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?

Childcare costs for 2 at nursery full time have always been prohibitive. Even in the early 1990s. But I managed as I wanted to keep my job. Both my dc each have 2 of their own now, and are finding similar issues. I don’t think things have really changed that much over the past 30 -40 years

Absolutely this 100%

We want it all these days and we want to give our children also what we consider it "all" - it depends on what you consider is important

To me providing siblings is more important

It very much depends what kind of lifestyle you envisage for your children. You can have a second child very cheaply if you are only providing the very basics, reusing clothes/equipment from the first, don't need to upsize your house and all extras such as driving lessons/uni etc. are down to them to provide for themselves.
If you want to privately educate, pay for a range of extracurricular activities, take your children to travel the world, pay for driving lessons/first car, pay them through university and provide house deposits etc. then each additional child could easily cost you a seven figure sum over your lifetimes.

I knew I wouldn't be able to afford to provide the lifestyle I want for more than two children, so we are stopping at two. If I could only afford that lifestyle for one I would have stopped at one.

I agree driving is a really important skill to learn but the PP is right that plenty of kids pay for their own lessons, car and insurance at 17/18.

I’m only in my early 30’s but everyone in my group at school were working at the same time as being at sixth form (we all aimed to work at Somerfield as it was the only place that paid adult NMW for everyone) and it was literally to fund driving lessons and to buy a car. Mine was an ancient Vauxhall that I paid £300 for and around £1500 for the insurance. We were collectively outraged at the cost as teenagers at the time but all our parents had social lives/work at that point and so we had to rely on public transport to get anywhere.

I’ve only heard that 16 year olds shouldn’t get jobs alongside their studying on mumsnet. When I was at school it was actively encouraged to strengthen uni applications.

But it’s not just mortgages. Council tax is more expensive now, food is more expensive now. NHS dentists are hard to come by so things like that are also an extra cost. Everything is a lot more expensive now and things like final salary pensions are rare but not so rare 50 years ago.

Yes. But if same gender and happy to share a bedroom you can keep hosting cost down

If only you could guarantee that! No way of knowing before going for a second

We’re having the same debate and have a 3 month old atm.

If money was no object, I think we’d have two. However, I’m just not sure we can justify the cost.

We can’t really afford two lots of nursery fees and I don’t want a big age gap (and time isn’t really on our side for a big gap).

From what I can tell the cost really is double - the baby years we could easily afford, it’s the rest of their lives that concerns me!

Paying for two lots of food, holiday costs, nursery, wrap around care, extra curriculars, books, clothes, phone contracts, driving lessons, uni fees, help with housing (not guaranteed but ideally I’d like to help).

Also the cost of a 3 bed house vs a 4 bed (we currently live in a flat so looking to move imminently).

We earn well and could probably just about afford it, but at a serious downgrade in lifestyle.

Debating if a sibling is ‘worth’ the downgrade.

A sibling isn't vital but I don't regret it at all. They love each other so much. The eldest is also mush more confident and relaxed with having a sibling.

But you don’t have to really think about separate bedrooms until they’re 10/11 even if they are opposite sex - by which point you won’t have significant childcare costs and may well have had significant promotions at work. A bigger house isn’t something that needs to be on the to-do list the moment you get pregnant.

There's certainly certain things that don't cost double for 2 kids but they don't tend to be essentials (eg attractions tend to have a family rate). In theory kids can share a room and you can hand down clothes I suppose but the big costs eg childcare are double

This all this. I’m starting to get too bored with this debate. Let’s compare my situation versus my parents. They had an outstanding mortgage balance of £30k at 12.5% and me / my husband have an outstanding mortgage balance of £280k at 5%. Worst thing is my partner are better educated and worked more than my parents did.

Childcare. That'll be the big enormous cost. And time out of your career.

Food - in theory you eat 25% more as a 4 than a 3. But in reality, you'd use the entire package of meat between 3 people or 4 people, and just add more veg/ carbs/ whatever - ie the cheaper part of the meal. And it doesnt take signifucantly longer to cook 4 portions vs 3.

If youve a car, you dont often need a bigger one for 4 than you need for 3.

A lot of the rest is discretionary, share a room, do fewer activities, etc. Where I live, the difference between a two-bedroom house and a 3-bedroom isnt proportional - it doesnt cost 30% more to have a third bedroom, although its difficult to have direct comparison between properties as theyre so variable.

Absolutely: when the mortgage interest rate went over 15%, albeit briefly. There wasn't the childcare available, either.

Agree with the pp that made a point about age gap. Smaller gap = more nursery fees at the same time. Bigger gap = the bloody school runs are never ending.
My eldest started school as I was on May leave with my second which massively helped.
I couldn't have got back to work in the way I did without my parents though. I left my ExH when youngest was one, which didn't help money etc, but it's only now that youngest is in Y5 that I can see the end in sight for school runs etc.
Also having had 2, I now can't be ARSED with work. I've had too long on part time, missing networking events etc and it has 💯 affected my career. And my work ethic.
I'm tired. So fucking tired.

@May487

It isn't that different now, and we didn't get any help with childcare when dd1 was born. Interest at 5.99% child care would have been 50% of my income, prices were already high in London

I also had to move house as my original 3 bed was basically a 2 bed and a box room. Kids shared in bunk beds.
They're different sexes so eventually I had to move so they had their own space.
Day to day expenses (food/utilities) aren't much more.

@FestiveAuntFanny

Salaries were a lot lower! My first job paid £3.45 an hour! No minimum wage then

Hard for me to comment as we have twins so money is super tight. We pay £1,500 a month in childcare for 2 days a week, we get 20% tax back off the government but it’s still super expensive and it’s the cheapest option -a childminder round the corner.

