Full time study and daycare

I have just been looking at numbers and I really don't think we are going to be able to afford for us to put both kids in daycare and eat food. Is there a special benefit or anything that helps out? We are on a tight budget at the moment and thats without having to pay an extra $100+ a week.

i,m sure there is a way you could do it some people do quilfffffffy for up to 50 hours a week paid/sub thur winz try ringing them or it might of been ird i cant quite rember (excuse my foggy brain)

Janine has said everything I wanted to say. But I will add the student allowance bites when you have children. Yes you can get it but they take away your inwork payment from IRD and take away some of your accom suppliment - not good at all.

How much is average to charge for daycare? The one we like is $92 for both of them for 2 afternoons a week and then counting the subsidy it will be about $39 and thats only for 2 afternoons. I'm assuming it will be a cheaper amount per hour when they are in full time?

I'm so confused, we are going to have a chat to the daycare tommorrow but i'm not sure whats expensive and whats cheap.

Thanks for that about the allowance, I was never entitled to it so I didn't even think of it, I might check it out. Otherwise student loan it is

If one of you is working and one of you is studying full time then depending on the wage the working one is earning, you can get it fully subsidised, also depends again on how much the daycare is. The main thing is it's one or the other in terms of the schemes available.

Ie, currently the government offers the 9 hours daycare for all, and the 20 free hours for 3&4 year olds. what most places don't tell you is that now that the 20 free hours offer is going, the hours a child is there over and above that, are usually charged at a higher rate now to covers costs for the daycares.

We don't do either of those schemes, we don't sign up for those. when the 20 free hours came in, our daycare said to us.. to be completely truthful, if we signed up for that we get no further subsidy for the rest of the hours, which meant we'd have ended up paying around $70 a week per child.. we would have been nuts to swap over.

So Rach, find out how much it would be for daycare for say 40 hours a week (which you'll at least need if you're going back to full time study.. when you're not in class you'll need time child-free for assignment work),

then go in an find out about subsidies.. if you go into studylink (as opposed to WINZ) which you'll need to do to apply for student loans, then you can talk to them about daycare subsidy for those studying witha partner working, they deal with this everyday. if you don't have one nearby, ring up and talk to someone from studylink over the phone and you should be able to get the froms and all that sent to you too. I can't remember if you'll need an initial quote from the daycare, but usually once your study is confirmed (which it will be as part of the student loan process) it will back up how many hours you need them in care for, and the daycare subsidy is sorted too by studylink.

Don't let them try and talk you into the 9 hours free, or the 20 free hours, many people don't actually know what they are entitled to while studying unless someone else has told them.

as for what's cheap etc. Am not so sure, i guess it depends on where you are.. obviously the major city centres around NZ would be more costly. it also depends on the type of centre you're going for. alsop another factor is how many others are around too, if theres only a few then they can charge a bit more cos, well, just cos they can. If theres quite a few they tend to be a bit more competitive with prices.

Our daycare is pretty much new, built the year before paris started, and as it's associated with a learning institution (it's owned by the polytech) it has all the newest neatest educational gear.. but that's not a huge must really if the care provided is great.

For our girls, when Ayja was in the under-2's for 45 hours a week it was $175 per week, paris was cheaper as she was over-2's so was $159 per week, this also included the fact that our daycare give a 20% discount for each child when you have 2 or more there. It was also a bit cheaper as the fees are cheaper for students (only by about $20 a week i think from memory).
From what i can tell, that's fairly standard for most places here in palmy. And yep it tends to be cheaper per hour the more hours they're booked in for.

Edited by mum2paris

I can't be arsed typing a novel - I think Janine covered most of it but basically my childcare was around $5 per hour. Subsidised it was about $1.60 per hour.

$1.60 x 40 x 2 = $128. So yeah, that's what you are looking at paying per week.

rach and jack but lots of places in chch dont do it:( those that do have huge waiting lists..its sucks:( !(its great for parents and freaking awful for childcare centres:(

yep, what i meant thru my post was that our daycare was those prices per week, BUT that we were charged NONE of that.. apart from when this year over mikes study break, because we stil had to pay to keep their places open over xmas, but studylink does not cover study leave longer than 3 or 4 weeks i think it is. I found our daycare great though in that over that time we did qualify for the 9 hours for ayja dn the 20 free hours for Paris and they let us drop down to the minimum number of hours care so it cost us less.

Yeah talk to Winz you should be eligible for a chidcare subsidy. Usually daycares have a maximum amount that can be paid, like Kahtrell's daycare you pay no more than $161 per week. Winz will pay $3....something for upto 50 hours, Kahtrell's in daycare for 39.5 hours and I pay $24.11 per week, if he was there for say 50 hours It would be around $10 per week to pay. Also with two children the winz threshold is a little higher I think.

Yip except the down side is that it will cost $40 to send Jack for one day and thats fully subsidised. I was wanting him to go part time for the rest of the year so hes used to it next year but not with that price.