A Leeds dad has cut £1,600 a month childcare costs for son in half by getting paid to have a day off.
Jack Darracott, 33, from Leeds, was worried about how he would be able to afford childcare for his baby son, Theo, once his partner returned to work from maternity leave. Jack a software developer considered changing jobs to be on a higher salary so they could afford the costly nursery prices.
The couple had priced three nurseries in the area for Theo to attend five days a week, which would cost around £80 a day - £400 a week - equating to a staggering £1,600 a month, leaving them with nothing for the month. With cost of living crisis being a worry for many parents Jack realised it actually be more cost effective for him to work fewer hours than fork out for childcare, reports the Mirror.
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Jack applied for flexible hours where he works at a search engine marketing agency, Marketing Signals, putting a case forward to his boss that he could drop one day and would be willing to take a 20 per cent pay cut. But to his delight, the response he had back was that the company was going to be taking part in the worldwide six-month trial of the four-day week - enabling Jack to have a day off every week for 100 per cent pay.
By taking Thursdays off, it meant that Theo, now 16 months old, could attend a cheaper nursery around the corner from their home, which only had spaces available on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Friday's.
It now costs them £50 a day, equating to £800 a month.
He told the Mirror: "I don't know what we would have done, I would have had to have gotten another job, to be honest. We pretty much halved the price of our childcare by just taking one day off a week.
"We'd have gotten to the end of the month with nothing left. The price of everything has gone up so it's been really helpful. With the Government scheme (Tax-Free Childcare), we get 20 per cent towards childcare which also helps."
The latest figures show that to place a child under the age of two in nursery full-time - 50 hours a week - costs on average more than £14,000 a year in the UK (and £19,000 a year in London). And in England, full-time nursery costs almost two-thirds of a parent's weekly take-home pay, according to analysis by Business in the Community (BITC), the Prince's Responsible Business Network.
While being able to drop to four days has meant their childcare costs have halved, Jack says his life has transformed too. Having Thursdays off has allowed him to form a stronger connection with his son, while he feels more energised at work.
Jack added: "It's been great to connect with my son, our relationship is a lot stronger because of it. I would have only seen my son really on weekends so I would have missed a lot of the milestones.
"We do our own thing on Thursday, we get out, and it gives me the time to relax. I would say I'm a lot less stressed - well, I'm not even stressed anymore."
The four-day week experiment, which kicked off on June 6, was organised by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with the think tank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week UK Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College. The trial - which saw 3,000 people being paid 100 per cent of their salary but for 80 per cent of the hours they would usually work, with many going from 40 to 32 hours per week - came to a close last week, with results to be published in February 2023.
The marketing firm where Jack works was one of the 70 companies that took part and are now aiming to make the change permanent after seeing a rise in job retention and attracting new talent. Jack says he doesn't like to boast too much about his new working arrangement to his friends, but he often gets asked how it's possible to fit five days' worth of work into four.
The dad-of-one says it's important to plan his weeks in advance so he knows what exactly needs to be achieved by each day. His Fridays have become an admin day where he sets himself up for the week ahead.
He said: "My friends didn't believe I could get the work done in time but I've had days where I've worked too long and caused problems. Our work hasn't suffered a loss as a result, we are still hitting target.
"You can cut a lot out of your day if you really look at it. You need to look at the bigger picture, how are you actually spending your time at work? My day off serves as a 'reset day', so when I'm back in I can look at work with a fresh pair of eyes and I feel more refreshed."
Jack adds: "I actually feel more present in the hours that I do work and the working week feels less of a grind. You couldn't pay me enough to go back to five days."
While a five-day working week is typical for millions of employees up and down the country, for Jack, he can't imagine ever returning to the traditional work pattern. He says it's done wonders for his relationship with his son and general happiness and hopes it can become the mainstream for other parents to reap the rewards too.
"It's crazy when you get that extra day off at first and it takes a bit of getting used to," Jack, who also works remotely, says.
"But there should be more focus on output and less focus on attendance as long as they [bosses] can see the work has been done. It would be nice to see it across the board and I appreciate it can be more difficult for others but it's an absolute game changer."
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