To ask what earnings you would recommend for this lifestyle?

[Howmuch3]

Hello everyone,

I have namechanged as I am writing this with relatives here and don't want my usual name known.

We are currently on holiday with not much to do at this hour, so have been discussing about how expensive life seems to be becoming and it led to a conversation about earnings before children.

Long story short, I want to ask you ; how much do you think a couple in the South East should be earning before they have 2 children?

The lifestyle said couple would want for their family is ;
2 foreign holidays a year (1 big - e.g Mexico and 1 small - e.g Cyprus)
2 cars
4 bed house (average price is £300k )
Childcare for 2 kids
Activities/school trips for kids
Disposable income for the parents
Savings

If you have this sort of lifestyle(or better !) or know those who do, please let me know what you recommend. Also, would you delay having kids to reach that figure? Financial security for myself and my kids is very important.

Thank you

Have plans, and goals. But be flexible. When you want a baby you will probably be willing to compromise a lot of the material things if you have to. X

I was quite shocked at the beginning of this thread as to how many posters actually gave a serious response about how much money the OP would need to fund that lifestyle. As though aiming for a specific lifestyle (incuding one short haul and one long haul foreign holiday every year) is important! My DH and I are 50 ish now and our DSs are both over 20 . We've always both worked full time, live in a cheap but big house in a cheap part of the country and my DH has always had a 'professional' job (as do I now). When our DSs were little our joint income was about 45k. We didn't go on holiday abroad till the youngest was 8 and then always went camping abroad in the car. Our DSs have extremely fond memories of our holidays as being mini adventures and say they would want similar for their children. We didn't have a 2nd car till 10 years ago and both our cars are over 6 years old but are perfectly adequate for getting from A to B comfortably and reliably. Why do people feel they need so much stuff and such a comfortable lifestyle now? If we'd waited to afford a fraction of what the OP expects we'd have missed the boat altogether and be comfortably off but childless 😐

jubi £45k was a lot of money 20 years ago, especially given how cheap housing was at that time. Childcare was also much cheaper 20 years ago. I had my first child almost 16 years ago and we had holidays abroad, a mortgage, a decent car and a decent lifestyle on a joint income of £32k. We couldn't do that now if we were just starting out in life and having our first child as the house we lived in is about 4 times more expensive now (in the north), childcare is more expensive and the cost of living is significantly more expensive too.

To add to my post above ^^ I'm glad we didn't wait until we felt financially comfortable to have children though as we would probably still be childless if we had done that.

£45k was a lot of money 20 years ago, especially given how cheap housing was at that time

Indeed, it would have been about that time that DP and I earned £16k between us and we bought a 2 bed terraced house for £32k. £45k joint income then was huge.

The big limiting factor for the OP is saving a deposit and qualifying for a mortgage for the house she wants (assuming no inheritences/parental help etc). It's no good saying 'we bought a 4 bed detached in 1998 for£250k' or whatever, the OP simply isn't going to be able to do that in the south now.

She's probably looking at £500k+, which means a deposit of £50k+ and a joint income well north of £100k+ to qualify for the mortgage needed.

Which they will have to continue servicing if and when these 2 DCs come along and they will either have to pay for childcare or one parent SAH. Another consideration would be that in this situation they may not qualify for further mortgage deals so would have to choose their first mortgage carefully (eg 10 year fix) to avoid being shunted onto an expensive SVR because they don't qualify for any new deals because either their expenses have gone up and/or their income has gone down.

I think the problem is you're attempting to combine two different lifestyles I've seen in the south east:

1. couple on decent income, nice house/flat, couple of trips abroad a year, active social life together (ie you go out and do things that cost money be it dinner, gym membership, sports clubs, concerts etc)

2. children. Settle down somewhere practical for raising kids (why do you need a 4 bed for 2 kids? My parents had my brother and me in barely a 3 bed, moved to a bigger 3 bed when we were pre school age and moved to a 4 bed when we were about to start secondary, but we easily could have stayed in the 3 bed), less holidays, less money for going out as a couple and that gets redistributed to the kids

( 3) alone and single and sad, like me)

Lots of people will end up with 1) and 2) combined once their kids are a little older, mine did. Your problem is you're trying to skip step 2 and go straight to 1 and 2 combined.

Hello, Thankyou for your responses. I'm sure I mentioned above that the house/deposit will be taken care by that time (I was trying to paint a picture). It's the costs that occur AFTER the house ; holidays, outings, activities, meals, shopping. State school though.

Someone asked - it would be fulltime childcare 3/5 days a week.

Some people are saying 'it will take care of itself' but if I come back in 4 years talking about how we are struggling , they will also be asking "why didn't you plan ahead?" Can't win.

Thankyou to those who understand why I'm thinking ahead. I've received a lot of useful advice which I appreciate.

TBH I think if you come back in four years and say "we had children when we had a dual income of £60k and now we can't afford to go to Mexico every year" people will just roll their eyes. Not being able to put food on the table or but school shoes is struggling OP.

You may reconsider 2 holidays a year once you have kids - they aren't as much fun as you might think...maybe once they can go into kids club

You can't micromanage your life to this level OP.
Life throws curveballs. You seem to think that if you decide to have a healthy baby, you can click your fingers and it will happen. It's not always so easy.
By all means, have plans, save, budget and live within your means.
But don't become so busy planning that you actually stop living.

but if I come back in 4 years talking about how we are struggling

It's not "struggling" to not be able to afford 4 beds and 2 overseas holidays.

