Are the finances really that different between one and two child families?

[May487]

I know it’s probably obvious but just wondering about this one. I’m pregnant with our first and thinking about whether we’d like one or two children. I think if money were no object it would easily be two but naturally it is, with childcare, housing and the general cost of living all being very expensive!

Older relatives of ours seem to believe ‘it all works out’ but when I look around, the ones saying this with multiple DC have either had grandparents provide full time childcare, bought their homes when interest rates were low, one parent can afford to be a SAHP etc.

I love my career and want to stay employed and same goes for DH. We have time and could potentially leave a 5 year+ age gap but also even with that surely there is summer holiday clubs to pay for, uniform, hobbies, just alongside maternity leave and then childcare fees for the second?

Am I missing something or is the world just changing now?

I've got 2 DC and would say having a second child is practically twice as expensive as having one. You have twice the food, twice the childcare, twice the hobbies, twice the travel costs, twice the uni costs. The only possible saving is clothing hand-me-downs IF the children like the same clothes and if the clothes are in good enough condition after being worn by the first.

I’m guessing that your older relatives didn’t use private schools or contribute to university fees (if you earn more than 60k? the loan won’t cover costs)
When they are very young then there’s some lower costs eg child 2 happy with hand me downs but when they are older, you can’t get away with handing down driving lessons or things like trainers.
Biggest cost might be car and housing. If you have a dog or a 2 bedroom house then you might want/need to upgrade and not everyone has jobs where the wages will increase in the long term.

I think so. Your career can take the hit with one child but with two mine was pretty much destroyed. I clung onto my profession for 10 years to avoid having to pass exams to re-enter. my eldest is 13 and I'm only just getting my mojo back. However I wouldn't change it for the world but I wasn't prepared for how long it took to be able to get back to even enjoying work let alone progressing again.

Also you are stuck doing the primary school run and all the holiday clubs for longer if you have a larger age gap but if you have a small age gap you have to pay 2 x nursery fees for a while which is crippling for most people.

However they do entertain each other and hope that they will be there for each other once we've gone.

Our friends and family that have been through this were shocked how much the second child cost - twice the nursery fees, twice the food (some breastfed fine with first baby and then had to bottle feed the second one), twice the clothes for those with second children that are a different gender, having to buy a double pram if there's a close age gap. The only things they've saved money on is a cot (unless they bought a cot that transforms into a toddler bed like SIL did), some good condition gender neutral clothes, the bottle steriliser and some bottles. Everything else had to be bought new either because the older ones were still using them or they were worn out or they were the wrong style (e.g. First baby was born in December so had winter clothes in 0-3m and 12-18m, second baby born in May so needed winter clothes in 6-9m and then 18-24m).

Very true, hadn’t even considered the hand me downs might not be seasonally appropriate! I guess you just see so many 2 child families. It would make sense if you earned a lot or one of you could stay at home. Or, if you had your kids 10-20 years ago or more when it was cheaper and easier to have more. Feels impossible these days! Want to give our baby the best we can, would love to give them a sibling but not if it meant taking away from their future support e.g driving lessons and savings

Agree with everyone else. Older generations completely forget what it's like. You'll also get loads of helpful comments like 'if she's hungry she will eat' and 'oh put her down and she will just sleep' etc etc. But yeah, massive mortgage costs and cost of living crisis combined with if you live in the middle of a southern city versus somewhere else where the prices of most businesses and services (including nursery) are just so much higher.... Finances are a big reason why many people I know aren't having a second. Even food is extortionate.

Or, if you had your kids 10-20 years ago or more when it was cheaper and easier to have more.

I don’t know where you get this from…when we had our eldest 26 years ago, our mortgage rate was 6.45%….its only relatively very recently that rates have been so low, we also didn’t have subsidised childcare.

Life relatively any cheaper then than it is now, it was just different

Relative to income it is a lot different.

We ended up sending our child to private school, despite not originally planning to. If we had more than one child, we probably wouldn’t have had the financial freedom to make that choice.

@May487 seriously? Driving lessons and savings? They can do that themselves but they'll never get another sibling.
Personally if you manage it well there isn't much a different. We used to spoil our only rotten now it means we're careful where we spend but it's not like we don't eat out, have fun days, give them presents etc.

If you say so, but if you ask more people of my age (50+) you’ll get a very different answer, as they have lived it

I was thinking about this earlier. We have 1 DC. It would be manageable but very tight with 2, whereas at the moment we do have disposable income for DC’s music lessons/ swimming/ general activities and when they’re older will hopefully be able to help with driving lessons etc. This could all change of course, one of us could lose our job, get sick, life happens. We would struggle to afford 2 though.

