How much do you need to earn for 3 kids?

[Diskneedisney]

Exactly that. DH and I are having some back and forth on the topic

i know MN can be a bit skewed with v large incomes but realistically in a 2 parent household (not in london) how much is the minimum gross salary that you think is necessary to live a good life, which includes a holiday abroad and maybe a uk holiday a year.

let’s assume no debts, no cars on anything on finance and a mortgage of £1500 a month. Childcare costs with government funding would be reduced. Let’s assume only one child in nursery. Then big standard average bills on everything else.

dh for instance thinks you’d need a combined income of around 130/150k a year to even contemplate 3. I think that’s a bit silly.

what do we think Mn- appreciate we are painting with a broad brush here

So for context we don’t live in London, our mortgage is £1000 a month (likely to go down when the rates come down, which they will. I work in mortgages).

@Diskneedisney when will rates come down to lower than your current rate? or are you on a high one?

I have a lot of friends with 3 or 4 children who have nowhere near the sort of salaries mentioned on this thread. They seem happy with their choices.

It depends on the lifestyle you want to have and what you expect to be able to do with/for your children.

Someone who has decided that every child needs their own bedroom in a detached house with 2-3 bathrooms, close to a good school, will need to go on every optional enrichment residential, have expensive hobbies and activities, drive up to date cars, pay for their children's driving licence, fund them through university and give them a house deposit is going to make a different decision on family size/salary requirements than someone who doesn't want to do all of that stuff.

Sounds like you would be fine, apart from the holiday budget which sounds a bit ambitious.

Also, as we have found, once they are out of a cot you are over capacity for a standard premier inn room, decent family rooms are harder to find and package holidays are harder to book, air bnb and camping is easier. But not a big deal in the scheme of things.

i guess it’s the extra maternity leave and nursery fees that make the biggest difference early on, (then driving lessons/uni etc later)

That sounds about right in my opinion. We are very comfortable as a family of 3 on around this. We plan to have another. Outgoings are lower than normal however (no mortgage currently as paid it off, but hope to upsize!)

We were a family of 3 children. No idea what my parents earned (or the equivalent in today's money) but I don't think as much as £100k combined. I remember feeling like they were more well off than most of my friends. We always had annual holidays, lots of pets, a biggish house.

Well pretty much every answer so far is on the skewed 'mumsnet world' scale

Yep lol.

We have 3 dc. Two teens and a 6 year old. All boys and eat us out of house and home.

I'm on £37k. Dh variable as SE but in the region of £30-35k. So household about £70k.

Housing costs £1000. Minimal childcare - ASC for youngest, about £100 a month. Two cars owned outright, not new though. We shop in Lidls, eat out or takeaway maybe twice a month.

We have a lovely standard of living. Largeish 4 bed house in a great area. One foreign holiday a year. Several UK breaks. No debt, about £50k in savings and saving £400pm at present.

Dc have everything they need, I have a low-stress mid-management type role where I don't work a second over my 35 hour contract. Dh SE and works far less than he could and also only puts in about 35 hours.

You have to pay for university now. It's changed and they can't survive on maintenance grant alone, even if they get full grant. If they live at home, then obivously they can because they are saving on housing cost.

Teenage years are a lot more expensive than nusery years unless you are using full time childcare.

Obviously you can cut your cloth to what you have. I would say the question is actually 'if this is the lifestyle I have with 2, how much more would it cost with 3'?

Eg - if the house you live in currently has 3 beds, and you have 2 children - would you be happy with 2 sharing permanently - if not you would need to move - how much would the move and new house cost?

If the house has 4 beds anyway, probably not much extra cost.

If the holidays you currently go on are AI, 10 days in the sun and cost £5k for a family of 4, that would probably cost £7k for a family of 5 once the little one was over 2, as you need two rooms. But could you find a holiday for a family of 5 for £5k? - yes you could.

Do you have a car? If so would it fit 3 comfortably in the back - etc etc.

Some costs are directly scalable (school fees) in some ways (hand me downs) the third costs very little, in others (hotel holidays, houses) the incremental cost for the third is huge.

This thread really does demonstrate that skewed Mumsnet world! We have 3. I had to give up work when DC3 was 4 (now almost 18). For much of that time our household income has been in the £40-45k range (salaries less but topped up by tax credits). We have had a nice UK holiday every year, kids have done activities, sports and private music lessons throughout their childhood (including horse riding). Eldest 2 now at uni and get almost full student loans. What we didn't do because of cost were things like foreign holidays. Meals out/cinema trips were very rare, days out tended to be of the 'free' kind, but not all. It's perfectly possible to live well with 3 children on a salary far less than the kind many of you are talking about. It's all about careful budgeting and priorities, and those things apply whereever you are on the income scale.

