How much do your primary school aged kids cost?

[LittleRedRidingHoody]

On the back of the 'how much do your teens cost' thread...

Will preface by saying yes, we are privileged, I will take great care to ensure DS knows this etc etc. I am aware I could save money, and am not interested in finance tips. Curious to see peoples answers but if you're offended by anything you don't need to contribute 😊

Only 1 child, DS is 5.

Monthly:
£80 breakfast club
£300 afternoon activities (DS does a range of clubs every day, but if he didn't I'd be spending the same amount on after school clubs)
£40 swimming
£20-ish on Vinted for clothes
£60 for weekend activities. We try and do 1x 'free' trip and 1x paid excursion each weekend because he's an only child and crawls the walls otherwise!
£100 for his food. Free school meals and breakfast club so it's only 2x snacks (breakfast and after school), dinner and weekends.
£20 'pocket money' but realistically this doesn't get spent and just piles up in savings.

Annual:
£70 Junior Zoo Membership
£150 Soft Play Membership
£150 Christmas/Birthday presents
Birthday party ~ up til now has been £300 as we've been able to hire a cheap (for here!) soft play but unsure this year as DS has outgrown it and everywhere else is £20+ per head. May do hall hire etc and try and keep it under £300.

Another only here and again I appreciate he is very privileged. We have made decision to spend more on extra curricular activities and opt for state school.
I haven’t seen the thread on teenagers but I am hoping he actually gets cheaper as childcare is a big chunk of our costs at the moment.

per month:
£450 wrap-around and school holiday
clubs
£300 sports activities
£150 food including packed lunches and snacks
£50 clothes and incidentals
£50 day trips and meals
out
£20 gifts for others
£20 school donations / trips and activities

annually
£120 magazine subscription
£2500 holidays ( includes 1 skiing and 1 summer plus maybe a weekend away)
£600 Christmas gifts and birthday gifts and party.

probably forgotten some stuff!

We could of course completely cut back on this with the exception of childcare and food. We are fortunate that at the moment we do not have to.

This was the same decision I made re state school/activities!

I left holidays off my list because it varies wildly. Up until last year it was mostly camping/Butlins but we're having a few 'bucket list' holidays which skews the numbers 😬

I dunno, dread to add it up after the "how much does your dog cost" thread made me realise the hairy dickhead was costing 500 a month.

I honestly don't think I could put a figure on it. He costs a lot. He is autistic so everything is 1:1 and this month I've spent literal thousands on private assessments which have been being done yearly.

Cost is the reason why we only have one child!

Hmm to be fair this is a difficult one.

Ds8 is disabled and out of school we are currently paying for a lot of his provisions in place while the la sort themselves out (still 2 years waiting) I'd say we are probably paying around £300 a month

Nappies £45ish a month on top of the allowance he gets

Clothes as he chews maybe another £50ish a month on top of our £500 a year per child budget. but it depends on what damage he's done. Ie 1 coat is cheaper than replacing all pjs we find.

Food again he has a restricted diet im not entirely sure but when i can buy at least 10 tubes of Pringles in 3 day period at £1.80 a pop.. that's £18 there. We usually budget around £200 extra on food for him.

A lot of his costs come in from bigger purchases of disability equipment.

Then there's the things he unintentionally breaks. My car repair recently was £600.
£34 swim lessons

Dd11
£35 pocket money
£30 guides termly (3 terms)
£34 Swim lessons
No school costs as home educated as moved and no spaces. But saving £30 a month to pay for secondary uniform in September.

Clothes like our teen we usually set aside £500 for the year.

Dd5 also disabled
£34 swim lessons
£50ish on damaged clothes replacing on top of our usual £500 a year budget per a child. But again depends on what's been damaged. It's usually sleeves with her.
£37 on nappies
Wrap around care as I can't collect till after 4 is £6 a day. So £120 a 4 week period

We spend £150 a month of speech and language sessions

We budget an extra £100 for food each month for her.

Again the cost comes out in equipment. It's not an every day thing but when it's needed it's expensive.

Then cost of appointments in sense of fuel and parking we probably average £150ish a month between the 2 children

It's hard to know what dd5 and ds8 actually cost as there's a lot of one of costs involved ie we have just moved. We had to make ds
room safe. Ie padded walls and floors.

Dd and ds both have hydrotherapy sessions. But we purchased a pool so they can now also have it at home (so there's no gaps between nhs session timetable) the cost of the pool is a one off but the maintenance and cost of running is monthly.

Cost of creating our own sensory room to save on spending on attending sessions to save in the long run.

