What age of parenting is most expensive?

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Wondering what everyone’s thoughts are on the most expensive parenting age between 0 and 18.

I’m wondering if early years are because we’ll be paying £25k p/a nursery fees per child - although DC’s activities at this age are quite cheap and she doesn’t eat much / clothes are small sizes.

We aren’t doing private schools so struggling to think of an annual cost that will be more than the nursery fees but happy to be told wrong.

Just wondering between 0 and 18 so not considering possible uni fees.

Aware DC’s activities, clothes, food, hobbies will go up as she grows but as above surely not £25k worth of increases?

I don’t know any parents who haven’t funded their kids’ driving lessons.

Ours were 17 when they learned and obvs still at school. I don’t know how kids that age could afford £45 per hour for lessons.

Insurance is at a premium at that age so waiting a few years works out cheaper for many families. If mine want to drive they can get a job or use any savings that they have to fund lessons. Having a Young Scot card helps them a lot until then even if it takes til 21/22 to learn to drive.

Most I know leave their children to fund it themselves which means that they don't start aged 17.

It's going to be uni for us. We have three dc to put through but fortunately just the one year when two will be there at the same time. On the upside, you do get longer notice to save than you do childcare costs.

University by far.

Driving lessons is an interesting one. They’re £30 an hour and at 16 dc was earning £5.50 an hour in their summer job. We paid for 15 lessons and gave as much practice as we could in between.

By helping them to pass their test relatively quickly in the first year of FE college we enabled them to apply for apprenticeships for their second year (equivalent of year 13 and needed to get themselves to a variety of locations) which meant they could start earning, saving properly, have a pension and paying us some rent just before their 18th birthday.

It has now lead onto the next stage of apprenticeship and by the time they finish this one they will have had 5 years of earning while learning, 5 years of saving and 5 years of paying into their pension while others who stayed at 6th form and went to university have little/no career related work experience as well as 3 years worth of uni costs (debt). We’ll have had 5 years worth of rent from them which they’ll get back (they don’t know this) when they’ve setting up their first home

For us, paying for driving lessons was definitely a very good move.

I think as they get older, some of the expense can fluctuate based on lifestyle, but I’ve been taken aback at how expensive they are even as preteens. It’s easy to forget that as they get older, you start paying full price for things, and random needs come up all the time, which gets expensive.

I was explaining this to a friend the other day, that it’s not just keeping three extra people alive, it feels to me like paying for three extra adult friends (or however many kids you have) to come with you everywhere you go and do everything you do. So that’s 5 adult plates and drinks at restaurants, 5 adult seats at the theatre, 5 plane tickets for every holiday, 5 adult price ski lift passes, 2 hotel rooms needed to fit you all on holiday, etc. And of course they grow like weeds and now need adult sizes, so you end up spending loads on clothes—yes, even secondhand—unless you are lucky enough to be the regular recipient of hand me downs. Their food is expensive too—my family of 5’s shopping bill for the month has breached 1k, when we happily survived on closer to 250/month with under 5s. And then there are the extracurriculars. I’d say per child you could easily spend in the ballpark of 300/month if they were doing, say, 3-4 extracurriculars (one sport like tennis or gymnastics, one instrument, and one arty thing like drama classes) at £20-25 per weekly lesson plus all the kit and extra bits they need and keep needing. That’s not counting all the transport to and from everywhere. It’s death by a thousand cuts at this age, and if I were to add it all up down to the last cent (even things like them using utilities and services at near adult levels)—it might not be too far off the nursery fees. And that’s without private school tuition.

Obviously many of those things—show tickets, holidays, extracurriculars, etc.—aren’t strictly necessary, so it depends a lot on lifestyle, which is a saving grace. Nevertheless, I think it’s easy to overlook the overall extra expense of older kids as some of those bulkier line items like food and clothes and even holidays are absorbed into the budget and aren’t seen as kid expenses, whereas before it was fairly stark because a lot of it was on the monthly childcare bill.

Late teens and uni. Laptop, living stuff, Getting DC2 to 6th form costs us £90 pm and next year he’ll be 18 and so it will be close to £180 pm as no 16/17 rail card. His college is in a city so no parking, been so Learning to drive is £50 per session here with no useful public transport for local trips. DS1s unin accomm is c£180 pw so his loan doesn’t even come close to covering it.

Thank you. This is helpful (and terrifying!!) to read. But useful.

