to ask why having kids is expensive?

[HodgePodge23]

What do you need to buy them apart from toys, food, clothes and a few other bits and bobs here and there? I have an 8 month old so maybe things will get more expensive with time, but I really don't understand why people say having children is expensive. What are people spending their money on?

As with anything in life, the cost of having children is like asking how long is a piece of string.

This weekend dd is costing us over £2,000 as we are creating a study for her for when she starts college next month.
Next weekend (hopefully) she won't cost us a penny

Kids within reason are as expensive as you want them to be.

Not really. You can save a few quid on handing down clothes, meal planning etc but childcare is pretty fixed and food/heating/gas costs what it costs. If you are SAHP then youve lost the potential income for however many years you SAH for and potential career progression.

They do activities but chosen wisely ie brownies £2 a week,weekly kids club free etc. Swimming here is free for under 18 year olds.

Well thats part luck too surely? In that your area provides free swimming and kids club and you have brownies local etc.

I have a baby too and he hasn't cost us anything really get. He's breastfed and I buy aldi nappies. I've never had to buy him much clothes, they've all been bought as gifts or hand downs.

Older DC cost us a fortune and it gets more expensive every year.

Clothes, shoes, winter coats etc.
Education
Food. They never stop eating. I spend a fortune on meat for 5 people to make a casserole etc.
Activities
Petrol
Hair cuts
Swimming lessons
Holidays
Additional needs or illness' they may have, eg private therapies which both needed this year and were £50 each x 5 sessions.
Birthdays
Christmas
Trips & outings
Extra electricity, water, more wear and tear in house.
Family occasions such as a wedding and having to kit them all out, travel, pay for accommodation etc

Babies are so cheap!

I was on income support when I had an 8 month old and I didn't feel that broke. (I'd saved up and had very low outgoings)

Now I have a teen even with above average earnings I feel broke.

I thought things would get easier when I wasn't paying hundreds a month on childcare every month anymore but older DCs cost in different ways.

They eat more than adults.
Their clothes aren't vat free.
They are more picky about brands.
They waste/break stuff.
You need more space in your home for them.
They cost a lot to entertain.
I go through loads of petrol ferrying them about.
They don't want 'free' babysitting at granny's anymore.
They want expensive parties and presents and tell you you aren't as good a parent as all their friends if you don't give in.
They use up loads of electricity!
Bus fares to school and dinner money are hundreds a year too.

I've not even got to the Uni bit -£100 per week for halls!

Then driving lessons, house deposits etc- it will never end!

They get more expensive the older they get. Even if you home educate you will need to do things for the social interaction, such as clubs or sporting activities which can really add up. Proper swimming lessons are very important, and being part of a team like football, rugby or netball helps their overall development. Food costs a fortune for mine, as does fuel, train or bus fares. Holidays and travel are important even if you don't travel abroad it still adds up. As they hit the teens they'll need a phone, computer etc. Then older still driving lessons and insurance. Then there's university expenses.

We too H.ed but didn't have groups to attend and had different costs to Omm
I've recently nc

Our costs have been music lessons, tickets for concerts and travel, but have found a good bartering system for language lessons.

If you plan to go back to work EVER...childcare costs! Nursery fees for one child for us was 1200 pcm. We didnt have two kids in nursery at the same time...no idea how we would have coped! After school clubs for 2 primary age DC still = £200 pcm (and I dont have to use breakfast club or pay for school holiday childcare as work TTO).

Once theyre at school, there are also going to be things they want to do that may not be necessities but are lovely, enriching things you want them to try out...and they all cost money. School trips, extra curricular clubs (we spend about £350 per term on dance, sports, music clubs etc for 2 DC), outings etc.

Clothing costs money as they get older, too, no matter how thrifty you are. Dont get me started on shoes (DS has grown three shoe sizes in Year 6!).

Feeding a pre-teen boy is pretty expensive, too .

You have an extra person (or people) to finance, basically. Its not cheap.

I predict that hodge is now weeping at a budgeting spreadsheet and planning on what to eBay .

I agree that hand-me-down clothes vanish once a child hits about 3. Nothing my kids wear now is fit to be handed on except maybe formal stuff that they've had for a wedding or something.

