Be Excellent To Each Other

Maybe a yargh, then.

You'll be right, glad it's not me though.

We've got the Play Doh out.

Common occurence in the Z house. Ms Z loves the stuff.

Just come out of my interview at work for the promotion job, think it went well. Hopefully I'll be posting in here again soon. If not I'll see you in the Nay thread.

I had an epic shit before the interview.

I don't usually have time these days. Just me, Chloe and the cat right now though.

Fingers crossed for you Z, when will you find out?

Play D'oh is the best smell ever!

Hehe, phone inserted the apostrophe!

Cheers GJ, not sure when I'll hear.

I feel I did the best I could and didn't come away thinking I should have said things differently.

Got a call from the local nursery saying they have an opening for three days a week (exactly what we wanted) starting in April (exactly when we wanted).

This is good news, as until this happened I was going to have to take the baby on the rush hour morning train three days a week! Now it's a two minute walk from our front door.

YAY!

Yay indeed.

Is it elbow-smashingly expensive?

You'll make an excellent nursery assistant.

650 a month, give or take. For three days a week.

*weeps*

Holy fucking shit. Not having kids I knew that nurseries et al were expensive but I never knew quite how bad it was. That's unbelievable.

We pay £27 a day. A colleague pays £49.

*winces*

Yep, but significantly less expensive than the wife not working.

Presumably there are people out there for whom that's not neccesarily true though? It must be possible for people on lower incomes to actually lose money by going back to work. My rough maths have it that anyone on a wage of £13,000 after tax is better off staying at home.

Yep. I doubt many people earning that little live in the nicer parts of London, though!

Fucking hell!

The South SUCKS.

Get this chucked in the nay thread.

Aye, when I got my first full-time job I worked 47.5hrs per week and after paying the nursery fees, we were no better off. School holidays completely destroyed us. So much so, that Ramsea quit his job one July and didn't get a new one until September as there was absolutely no point in both of us working.

Mind-boggling. I mean, it's not as if I needed any further reasons to never have kids but that alone would do it.

You should see our salaries, bro.

Londoners are the 1%

Yeah, I would never advocate the way we did things as the way to go.

We're both qualified professional now and because we wanted more from life than benefits, we had to start on salaries lower than your average bank clerk/shelf stacker. His first job paid about £9500pa, I think.

We still have to stagger our holidays and my FiL helps out over the school holidays, and our boys are going on 10 and 13. We could easily spend over £3000pa on childcare just to cover holidays, otherwise.

Car passed MOT with only headlight adjustment needed, front brake pads were an advisory though so I'm getting those changed. I will be sad when the time comes to send my little MX-5 off down the road.

Do I need to book a table?

Nurseries are pretty much standard - yours is about £50 a day, right? Which (I'm assuming) is including food and a 'low use' fee?
Our old one in Depford (which isn't a nicer part of London) was £40 a day for five days a week (our current one in Bedford is £40 too, but for only three days). It would have been cheaper for us to get a mortgage on the flat next door, leave it completely empty, and throw him in it each day. And then, of course, we'd have two flats.

You wait until you have to pay even though your kid isn't there. Do they shut down for Christmas?

Working Family tax credits help there.


We had 80% of our childcare paid for that (£13,000 a year is almost exactly what Pauline earns)

Now Raven is 3, she gets free childcare for 2.5 days a week.

Malc

I pay £48 a day for ours, 3 days a week.
Worth it tho, cos she gets to socialise & get all the latest diseases which she brings home for me

and very much

Enjoy, i'll be thinking of you while I play with my new iPad.

I know, I know, I wouldn't understand...

God bless workplaces that allow you to take childcare vouchers as salary sacrifice during maternity leave, then also allow you to salary sacrifice the nursery cost, but let you use your previously accrued childcare vouchers to pay the nursery fees.

Edit: I'm fairly sure this isn't allowed for tax purposes. But as said employer is the government, I'm not inclined to review or challenge it too far.

Yeah, I was going to mention getting onto a childcare voucher scheme as soon as you could. Sucks that it's limited to ~£275 per child, though.

I thought it was limited per parent, so she can get that much and I can get half that again?

Anyway, it is £617 per month, which broken down is:

13 days per month = £47.50 per day.

Each day = 10 hours.

£4.75 (before tax break reductions) per hour for qualified childcare, including all the food and drink she'll need, toys to play with, etc.

All in all, that's a bloody bargain.

Also annoying, me not being able to use it as self employed. Although id only get half due to being paid too much anyway.

See also, child benefit.

Stupid tax policies to help the poor. Which I happily agreed with 2 years ago.

Here parents get 200 days off each (i think) at 80% until their pay until the child is 8. But they can only be off one at a time.

It is up to the employer how much they offer. They can offer up to £243 per employee per month tax-free (as long as the employee is not a high-rate tax payer otherwise it gets halved) They can also offer more but it either has to be based on a salary reduction or count as a benefit-in-kind which has to be counted as taxable salary & it gets all complicated.
If you are self-employed in a small company, the £243 a month is the simplest, but has to be offered to all employees equally (so directors & minimum-wage workers must be offered it equally), and they do make you send a specifically worded letter to the nursery who look confused at it & have no idea what they need to do.

Wow, that's awesome.

I assume that's 200 days over those 8 years. Still, 12.5 days a year is really good.

Until 8 years old?

Yeah. Not a year, so they can take it when they want really. Which is good.

Just checking it's actually 480 days between them. So 240 each if you go that way. I'm not sure if it's your employer or it's the government who pay it, but it's a pretty good scheme I think.

Ok It's full time leave up to 1 and a half years baby age, and can work shorter days up to 8 years old.

Yeah, those 9 year olds are plenty old enough to look after themselves by then!

The wife's had a new tattoo today. I'm trying hard not to sit there for hours stroking and licking her while making a deep throat rumbly growl.

Is it an 'achievement unlocked' tattoo?

It it the chin of a hoss?

Well according to the scales..


I have hit 1 6stone 9, so I have lost a stone, and it is staying off.. I am most happy.

That's great Kov, are you dieting?

Doing the slimming world diet.. Which to be fair is easy.


I miss chips

And among the chip peoples of the remote Mcain islands, there was much rejoicing.

I'm losing fat, so that's good. The wonders of going to the gym every week day, hey? No missing pizzas or chocolate for me. Just four weights sessions and a circuit session.

Just made an appointment with a mortgage adviser.

Just ordered Sam's driving licence. Erk.