What's more expensive: the childcare years or the teen years?

[Oddsox1]

Currently paying £1000 a month for 3 days nursery for one child. Second child due to start soon.

Someone please please reassure me that teens won't cost this much?! Chatting to a friend has scared me!

A local school (not private) has blazers that are £110 each and skirts are £40+ each, most uniform.and pe kit has to come from the compulsory supplier. ....but I'd be surprised if the full uniform needed replacing every year
Ours is more reasonably priced but a lot still from the compulsory supplier.

(I did have 1 year where DDs shirts needed replacing every term! but her skirts - and blazer lasted at least 2 years)

My childcare bill from nursery through to the end of primary for wrap around was around £70,000 (for one child). No way between the ages of 13 and 18 I’d spend £1400 a month every month!

Teens are very expensive but i didn't pay for childcare (just the opportunity cost of me not working)

For us, it’s shaping up to be the teens but as most others have pointed out, most of those expenses are optional. Childcare is ridiculously expensive and also unavoidable for most people. We have one still in childcare and the fortnightly direct debit is noticeable!

Our oldest 2 have both gone down an elite sport pathway, which I recognise has only been an option for them because we are able and willing to pay the necessary expenses. Between the equipment, coaching, competitions, and travel, the costs are really high.

I can’t afford them for myself either but when they come home from school with the letter and saying all their friends are going it is hard to say no and you find the money!

Yeah I get this! But also sometimes it's not as simple as finding the money. It's all a while off for us, but will come around quickly I'm sure. I guess we just try to save a bit during the primary school years and hope we have a few reserves to dig into.

In the past year and a bit)DD has brought home letters for...
Ski trips (x2) £1500
New York £1800
Iceland £1800
Cornwall £580

Weve only said yes to Cornwall... as have most of the parents! Only one coach load go on each trip.

Pretty sure when I was in high school the most exotic place I went was the Lake District 😃

Don't forget the Primary school residential... thats more important in a way as that does tend to be the majority of the class.

Personally I found the teen years more expensive but I will say the stuff we spent on Dd which cost big bucks when she was older was not essential. But yes she’s had the ski holiday school trips, the summers in Italy at art classes, etc. but if we hadn’t had the money/didn’t want to spend the money then we didn’t have to. Wheras childcare is pretty essential if you work.

Childcare years 100%.

This would really annoy me.

I’ve always worked PT so childcare wasn’t a big cost for us. I’m finding teen years v expensive- the food bill is insane. Plus we’ve needed to pay for therapy for one of our DC’s (£55ph) and tutoring (£45 ph). Yes, some of the teen costs are optional but food obviously isn’t and therapy wasn’t either. It was needed and the NHS wait was too long.

DD's old secondary did ski trips, max 100 girls over 5 year groups (240 girls per year in that school), so hardly everyone.

Language trips, maybe 50 girls of 240.

Music tour - bit more difficult to avoid as these includes performances they practice months for so you either sit out for 1-2 terms or you go. DD was scheduled to go in 2020 and it was priced for £600 for 5 days incl. all meals but lunch.

The Y7 do a residential trip during school time, they do want everyone to go and have emergency funds plus the funding for FSM pupils.

In the past music and sport was properly taught in school, the provision in DD's schools, primary and secondary, was laughable. Secondary slightly better but only if you like ball sport.

We have 5 teens and it's way more expensive for us now . They eat SO much . Hundreds of euro every week .
University fees, travel, phones, driving lessons, school trips, golf club memberships, other sports' fees, music lessons and worst of all they all count as adults on holidays !!
Never seem to have any money left over .
Luckily when they were small I was able to take time off so childcare was not a consideration but we were down one salary for a few years.

It's not new. It's just a mumsnet thing.

Teen years 16-18 for us
and we had to pay extortionate amounts for 3 ( including under 12month twins ) in nursery with no Government support then.

