Is £500 enough?

[boredboredandmorebored]

I know this will be different for everyone and everyone will have different incomes but we are starting to work out finances for when we have a baby. We've worked out without my wage and after bills, food and fuel we'll have around £500 a month spare, is this doable? Obviously this will pay for everything else so to go out and do activities, things for baby, savings, xmas etc.

I gave up work when I had DD and we made it work. Firstly, if you're able to save £1200 pm at the moment that's a good chunk for emergencies. We gave ourselves an amount each which was ours to spend as we wished, going out, luxury items, coffee in town, presents for eachother and our own friends - we actually still do this and now have £125pm each, I've got £600 unspent in my account. You'll probably find you can cut back on heating bills by moving to a cheaper provider and even food. It's only two of us now, but when I'm detemined we can live on just over £30 per week for good and groceries. Once you get your DB in a routine, you'll probably find you go out less, you can still have a good evening watching a film, playing a game and we made a point of having a nice meal once a week.

OP Do you have all baby equipment or will that have to come out of £500 too? Look out for good quality second hand baby equipment. There are some free or cheap activities you can do with babies in most areas. Do a google search for free baby activities near where you live. If you have been used to having 2 salaries it can be hard to adapt.

Getting off the Lake District Cottage obsession for a mo... (we stay there for less but we have local relatives, tents and low standards):

Have you factored in replacing a car (or parts of it) in the next few years?
How is your house in general state of repair (our roof just cost me £750)?
How new are your washing machine, oven and so on?
Any health problems, glasses, dental work etc needed?
Do you have a dog, and is it insured if so (glares at PuppyPaws, who is a repeat offender and the Toxic Items clinic)?

Before I had my first baby I analysed my expenditure with a fine tooth comb - yes, I was very sad!!! I found that if I doubled up on buying household cleaners etc in the 6 months before baby was born I could save a considerable sum during maternity leave. OK so I was lucky to have a spare cupboard but is this an option? Did the same with cereals and tinned goods so my weekly shop after the birth was much lower.

With all due respect MyDC,the dates you posted are early July i.just put in dates for the end of July and the price jumped up about £200 still quite cheap tbf though

x2boys if this is ops only child they wont need to go in school hols, which was the point I was trying to make! school hols indeed do make everything jump up in price unfortunately!

I’d suggest start living the budget you propose now to test it out, and whack the rest in savings.

Babies don’t have to be expensive (apart from the basic weekly running costs!) which for my DTs on formula was about £50 a week all in, so I imagine you’d have a small amount of change from £30 for a singleton. Buy all your baby clothes off of eBay, and sell them on when you’re done which frees up cash to buy the next size up.

I think £500 to spend on just luxuries is ample, some months will be tight, some will be easy, but I guess it depends on your shopping habits!

OP you will be fine..you will find a way to manage regardless.If we all waited until we could afford a baby it would never happen for the majority of us!!! But you do manage things you once thought of as important tend to go out of the window when you have a baby so your priorities will change and you will too.It will be fine and you will be happy to cut your cloth.I wish you well x

Op how long do you have left?

Are you having mat leave or quitting?

Have you taken into consideration CB, any tax credits etc?

Does your shopping costs cover nappies and milk?

Have you started buying for baby out of your savings?

All those issues make a difference.

500 to cover fun is plenty
Yes you can have two weeks in Mauritius every year and pay for all the fancy baby groups, or you can have a less expensive holiday or no holiday for a year and make the most of free groups

These threads always go the same way.

It's either "loads", "just cut back", or "I earn 150k and only just survive, couldn't eat on less".

It's down to lifestyle. It is perfectly possible to live, eat, and have the occasional treat on £500 a month. It's perfectly possible to spend your way through £1500 a month and think you have no money.

You just adjust your spending to fit your budget.

Bloody hell, why are people arguing about the cost of caravans in Cumbria on the OP’s thread?

