Wednesday 19 November 2014

Paying the bills

Well, life is weird... I've been playing with the maths for a while now (I even found an online calculator (see the link): and it turns out that I don't earn enough to pay nursery fees for two kids... on balance, I'd be paying out over £1000/year just to go to work... and I'd need to be on 30,000 a year with a job that I could walk to just to be working for free!, So, come the new year when Sarah's career starts to get back on track (lecturing at Trent), I'll be managing the kids and the house.

In many ways I'm looking forward to it (as the kids are great and I often feel I don't get the time with them I'd like). It's going to be a brilliant adventure and I'm going to get to learn a lot from my kids.

Two things bug me... firstly, I am disappointed that, in my 30s, I'm not at the stage career/financially where there was completely free choice... it would appear that the universities I attended were rather over optimistic when discussing "graduate career trajectory" (I won't name and shame, but I'd take legal action if I thought I could win).

The second thing that bugs me is government policy... every nursery we've asked at has said "don't worry about the cost, there's tax credits". This is not true for us, our combined income would be such that we wouldn't get ANY government help. This is irritating because the nurseries all assume state help when pricing their services and we're in the zone between "low paid enough to get help" and "rich enough that it doesn't matter".

I will still be professionally active (part-time), but until September 2018, I'll probably be on my mobile or at home rather than in the office.