Personally l think in the modern world they are pretty much double. I would have your first and then give it a couple of years to see what you want. Inflation / the economy won’t be so bad. Are either of you (theoretically) going to progress much in your careers?

I’m have 2 boys. I want to try for a girl. But its seems impossible in this living condition. Because for me and DH we want our kids to see the world with us. we like travelling a lot and have 3 its hella expensive. Also university and housing when they are adult. House price its very expensive nowadays, i cant imagine when my kids are adult. Must be so expensive. So i’m planning to help my children to give them deposit for their own place later on. So yeah. We stick with two eventhough i still want to try another one.

"According to the latest data from HMRC, the top 10% of earners make an annual personal income of over £59,200 in the UK. This is roughly 2x the median UK income of £33,280 per year."https://moneysprout.co.uk/top-10-income-in-the-uk/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,%2C%20dividends%2C%20interest%20and%20more.

It is a fact that house price to income ratios have dramatically worsened. Not saying it wasn't tough, my parents had a really high mortgage rate suddenly just as I was born and it was stressful for them. But they had bought a 4 bed detached at the age of 25 with no money from relatives/inheritance etc and solid middle class jobs in IT but nothing crazy. My husband and I (both professionals with good careers) have a 2 bed semi in the same area, bought aged 30 with significant parental help.
This is anecdotal like your post. Who knows, maybe I'm spending £500+ per month on avocado on toast and netflix and my parents ate cold beans for every meal (I'm not though, I don't like takeaways, rarely buy coffees, have 1 streaming subscription and don't replace electronics until they literally will not work, and even then if it's a laptop I'll leave it another year or two and just use my phone instead).

Or we could look at the facts, heres a graph to show it https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/individual/insights/what-174-years-of-data-tell-us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/.

Sorry to derail thread. One newborn here so cant really comment!

Indeed. It amazes me.

My experience was that for the first couple of years it didn’t seem too much more expensive with two. I took a couple of years at home so we didn’t have childcare costs, mostly used hand me downs, had pushchair, car seat, cot etc.

But with me back to work, second child now needing entry tickets for stuff, food costs, clothes doubling up because my first is tiny and my second is enormous, both needing full bedroom furniture, etc, yes the costs are double.

The world of the 1970's and 1980's was unutterably different from today, though. House prices were way lower and a much smaller proportion of income, but I dont recall disposable income being high. Some things then were seen as normal - no proper heating, food being very basic, luxuries were things like chocolate biscuits, a "2 car family" was Notable, a meal out was for a proper birthday of a parent, if you went anywhere for the afternoon your Mum wouldve packed a tartan thermos of tea and some orange squash..... etc etc. That wasnt just in the industrial areas, that was everyone (maybe not the SE of England? Not sure!). Im not saying it was worse or better, but it was so different Im not sure how comparable it is.

Edited to add: this was my experience with 2 parents working in reasonably professional jobs.

But, most younger people now are having a way worse time (financially) than most older people now are having.

I'm an only. I had everything I wanted growing up. Clubs, holidays, I was the star of the show. I'm likely in line for a sole large inheritance. I'd give it all up to go back and have grown up with a sibling.

We had DC then had DTwins. So there's a whole bunch of us. DH is low 6-fig salary. I've not worked until the last few months to save us on childcare. I'm lucky to have walked straight in to a well paid part time role now.

We're also lucky to be in the position of an early inheritance to put towards a house, and so we can get somewhere lovely and big. But I don't drive the car I want, we don't take nice long haul holidays. My clothes could be nicer. I could run the bank dry each month on clothes/toys/books/stuff for the house but I'm a smart shopper and use charity shops and FB for sale and search carefully for real bargains. I often resell on eBay for more than I paid. We tried Butlins hotel for the first time when DTwins were 2, thinking we'd stay one night and leave in disappointment. Loved it. But that's because for us, it really is the more the merrier.

Christmases are everything I never had but longed for. I had a huge pile of toys to over compensate that I had no one to play with. Now, with DC plus DH and I the pile is enormous, just because it's that many more people. DTwins are oblivious that their massive bundle of paw patrol was £20 from FB for sale.

We have no family childcare help, and lack of childcare has been the bane of our lives. Until very recently, I was almost going crazy stuck at home with "mum...mum...mum...Mum!" 12 hrs a day, which has been relieved by the now enormous nursery fees. There have been some real low points for me, mental health wise, where DTwins have been relentless and there's no one to give me a break, and I haven't had a day or night off since the day they were born, (with the exception of one night in hospital after I had an accident) and it's been four years. DH often does not finish work until their bedtime. They have eased up in recent months, and my new job is a welcome break. It's much better.

Another thing that may sound daft, is sick days. If I'm sick, I'm off work. But if child 1 gets sick I'm off work. Then when they get better but child 2 catches it, I'm off work. Then child 3 gets it. Then I catch it again off child 3...you get the picture.

The admin for more than one child soon adds up
Multiple dental appointments. Doctors appointments. Parents evenings. Clubs. School forms.

Having more than one child is so much more than the money. You have to really want a larger family, or I think you could have regrets, or even resent that you are more restricted. If you're the type who needs new everything, and recoils at the idea of a lovely Feather and Black bed frame for £30 because someone else has slept in it, then unless you have a big income, multiple children will be expensive.

Once you get the childcare ages out of the way, it's manageable if you make smart purchases, and have a good income. Having to spread our finances, time and resources over multiple DC can be tricky at times. For me, it's absolutely worth it.