Nursery costs

You should qualify for the funded hours, which helps a little!
It is very expensive.

Are you able to ask for about flexible working? I now work 4 days and have my son the day I’m off, my husband works tues - sat so he has him on a Monday and my mum does half a day Wednesday. Is there anyway you could do this sort of structure?

Sadly its very expensive. I had to go back to work when my son was 7m old too and it was costing us between £1-1.2k each month for full-time nursery (including tax free childcare!). Even with 30hrs funding now we're still having to pay £800-£1k towards nursery costs each month.

Will you qualify/are you including Tax Free Childcare and 30 hours of funding in your costs? Alternatively, childminders tend to charge lower rates so might be worth looking into local CMs as well.

The funding won’t start until the term after baby is 9 months old is something to bare in mind so a baby turning 9 months in February for example wouldn’t get funding until the April term.

As long as individually you earn under 100k each you will qualify for the funded hours and tax free childcare.

What do you do for work? I for example work shifts so we only need childcare 3 days a week rather than 5 which makes things significantly cheaper.

Also look at lots of nurseries and perhaps childminders who are often much cheaper. Costs vary massively between settings so ‘shop around’ so to speak x

Have a look at childminders as they can work out a little cheaper.
The 30 hrs from 9 months is a god send & tax free childcare account.
Hubby and I both have v good jobs but as individually below 100k we are eligible.
Our son is in childminders all day Mon - weds. Half day Thurs and off Friday and this costs about £350 a month (this includes the 20% childcare tax free) so much more affordable that you might think x

I feel your pain, child care is so expensive. When you say “we earn just over” so you don’t qualify for free hours, do you mean one/both of you earn over £100k per year?

If so there are things you can do to bring your “taxable income” down to £99k so that you qualify x