Playpennies

It depends on how much you earn to start with. But yes, childcare is a huge chunk of money and if you've got two children at pre-school age it can be prohibitively expensive. You need to do the numbers very carefully. If it costs you £1,900 in childcare a month, and your take home pay is £2,000 then it doesn't take a genius to work out you're effectively paying for the privilege of working. Money isn't the only reason we work though. There's a huge amount of our lives that we'll be working, and taking a long career break can be something that you never manage to recover from.

Odd question? "Is it true"? Like this is some big shocker. It is a lot like saying "Is it true that buying a bigger three bedroom property will leave you worse off financially"?

Unfortunately Lynley is right. Unless you have family or a group of friends that look after each other's children a day a week each or something, (so you all work four day weeks, for example) it can end up costing you more than you take home to pay for childcare :/

In fact, I have a friend whose entire salary and all her tax credits/child tax goes to paying childcare, while her husband pays her travelcard each month, but she really wants to work and feels she's a better mother/wife/person if she's not at home every day. It makes no sense to me, but different strokes and all.