The true cost of raising children has just hit me like a humungous slap in the face. So far we’ve been living in isolated bliss. Cat on fully paid maternity leave and me swanning around with my reduced working hours and plenty of quality parenting time. But come September, when Cat goes back to work, we have to place both Aimee and Dylan into nursery day care. Oh my God. We’re talking £1400 a month for full time care for both. That’s the cheapest nursery in town. If you add food, bills and other non-fun everyday expenditure, then basically both me and Cat will be out of pocket by a few hundred each month. My eyes nearly popped out when I worked it all out using Excel, and Cat looked on the brink of tears.
So our first solution was to suggest that Aimee work hard manual labour down the coal shaft (we’ll just call it the ‘find the black ball’ game), and Dylan to get a major new role in Eastenders (after all, you never see half-asian actors on TV, it’s an equality thing). The boringly serious solution though, is to find a way of tweeking our work hours and putting the kids into nursery for only part of the week. We’ll also need to change a habit of a lifetime and live strictly to budget. No more fancy cakes and impulse buys at Tesco. It’s Value meals and lots of home-made freezer food. But that’s all to come in September. Now pass me the caviar.
So our first solution was to suggest that Aimee work hard manual labour down the coal shaft (we’ll just call it the ‘find the black ball’ game), and Dylan to get a major new role in Eastenders (after all, you never see half-asian actors on TV, it’s an equality thing). The boringly serious solution though, is to find a way of tweeking our work hours and putting the kids into nursery for only part of the week. We’ll also need to change a habit of a lifetime and live strictly to budget. No more fancy cakes and impulse buys at Tesco. It’s Value meals and lots of home-made freezer food. But that’s all to come in September. Now pass me the caviar.
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