@PuttingDownRoots if this about the trips is true I am seriously worried about my 2 in secondary school as they won’t be going on the trips. We are comfortably off but at the moment can only do 1 abroad holiday per year…no way can it would I be paying for extra ££££ on top for school trips. Also what horrible pressure to put on parents, and wouldn’t it be really obvious who were the haves and have nots in the class? Is this private or state?

Thats what surprised me... its a normal Comp in a not very affluent area! Part of the catchment is more affluent, but a lot really isn't.

On the plus side... Yr7 camp is only £25 including food for three days.

@Prapsfound Our teens were at State school (both now left) and there were some eye-wateringly expensive trips (a trip to Iceland was north of a grand I think).

One of our DC’s went on a day trip to Bletchley Park and the other went to the theatre IIRC. DC1 was going to go on the ski trip (about £900 I think), but then Covid hit so that didn’t happen. DC2 was going on a weekend GCSE History trip to Berlin (£700) but that was also cancelled because their flights were changed/costs of the trip were rising for various reasons. (Reflective of the general cost and uncertainty of travel post-Covid I think). So neither did a residential trip and we were able to put that money into family holidays instead. Both of them went to Paris Disneyland in Y6 so they haven’t exactly gone without.

Don’t feel pressured- most of the children won’t be going on trips to Iceland or ski resorts so your kids won’t be alone if you can’t/don’t want to fund it.

As someone said that no one in the real world is paying £10k a year for a teen I thought I'd break down our expenses over the last 12 months

Braces: £4,500
School trips - French trip, history trip and maths trip: £447
Additional cost of adult/extra room on summer holiday: £800
Prom inc ticket, dress, shoes etc: £500
X 2 trainers: £160
Clothes: approx. £60 a month
Pocket money: £20 a week
Birthday and Xmas: £500
Phone contract: £35 a month

That's without the cost of random days out, adult cinema costs, adult train costs, food costs etc.

I appreciate braces seem like a one off cost but next year it will be driving lessons, the year after it will be university... she's looking for a part time job but there's not much around here.

The difference is that all of the above is somewhat optional (DD would disagree) whilst childcare was a fixed cost.

I have a similar age DD (she's 17)
Her prom outfit was nowhere near £500
She gets £50-60/month pocket money
She has a young person's railcard = half price train fares
I rarely buy her clothes, certainly not £60/month (she buys her own mainly from vinted or depop)
Her phone contract is sim only and its £10/month
Admittedly she had free orthodontist treatment from age 10-14.
We go on self catering holidays and occassionally this means DC sharing a room or one of them sleeping on a sofa bed
We found it pretty difficult to find a driving instructor at all so have put off learning to drive (although obviously if we lived somewhere very remote that would probably be more essential)

So yes youre rught in that there's options and more variables/negotiables with these type of expenses as opposed to childcare which is very much a fixed price

The big teen expenses are not necessities.

we are definitely spending more now than we did in the nursery years.

It's a hard call actually.

DS has size 14 feet and is 6'3 and still growing at 15. So his clothes and shoes especially are not cheap. His appetite is huge!! He literally eats 3 times what I do!

Bus fares -£40/month
School dinners - £4-5/day
GCSE Spanish trip - £700
GCSE History trip - £500
Music lessons - £400/term
Orchestra/choir subs - £50/term
Archery club fees/insurance - £100/year ish
DoE Bronze - £220 (one off)
Phone - £30/month ish
Pocket money - £30/month

Thank goodness he's taking a year out of cricket, so I don't have to source cricket shoes...

So I'd say all of these things are optional, but there's also more to life than school and screens. We're rural enough that he's mates aren't in the same village, so he's not a big one for hanging out playing football.... he never was anyway. There's still a lot of "mum's taxi".

Nursery was about £1000/month for 3 days. Looking at the above, and considering other expenses, clothes, additional driving etc, I'm not sure there's much in it.

Do most people only have one child, or are super high earners? My second pregnancy wasn't planned and now I'm feeling guilty I won't be able to afford to give two children all these opportunities.