AIBU to wonder how much you spend on your children’s clothes per year?

[NoseinBook3]

Hello,

Just realised that none of the kids now fit in their clothes so I’ve put an order in. I’ve got two children and it came to about £400... but that includes two coats, two pairs of trainers and then jumpers, tshirts, trousers, underwear and dresses.

I probably still need to get another pair of shoes for them both, pjs and swimwear.

Also I found it quite difficult to find any decent coats.

I very much hope that’s them now set for a while... but it did make me wonder. Do you budget for clothes for the year?

I buy as needed but always sale prices, can't remember the last time I bought something full price.

Got a brilliant coat from regatta reduced from £70- £20 which will do her through next winter as well as this one.

Shoes I buy from the supermarket, sainsburys ones are fab and have outperformed Clark's for longevity in my experience plus they regularly have them 50% off.

I tend to buy most of my DTs clothes second hand, but better quality brands.

I’ve found recently that the prices have crept up to not far off of new prices so have spent about a hundred on new joggers from next, and about £60 so far on tops/dresses/pjs from eBay which were mostly next/joules/mini boden.

Most years shoes and wellies come to about £150 each as I only buy new - I have a thing about only having new shoes!

I allocate £25 per month in the budget for clothes for the four of us, but sell on the clothes we no longer want which makes up the extra. If there’s any surplus left I put it in the kids savings.

I make sure that I get topcashback as much as possible on my purchases (including on eBay) and search for a discount code too.

Probably around £300 a year, i buy my kids clothes from the supermarkets or Primark. I was having this conversation with my husband last night about the child benefit. It covers the “essentials” food and clothes for them. They are only 5 and 2 at the moment though so I am sure once they get bigger they will start costing us more

No budget for toddler but it's mostly supermarket. He's at nursery getting covered in paint 3 days a week and then gets really grubby at home!

It gets expensive when he needs new shoes, and a pair of wellies for home and nursery in the same month. I pay about £20 a pair for Start Rite in the sale and wellies are about £10 a pair.

Some months the full child benefit goes on clothes, and others like this month it's £7 for a couple of jumpers for nursery. I shop the Frugi sale and pay about £12 an item. Ds has lots of JojoMamanBebe but the in-laws buy that!

I have no idea. I have four kids. Three little ones and a teen. Teen DS' clothes are expensive as it's labelled sportswear, I don't buy loads in one go but do top ups. Other kids wear Primark, Matalan and that sort of thing. I don't buy everything in one go, but maybe once or twice a month I'll buy them a load of tops, pants etc and spend about £150.

And on a serious note the amounts that some of us are spending is because we are lucky we can, when things are outgrown please think about passing them on so they can be of us to other children to save their parents worrying how they will be clothed

I buy a mixture of sales clothes and second hand, I get shoes and wellies from the supermarket though as genuinely cannot feel a difference between them and the more expensive brands (the main difference seems to be the material of the outer shoe, but he outgrows them before they break anyway).

For winter I bought:

Coat- £5 eBay
Wellies- £10 Asda
Boots- £8, trainers- £6
Waterproof all in one- £5 Regatta sale
Hat and gloves- £5 TU

Basic stuff I tend to stock up when there's the 25% off Tu in the next size up, will occasionally but frugi in the sale, but sell it on eBay after and usually nearly make the money back!

Also bought a bundle of tops and trousers for nursery, got about 10 sets for under a tenner!

I haven't got a clue, I buy throughout the year whenever I see good sales on. I buy for the current age they are and the next size. They both have a current winter coat and one for the next size, same with thin waterproof coat. I also have trainers for them in the next size and things like leggings and joggers as they will never go to waste. I never pay full price though. I get their trainers from Nike or Adidas from the clearance/sale sections with extra discount codes. I never shop without searching for a discount code first

I give my 14 yo DS £50 per month for clothes so that’s £600 per year. It is to help him learn to budget. He is in mens sizes. This does include school clothes as they don’t have a uniform although I buy him PE kit on top of that and and PJs at Christmas.

As we have been in lockdown on and off and haven’t been on holiday or really ‘out’ anywhere you might dress up for the past year, he hasn’t spent much and has quite a pot saved. That said he is in need of trainers and coats.

I spread the cost and buy a few needed things each week or every two weeks. I couldn't spend hundreds at one go. No way will I get into debt over children's clothes.

I mainly buy second-hand with the exception of school uniforms, underwear and shoes.

My DC are junior school age (upper end).

I probably spend no more than £60 per child on second-hand jumpers, t-shirts, pyjamas, shorts, trousers, fleeces etc. In a year. Maybe up to £10 extra per child on a nice outfit for a wedding / special occasion etc. if needed (again second hand).