I would definitely advise you to wait until you are in a position to afford the basics - secure housing situation, food, decent childcare - and ideally a cushion on top of that for emergencies. So that you will not be struggling. But I would not advise you to wait until you're in a position to afford luxuries. Unless those things are really more important to you than children, in which case you might be better off not having DC anyway.

I wouldn't criticise somebody who came back 4 years after having children to say that they were financially struggling. All the planning in the world doesn't remove the risk of struggling in the future. You could both have salaries of £75k and decide to start a family and then one of you gets long term health problems and has to give up work or you have a child with additional needs and one of you has to give up work etc and suddenly your income is halved on a permanent basis leaving you struggling. I think as long as you can comfortably afford to house, feed and clothe your children whilst paying For any essential Childcare you have enough money.
It sounds like you might not be ready for children though as you are basing this discussion partly on what members of your family have said about starting a family.

If you're already earning decent salaries in your mid 20s, stop worrying about it and just try for kids whenever you feel ready because, financially, you'll be fine. Maybe concentrate more on the stuff you really want to do in your life that would be easier/more fun without kids and do that instead?

I'd pay not to take two young dcs on a 12 hour flight to Mexico!

You can't plan. I agree that life throws curveballs. DH was made redundant when DD (dc2) was 4 weeks old. 3 years later his salary was double what is was beforehand.

And flying with children is hell on Earth.

but if I come back in 4 years talking about how we are struggling?

Planning is generally a good thing, and will be helpful. But equally important for a happy and fulfilling life is flexibility and managing your own (high) expectations. What would you do if you came back in 4 years and were struggling? Only you can answer this. I'd say, getting your head around the possibility of future "struggling" (no matter how much you have in the bank now) is much more important than initial financial stability before making the decision to try for children. If you feel you can rely on yourself and your partner to cope no matter what life chucks at you, go for it. If you feel you would crumble, think again.

If no mortgage (as you said house costs would be taken care of) and no school fees, 60-80k should be plenty to live off even in the south east!

4 bed house in central London would cost millions. Housing in the south east is the biggest expense by far: if this cost is absent you can live well on not much at all.

4 bed house in North Surrey around 650 - 700k so would depend how big a mortgage you would need to take on for that . Will also depend on whether you want private schools as you will need to add upwards of 1050 pcm for that up to 7000 per term for seniors in expensive day school .

The thing is, you can't always plan life with such precision. We started trying for children as soon as we got married (when I was 30) and after 5 years we finally conceived twins after several failed attempts at IUI/IVF. (As it happens, my salary almost doubled in that 5 year period but wasn't really intentional!) And now we have nearly-6 year old twins, and their grandparents are all in mid seventies so getting too old to enjoy them or help out.

We have most of that except house is about £420k we have one car, 3 kids but only PT childcare and one big holiday a year (Europe) and smaller few days away once or twice a year (in U.K/Ireland). We earn about £170k between us. We do make large pension contributions and save a good bit as well.

As to waiting to have kids? No I wouldn't we actually earned more when we had our first but by time our second was a year our income was half what it is now. We managed fine you don't need all those things to have kids.

Personally I wouldn't bother with putting a price on it at all. Anything can happen with your earnings. For example, pre-dc both DH and I had good jobs and earnt well. We both had nice cars, pretty things and were well on the way to a deposit for a decent sized house and getting out of rented accommodation.

I fell pregnant with DS... six months later I was made redundant. A month later my nice car was written off. DH was made redundant a year later.

Now we have two DC, are still renting, I earn minimum wage in an 18 hour a week shop job.... but we are happy. The DC don't get foreign holidays, but they do get 2 week camping trips to Cornwall twice a year and have a brilliant time on a shoestring. We don't have nice cars, but we do have economical cheap and cheerful ones. We don't own our own property, but we rent one we could never afford to buy.

Eldest DC is 6 and at school, DD is 3 and we just qualified for the 30 free hours funding. I'm starting a better paid job in a few weeks and DH just got promoted in his job with a tidy pay hike. We're staring to get back to our pre-dc days finance wise.

It's all swings and roundabouts and if everyone waited til they could afford children.... nobody would have them.

Tl;dr - kids are expensive. No tellings what will happen.

Once you have DC you might find you don't want the same things you want now...I'm mainly thinking about the big holiday where you might find you don't want to take the baby on a long haul flight/give them travel jabs etc.

I wouldn't delay having kids till I reached this kind of lifestyle no, but I would like to be 'done' with having DC by 35 (mum got cancer in her early 40s so that sways me personally) Whereas financial security isn't as big a deal for me, as we never had much money growing up and were always happy. Otoh both my DPs had health problems so I was more concerned with having dc while I'm young and healthy in case I get ill later on.

We waited to have children. I really wish we hadn't. We now have one gorgeous IVF baby. We feel very lucky.
I'd give anything material up to have another baby but I just don't know if it'll be possible. We were fortunate to have one.

Full time child care cost us 50% of each of our salaries after tax when we had our first child. That was always the biggest expense in addition to housing. Full time childcare for two is likely to be about £30k+.

We bought a 3 bed semi here in outer London. That house costs about £420k today so exactly the same couple as we were could afford it today - very qualified professionals.

I didn't delay babies as I wanted quite a few so had 3 by the time I was 26 but always worked full time and just had a few weeks off work to have them in - not easy but you make your choices and get on with life.

I decided when I was 14 I wanted quite a few chilren so made sure I had the first at 22 and married at 21 as that was a pirority. I wanted a very high paid legal career so I left NE England and did what it took to get it.

Planning can make a huge different to women's lives. It does not insulate you entirely against bad luck but it can transform your life.