How can it be possible that we would be so skint!

[BasinHaircut]

Just doing some sums to basically work out whether we can ‘afford’ to have another child. We can, but I’ve just worked out that even though DH and I bring home £4500 per month net, PLUS childcare vouchers of £385 per month, once paying another set of childcare fees 4 days per week, after everything was paid out each month we would have £750 left over for food, petrol and other spends. There would be 4 of us to feed so let’s say £300 a month, plus £100 petrol. £350 for all of us for anything else.

How is it possible that we would have so little? I know it would be short term (until free 15 hours kick in and then better again once they started school) but what the fuck???

Going through our expenses it’s only things such as amazon prime and Apple Music that we could feasibly claw back each month. Nothing that would make a dent.

We are lucky I suppose that we own our house, have renovated it already so not expecting any big expenses in the medium term. But still, even Xmas would be a real struggle!

This is not a stealth boast I promise, I genuinely cannot understand how we can have so much coming in and still not even have enormous go to justify a takeaway if we have another child.

I havnt RTFT, but just saw the few posts giving you a hard time for complaining because, on mumsnet, if you earn more than the average you are not allowed to complain and that's ridiculous.

I've been in the situation were I was living payday to payday and it was horrible. Now, I've got more disposable income than you and I now think is find it even harder to go back. It's possible obviously, but I totally understand that you feel you've got barely anything left.

If you have another child, it will only be a little while until the older starts school and the younger one get free nursery hours. You'll manage a few years being careful.

tbf to Shadowboy her mortgage is pretty low.

We left a deliberate gap between ours to save paying out too. We are in a similar situation and I think OP isn't saying she has so little, I think it's more about having a pretty good income but still seeing 80-90% of it go on essential bills.

Really ariela? I'm not surprised at all. For one thing, it's £350 for everything not fritter money. So as well as the (admittedly surprisingly expensive) tyres presumably there would also be any unexpected car repairs, as there's nothing in the main budget about them. Same with house maintenance and utility bills where they've spent more than the predicted amount. They'd have two growing children so clothes, including school uniform, and shoes.

The problem though isn't the cost of childcare. It's the cost of housing. Pound to a penny OPs accommodation would have been much cheaper in real terms 20 years ago, and a lower percentage of their household income. This is a huge issue.

And whether or not one sympathises with OP and other posters mentioning similar circumstances like shadowboy, there's a strong argument that it's not good for our society to be structured in such a way that a household in the top, what, 15% income wise have such a small amount of wiggle room for discretionary spending. From the perspective of what's best for the country as a whole, I'd rather her mortgage were a couple of hundred a month less and she were spending that on restaurants and treats!

Lady - the horses are generally the reason why horse people are skint
I earn nothing like anything posted on here and loan a horse for a set amount per month. It's about 8% of my income but she is my destress/mental health help plus entertainment, socialising and fitness all in one

Have you looked at tax free childcare. I don't know why anyone would continue with vouchers when the government are offering £2000 per year per child. Your childcare vouchers only save you the tax on that 365. So if that's 20% tax rate it's about £73 a month. The tax free scheme is so much better. In my opinion and if you have more than one child who needs childcare then you are saving £4000 a year. And I think you v an use it up until they are 12?

And for four months we had only £350 after all bills. We found it hard. That had to cover all presents, clothes, social, holidays etc. It didn't go far. Luckily we remortgaged and now we have about double that and it is much more comfortable. We have two in full time child care. Bloody expensive

To put it in perspective with teenagers and two prof parents:

Mortgage 0
Council Tax 250+
Utilities 250+
Insurances house and cars £450
Prof subs 80
Phones 170
Fuel 200
DH's commute £160
Food £800
Cleaning £200
Gardening £200
Sky and broadband £70
Pet insurance £50
Children's rent and maintenance £1000min

Nearly £4k before passing go. Yep we could sell up and move to a semi but why? Add in a mortgage and car plan or three and that could easily be another £2k.

There's nothing in there for socialising, gifts, house maintenance, print cartridges, parking, coffees, lunches, birthdays, Christmas, holidays, dentist, visiting parents, the boiler breaking, needing a new washing machine. And as someone else said nothing for hair cuts, work clothes, teenagers' clothes and school trips Nor for the school fees that have now ended at another £3k pcm.

I don't for a minute think we are other than privileged. Neither do I for a minute resent a single penny of tax we pay but we have both done stints of 12/15 hour days. We have received not a single benefit except child. No tax credits, no nursery vouchers, 6 months stat mat, DH is self employed so no sick pay and no employer's pension contribution.

I appreciate many hearts won't bleed and nor should they but one can't maintain professional jobs without a basic level of personal expenditure. And yes we could scale down but what about the cleaner and the gardener and if one of us gave up work so we didn't need them our tax contributions would be gone.

Didn't read all posts but the sum sound right. We have higher household income but more kids (and animals!), we haven't been on holiday for quite some time now! Some parents get help from family and friends for childcare, inheritance money so they have smaller mortgage etc. As mindutopia mentioned, you can plan a bigger age gap - this sounds like the best option if you don't want to struggle too much financially!

Irrespective of what you are saving you have made choices that were more expensive than other options. If the £1.1k childcare plus £350 was saved you could buy a decent car in a few months. I’m guessing you chose a more expensive option and you’d spent all your savings on the house renovation - another choice you made - rather than keep it just in case the car needed replacing or whatever.

