to ask if its a really bad idea to TTC when we are in debt?

[neonrainbow]

DH and I have agreed to start TTC later this year. We are have our own house (with a mortgage) and are both in full time (hopefully secure) reasonably paid jobs. We also have about £15-£18k debt. (Some is from the wedding and a consolidation loan but the bulk is from where DH struggled when on his own with paying mortgage and bills and therefore racked up credit card debt and debt to family to avoid losing his house) We have already moved as much as we can to interest free and low interest arrangements.

We are keeping up with minimum payments on the debts with no problem, and paying off as much as we can but still its going down extremely slowly. Would it be a really bad idea to TTC this year with this hanging over us? If we did have a baby I think I would want at least 9 months off on maternity leave if not a year and then go part time, and I think we would struggle.

DH thinks we would find a way to manage. Im 31 and had always had this sort of age in my head as a good age to start having children and DH would have one yesterday if he could. I would be happy to get most baby stuff second hand so its the drop in wages and potential childcare costs Id be most worried about. I think it would take 2-3 years at least to completely clear the debt and not sure whether we should wait that long.

Is DH right? Do people just find a way to cope? Or would we be really foolish to take the risk?

What is your combined take-home pay each month? What is your mortgage amount and council tax amount? What is the child maintenance (plus the additional costs of travelling and the medical appointments etc)?

Those are the amounts that can't be changed so need to be worked around.

Then we can help work out how to get the other costs down.

Get a spreadsheet going (I love a good household finances spreadsheet! You might find it fun). Does your online banking have the facility to download your account/s in spreadsheet form so you can work through it? Then you can go through it putting things like "food" as one colour and work out the average of what you've spent on food each month. "Gas/electric" as another colour, "insurance" as another, phone/Internet costs, etc etc.

You need a list of essential outgoings including minimum debt repayment. How much do you spend on food? There is loads of help on here to help reduce that. You need to know everything down to the last penny, including the exact debt. The fact you say 15 to 18k shows that you don't have a real insight into the state of your exact finances.
You also need to track your spending so that you can see where money is being spent on non essentials. It's easy to think that a pound here, a coffee there, isn't much. But all non essentials needs to be accounted for and cut out. Short term pain for long term gain. Pay cash for everything. I find it harder to part with cash as it seems more real somehow. Perhaps put your budget into your purse and know that you can spend no more than that for the week. It will make you think. Do I really need this or do I just want it?

I agree that dss shouldn't suffer, but again perhaps you can make some savings here too. Walks in the forest rather than more than expensive activities. A few less treats/clothes. Spending time with him is what is important.

If go for it. The thing is, maternity leave passes rapidly, it's only a few months when you have reduced income. Also, dare I say it, babies are relatively cheap the first year! I'd do it while still clear in debts, they don't cost a whole lot plus I seem to spend a lot less while on leave.

Once you go back to work you will have childcare costs, so that is a year in. Hats when you will feel it. But again, that isn't forever.

There will always be a reason to wait. But there is always a way to manage too!

Other things to check:

the competitiveness of the deal you have on your mortgage, home + contents insurance, cars and car insurance.

Do you really need a landline or could you manage with just mobiles?
Have you taken a good look at your phone usage recently and could you be on a cheaper tariff?
Do you have stuff sitting in your garage/loft/shed that you could sell?

I had my first at 33 and from day one wished we'd done it earlier.

I would go right ahead with ttc

The credit crunch section on mumsnet is great and you can post daily for support if you want to. See sometimes you have to compromise - you can't go into having a baby, being in lots of debt and in your mind thinking sah/pt is a feasible option - not unless you want to lose your house etc - of course people do lose everything due to debts and cope but it's not what you would hope for you dc. It's lovely that you and dh are both ethical dreamer types - you've been very polite to the stern advice and that takes guts especially when not what you want to hear - good luck for the future.

Thank you for all your help... Ill check out the resources mentioned and we will do a budget planner. It must appear we arent living in the real world but i can only give you a snapshot. My dh really is a good man and he hates that we are in debt and we are both committed to getting rid of it. I think ill do a running total spreadsheet so even down to the penny we can see how much has gone. Thank you all for not being too harsh

We coped by me working as a carer earning for around £600 pcm. I did two twelve hour shifts per week (one at the weekend). Which left me Sundays to do overtime if I wanted to. A lot depends on what you need to earn. My mum helped in the one day during the week but otherwise it would have been one day at nursery to pay. But I then had 4 days off during the week to do all the baby groups etc and Sunday as a family.

Do some sums and see what you need to earn. Find out local childcare costs and form a plan. But it can cause you a lot of stress if you just blindly go for it.

Things won't magically work out. You need a plan I'd say.

It's not that you aren't living in the real world. You are managing at the moment and gradually getting the debt down so up till now haven't really needed to change your lifestyle too much. But now you realise that if you want the baby, long maternity leave and working pt, something has to change.
Very sensible. Go for it op.

You mentioned minimum payments being no problem, but I assume you're paying more than that? Because it'll take forever if you're not.

I think it's good that you're taking the finances in hand. You need to figure out who's bringing in what, the maternity and paternity pay offered by both employers (if his is more generous than yours, it might be him rather than you doing the lion's share of the leave if possible). From what you've said, you need to get the debt down to something a bit more manageable first. 18k is a massive percentage of your combined income, which for the south east isn't colossal. What impact would 12-18 months absolutely caning it with the savings, overtime, second jobs etc have? At 31 you probably still have a fair amount of time left, but not an infinite amount.