I wish I'd appreciated how expensive late teens uni years would be when we went for third. But she absolutely brought us so much joy, however it is so much more expensive than I'd of imagined when they were 6, 4 and 1. We are a close family so pay for partners for a meal out ,etc Before you know it you're paying for 7/8 adults for drinks and meals out, it's so expensive, wouldn't change it for the world though, so happy to have 3 not 2 .

c£100 per day in London for nursery. Not the cheapest nor most expensive in my area

I have found teens by far the most expensive but I didn't go to work when I had 2 of nursery age, only when I had 1 still at that age did I go back to work and use a mix of childminders, au pairs and school nursery which worked out way cheaper than what my teens cost me now- I feel like I am going bankrupt. Would swap back to the early days anytime!

I have to admit meals out is on my list of things that scares me how expensive a nice family meal might be when we’re all older (compared to when it was just me and dh).

sounds like you have a lovely welcoming family xx

You must be buying solid gold protractors, eh.

Sixth form even in state school is shockingly expensive! So many trips, obviously not compulsory but two of the three a level subjects have exciting and relevant trips costing £100s plus there are other opportunities they're given, and gold d of e is costly. And the a level maths calculator....
Then we've got university open days to travel to. And they get an allowance instead of a bit of pocket money.
When they were little they did lots of clubs which was pricey. I don't know how this season compares really but it feels worse because of the number of big ticket items.

17-21 years for us - driving lessons, paying for Uni, etc.

We never paid nursery fees so paying for Uni is by far the biggest expense we've had so far.

That was the average for where I lived in SW London too. We got a discount for a full time place at £450pw which was still £2k per month.

Not sure how much it is out of London to be honest! I’d imagine not a lot cheaper though - although a few people on here seem surprised at the price so maybe it is! I think we will get some money back as we can pay via tax account hopefully.

Thanks for your insight. The big ticket items for the older children do sound more expensive! I’ve only got a baby to compare to but even when I take her swimming and I see that the young childrens prices are very cheap (a third of the price) compared to adults/teenagers.

I'm not finding the teenage years anywhere near as expensive as the baby years. As soon as the youngest started school we were able to save again and now DH and I are both back working FT so we have much more money. The costs of teenagers are more discretionary than toddlers so there are more options and they can get a PT job as well.

University is going to be more expensive but I've told them no to London so I'm assuming we'll make up their living costs by about £6K each per year which is less than we paid for nursery fees when they were little. And no cut in salary.

My child is primary age and nursery fees crippled us. Our only outgoing now is £30 pm on breakfast club and days out don’t have to cost a bomb, so this age seems pretty cheap!

I'm surprised that people say teenagers, learning to drive and student age is expensive. I’d have thought that’s the cheapest time. It certainly was for my parents. If you want anything you can earn the money for it.

Nursery years weren't too bad for us. I carried on working and dd only went a couple of days a week.

Holidays with school age children are more expensive because of not going in term time but I'm a teacher so they would cost us more anyway.

Driving lessons were really expensive. We paid (dd had an evening job but used that to fund going out, make up, non-essential clothing etc), especially as it took her 3 times to pass her test.

University is also expensive. Dd has a student loan but we contribute towards living expenses and pay her rent which is extortionate.

Depends a bit. Baby/toddler can be hard as need a lot of new purchases and then reduced earning or cost of childcare. Teens are also more expensive. They are aware of branding and tend to want more expensive items, ie phones, air pods, Mac book, designer clothes, going to movies, sports clubs, concerts, etc. Primary school is probably the cheapest as they are out of childcare but still happy with cheap/affordable presents and activities like going to parks.

These threads in the past have always seemed to be overall 'teenage years are the worst' but I think it just depends on family circumstances. Some people have grandparents for childcare or are lucky to live near a charity run nursery or something. We had neither, like many. My dd is only 7 (goes to breakfast club and after school club, which is manageable) but nursery fees were crippling and we have another dc due next week, and am just hoping a magic money fairy comes along to help with nursery costs.

It'll be the nursery years for us no doubt, we were paying £1500 a month at one point AND I was working part time hours so you need to add loss of income to that. We are saving for the uni years so will be much better prepared for that, and even then we shouldn't be paying the sums we were paying in nursery bills, they also likely won't overlap in uni.

Hands down teenage years are by far the most expensive!

• Clothes cost more (DS15 is in men's sizes, so VAT!)
• They have more expensive tastes in clothes anyway, primark no longer cuts it!
• Electronics, which cost more than kids toys
• Hobbies are more expensive
• Pocket money
• Trips/holidays cost more because ticket prices hike up at 12 and then full adult fares kick in at 14/16
• Secondary school trips cost more than primary ones
• they eat WAAAAAAY more!

Yes we had nursery fees before he started school but I don't think those ever cost us on the scale of all the above.

I guess if one parent stayed home when DC are preschoolers/nursery you would count the loss of earnings though, so it does entirely depend on your circumstances.