To ask how people afford to have a family...

[TiredMumma88]

DH and I earn £57k as a household.

Outgoings are c. £2.5k per month (household bills, travel, food and childcare).

DS is 19months old and we'd love to have another but cannot for the life of us see how we could afford it.

PILs have DS a couple of days per week while we're at work so we only currently pay for 3 days nursery, but after doing some major maths - whether I go back to work or not after we still won't have enough to pay the mortgage...

How do people do it??

@fearfutfil yes it does. If you had wealthy parents who could pay for all this and had children on that basis that wouldn’t mean that you could afford a child. It would mean that you were very hopefully having a child on the expectation that someone else would meet that child’s needs. Why are you getting so worked about this? It’s a fact of life (in Britain) that most people can’t afford a child but we make it work anyway, that’s all. I’m sure OP could find a way in that same spirit if that’s what she wants. Fundamentally, even if they earned enough by her estimation this may not always be the case, people die, they loose their jobs, economic meltdowns occur. The vast majority go into parenthood expecting someone else to meet the costs. Of the small minority who are able to meet the costs themselves most of them can’t know that that will always be the case. Very, very few people can sit down and say to themselves ‘yes, I will definitely be able to support this child into adulthood’.

And that renting is cheaper than a mortgage?

It is for us at the moment. Our rent is £1,200 for a 3 bed on a dodgy council estate in the south east. If it was sold, it would sell for somewhere in the region of £350-£400k. My DP has a well above average salary but we wouldn't be able to get a big enough mortgage to buy the house, and even if we could, the mortgage would be considerably more than we pay in rent plus we then have insurance and maintenance costs to find. It would be a bit different of course if we had bought at an earlier age and hadn't climbed the ladder etc

OP Our combined income is half-ish of yours.

We will have paid off our mortgage next year having owned the place for 10 years.

We've regularly holidayed twice a year before DS came along - Bangkok, Mexico, Caribbean...

4 year old DS, now in school, went to a private nursery 3 days a week and was with my parents 2 days a week.

I have just reduced from 5 to 4 days.

We have good, reliable newish cars. Both owned and paid for.

And no, we do not have any loans, credit cards or otherwise.

We have done all of the above through good money management - savings and investments and living within our means.

@overagain where we live at the bottom end of the housing market mortgaging is cheaper than renting. It’s only when the properties get bigger (harder to rent out) and their price higher (remember the impact of interest of mortgage payments) that it becomes cheaper to rent. We decided to rent for this reason. We wanted a large house but weren’t fussed about owning it and it’s much cheaper this way (about 40% less per month).

Our income is lower than yours but so is our expenditure. We have 2 children.

A combination of saving hard when we were younger, inheritance and our previous house going up in value means we have a lot of equity in our current house so a lower mortgage repayment than many.
We have a 3 year gap between dc so the time between dc2 being born and dc1 going to school is only 18 months and for more than half of that I am on maternity leave.
I work 3 days a week - we took the hit on that financially 3 years ago after DC1 was born and have adjusted to the lower salary.
DC1 now qualifies for the funded hours so our nursery bill is lower (our nursery only offers 15 hours though).
My mum will help us with childcare when I return to work so we will not be paying nursery fees for 2. DC2 will start nursery when he’s a bit older. I will carry on saving childcare vouchers for him even when dc1 starts school.
I have a short commute to work so when dc1 starts school I’m hoping to change my hours so I can drop dc1 off at school in the morning.
DH is a teacher so we won’t need childcare in the holidays.
We don’t have any debts apart from a small credit card and our mortgage.
We drive old cars (we need 1 each due to where we live and work).
We have 2 boys so almost all of dc2’s clothes are hand me downs and most of all of our kids clothes come from Tesco.

Looking back at that, really we are very lucky.

Zimbabwebadgers I think that's it. We bought our house for around that figure and our mortgage is £900 a month, an equivalent house rented would be around £1400.

We've managed it by me not returning to work.
There is no way on earth we can afford the wrap around childcare on the salary I can currently make.
Plus DH is not able to share any school runs/sick days due to his work, so it would be all on me, and if have to find an exceptionally understanding employer.
DS2 is prone to illness, and if I'd been back at work it would have been a nightmare last year.
So SAHM for the school years, or until I can find something that fits around them.

@Racecardriver I don't think there is a single person in this country who hasn't at some point in their life used something state funded. That does not mean that they cannot afford to support their child. The OP was not talking about the costs that you keep bringing up. You were being pedantic with your first post.

I don't think I'm the only one getting riled up about this - I wasn't the one who said you were 'talking shite' for starters!

Where does the rest of your salary go? You must have more in take-home than £2,500? Also, is your mortgage a very high proportion of your income?

You almost certainly can afford it, but it would just mean life would look a bit different.

@Racecardriver we own (with mortgage) a large 4 bed house. Rent is £200 - £400 per month more than our mortgage is for an equivalent or slightly smaller house. It may be because we have good equity in the property which was achieved by a good decision on the previous house. But even when we bought our first house mortgage and rent were about equal, then once we remortgaged rent was about twice as much.

@featfultrill well it does, that how money works, fact of life and all that. It’s like taking a year out of work to write a novel without any savings and claiming job seekers. The remark was meant to lighten the tone. Most of us can’t afford it but so what? kind of thing. Sometimes people spend too much time stressing about their mortgages not realising that pretty much everyone else is sitting in the same, rather flimsy, boat. Just keep sailing on. Or keep calm and carry on etc.

I also don't think you can rely on being able to have the older one at home whilst you are on mat leave - we've had to agree that no matter what DS1 goes to nursery whilst I'm on mat leave. We'll loose other essentials before that. I was so ill after having DS that it just wouldn't be fair on him if I end up that ill again.