You have made choices that others with lower incomes couldn’t make. These choices didn’t take into account plans for another baby plus all the costs. You can now choose to save like crazy to make it more manageable to have another baby, but that’s another choice and will impact your current lifestyle. But then again two kids is gonna cramp your lifestyle regardless, going out is definitely less appealing.

It does annoy me when people spend money or make choices to commit future expenditure and feel hard done by compared to others. We had friends who took out a big mortgage to improve their home. We bought a smaller place in a less desireable area specifically to minimise the stress so we could just about manage on one average salary. I stayed home with the kids and there was clear resentment about the fact they both had to work to service the loans/mortgage. Longer term they will be better off but should’ve sucked it up instead of moaning at us.

It's fine to base whether you have another child on current income.Just be aware things can change, health accident divorce etc you can't future proof your decision

£450 for insurances? A month? Our combined car x 2, buildings and contents insurances are £700 a year! And that's for a Grade ll listed house.

Just read the rest of the thread and see someone already mentioned the tax free childcare.

The problem though isn't the cost of childcare. It's the cost of housing. Pound to a penny OPs accommodation would have been much cheaper in real terms 20 years ago, and a lower percentage of their household income. This is a huge issue

Definitely & the forced low interest rates & high prices are one the reasons we have such low productivity.

Fair point shasta, we didn’t make those decisions with another child in mind. We thought we were one and done!

@BasinHaircut For the period that you're paying two lots of childcare for (assuming this would be 1-1.5 years tops) you could consider changing your mortgage to interest only payments. You could save the difference in a savings account to dip into for emergencies (eg new washing machine), and if you have some of it left at the end of the period then pay it as a lump sum towards your mortgage.

Apologies if this has already been suggested I've not read the whole thread.

@Ollivander84

I notice that despite your horse costs you didn't end your post by saying you're skint!

I am into horses as well so i have a vague idea of how much they cost and know that in general, if you've got a horse, you're going to be pretty well off. If you were in dire straits you could sell the horse/ hand back the loan and be hundreds of pounds better off a month. If you're actually skint you don't have that luxury.

You could also look into increasing your mortgage term, as well as making it interest only. It doesn’t feel great but you can ramp up overpayments once the childcare gets cheaper so the actual term you’ve got set doesn’t really matter except that it gives you a lower committed monthly payment can be useful when pressed.

£4.5k a month net AND you're entitled to £385 a month free childcare, this really is one fucked up system we have in this country

The op doesn't get £385 of 'free' childcare - she gets vouchers. To get the £385 of vouchers she'd have had £385 taken out of her gross pay- it's just the tax you save.

Also Roobie your understanding of TFC is completely wrong - the Government don't just gift you £2k towards childcare - that £2k is your maximum total saving. You'd only get that if you had childcare costs of £10k a year per child.

The vast majority of families are better off using the old CC vouchers.

Have you looked at tax free childcare. I don't know why anyone would continue with vouchers when the government are offering £2000 per year per child. Your childcare vouchers only save you the tax on that 365. So if that's 20% tax rate it's about £73 a month. The tax free scheme is so much better. In my opinion and if you have more than one child who needs childcare then you are saving £4000 a year. And I think you v an use it up until they are 12?

£350 surplus when all other bills have been paid isnt such a bad problem to have imo.

But it’s the one-offs that are a killer when you have a house and a couple of cars. There are few months when there isn’t a one-off (or 2) for a few hundred, especially if you factor in things like weddings and christenings etc.

Sorry didn't bold the quote at the bottom, looks a bit confusing!

This is where renters are better off - if the boiler breaks down their land lord pays to fix it not them - I’m not sure everyone is taking this into account.

secretbum the OP would have 10k a year childcare bills. I guess I forget that not everyone has massive childcare bills. We were paying 23k a year and with his 30 free hours and tax free we are now paying 18k a year. So it doesn't often occur to me that other people might be paying less than 10k. I dream of that day!

£750 a month for a family of 4 doesn't really go far. I budget £200 a week for me, 2 teens and a dog.
Food, toiletries, cleaning stuff, etc - £60- 80 a week
Kids lunches at college £30 a week
Petrol £50 a week
Dog food £15 a week

This leaves £25 a week for everything else.

I know this was mentioned a while back, but if you can flex work at all it can save substantially on childcare. Even if one of you does 9 in 10 to get a day childcare free every two weeks that saves loads. You only need to work an extra hour a day on the other days to still be doing a full time job.

Also, reducing your days. Because of tax being stepped, those first few days bring in much more than the last few. It's not equal across the days. It is worth fiddling with the numbers, as it may seem much more reasonable to work 3 or even 3.5 or 4 days given what those extra days actually make you. If for example one worked 9/10 and the other 3.5 worked at 3 one week 4 the next, you would only need 3 days of childcare. That could make quite a difference. Totally job dependent of course. Might hamper progression a bit, but less if it's spread across both careers. But we are likely to have fairly long working lives so see if it matters or not in the long run. You may find that whoever is home on weekdays can get a lot of chores cleared too, which can help make weekends more restful and better quality.

I find a lot of people have to fiddle about like this to make things work, but it's surprising what you might be able manage to make your budget bigger.