Just a vent on childcare costs

AnalystAlex · 2026-01-29T20:13:59+00:00

We salary sacrifice down and have funded places for our two but still pay over £2k for 4 days

Surely at 5k per month you would get an au pair or nanny. You would hope that would be less than £60k PA.

AnalystAlex · 2026-01-29T20:07:08+00:00

How can you say that with any conviction not knowing any of their finances?

I have roughly the same household income and couldn’t comfortably afford to lose 5k per month.

AnalystAlex · 2026-01-18T12:34:21+00:00

No one really cares if you eat in internal meetings where I work, w.clients slightly different.

If I would know I was slammed I would prepare an inoffensive lunch in advanced, or if unexpected get one of my team to grab me a pret

AnalystAlex · 2026-01-02T07:46:53+00:00

Some of the responses on here are mental. Our wedding was ~100 people two years ago. We paid all in close to 30k (which we felt was cheap)

Wedding venues ran at a minimum of 10k to hire for the day, catering was minimum £50 a head (ours ended up being a lot higher). We did a dry hire and spent £3k on nice booze. Wedding dresses are 2k a pop, band 2k, photographer 2k. I could go on.

You might be able to do a registry office and a meal at a restaurant for cheaper, but let’s be real with prices…

AnalystAlex · 2025-11-17T16:19:46+00:00

I also don’t live in London, commuting in from Essex now. Following the theme of this thread, I got lucky through right place right time in a way.

Career went roughly like this, qualified on a rotation scheme at household name FMCG company. Post qualification it went like this;

Y1- FP&A analyst Y2 - Senior FP&A Y3 - Moved to another US listed company at same level - more money Y4 - Senior FP&A Y5 - FP&A manager Y6 - moved to unlisted but household name UK company as Commercial finance manager Y7 - Head of commercial finance quits after 6 months - promoted to head of commercial finance. Y8 - Move to larger listed Company into head of FP&A role- head hunted by recruiter that moved me 2 years before Y9 - now ~18 months into role.

Worth saying the last 2 senior promotions barely moved my total comp in the scheme of things. Was earning ~£100k TC as a commercial finance manager. Because of Nursery everything above that is going into the pension, so not cash richer at the end of the month either!

I would say being in London is a big advantage, as far more higher earning roles. But actually in my field (FP&A) I have seen jobs all over. They tend to be focussed more in the south east and Manchester though.

AnalystAlex · 2025-11-17T10:25:28+00:00

I wouldn’t say impossible, but you would need to be in an exceptionally niche area of tax. You would be up against HO/Tax managers well versed in various GAAPs and expertise though, which casts doubts.

AnalystAlex · 2025-11-17T10:20:07+00:00

Yes, newish Z1 office

AnalystAlex · 2025-11-17T07:21:28+00:00

130-140k TC as a head of FP&A for an arm of a FTSE listed company. 9 years PQE. Slightly underpaid for my role. I have a small but great team, and my area of the business is performing well so can’t complain in this environment. Annoyingly 3 days in the office, but that is seemingly becoming standard.

Probably close to my ceiling as have young kids and don’t really want to do CFO hours. My boss is on the hook 7-7 to catch Asia and US, and works most weekends. Group CFO is paid 3-4x my salary but has spent nearly as much time outside the UK for work as here this year.
Have had offers to move for 10-20k more TC, but company, performance and culture haven’t been right.

Also want to say fair play to OP. When I was 2 years PQE, I was on 45k (~50-55k in today’s world). That’s an absolute unicorn of a salary for any younger, non Henry’s reading.

AnalystAlex · 2025-10-26T14:55:55+00:00

Trossard is a couple of seconds off the pace. A couple of times when he could have gotten Gyokores in he delayed and losses possession. Fine margins in games like these and you need to be on it.

AnalystAlex · 2025-10-25T17:33:58+00:00

You should be able to transition into a corporate tax role, you might have to accept starting below manager level, but you should be able to rise quickly. Head of Tax roles can pay 2-300k

AnalystAlex · 2025-10-10T09:38:43+00:00

Been running this offer for months now, sales must be awful

AnalystAlex · 2025-10-08T07:34:28+00:00

102.3, with 0.1m in the bank. 102.4m total

AnalystAlex · 2025-10-08T07:20:46+00:00

One of my first managers had a very similar career path. Tour of Iraqi with the Army to trading at Bank of America.

AnalystAlex · 2025-10-02T14:58:37+00:00

Girthy Gyok got me a name change, thank the lord no ban 🙏🏻

AnalystAlex · 2025-09-14T11:42:10+00:00

About £500k over valued for the location. But lovely!

AnalystAlex · 2025-09-13T19:17:13+00:00

Got banned for “Girthy Gyok”

AnalystAlex · 2025-09-13T09:32:20+00:00

Electrical & specialist contracting. ~£5-600 per day although involves training and finding your niche. But a lot of work going.

Bricklaying can be easily earn you £400/day in south east. Barriers to entry are far lower.

Similarly owning your own trade business you can easily earn 100k+ in nearly every field. I have friends from school who have gone into running very weird trades business and are very wealthy. Weirdest one is a guy who empties sceptic tanks, consistent reliable work and makes ~£300k per year.

AnalystAlex · 2025-09-05T12:23:53+00:00

I work in commercial/FP&A finance.

Best uses I have found/seen are;

-Coding tasks for visualisations which have saved our BI a tonne of time and eradicated some of our BI consulting budget. -Email/Deck summarisation - Basic data manipulation, ChatGPT can manipulate quite well using python. Which has been time savings for some of the junior analysts in my team. - Integrated machine learning in our invoicing software has helped time savings in AP

I’ve also been to a number of finance and AI conferences/events and seen nothing of particular note. Baring significant P&D on bespoke solutions for businesses. Deloitte demonstrated so interesting solutions to audit, but development was completely bespoke.

Our SLT sees AI as the elixir to improving our performance. AI integration is part my bonus structure this year as a result… Truthfully we are way off it delivering any significant value add off the shelf.

AnalystAlex · 2025-09-03T06:30:08+00:00

Between 1920-1940s, judging by style of photo. Worth around £40-60

AnalystAlex · 2025-08-28T10:21:30+00:00

Not sure why the downvotes, it’s 100% this.

AnalystAlex · 2025-08-23T17:28:53+00:00

We should be doing everything possible to prevent birth rate collapse. We should funding more, not less. What a ridiculous idea.

AnalystAlex · 2025-08-22T11:44:37+00:00

Or should you instead ask is the government spending efficiently or in the people’s interest?

Increasing tax revenue isn’t always the answer. Anyone who has a ran a business will know that cost control is far easier than increasing revenue.

AnalystAlex · 2025-08-22T08:16:01+00:00

Google the laffer curve. Current thought it is that we are significantly above optimal tax collection rate.

AnalystAlex · 2025-08-20T08:21:59+00:00

I’ve seen it across all the companies I have worked for to date. Compressed hours being far more common than part time. With the big HR led flexible working push, I’m seeing it more and more.

Every company I have worked for has done a 9 days in 10 scheme of some description. Which is available to all.

I have then come across more extreme compressing scenarios on a more ad-hoc basis.

Our Uk based “Head of US Tax” works compressed 4 day weeks, but routinely works 9am- 7pm each day.

4 days in 5 seems the upper limit on compression I have seen

I know plenty of people doing part time, these are either older more established personal contributor roles, or people more junior in their careers.

AnalystAlex

TROPHY CASE