To not understand how some people afford to have so many children?

[KiKiFrance]

I mean this as a genuine question, but how the heck do they do it?

We have 3 DCs as that was all we could afford, yet I know families that have only one very average income that just seem to keep having children, and affording nice things, activities and holidays too.

Someone I know has just had her fifth baby. They are very early thirties and her DH works in a supermarket, and she is a SAHM, so obviously not on a high income, yet they always have nice clothes, the older children to lots of activities, they have a lovely new build house which is decorated beautifully, always eat out, and they bought all new (expensive) baby equipment for baby #5. She has also said to me that they'll have a sixth baby at some point, and possibly a seventh too!

The other person that I know has 4 children. Her DH is a chef but is always in and out of work, but again they seem to have such nice things, and her children to lots of activities and clubs. One of her sons has just had a huge birthday disco in a hall, and she said it cost over £300. They too are planning to have more children.

Our income is good, yet we generally can't afford half the things that they can, and certainly could never have afforded a 4th child, even though I would have quite liked another baby.

[DogCalledRudis]

Having a first child is expensive. With subsequent children costs tend to diminish.

[ilovechristmas1]

of course you can have a nice house on benefits,we dont all live in tower blocks with damp running down the walls,

[Babyroobs]

The benfits system traps people so that they are often no better off working more hours as any increasein wages will wipe out other benefits.i ahve a lone parent colleauge with one 14 year old dd who will not increase her working hours above 16 as she will lose HB and tax credits and be worse off. in the same way couples can maximise benefits by working the minimum of 24hours required to claim working tax credits. If they increase their hours they lose tax credits so it may not be worth their while.

[alemci]

I think if you have your own business you can offset things and have a large amount of cash at certain times to put against your mortgage but not so great if you are ill or if the work dries up.

[morethanpotatoprints]

whatever

We have managed a nice house and good mc lifestyle on a low income and tax credits, although it has taken us 20 odd years to do this.
We eat good food cooked mostly from scratch, shop for bargains and only run one family car.
We have holidays, kids have done lots of activities, paid one mortgage off and nearly finished the second, this one was aided with a small inheritance.
We own everything we have, don't owe a penny except the last bit of mortgage.
Of course its possible.
You can save a lot of money by having a sahp.

[Itsjustmeagain]

We have 5 children. I dont know what sort of income your friend would have but ours is probably around £50000-60000 but DH is self employed so it varies from month to month.

We live in a 5 bedroomed house in a quite cheap area and we rent rather than buy and we dont have a car so use trains etc. Other than that we easily afford the children, we were getting child benefit but we dont get that anymore. No tax credits.

when our third was born our income was probably around £25,000 and we didnt struglle then either - I have no idea why the only thing I can think is that we have low outgoings and are really careful with money.

at the moment all of our bills rent, etc etc comes to around £1300 per month and we spend around £400 a month on food.

[ilovechristmas1]

Babyroobs good point

i also think we have to remember that many in low paid jobs see it as a job and just that,they are working to earn money not see it as a career for what ever reason,do the work and go home

many people are stuck in dead end boring jobs,they may not want to climb the ladder maybe just earning the money is just that

so i get why some do the minimum

im not sure ive put this across very well

[wafflyversatile]

How come this isn't full of ODFODs like usual?

OP, maybe she thinks lovely thoughts all day creating lovely fluffy laundry fresh air around her so a money fairy comes round her house every night with a magic money pot and a spirit of largesse. Maybe the money fairy skips your house because of all the mean thoughts oozing out into the atmosphere. :(

[merrymouse]

Even if somebody receives tax credits, I don't think they are enough money to pay for nice clothes, activities, eating out etc.

On the other hand, some people don't do things like pay into a pension, save, insure a house, pay for a car, new roof etc.

Boring expenses can really add up.

Beyond that you can't tell whether somebody inherited money/sold a business/used to have a very high paying job or is just in loads of debt unless they tell you.

[VinoTime]

My Gran used to have a saying...

If your front door's kept nice, nobody will ever suspect the poverty inside.

I had a colleague who I am friendly with say to me on Saturday whilst I was at work how lovely my lifestyle seemed. The "I don't understand how you afford it!" was subtlety implied. I'd been telling her that I was feeling happy having booked a weeks holiday over at Seton Sands in April for me and dd (7), in a 'it's nice to have something to look forward to' kind of way. I wasn't being at all boastful - I was just happy about it. It's only a silly caravan holiday and cost £300. The only way I am affording it is by paying monthly instalments for the next few months.

But she was saying how me and dd are always dressed really nicely and how my Facebook pictures are always showing us doing things and going places. I'm sure she meant it to be complimentary, but there was a bit of an edge to the way she was saying it.

I think because she's been to my house (an incredibly sweet 1800's cottage that I have looking beautiful - but my parents own it so it's not like it's mine) and has seen my things, she can't quite figure out how, as a single parent earning very little, I manage it all.

