doorstep). If you take the 5 year view of your finances, it can look a lot brighter.

ETA – HAVING 2 IS ACE!

All that said Hora – do we really want to encourage you to breed further?

Our kids are going to need someone to ridicule on STW in 20 years time for buying the wrong sized frame / breaking another set of forks etc etc 😉

It’s a tricky one. We did the maths and then considered how stressful it’d be trying to get to and from work in time to collect plus the consideration of the length of time we’d have to leave them at the nursery to be able to do full time jobs and just thought it wasn’t worth the meagre amount that’d actually be left over. In th end it just made more sense for my wife to jack her job in and provide what I consider to be athe massive positive influence on the kis of being a full time mum. Wasn’t easy but financially it really wouldn’t have made a massive amount of difference. I’d have loved to be the stay at home dad but at the time our earnings were quite different from each other. I worked my arse off at work. She worked her arse of doing everything else. Kids are at school now. She’s retrained to do something she really loves. All good.

If you have a 2nd, the child comes first, you have to make it all work around the kids. The basic fundementals for us were:

a) Mrs K needs to keep her career ticking over
b) kiddie social interaction, and pre-school disciplines are good for jnr rather than being stuck at home for 4 years with adult interaction only
c) we make sacrifices to enable the finances to work

Hence, Mrs K works 3 days Pw, her salary less £100pm and our mutual childcare vouchers pay the nursery fees for KJ02 to be at nursery 3dpw. Our eyes were wide open to that before we started with KJ01. c) is sometime quite hard but sometimes you get lucky (we have an foc awesome holiday this year) but really if you have your kids, a beer and a pizza all is well with the world.

getting an Au Pair is a very appealing way of sorting cheap childcare of course…..

i read this with much interest…

we have decided NOT to have another, im 40 and wife is 41.

we simply couldnt afford too have another and it would be detriment to our 5 year old daughter.

some have said we are totally selfish, but i think we are just realistic.

no offence to anybody on here as i know this can be a cagey subject.

i see so many children at my daughters school who are in morning and aftenroon club. i just dont see the point as they cannot see their children much at all.

i am fortunate that im off some days in the week and take my daughter to school and pick her up alot.

(again not directed at anyone on here so please dont take offence)

but the amount of pressure and people saying “ooh you should have another!” – “when you having another etc”

i dont for one second think a single child turns out any different to one with siblings.

infact i think ‘within reason’ we can give/help our daughter out in the future with a car/house etc if needed, where as if we had another we wouldnt be able to help as much.

i know a friend of a friend who has 6 kids, they struggle all the time with money but he said he wouldnt change it for the world, so i guess it’s each to his/her own.

i must admit i do think, my god what if somehting happend to our daughter we would have no children but i guess you cant walk round thinking that every day.

i dont know what im trying to say really…..

We had a year withb both in full time childcare, befre the ledest started school, I think we were paying out £1300ish a month.
Our youngest will be starting school in Septmber so we’ll just be paying for before/after school care.
hankfully my wife is a teacher so the chool holidays are sorted,and at least she gets to spend some quality time with the kids in the holidays.

Its tough, but you an make it work

Get in a nanny.

They can also take/bring-back the school aged child.

It’ll work out cheaper than you think.

getting an Au Pair is a very appealing way of sorting cheap childcare of course…..

But you know what they say about paying peanuts…..

We only make it work by having a nanny. Nurseries wouldn’t remotely work with the hours we need cover for and while a child minder could work, it’s so much easier having someone come to your house rather than having to do the whole drop off thing.

Not cheap though as you pay PAYE, NI and holiday pay and you have to provide maternity/paternity rights. Key difference between a Nanny and an Au Pair is that an Au Pair has no qualifications, doesn’t even need to be registered and back ground checked I don’t think (could be wrong about that). It’s just someone you hire, who lives in your house and stops you getting prosecuted for leaving small children on their own. That’s not to say that you won’t ever get good care, just that the person concerned has no formal training in it (like most parents then!)

A Nanny will have a formal qualification that covers things like child development, meeting needs, first aid etc. Child Minders will have something similar but not quite to the same level. They have to be registered and show proficiency (and get a rating as a result) but they don’t come to your house.

For us having a second was less about the cost and more about the level of work involved (when both my wife and I were always going to [have to] maintain full time work.

We have two FULL ON kids, like the ones you mention above. They are all different. My brother has three fairly easy maintenance kids. Ours are turned up to 11 the entire time. I love it but it is hard work.

Get in a nanny.
They can also take/bring-back the school aged child.

Our childminder does that. We drop our daughter off at her house anytime between 8 and 9 (depending on how late we are running). She takes her to school along with the other kids in her care. She picks them all up again at 3 and they go to her house and play for a few hours (or she takes them to ballet class). Then we pick up at 6.

Works well for the two days a week we do it.

Nothing to stop a child minder doing the school run, except when they have other kids (or indeed their own) not at the same school as yours. Then it can get a little tricky.

True. In our case we live in a relatively small village and there only is one school so that’s not an issue. May be more complicated in the big smoke.

Agree with JFDI

Also agree with depends on how much you both earn. Part time is a good solution as you get proportionally more net pay vs gross pay

(I’m lucky to have both sets of parents very close by, we still use childcare for the benefits of the kids interacting with others though)

Our childminder does that.

Yes, but you’ve still got to get them to the childminder – and if they are sick etc…

We had a nanny when my two were little, worked out cheaper/easier than other childcare – and this was nearly 20 years ago, before nursery costs ‘exploded’.