When the base rate moves down if you are on a tracker your rate will move down with it. The thought is to around 4% by the end of this year and around 3/ 3.5 by the end of 2025. My fix is up then, and I’m on a relatively high rate of 4.8

when inflation moves down rates will as well, we’ve seen inflation reduce and mortgages come down too (mortgages rates are largely based on swap rates) some think inflation could get back to the BoE target by as early as may this year.

it’s a bit too early to call but the general thought is 2025 will be more stable, it’s a very dynamic environment atm

I agree, my income is similar, though I appreciate I have a very small mortgage with about 3 years left.

Well we earn a lot less than that (almost half!) and get by just fine! Our mortgage is £900 though and I work very part time so not much is going on childcare (although it is basically everything I earn!). I think a lot depends how materialist you are and where you live - we aren’t fussed about nice cars, latest gadgets etc and buy pretty much everything second hand. We live by the beach and countryside on our doorstep so have quiet an outdoorsy lifestyle so don’t spend much on days out and don’t feel the need for expensive holidays. Although we do go away once or twice a year (normally one uk based one abroad). If you like expensive things, latest tech and big holidays then of course you’d need to be earning more!
I do find mumsnet is a very skewed take on reality though so you’ll probably get lots of people telling you 150k is what you need :).
Before anyone tells me we’ll need more in the teen years, I don’t doubt that’s true. But by that point I should be working more hours and dh’s salary likely to have increased, so we aren’t worried.

Why you think hols would be ambitious?

im trying to get hubs into haven for our UK breaks.

we tend to do AI hols for ease but realistically we could easily do self catering and eat out In the evening and not spend a bomb.

i do have some big ticket holidays on my agenda though like Japan for my next big birthday but I’d like to have had another 2 move up career wise at that point like wise for dh

We have four. Eldest is 14, youngest is 5. All at school. No after school club as we work hours mainly from home and around the kids
Joint household income is approx £90k ish. I work about 0.7 FTE, he is full time
We did buy current house back in 2017 but mortgage is £900pm excepted to go up to about £1200pm when rate ends
Should be paid off by time we are 60 at the latest. Both have good work pensions and savings to cover over 12m joint wages
Live in a lovely detached house in a village middle ish of the country. Great schools. Not a cheap area
Save £25 a month for each child which will be used for first car and insurance
Won't be paying tuition fees if they go to uni. Will pay towards other uni costs I.e rent
We live well, drive oldish cars bought outright. Never bought one on lease
Go abroad for 2 weeks every year.
Now we are out of the childcare years we are saving approx £15k a year which will be used to help with housing deposits for them in the future. They can live at home while they save towards a deposit also we have the space
We are comfortable..likely no inheritance to fall back on
But we have never been flashy. We like nice things but spend our money wisely. We've tried to avoid lifestyle creep at all costs so now we are out of the childcare years we have a great amount to put into savings combined with payrises over the years

@Diskneedisney we are on 2.5% and another 5 yrs to go. Was interested if you thought they would be going back to this. As you say they will come down but I’ll keep overpaying!

They’ll come down, that’s a given, but how low, and if it will be that 2% mark, ahh that I don’t know. I’m not a mortgage advisor btw, but you’re on a competitive rate (even 5 years ago) so if you’ve got the means to over pay now, you won’t regret it.

We need £2250 a month to float with 2 older children at home but we haven't got a mortgage.
So factor in £3750 ish. Plus holidays as that amount excludes holidays, includes generous basic living rather than skimping but nothing extra.

Do you mean you need a net income of £2250 or you spend an additional £2250 per month on your older children.

id say we spend £1000 a month on the kids, but £800 of that is childcare and then there’s swimming lessons at £5 each and then clothes

No, state school, they seem to have basically outsourced to an expensive provider. It covers a practice and real expedition.

You are right. He is being ridiculous.

I mean, if he doesn't want a 3rd child, then that is absolutely fair enough, but the idea that you need a combined income of £130-£150K is just ludicrous.

Easily proven by looking at average household income and what a tiny % of young couples earn that kind of money, compared with how many families have 3 (or more) dc.

£48k per year, single parent to three, four bed house, one takeaway a week, shop in aldi, newish car but barely have any new clothes or socialisation funds. I struggle.

Just to clarify though, we struggle as in we have no spare funds for emergencies or many treats. In comparison to others we have a lovely home, plenty of basics and are happy.

I've got 2 Dc at Uni. They have each taken out loans for tution fees (£9K a year) and the maintenance loan (£4500) to live off. We cover their rent - £10K a year each or about £1800 a month for both of them.

We lived on 36k with 3dcs for a long time. And never went without .
Now 52k 4dcs. And live comfortably. Dcs all in schools / college etc. They all do clubs, activities have nice clothes ( teen and dd are very into trends) , days out, annual passes to attractions.
But we don't eat out or have coffee out etc

I'm enjoying the typically mental mumsnet responses. Three children in London here on £65k total income. Most friends with three have less money and three or more children. Seemingly our children are surviving quite well without £2000 school trips 😁

Totally bonkers.. our local council youth club runs it for £200 donation. Admittedly there is equipment to get, but we mostly borrowed it.