Ask the Expert: Should I go part-time or pay for nursery?
Fidelity personal finance specialist Marianna Hunt is back again to answer your questions, and today a reader is weighing up the financial decision of childcare.
Q. My husband and I recently had a baby and I am planning my return to work post maternity leave. The cost of nursery is so enormous – our chosen one charges £1,800 a month – that I am questioning whether it makes sense to go back full-time.
How should I go about making this decision? I know it’s not just about the cost of nursery versus how much I’m paid but also the potential for missed career opportunities, future salary growth, pension contributions etc.
A: This is a question many parents find themselves grappling with much sooner than they’d like. Those early months with a new baby should be a time for settling into family life. But the practical realities of returning to work – from eye-watering childcare costs that feel like a second mortgage to flexible working arrangements – mean there’s a lot to think about. Breaking the decision down into bite-sized chunks can help.
First of all, have you factored in government funding? Since September 2025, eligible working parents in England can get up to 30 funded childcare hours a week for children aged from nine months old until school age. Most middle-income couples should qualify, provided each parent earns at least the equivalent of 16 hours per week at minimum wage and neither earns more than £100,000.
As a rough illustration, a nursery charging £1,800 a month for five days’ care might cost closer to £1,000 a month once government support has been factored in, although the exact saving will vary significantly between providers.
If you went part-time and therefore needed fewer nursery days, those 30 free government hours would cover an even greater proportion of your costs. If you worked, say, three days a week, the cost of nursery could fall further, perhaps to around £400 a month in this example – which sounds much more manageable than £1,800.
So how much would you need to earn for cutting down your days to make sense?
Considering factors
For ease, let’s assume the difference between sending a child to nursery for three days rather than five is £600 a month, or £7,200 per year. In pure salary terms, that means you’d need to earn an extra £7,200 per year after tax for it to make sense to work five days a week and pay for the additional childcare rather than reduce your hours.
Based on some rough calculations, I estimate that someone earning £25,000 per year before tax is unlikely to earn enough in those extra two days to justify the cost of the fees. But for someone earning £40,000 per year, it probably would make sense to work the full five days. So, the breakeven point will be somewhere in between depending on your salary, tax position, childcare costs and so on.
Of course, you’d also need to factor in commuting costs and day-to-day work expenses such as lunches and coffees.
Alongside the funded childcare hours, it’s worth checking whether you’re eligible for the Government’s Tax-Free Childcare scheme, which can help reduce the cost of nursery fees further. For every £8 you pay into a Tax-Free Childcare account, the government adds £2, up to a maximum top-up of £2,000 per child each year.
As you say, though, there are other considerations. It’s uncomfortable to think that reducing your hours to care for children can still hold back women’s careers. And while attitudes are changing, we hear anecdotally that this still goes on.
Reducing your hours and your pay will also mean less money going into your pension. This is one of the biggest reasons why women end up with far less to live off in retirement than men on average.
Based on your salary and your combined employee and employer pension contributions, how much could you be missing out on each year? You can then use a pension calculator to see what those forgone contributions could have grown to by retirement age.
More importantly, however, looking at this in pure financial terms glosses over so many other crucial considerations.
What works best for you?
Don’t lose sight of your own enjoyment and sense of purpose. Would going part-time and placing less emphasis on your career feel like sacrificing an important part of your identity? Or would you relish the opportunity to spend more time with your child and watch them develop through this pivotal stage? For many parents, the answer isn’t straightforward – and neither choice is inherently right or wrong.
It’s worth remembering that childcare decisions don’t have to rest on one parent’s shoulders alone. There may be changes your husband could make to his working hours that allow you to approach this decision differently. Or, if you do decide you want to work three days a week, could he pay some money into your pension each month to compensate (even just partly) for your missed contributions?
These are all important factors to consider. But I would start with: which option is most likely to make you happiest? Looking back in five or ten years’ time, which route would you regret not taking?
If you’re unsure about the money side of things, speaking to a financial adviser can help you to explore your options and build a plan that suits you.