Sadly, we don’t need this at the moment but, boy, are there days we want it!
I mean I don’t like to gripe about our current lifestyle, because travelling Australia as a family in a converted school bus is just about as awesome as things can get, but with both of us running our own businesses, one of the hardest things is trying to get any work done with the kids hanging about. Tracey and I generally take turns ferreting our munchkins out the door so the other one can get things done, with whoever’s the further behind getting precedence. It is no mystery to us why ‘bring a kid to work day’ hasn’t caught on like No Undie Monday.
I confess, when the kids are screaming and throwing thongs at each other over my head as I try type a story about how cute they were the day before, I sometimes reminisce about dropping them at child care. Well I say ‘child care’ but these days I’m thinking ‘side of the road’. Oh, those wonderful days driving to work and being able to hear yourself fart. Good times.
But historically, and more to the point, Child Care Benefits and Child Care Rebates have enabled our family to get ahead over the years. Without access to these one of us would have needed to stay home and learn to churn butter. It certainly wouldn’t have been worth getting a job if we had to cover the full cost of daycare ourselves.
It really makes you thankful we live in a country with such a comprehensive welfare system.
And the good news is child care is about to get even better for those of you who can utilise it – both simpler and cheaper for most Australian families.
As of 2nd July 2018, both the benefit and the rebate are going to get a shake up and be combined into one single payment called – wait for it – the Child Care Subsidy. Plus the abolishment of the rate cap for families earning $185,710 or less means instead of reaching their cap towards the end of the year and the money cutting out they can keep receiving subsidy for the whole year. Rather brilliantly, in most cases this will result in more actual readies left in the pockets of the mums and dads. So, a simpler system AND it’ll cost you less – this should leave everyone winning and grinning.
There are three boxes families need to tick to access their Child Care Subsidy: Combined family income, activity level of parents and type of child care service used. Tracey put our details into the Family Child Care Subsidy Estimator and it said we’d be $70 a fortnight better off. It should only take a few minutes to see how you’ll fair but for us that sort of money would have meant more solid cuts of meat around the dinner table. Or even better, pizza. For you it could well mean the opportunity to save for a holiday or pay off your house quicker, but we like our food.
It’s not often you have a win like this so I was thrilled to be asked to pass on the good news and share the information for the Department of Education & Training. Check out the nice infographics below and link over to the website for even more information.
Now if you’ll excuse me I have to help my son find his other thong.
Raising a family on little more than laughs
Thank you to Department of Education & Training for sponsoring this post.
As a single full time working mum with an income of under $60,000 per year, my child care payments are going to increase about $20 a fortnight according to the calculator that’s been circulating. It’s not going to be fun trying to squeeze that into an already tight budget.
Its good it works out being cheaper for you but im an educator and can honestly say most families are going to be alot worse off
Those that slip through the cracks are going ro be unable to afford care the estimation is done by using the hours parent who works/studys less.
An example ..parents with 4 children 3 in childcare
1 parent physically disabled due to accident but is studying, the other just started a new job with shift work, usual hours usrd for care 50hrs due to shiftwork often uses more, as disabled parent cant care for all 4 children by themself and dorsnt study enough hours now only eligible for 36hrs their childcare will go up 200 a fortnight more than $70 they already pay for each child in care thats over $820 a fortnight for the 3 children