I should have shares in Weetabix. They easily get through a box of 72 in a week, plus porridge, plus shit loads of bread/butter/jam. It's cheap stuff but it's so constant, week in, week out, year after year.

At age six, DC1 had his third pair of school shoes in a year, at £48 (ignoring football boots, trainers, PE trainers, wellies etc). Frankly everything else could be presents and shoes would be an eye watering cost.

The loss of earnings is the killer. We're probably down around £25k a year net. That's a luxury holiday a month. I try to remember this when my childless school/university are posting about their exciting lives.

Oh God the shoes...I have two children so I need

2 sets of school shoes
2 pairs of sandals
2 pairs of wellie boots
2 pairs of pe shoes
2 pairs of trainers for home
2 pairs of smart shoes for parties etc
Ballet shoes and football boots
2 pairs of winter boots
2 pairs of slippers

ds(11)

• holiday clubs,
• footwear - shoes, school shoes, trainers, wellies, different football boots for astro turf, grass (size 6 adult sizes/prices) some of which usually last ~ 6 months
• football strips (~£55 for a top with lettering, £15 for shorts, £12 for socks, he's only 11 and tall so in a XLB, next year will be adult S and prices will shoot up)
• talking him and pals on days out (easily £100 by the time you factor in entry fees and food)
• addidas clothes (£18 for a t-shirt!!!!!)
• replacing missing jackets, hoodies, school sweatshirts.
• food - he eats masses amounts of food, no idea where he puts it as he's a skinny rake
• eating out, he eats a full priced adult portion (curry, pizzahut, pub meal), no more £3.99 for a kids meal with drink. makes eating out expensive.
• books, they start to read through them quickly and you find you are buying more regularily
• Microsoft points/iTunes
• Pokemon cards/Match attack cards!!!!!!!!!! or whatever the latest collection is, these will go from being the most important thing ever to being discarded within weeks

The many mumsnetters who earn say £100k a ywear (yes we exist) either they pay £30k a year for childcare or they lose £100k a year to look after the children./ This is the biggest expense of all.

Second for me was paying 5 sets of school fees £50k a year+

Cost of a pair of shoes is nothing compared to all that.

Bigger home definitely. Think if you never had or even planned on having kids you wouldn't need a 2/3/4 bedroom home. Most couples could just have a 1 bed place and save thousands! This is one people really don't consider.

Put it this way. I have 4 children. Over the summer holidays I am having to pay for 4 lots of birthday presents, 4 birthday parties (all 4 are summer born), a week's holiday in Devon (I wouldn't go away peak time if I didn't have kids), holiday clothes, 3 sets of school uniform - 2 high school which is more expensive - new school shoes, trainers, football boots, extra food, nappies, an outfit each for the 2 weddings we have to attend. These are all just over the next 6 weeks.

The rest of the year we will be having to pay for new clothes, day trips, packed lunches, Christmas presents, Easter eggs, school trips, school fetes, dressing up outfits for Halloween/world book day, etc etc.

None of these expenses we would have had if we didn't have children. It's definitely very expensive!

School shoes - £40+ for a pair that'll last more than half a term.
School jumpers £10 each for logo'ed ones.
Swimming lessons, ballet lessons, bikes, beaver subs, Beaver camp, football training, music lessons....

Bigger room/tent/cottage for holidays

Bigger car!

Childcare, loss of earnings

Food!!!!! My nearly 7 year old eats as much me!

Lego!

We've squeezed 2 DC into the house we bought for just us 2, not sure how long this will last.

There is a certain level of naivety, I'm fairly shocked that although you made the decision to have a child, you hadn't really thought far into the future!!
I remember dc1 though, walking through the park with her in the buggy and thinking how lovely and simple life was.

Since my earlier post, I have spent £150 on 2 pairs of school shoes and 3 haircuts for the blasted dc!
And the eldest has now said she needs a new bike (she does) for cycling to her new school.
Costs just creep in. Sneaky.

1 shoe size growth = new school shoes, PE pumps, home shoes, trainers, wellies, ballet shoes, football boots, walking boots etc - never much change from £120-150 from feet growing.

Holidays during school holidays.

New winter coat every year (fingers crossed I think ds's might still fit from last year).

I'm sorry, but I still don't think it's necessarily expensive if you don't want it to be.
If you are H. edding OP you can minus holiday care, school uniform and school extras.

