Part-Time/Full-Time

Choosing between part-time and full-time work after a baby is rarely about salary alone; it's what's left after childcare, tax and pension that really counts.

For a lot of families, three days a week turns out to be the comfortable spot. Once the 30 funded hours are used, a good chunk of the nursery bill is covered, and what remains sits manageably against a part-time salary. It's the stretch to four or five days where the picture gets harder to work out; more days usually means more chargeable sessions with less proportional help from the funded hours, and for higher earners a large slice of that extra pay disappears into tax and National Insurance before it ever reaches the bank.

I built this calculator because it's one of the questions I'm asked most often, and the answer is almost never the obvious one. I've sat with parents who assumed a fourth day would barely dent their finances, only to find the extra childcare and tax swallowed most of the additional pay; and others who were reassured to see the take home pay was better than they'd thought. It compares your real take-home pay after childcare across different working patterns, so you can see what each option actually leaves you before you commit to anything.

Written and created by Catherine, founder of Milk & Money, who swapped PhD research for childcare analytics.