Does your financial situation always take a drop after kids?

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We are only planning one, not sure if we’d have a second

For one we’d probably only need one day of paid childcare a week, and hopefully by the time we’d need it (2025) 9 month olds may be entitled to 30hrs a week anyway so our 10 hours a week that we need might be covered.

We don’t have an extravagant lifestyle at the moment and both earn averagely, and both plan to continue working full time if we can (know I might change my mind on this). DH salary should steadily rise for the next 5 years too. We do like our meals out/takeaways once or twice a week and nice holidays. Someone recently said to us to enjoy our takeaways while we can afford them! Is it really the case?

Personally for me yes this was the case whilst I was on maternity leave. I was more weary of where i'm spending my money

Once I returned to work, I felt like I needed to top my savings back up so it did feel like I was trying to recover my savings for awhile after - because I went into the savings to pay for car insurance and 1 or 2 unexpected purchases (broken sofa/boiler)

It depends on personal circumstances and if you have savings/what your lifestyle is

For us it’s mostly nursery fees. I went back to work f/t and we live in an expensive area so we pay about £1,650 a month for 4 days a week.

If your childcare fees are low then not necessarily. When I go back to work after mat leave our childcare bill will be approx £900 per month for 4 days (no local family to help) depending on the new funded hours. DC1 already in school so only pay approx £70pm on after school club twice a week.

if we didn’t have this expenditure, financially we’d be no worse off. Holidays take a backseat whether you’re worse off or not though, as holidays with children are just not the same, so we don’t bother 🤣

At least in the short term yes it will, unless you are on an extremely good contract you will have reduced pay during maternity leave, then an added monthly cost of childcare, nappies, clothing, as well as the big one off purchases pram, cot, car seat etc.

Childcare you'll be paying for 12 years because you'll need before/after school and holiday care if you're both going to be working full time.

I know you say you'll have family help but you need to plan for if this falls through. My MiL initially looked after DD one day a week but health issues meant she wasn't able to continue that for long. It wasn't a lack of will on her part, she just wasn't able to. You may also find you prefer nursery, it was much easier around work to use nursery 5 days a week than when I had MIL Monday, other family member Tuesday, Nursery We'd-Fri. I was travelling further ti family than to nursery and there is a feeling of obligation to spend a bit of time there, having a chat and a cup of tea, at nursery handover is 2 minutes on each end of the day, with family it was an hour on each end.

I mean... kids are expensive. Clothing them, feeding them, paying for someone else to care for them while you work, etc.

DH and I have both been fortunate to have careers which have taken off since having DS almost 5 years ago (who's also an only, which helps), but when I think about the type of lifestyle we'd be living now if we didn't have him, they're completely incomparable.

A lot also depends of the choices you make though. In our case, we wouldn't have had a DC without being able to send them to private school for example, which is obviously a significant cost.

We don't have much in the way of childcare costs anymore and earn well but the cost of hobbies, clothes, shoes, kids parties, birthdays, Christmases, extra food, extra utilities (water/electricity), holidays all adds up. Not to mention the extra mortgage for the bigger house 🥴 The kids take the majority of our spare money!

Obviously your finances will take a hit, kids aren't free.

You mentioned meals out - this is fine when they are babies, and then you have a few years when they eat from the children's menu so that's not too bad. Both of mine now have adult meals so it is literally double the price compared with just me and Dh. Ditto holidays - children age 2+ cost basically the same as adults when you take them abroad.

It's the childcare fees that are extortionate. We pay £1K a month. The other costs, clothing, shoes, food, don't make that big a difference (especially if you use vinted etc for clothes). We're not extravagant with takeaways or eating out anyway though. But the childcare costs have made things very tight.

It depends. Our nursery costs were more than our mortgage. It was do-able but we had to be more conscious about spending money. On the plus side, we go out less as a couple (nice restaurants, theatre etc) so we save money in different ways.

Why will you only need one day of paid childcare if you’re both working full time? that sounds ambitious even with shifts and doting grandparents. 30 free hours as a slogan is a massive con- at best you can see it as subsidised hours and not free. You would be unlikely to get them at all for one day- lots of nurseries would have a minimum number of days to be eligible and then a max number of applicable hours per day.

yeah of course they take a hit, you will be paying for a dependent. but as others have said your life style will change massively anyhow so just go with it. meals out, holidays etc are not the same with a toddler.

In a way. Nursery was hard but necessary as my job was a niche one and they were happy for me to go back part-time and are really family orientated. It helped that my boss also had toddlers and knew first hand how hard things like sudden illnesses etc can be.

While my salary increased significantly, we decided to use some of the childcare fees and move them straight into savings when DD didn't need full day nursery and later no after-school cover. If you are used to the reduced money you don't miss it that much.

But, while a baby may be easy to pay for, it gets more expensive later. Hobbies, clothing, toys, holidays and a teen is especially costly.

Your lifestyle will change and you'll find yourselves naturally adjusting and be happy to do so. We found it wasn't so easy to eat out initially, so we made a point of a nice meal and a bottle of wine after DD went to bed Saturday night. Equally as nice.