@overagain must live in different places. I think it may be because we live in an area with lots of families and retirees so demand for property to buy is very high but renting wise isn’t popular (far from places of work and much more expensive than surrounding areas). If you go to the next town over a house the size of ours is cheaper to mortgage if you go in with a 20% deposit. The town we live in is a just a bit weird that way. It’s similar in Brighton where my cousin lives. Houses are so expensive in the nice bits that you might as well rent.

what's your take home pay?

If £57k is total, is that pre-tax? So is it more like £3.5k a month, with £2.5k month bills so £1k left over? Does the £2.5k cover food/DC clothing, or does the £1k have to cover all that?

When your DC1 hits 3, you'll be able to knock the preschool funding off their nursery bill, so that should go down. If you got pregnant now, you're DC1 would be on preschool hours by the time you went back to work after mat leave. Timing this right so you don't have to pay 2 lots of full days at preschool is definately worth thinking about.

A good friend of ours went to interest only mortgage just for the 18 months she was on mat leave then they had 2 DCs in nursery, is that something you can explore? (Not ideal, but out of a 25 year mortgage, not bad to effectly underpay for a short while then overpay when your DC2 starts school and you can afford to make up the time). Some mortgage companies can be flexible like that.

Save as much now you can so you can have a pot built up for the 1-2 years when money is very tight in case a car fails it's MOT, boiler dies etc. (Don't get tempted with nice holidays!)

You might find reducing your hours leaves you with more money - if your PIL are happy to have 2DGC, if you went to 4 days a week so only had to pay out for 2, that might leave you with more money than working 5 days adn paying for 3 days care + commuting costs. (Also look at what the sums would look like if both you and your DH went to 4 days a week, only paying for 1 day at nursery - would that work out as more money?)

Had our first child and bought a house when we were very young and houses were very cheap.
Only ever based mortgage etc on one wage so whenever there been two wages we've used a lot of that money to overpay mortgage and save.
We've prioritised having a SAHP over pretty much everything so have never really paid for childcare. This has meant I don't drive, we don't live in a particularly good area, we don't have loads of holidays etc

We have one child and I gave up work because full time childcare (£1k pcm) plus transport (£250 pcm) exceeded my salary (£16k, approx £1200 pcm after tax). We manage on DH’s salary. I wear Primark clothes and rarely buy anything new. We don’t have nights out because we can’t afford a babysitter never mind pay to go out. We don’t have holidays. I don’t go out for lunch or to expensive baby activities. We no longer buy each other gifts for birthdays or Christmas etc.

To afford to shell out £1250 pcm and still have £1000 pcm left in my pocket (to make it worthwhile working) I’d have to earn about £35k before tax. That’s pretty close to a salary in the top 20%.

Many sacrifice career and go part time to help reduce childcare costs; many wait until first child is 3 and eligible for funded nursery hours/ready for school. They also cut back on luxuries

My husband and I earn less than half you OP, we have two kids 9 & 11, Live in a very modest 90K terrace. The only thing stopping me having a third is that I don't want one. We could manage financially if we wanted to go for number three.

I agree some people cant afford kids but to be honest those who cant are on much less of an income than I am and I'm on much less than you op.

Just for note, we don't rely on benefits either.

Also worth checking - many nurseries and childcare providers do offer sibling discounts, it could be worth exploring as some nurseries that are more expensive for 1child work out cheaper for 2 children if they have bigger sibling discounts. It is definately worth asking.

When my 2 DC were little, my DH and I were both nurses. I gave up my permanent job to work agency. DH took a community job and I worked weekend nightshifts. It wasn't great but we never needed to pay for childchare.

Many sacrifice career and go part time to help reduce childcare costs; many wait until first child is 3 and eligible for funded nursery hours/ready for school. They also cut back on luxuries

This is what my hubby and I did, you just need to be prepared to strip your lifestyle back to basics.

DP and I have a joint income of £2,400 per month before tax. Outgoings, including mortgage and childcare, come to about £1,800.

DD starts school in January so we’ve waited until now to start TTC so that by the time second DC is born, we will still only be paying one lot of childcare expenses - I’m very lucky to work in a flexible job that allows me to leave early to do pick ups and work the hours up on the days that DP has a mid week day off.

Things were tight when I was on maternity leave last time as I only qualified for maternity allowance, so we cut back on treats and takeaways, bought more own brand stuff and switched to having our food shop delivered so that we could meal plan and shop without being tempted by offers and things we didn’t need. We stuck to this even when I returned to work, so the food shop, including toiletries and cleaning stuff, comes to £40/£45 per week for the three of us.

We also cut back on buying new clothes that we didn’t need - now I only buy to replace things that are no longer wearable or for a special occasion.

We always shop around each year for energy/car insurance/home insurance to try and save money that way.

We also decided against getting any pets, even though we’d love a dog or some rabbits, they’re just going to have to wait until DC2 (when we eventually have one) is in full time school so that we’ll have the ‘spare’ money.

We do have some luxuries tho - Netflix, Sky/Virgin, hairdresser appointments, days out with DD or weekends away to places like chessington a couple of times a year. We just save up for these and rarely do things spur of moment.

Good income.
High outgoings.
Don't have to pay for full-time childcare.

I think the problem is your own.

We wanted a sahp so chose the lowest mortgage in our range, each time we moved.
So instead of the wage increase over the years buying a better house we started off again with bog standard, did it up ourselves making a profit and moving up that way.
Of course with a low mortgage, no childcare costs and no other costs associated with working we manage fine.
There were tax credits for low income, too.

My brother earns around £30,000 with three kids. His wife gave up her job to look after the kids though so childcare stayed at the fixed cost of losing her wage instead of increasing fees. It does however mean 5 people living off one wage.