Each child is probably
Monthly
£200 clubs and activities
£50 clothes and sports equipment
£100 food maybe, never really worked it out per head
£20 pocket money
£20 party gifts
£40 days out
£100 savings account

Annually
£500 each birthday
£300 each Christmas
£1000 holiday

God I've never written down and realised how expensive they are 🤔

@PigInADuvet and @sunshineandrain82 ~ that sounds so hard! DM is recently disabled and I'm currently managing finances etc for her - previous to that I don't think I had a clue how much it can all add up so quickly, and even now I'm thankful it's 'temporary' ie not something I'm paying for throughout the rest of a child's life 😬

I'd forgotten party gifts actually, that's another chunky predictable cost! We do the whole birthday box thing but it still probably works out at about £40-50 a month.

I'm started to write down how much I spend on the kids per month in case my arsey exh - who doesn't pay maintenance - ever tries to argue that they "don't cost anything".

2 primary aged kids, this is how much I've spent this month:
£180 after school club
£156 maths tuition
£107 swimming lessons
£100 on going to soft play and a trampoline park
£50 savings
£44.20 school dinners
£37 clothes
£37 stationery/craft stuff
£29.99 The Week subscription (every quarter)
£22 pocket money
£20 on party bag fillers / balloons / invites for both of their approaching birthdays
£14 beavers

I haven't even bothered to work out how much their food costs! Maybe £150?

The soft play / trampoline park / birthday decorations etc are obviously luxuries but I would say everything else is either essential or very useful.

That should say The Week Junior subscription

Hard to say!
£33 gymnastics club
£34 swimming lessons
£100 2nd language tutor (appreciate most people won’t have this but he is bilingual and I want to maintain that)
£50 music lessons (two lessons per week plus after school orchestra, so pretty decent value)
£19 rugby club
£50 tennis club
Breakfast club and after school club are pretty adhoc depending on my shifts, but maybe averages £100 per month?

He doesn’t cost much to feed, though I do buy him a fair number of afterschool snacks on the way to various clubs, which racks up
Dentist is free currently
Haircuts maybe £120 per year
Annual zoo family membership £134
Birthday party £200
Presents maybe £500 per year?
Clothes and shoes probably £500 per year, at least half of which is shoes. Not designer, but Clark’s school shoes etc aren’t cheap.

So I reckon averages out at maybe £500-600 per month all in.

I don’t want to derail the thread but how on earth can a dog be costing you £500 per month?!

Never added it up but interesting to do so:

monthly
OSC £320
Football £70
Athletics £15
BB’s £10
Gym £20
Swimmig £24
Attending parties £15
Weekend Budget £80
School Dinners Free
Football/Sports clothing for clubs £50
Hair £20
Clothes £60
Annual
Christmas £800
Birthday £500
Holiday £2000

Two boys primary school age. OSC for oldest ends this year but need to start paying lunches.

I know that physical newspapers have their benefits but do you know Readly has The Week and hundreds more magazines and newspapers. It’s £8.99 a month.

@MaybeItWasMe I can see how it could add up. Our 8m Labrador pet insurance alone is £90 something a month. Then his vet plan is £36. So we are at £126 before adding anything else in. If they use walkers, boarding, daycare etc

When we holiday it's £50 a day for us for him to board. 7 day holiday means 9 days boarding as a day either side so that's £450. If we put the money aside for that we save £37.50 a month towards boarding.

His food is expensive as well as we have had issues with allergies. It's finally settled on what he's on now but that's about £100 a month. So we are now at £263.50 before toys, and any other things he may need. We always have £110 set aside for his insurance excess.

I know that physical newspapers have their benefits but do you know Readly has The Week and hundreds more magazines and newspapers. It’s £8.99 a month.

That's interesting, thanks. Tbh one of the main benefits of The Week Jr is that it means DS1 isn't on a screen, particularly as he mainly reads it at bedtime.

Monthly:

£25 for football club
£10 ish for bus fares to town and back at the weekend, but that's not every weekend
She has packed lunches so maybe £5 as she's a very picky eater and has the same every day
Couple of bits of clothes from charity shop, £10?

We go to as many free places as possible- museum, galleries, parks, council-run farm park, city farm.

£4 for swimming once a month.

New school shoes twice a year, £16 a time
School uniform at the start of the year, about £50
School uniform bits replaced via Vinted- £1-10 a couple of times a year.

Toys at birthday and Xmas unless she uses her money (she saves her pocket money and I give her bits and pieces of change to add to it, and family give her some when they see her which is very rarely)
Xmas and birthday there's a £150 limit as that's what I can save.