As someone said upthread, when your child gets 15 hours free at the moment, the nurseries charge for extras like food and lunchtime supervision and time outside 9am-3pm. Mostly because the government don't pay nurseries enough to actually look after your kid.

When you say you'll only need 1 day a week, I'm hoping you aren't being naive enough to think you can wfh with a child under about 7?

My kids are now 8 and 11. Everything is expensive. A tesco shop, a takeaway, a trip to the zoo (£18 x4). School shoes for secondary just set me back £140 (black shoes, trainers and hockey boots).

It's nursery fees, the free hours are only for 38 weeks of the year. Once they get in school it's quite expensive to have 2 f/t working parents

In our experience they are both worth every penny.

But god it's a lot of pennies.

And they are getting more expensive!

Our financial situation is hugely improved since we had dc. This isn’t due to having had dc, but both of us progressing in our careers at the same time. We make as a household probably 3x what we made before our first was born 10 years ago. That’s been possible because we have careers with a lot of growth potential and we’ve made a real effort to support each other’s careers. No one took the back burner. Yes, the first 2 years after mat leave with childcare costs were tight, but it was worth sticking with it. I think lots of people (women) give up work when childcare and income cancel each other out, but it was continuing to work through those phases that paid off. Now we both earn well and are senior enough to have a lot of flexibility, so always available for school plays and sports days and parties, etc.

I mean they don’t absolutely have to cost a lot, but for most people they do. Childcare, clothes, food, activities etc all add up. It’s the things you don’t think of too, like a gift for a friend whose birthday party they have been invited to. There’s so many of those kinds of things, it’s really difficult to imagine when you don’t have kids.

It's bound to be because you have taken on a significant commitment. In our case, because I worked shift patterns we hired a nanny. But she only worked mon-Friday 8-6 because that is all we could afford. And if I was at work ( I covered weekends and nights ) my husband picked up the rest. And he worked full time too.

Dd struggled so we needed tutors and extra curricular stuff on top has been hugely expensive.

You have an idea of costs going into parenthood, but there are unknown/unexpected costs that can add up along the way.

Here are some costs that have slapped me as we start the new academic year. DC go to a state primary + the attached nursery. DH and I both work FT, DH on a very high wage.

After school club x 2 for DS1
=£75 for those two clubs for the term. Both run by school. (We haven't yet started talking about the musical instrument clubs that will start at school some point... ). I can expect to pay all this per term.

DS1 school dinners £149 per term.
DS2 top up fees for nursery are just over 1k for a term. This is much cheaper than private nursery but it is a shorter day. We are entitled to only 15 free hours not 30.
12 quid for homework package for DS1 (+ you need a tablet/laptop at home)
£3 per week for nursery snacks for DS2. I have to provide snacks for DS1.

Outside of school:
Swimming lessons for DC1- I can't remember as DH pays but it's not cheap.
Swimming class for DC2 - same as above

Plus

• Speech therapy (because the NHS one is a joke, I pay around 270 per month but it's helping so hopefully will step this down to half soon)
• Tuition will start at some point because I've found myself in an 11+ area. (Totally unplanned, I didn't even know until some family members started that 11+ journey). It will cost 250 per month for 2 hours per week.

Then there's uniform and other spendy shit. Kids are expensive, but a lot depends on what you need to pay + what you're willing to pay.

We were fortunate to be able to have a nice life style on one salary so didn’t have to pay any childcare and my DH received a large pay rise each year and his annual bonus paid for our holidays.

Well it’s not going to get better (relative to how it would be if you didn’t have a child) but the magnitude of the impact depends on a lot of things. Childcare, school fees, tutors, the need to move to an area with better schools, expensive hobbies, subsidising university attendance and ultimately house deposits are all things which can impact your finances but you can choose to fund these things or not. At a basic level children are not expensive, you can choose to make them very expensive indeed if you wish!

Well, most people have a choice of giving up work (so losing one wage) or paying out for 5 days childcare, so that is where the massive hit on most people's budgets comes from.
If you aren't having to pay for childcare, then you will not be impacted in the same way.
The small initial costs of "running" a baby, a toddler, or a small child are probably offset by the fact you are too knackered to go out much so your social life dwindles.
Of course, as they get older, costs increase in terms of things they want need, but, for many people, increases in salaries can help by then.

Agree with @mindutopia completely. Of course kids cost money (although they don’t have to cost much in “stuff” in the early years if you will happily make use of second hand eg. Can buy an entire newborn baby clothes bundle for £25 off Facebook or Vinted vs god knows how much if you bought it all new. Then you can probably sell it all on again once you’re done for £20). But this is where you have to remember to play the long game. Stay focused on your career (not just your DHs). Remember that the value in going to work is not just the amount leftover once you’ve paid for childcare. Yes it’s fine for one or even both of you to work part time for a bit after kids if that’s what you want but do NOT give up. It will pay off hugely.