The truth is I really don't have very much financially. I receive nothing from dd's dad and I survive on about £1,000 per month and that has to cover rent, council tax, bills, a small child, food and toiletries, a cat, dog, etc. As soon as the essentials are paid and bought, there isn't much left at all. But I try my best to budget and shop very carefully. I manage to kit dd out in a few nice clothes from the likes of Joules and Boden because I buy in the clearance sales. We loved going to some of the Commonwealth Games but we bought the cheap seat tickets (adult £15 and child £7.50). The pictures on FB of me and dd cooking don't show the Tesco Value ingredients I used because that's all I could afford. And yes, we're at the park and having a fab time - because it's free and there's nothing in the pot for an expensive day out. Thanks for telling me my hair looks great - I'm growing it out because I don't have the £30 it would cost to get it cut at a half decent salon. I used a home dye kit that cost a fiver and cut the split ends off myself

These friends of yours could be in a mountain of debt trying to sustain their lifestyles. Perhaps they're living off some inheritance they received from good ol' Uncle Henry. Or maybe they stalk the likes of Freecylce, FB selling pages and ebay for items they could normally not afford new. Who knows. Appearances can often be deceiving, OP. I am, technically speaking, a poor person. But you wouldn't think it to look at me. And I don't think it would be any different if I had 6 children instead of 1, because I would still always keep my front door immaculate

[redshifter]

I work 40 hours a week in a well known supermarket for £7.50 per hour, side by side with two twin brothers who do the exact same job as me but only for 22.5 hours a week..
Brother A has no kids lives in a 6ft x 5ft room in a shared house with 10 other people, one bathroom, one kitchen. It costs him £80 per week.
Brother B lives in a 3 bed house with his wife and 4 children cost £350 per week which £300 is paid for with HB.
I live live in a studio flat cost £145 per week. My DC are adults now.

My income for 40 hours = £300 p/w, £15600 p/a, pre tax. Rent cost = £7450 p/a

Brother A, 22.5 hours = £169 p/w, £8775 p/a, rent = £4160 p/a - £1040 HB = £3120

Brother B, 22.5 hours = £169 p/w + CTC, WTC, CB = £460 p/w, £24000 p/a (tax free). Rent - HB (for 3 bed house) = £2600.

It used to be that my single colleagues with no DCs or adult DCs were the only ones who could afford to run a car, have nights out, eat out, have holidays etc. While tthe colleagues with spouse and children lived a much more spartan life. These days the roles seem to have drastically reversed.

Given just this one example of figures, can you see now why in certain cases (but no means all) you can have a much better and easier lifestyle by having more children?

Not benefit bashing. I don't blame anyone for claiming what they can ( I would) but I do feel sorry for young single people today that they can actually lead a much better life (both financially and environmentally etc) by having more children.

It's crazy really.

But that is how it is.

[Vajazzler]

Lally I've just submitted our final figures for TCs and I think we'll end up owing them money due to dH's overtime. He is self employed carpenter but only works for one company. The boss often leaves him in charge when he swans off on holiday so dh is in charge of running the jobs he's on.

[Lally112]

Feck, that's what happened to us when we had DD1, We didn't know it existed with DS1 so only started claiming it after, the way they work it out by using the previous years P60 is ludicrous so after 1 year we spent the next year paying most of it back because we weren't entitled to it any more based on the earnings with overtime.

DH is in the police so his overtime is mandatory most of the time and because we don't work set hours every week that always go above or below their thresholds we are too scared to put ourselves in the same position as last time and talking to them on the phone is frankly as much use as putting a condom machine in the Vatican.

[morethanpotatoprints]

Yes, merrymouse

We have managed all maintenance and refurbishing costs by dh doing most of it himself. He learned how to do things from when we first started out and will tackle most things confidently now apart from electrical or gas whereby we have friends who will do odd jobs for mates discount.
As dh doesn't do roofs anymore the ds who learned through dh have takenover these jobs.
I don't think we could have paid tradesmen for all the jobs they have done.

[Pregnantberry]

I don't understand why people are saying that tax credits must be why people can afford a car, mortgage, designer clothes, foreign holidays etc. They boost your (already low, if you are receiving them) income by a couple of k. I just worked out that when DS is born we will qualify for them, but it certainly wouldn't be enough to nudge us into affording all of the luxuries listed above.

Am I missing something?

[ElephantsNeverForgive]

Grandparents paying school fees and moving out from London/inheriting chunk of family business at about the same time meaning far less mortgage than us.

[whatever5]

Who are you Whatever to determine what is a nice house and a nice lifestyle?

I can determine what I think is a nice house and nice lifestyle surely??

[savingupforanother]

Once you have more and more kids, one of you being a SAHP is financially valuable as then you are dodging the childcare bullet but getting more benefits. We would like to try for a second but have had to wait so that we wouldn't have two in childcare together.

[Babyroobs]

Tax credits are perhaps worth 2K if you have one child, but if you have lots of kids on a low income they can be worth hundreds of pounds a month.

[savingupforanother]

Plus a lot of people like this get help from their parents so it's invisible.

[Lally112]

But what you class is a nice house and nice lifestyle would be a hovel and a suicide mission to someone else whatever. I and others like me above are very content with their houses and lifestyle without you insinuating that we cant possibly have a nice house or lifestyle because we have x amount of children and an average wage coming in. My house is wonderful, kitchen or bathroom hasn't been touched since the 60's, back boiler with log stove from about the 40's, lead piping, asbestos but the most important part is no friggin nosey neighbours close by. That to me is th best kind of house.

[merrymouse]

I can believe that tax credits enable you to feed your children (otherwise there would be lots of children begging on the street), but I can't believe that they are so generous that they enable you to have a nice house, nice outfits for the children and plenty of extra curricular activities.