Thank you grapejuice.

We have one credit card that charges interest so we are paying that first so any extra money is going on that, then we have two that are interest free and pay cashback for the next 18m months to 2 years, so they will be next, plus a bank loan which is £300 a month. Then the family loans which id love to pay back right now but it would be more sensible to pay those once we have sorted the interest credit card.

Can you not transfer the interest credit card to an interest free one? I think 12 months sounds like a good time to wait. Not too long to start TTC and enough time to make a decent dent in your debt if you make a big effort to really save as much as possible. Plus you'd have about 2 years in total if you count pregnancy etc.
Can you sit down and make a meticulous spreadsheet and work out what you're spending and saving ATM and try to save even more? It's amazing how things can add up. I assume you do this already, but things like not buying coffees /lunches can save you a lot if you do this regularly.

Good luck!

You absolutely have to find out how much is owed on what, and the rates. Is the bank loan interest free?

Also worth remembering that you probably won't want to do much when you're pregnant. I had a reasonably active social life before my first, which primarily involved drinking and eating out, but during pregnancy found it was as much as I could do to manage work. Most women don't have the energy to get out much, at least in the first and last trimesters, so you may save there. I also saved on food generally because I was eating sod all. Even if you're only spending a hundred or two a month on socialising stuff, that should be a grand over the course of the pregnancy.

why don't you try living on what the reduced income would be for a few months maybe 4-6 but the money aside see how you manage; if you can then you have a chunk set aside to either add to debt repayment or to keep for while on maternity leave/fund going pt for a while

if you can't manage you need to wait a bit longer

if you have never had a child you don't know whether you would conceive in 1 month or 3 years or whether if it didn't happen whether you would want IVF and you don't want to be getting on for 40 when you think you can't conceive naturally

The bank loan is low interest and theres no restrictions on us paying it back earlynor overpaying. We did a balance transfer for a chunk of the balance of the interest card but the limit on the interest free one didn't cover the whole balance. I was reluctant to apply for a 3rd interest free card as im concerned about affecting our credit rating. I have to say we have never missed a payment on any of these debts.

I would definitely try to live a year on what your income would be as a SAHM. And put the difference towards the debts.

Is your DSC's disability genetic? Could your future DC also have this disability? If so you need to budget accordingly.

"If anyone knows of any good resources or websites with tips for helping to reduce debt quickly please could you share with me?"

MoneySavingExpert is excellent for advice on paying off debts and reducing outgoings:
www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/debt-help-plan
There's loads of useful advice and links on that page.

As an aside, contact your mortgage company. I was able to take 'maternity leave' on mine, so nine months off. Not great long term but allowed more comfortable maternity leave. My view is you can always earn money but fertility is finite. Depends how precious you are though - I had everything secondhand and made sacrifices but it was worth it. Like you I had debt and worked out I'd be 32 when it cleared. My debt was cleared in the same time scale but with 2 babies in tow.

I was 20 when Ds was born.

What I didn't expect to have a child who is disabled, and while my idea was that we would struggle till he started school the reality is I can't. To many appointments and there is no way I can increase my hours.

Ive been tested and am clear for dsc condition but theres other conditions in my family tree so am all too aware that a baby not arrive perfectly healthy. Im not precious about secondhand only the stuff like car seats would i buy new i didn't know about mortgage holidays that's definitely worth looking into.

I also wondered why you spent on a wedding (which actually costs under £200, what others do is irrelevant). What's done is done.

if you don't want to post your spend breakdown on here, plenty of others have on other threads so have a look.

right now the big no-nos are as follows - you may have already cut these of course.

presents for adults
new clothes unless you actually have nothing left of the item and need it
books - use a library
magazines
takeaways
alcohol (and of course if you smoke, give up)
going out that costs; spring is coming so plenty of free stuff possible

make sure no food is being wasted and hit that Aldi!

Your lives will be far easier and more pleasant with DC if you work like mad to clear the debt. I have 2 DC and am so glad that we waited and got ourselves into a situation where we could make choices (I was able to take the full year mat leave both times and went back very PT after DC1). Once you already have DC it's much harder to earn extra money due to childcare.

Give yourselves a year to make clearing the debt your mission, living very frugally. You'll be so glad when you have the spare money (that you currently spend on debt repayments) to subsidise you so that you hopefully can afford to work pt.

Definitely look into what you'd get in mat pay from your employer- I know some people who have had a nasty shock to realise it was a lot less than their regular salary.

Look up Frugal Queen's blog- a very inspiring lady who repaid £19k debt in a couple of years by living very frugally. Lots of advice on her website.

I'd do a year of (very) hard saving and then reasses. Once you have a baby/child there will always be better/more important things to spend the money on... That cute outfit, that day out, those school shoes or that 'must have' accessory. You won't want a significant debt hanging around in the background.

Even in pregnancy if you want to join the NCT or pregnancy yoga type classes etc it'll all cost money, especially if you're not working as much as you'll have less money coming in and more time to spend and things to spend on.

You don't need to rush into it just yet and DH needs to realise that big spending results in big responsibilities to pay the money off. He seems to think he can 'have it all' but it's not as simple as that. Of course if you were to become pregnant you could manage and make it work but I'd suggest that you might not want to plan it into the equation with that big debt looming over everything.

I couldn't get pregnant at 31. I'm now pregnant at 33 but only after IVF. You can't take fertility for granted and I really wouldn't wait.