Your mortgage rate might have been 6% but your house cost less than half what the same house costs today proportional to your income.

It's amazing how innumerate people can be when they don't want to believe things are actually much worse for younger people today.

I should also add that both DH and I have terrible relationships with our siblings AND our parents struggled financially, so neither of us have that ‘a sibling is vital’ mentality.

I don’t know which 17 year old could afford £40 an hour to learn to drive and £2k+ a year driving insurance. Things are so expensive now. The answers isn’t take public transport as it’s not very well functioning in some places, so not driving can prevent opportunities like education and work.

Nah, 20 years ago I don't think I knew one person on a 6 figure salary, even low 6 figures. But now a good 50% of mumsnet are on mid 6 figures.

And we earn twice as much, so the proportions are the same….we also had no subsidised childcare… I’m not getting into an argument, just pointing out that the current 50+ didn’t have it as easy as you may think we did…just like our parents didn’t have it as straightforward as we can sometimes think. Having kids is expensive, no matter when you had or have them

Completely agree with this.

What I will add though is this - I've worked with the elderly for a long time - often having to look at their finances a bit. This one thing holds true throughout

• people who have no children are much better off than people who do and the more children you have, the less well off you are in old age.

Now, you might think this is obvious, but it really really stands out and stares me in the face daily. If I had known then what I know now, I'd have had one or even no children, instead of the three I did have.

Yes it is twice as expensive. I get a sibling discount for some of their activities, dd2 is free at Cubs and half price at Stagecoach. Hand me downs only really work when they grow out of stuff quickly - dd1 isn't growing fast enough to pass dd2 her clothes any more, and they've got the same size feet.

Food etc I'm not sure you notice so much when they're little, we probably will more when they're teenagers.

But - they do entertain each other. At a weekend we rarely go out much, we might go swimming, they're happy playing together. I suspect if we had one there would be a lot more expensive days out.

The stats prove that housing price in relation to average salaries make housing less affordable now than 26 years ago. Higher interest rates were less of an issue when house prices were reasonable. Our house is currently worth 5 times what it was sold for 29 years ago, average salaries are not 5x what they were back then.
My in laws house is worth 10 times what they paid in the 90s (it's a nice house in a more desirable location than ours).

Life is much more difficult today for young people trying to get on the housing market - the average house price has gone up x 60 in fifty years yet wages only x 30. Thats like a box of eggs costing 23p back in 1970's, now costing £13!

The childcare years are crippling for sure, if you've got 2 it can make sense to drop a day at work each and manage it that way.

DC are expensive to run for sure, but I know if I had just one I'd have indulged them more....more big ticket days out, taking a friend on holiday woth us for company etc. As it is they do get to do all the clubs and activities they want to, but they don't get to bring a mate unless it's a birthday, they play together. Plus you can get second child discount at some places.

For me the financial cost is dwarfed by the rewards of having the both to play together, support eachother, and clear out my house after I'm gone.

Its nearly twice the price. Childcare is double, food is double, activities are double. Savings on hand me downs only.

I think that if you really want a second child you take a realistic look at what’s actually important and what are really just aspirational nice-to-haves. I totally get why older relatives don’t understand why it has to be so expensive: I’m only in my late thirties, but when I compare how we ate when I was a kid to how the children of my friends eat nowadays, it’s night and day - and no wonder people complain their family grocery bills are unaffordable. Likewise things like extracurricular activities and “experiences”: when I read posts on MN about the multiple activities MNers seem to believe their children absolutely need to do and have to be well rounded, it’s no wonder many people of our parents’ generation don’t get it - half of these things didn’t even exist until fairly recently, let alone seen as necessities for children. Same with the expense of supposedly needing a bigger house: in decades past children shared bedrooms with siblings and nobody thought it was some kind of poverty hardship.

I doubt that your older relatives were thinking about funding things for their own children which repeatedly get mentioned on threads like these, such as university living costs, driving lessons, house deposits etc Young people used to work to pay for their driving lessons and university beer money and lived in shitty housing whilst they saved up for their own place. It’s a nice idea to want to pay for these things for your children to help them get on, but also very aspirational.

Not to go off topic but https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/expenditure-over-time/#:~:text=In%20the%2070s%2C%20we%20spent,hitting%20£2%2C615%20a%20year.

From what friends (in London and Se) have said, 2 is significantly more expensive than 1.

But I think if you want 2 then you’ll find a way to make it work.