I wasn't arguing, I was making a point that you don't need £1200 per year for holidays which another poster had said, and that poster clearly (from her place of great privilege) didn't believe me..

Is this after groceries? Or including them?

How would you pay for Christmas OP? Regardless of how cheap your holiday is how would you pay for it (plus spending money) how much of the £500 a month could you save towards these big one offs?

Oh I agree holidayhelpppp. We don’t spend £1200 on holidays a year and we’re a family of 5! Fair enough there are some posters who couldn’t possibly go without their luxury break every year, but the OP hasn’t indicted that that’s the case for her so I’m sure she’ll cope.

It’s definitely doable, you just need to budget to stay within your means. It’s amazing how much you can economise when you need to, start questioning every purchase - do I really need this? It would be a good idea to get some savings behind you too before the baby arrives so that £500 can just be for monthly expenses rather than big things.

@boredboredandmorebored £500 feels like it might be a bit tight when you start accounting for all the small expenses or long term things like Xmas, personal care, car maintenance, petrol etc all for both parents. At least it might feel psychologically tight. Can you possibly bump it up to £600 or £700? That would feel comfortable to me.

I would also want to keep putting at least something into savings each month to feel like I wasn’t losing ground. For instance, I’d want to put £200 per month into savings then leave the £500 for actual expenses. After the first crazy month, maybe you could do surveys and things like that on your phone while breastfeeding to gather some some money here and there?

Yes it is doable, and you can do things like Christmas presents and a UK break on that. But you will need to be careful nobody's doing daft things like a takeaway coffee and a muffin every day or whatever. It's enough to live a modestly comfortable life but not fritter.

I'd definitely agree getting as much savings behind you as possible too, just because if something electrical or mechanical expires, that could be a very big chunk of the spare money one month. And obviously go through your bills and direct debits and make sure you're paying as little as possible for what you need.

Also I know this isn't a holiday thread, but Haven have got various half price offers on for some UK breaks next June and early July. In case that information is helpful to OP or anyone else.

I'm a LP to 2 boys and I do it on less than that. We've had to cut back on a lot of 'uxuries since their dad left - no virgin media, cheapest broadband, no car and walk everywhere even if it's miles, I don't get hair cuts, loads of 2nd hand stuff. It's 'do able'.

So it just depends on if you're buying everything new, top brand, designer clothes, visitng expensive animal parks regularly etc.... because then you'd be needing a lot more!

With all due respect MyDC,the dates you posted are early July i.just put in dates for the end of July and the price jumped up about £200 still quite cheap tbf though
Yes but you would be crazy to go in school holidays with just one child under school age like the op.

I think you should make it £400 and put £100 immediately away to cover them emergencies that somehow know your skint and happen at the wrong time fingers crossed it won't and you'll have an occasional treat pot.
But £100 - depending on how much fuel etc i would say is very dooable possibly not fun but dooable

OP of course you can survive on it- but do you want to?! In our case the answer was no- we want to live in a bigger house, run 2 cars, have holidays, days out to the zoo etc, have cleaners, put money into savings for the kids, be able to afford another child etc. So we both work full time. Of course our DD has to be in a childminder full time but i feel like she gets much more out of that and the interaction with the other children there than she would being with me all day. It also means i get mental stimulation, coffee and lunch breaks and some kid free time. Works for us!

You have to add up every expense you have eg house car insurance, prescriptions eye tests if relevant, hair cuts, absolutely everything fir a whole year. Then you can see what is left and then work out what you are left with on a weekly basis. If money is a issue when a baby is small it will become worse as it grows.

manic not necessarily as a lot of people go back to work when their children go to school...

Babies are really cheap or really expensive. Personally, we bought a third-hand pram. Then we bought various odds and sods second-hand from the internet - most of which we didn't need. The only thing that we really needed was the carrier, which we got for 20 quid.

Apart from nappies, babies cost nothing and stop you going out on the razz. We saved loads of money. But if you want to have experiences with your baby and do loads of stuff they won't remember then they can cost a lot.