Red

The many Mnetters on 100k
But you chose the expensive lifestyle for your children it isn't necessary.
You didn't have to work and have childcare or private school it was your choice.
My kids won't have cost anything like yours per child as we don't have your kind of money.

You don't have to be toy-mad consumerists to find children expensive (which is kind of hinted at above) - we've just been camping on the cheapest, most simple site available but it still ends up costing £££! Mine are both under 4 but eat plenty - we got through 8 pints of milk in three days for example. Even a fast food or cafe meal is expensive as they both need their own meal now I stead of picking at ours, so we don't eat out much, but that means lugging sandwiches, snacks, drinks with you - and I don't know about anyone else but i didn't buy cartons of juice in bulk before I had kids! Even living cheaply you still want the odd day out, we enjoy walks by the beach, library trips and all the rest but one steam train ride cost £52, because it meant the world to DS.

And what, pray, if HEd-ing turns out not to be the best fit for your child?

A lot of the ways to be frugal don't take into account the child's potential interests and tastes (eg free church youth club v Brownies v one-to-one tennis coaching).

Loss of salary is the biggest. First there was the loss of salary when I was on maternity leave (I got a very generous 4 months full maternity pay but took between 9-12 months off for each child, with 3 kids that was 3 years on 30% of my normal salary). Then DH and I both went to 4 days a week when the kids were born, that was a 20% drop in salary for each of us. Then there's the inability to change job because of working part time and / or because moving with schoolchildren is a nightmare you don't want to face unless it's absolutely necessary which limits earning potential. And of course childcare, we spend £12k pa on childcare and that's with 2 at school and DH doing school drop off every morning.

Then you have clothes, food and entertainment. You might not need to spend much on those at the moment with a single 10 month old but in a few years you'll discover even the most expensive brands of clothes don't survive very long with active kids so the second hand market start getting harder to find, jeans get absolutley destroyed and t-shirts are very faded. DS (2) has gone through the soles of 3 pairs of shoes (up to £40 per pair) since July thanks to scootering and biking. The DDs need outdoor shoes, inside shoes and wellies for school plus trainers, football boots, wellies and 'party shoes' for home, every time their feet grow we have to buy 7 pairs of shoes. With 3 kids (who are only 2,6 &7) we have a food bill of ~ £130 per week (not including school meals) I am dreading them becoming teenagers. Entertainment, they have swimming lessons (£200 per year per child), football (£250 per year per child) and brownies (much cheaper thankfully, only £90 per year per child not including uniform or activities) and they want to do gymnastics (closer to £300 per year per child). English Heritage family ticket ~£80 per year (with 3 kids absolutely worth it though, as long as we take a picnic we recover the cost very quickly). Cinema trips ~£25 per trip. Day out at zoo entry fee £70 for whole family. We don't go on holiday except to visit family but to go to visit my Mum we spend £700 just to get there (admittedly we don't spend much once we are there). Not forgetting we have to have a big car to fit all 3 car seats in (much more expensive than the micra I drove pre-children), we only have 1 car, DH has a bike. As do the kids and because they do cycle about our small town they need decent bikes and helmets, £30 per helmet, bike price more variable but starting at £50 for a decent balance bike and could be anything up to a few hundred for a good brand like Islabike.

I have lots of DC - multiple teens!

Shoes
Food
Clothes
Shoes
Food
Books
Money for cinema/trips with friends
More clothes
Underwear and socks
Football subs
Football boots and training strip
Shoes
Food
Mobile phones
School uniforms - one blazer £60, one skirt £38
Assorted devices for homework, mine craft, YouTube, Instagram...
Shoes
Food
More clothes
Hair dye
School trips
Bus fares to town to shop with friends
Bus fares to school - £6 for one DC for one week!
Shoes
Food
Netflix subscription
Lots of hot water for constant baths/showers
Pens, stationery etc for school
Contribution towards glasses etc
Oh and did I say shoes and food!!!

Red

The many Mnetters on 100k
But you chose the expensive lifestyle for your children it isn't necessary.
You didn't have to work and have childcare or private school it was your choice.
My kids won't have cost anything like yours per child as we don't have your kind of money.

Oooh you dont want to open that can of worms with that particular poster