I'll buy books from charity shops and craft stuff from The Works- £10 a month, rounding up.

We have three and once you consider the fact we need a bigger house, bigger bills, etc we think we spend about £2k extra a month on our choice to have children.

£150 (ish - more if a 5 week month) on dog walker 3 days a week
£100 insurance
£20 health plan (vaccines, parasite treatment etc)
£150 medication
£30ish food
Plus the extra little bits - treats, dog bags, occasional secure field hire and a proportion of the cost of things broken down like prescription check 6 monthly, written prescription fee etc.

I don't include the cost of things like dog sitter when we go on holiday, I factor that into the holiday costs but we're away for 2 nights in Feb half term, so he'll be at the dog sitters for 3 nights, that's another 90 quid...

He's a hairy dickhead, but we love him!

Are you going to get any reimbursement from your LA? I've just had a lovely 4 figure sum drop into my account from them after I paid for 2 years worth of private SLT that they should have been funding. It was a long fought battle and a satisfying one to win. You sound like you have a lot to manage - its hard here at times and that's just with one fairly easy child. You must be Supermum 🦸‍♀️

1 child DS is also 5

Monthly
£25 breakfast club ( monday)
£40 after school club ( Friday)

Termly
£45 Squirels ( Thursday)
£40 football ( Wednesday at school)
£40 sports club ( Tuesday at school)

£100 Food ( guessing here - was more before he outgrew his allergies)

Annual
£140 pass to local farm attraction
£100 birthday and Christmas presents
£200 birthday party

Holidays mostly covered by splitting annual leave and some input from my mum.

So I guess about 300 quid a month all in

My 2 yo goes to nursery 4 days a week, get 15 hours funding and even with that it still costs us 700 a month 😪

Two primary school aged DDs, each of them cost:

£100 per month on after school club
£35 per month on swimming lessons
£15 per month on Rainbows/Brownies
£50 per month on school dinners
£50 ish on food at home
£50 roughly on miscellaneous spending. Sometimes new clothes, or taking them out to a café etc.

So that's roughly £700 per month for two children which has surprised me to be honest! It definitely adds up.

For birthdays and Christmas we have a budget of £100 per child for presents and then for their birthday we usually spend around £200 on a party at home or taking a couple of their friends out for bowling/cinema etc.

We have a family membership to a local zoo that is £250 a year and we have National Trust membership and like geocaching so that covers weekend trips and things to do in the school holidays.

Family holidays can vary too much. Some years it's camping or a cheap caravan break in the UK and other years we spend more and go abroad so it really varies.

Have a 6 year old DS
Monthly:
At the moment its 60 euros per month for before and afterschool care but that will probably go up when I send in our new income info (income based fees), maybe to 120 a month
40ish euros maybe for clothes. I buy mostly second hand.
Maybe a couple hundred euros on food - food is expensive! School dinners are free though, and he gets breakfast at breakfast club.
No pocket money yet.

Yearly:
100 euros for ice hockey
Couple hundred on Christmas and birthday presents
About 100 euros for birthday party (I think its a tenner or less per head for our local party arcade place, plus food)

He really doesn't cost much yet but if he decides to keep going with ice hockey once he ages out of the "hockey school" group then he'll start to get expensive!

About 2.3 million for Robux annually.

@PigInADuvet I'm hoping so! They are now consulting independent SEN schools which is a lot more then what I'm currently paying out. There's no argument over funding in terms of special school funny enough.

Our issue is he's hard to place. We have been turned down by 5 SEN schools this week. We suspect part of the issue is his PDA but his ehcp states 6 hours of 1:1 a day even in a special school. Which is a full day. the independent we viewed this week had an issue with it. Though it was clear within 20 mins of that viewing it wasn't a suitable provision for him.

My youngest gets her funded speech sessions but if I'm honest I see more progress with her private ones we pay for. So it's something we happily pay for. She's classed as non verbal but we are starting to get the odd word now.

Very little actually because my husband's work subsidises the childcare, only extra curricular he does atm is playing an instrument which is half funded so only £45 a term, he finished swimming lessons last year. He gets most of his clothes passed down which he's still happily doing despite being year 6, still loves wearing his brother's clothes.

We give him £20 pocket money a month, he's just getting to the stage now where he is wanting bigger portions so food bills going up, but he has a packed lunch.

So most of the spend is discretionary on holidays, days out, school holiday entertaining etc that kind of thing.

Actually we even got a free child place on our last holiday so he's not the freeloader his older brother is 😝