A single pair of school shoes seems to last each child a full year now. I buy from Clark's / Startrite so they cost about £30-£40 (I try to buy in the sale).

School uniform is about £70 per child (2 x logo jumpers, 3 x logo polo shirts, 2 x trousers or skirts, basic PE kit (t-shirt, joggers, shorts). School socks.

I always buy school coats second hand and never pay more than £10 for a nice warm, waterproof coat that keeps them dry on the walk to school (e.g H&M, Lands End).

Another £100 each to cover a few pairs of trainers, a pair of wellies, walking boots etc. to last a year.

£30 on a few packs of socks, pants and vests. I buy nice decent quality ones that last.

My kids don't have heaps of clothes as I just don't see why it's necessary. Enough for some in the wash, some to wear and some spare.

We put aside £100 a month for DS’s expenses and transfer whatever we haven’t spent into a savings account for him at the end of the month. On average we seem to spend about half so I guess that means we spend £600 a year roughly. That includes school uniform (he only started this year) and shoes. I don’t buy expensive clothes for him - mostly Sainsbury’s, H&M and a bit of M&S and Next. My neighbour kindly hands down some bits from her DS.

One thing I notice is that some of my friends seem to buy their children a huge number of pairs of shoes. No wonder they all add up! DS has a pair of school shoes, a pair of trainers and then wellies for the winter, sandals for the summer. That’s pretty much it - don’t see why he needs multiple pairs of each! Some of the little girls I know have about 5 different pairs of sandals to choose from - DS just has one pair!

When younger I did a big summer and winter shop for the main part and then picked up anything I thought they would like during the year. Did get a few bits in the after Christmas sales where possible especially coats.
Now they are older and grow less tend to do smaller shops but more frequently.
Anything stained or worn goes to the recycling bank and anything in decent condition goes to charity.

My kids are grown up now, but I used to buy their clothes from supermarkets, primark, sports direct and ocassionally catalogues on credit. So probably about £150 a year in today's prices, with some things bought by their grandparents on top..They only had 4 outfits at one time (like me) and buying that many clothes was a struggle. My best tip was to buy things in the sale in the next size up and put them away. My eldest was the most expensive because he was big and grew fast, and needed new clothes every year. My younger 2 were smaller and fitted into their clothes for a lot longer.

We have 5DC, when all of them were at school it cost us a bloody fortune.

Now only our youngest DD13 is at school we spend alot less on uniform,each year it's probably about £300 and then she gets lots of new clothes,shoes,sandals,sunglasses for spring/summer is about another £300 then ontop of that there's shoes throughout the year a summery jacket,then later on in the year there's warm layers and a decent coat a few pairs of gloves,scarves and hats and then add on underwear and Pjs for summer and then winter and a dressing gown so throughout the year that probably comes to another £400 so about £1,000 it sounds alot but being as it's for the whole year I think that's actually really good.

I have 5 DC and I’d guess it’s well over 2k a year including shoes and school uniform. My older 3 (8, 9 and 11) have been in adult sized shoes for some time so they cost a lot! I bought my DS some slip on vans for his birthday and they cost me £55. The older they get, the more it costs. I can get my 2 year old the same vans trainers for £30.

£200 September for uniform, shoes, coat, some Autumn/Winter clothes
£50 December/January Extra bits needed eg. Uniform lost, thermals, hats, gloves.
£150 March/April on Spring/Summer clothes, replacement uniform, sandals
£50 May/June Sun hats and swim wear, usually a pair of trainers which will get destroyed in the summer holiday (between sports club and the skate park)
Another £100-£200 for sports kit, dressing up and Christmas jumpers, that kind of thing.

I reckon at least £500 for a disinterested primary school child.

Worked it out over the last 2 years and it came to just over £500 including school uniform and shoes, 14 year old, average of £260 a year.

No where near that!
I buy a bundle off facebook for £20-£25 for my oldest and keep everything to pass down to the youngest.
I buy occasional “bits” (usually a tshirt) for special days at school (valentines disco was the latest - I bought a plain red tshirt for £2 and vinyl printed it myself, I have a few spare white ones for Red Nose Day etc.)
Most of mine goes in new shoes from the supermarkets/wellies.
Everything else - even coats I can buy from Facebook for £5-£8, keep and pass down.
I think I spend about £60 in total for 2 children for a year.

As for primary school uniforms - I do my oldest in a £30 bundle from asda and get my mother in law to embroider the school logos on for free.
That includes PE jumpers/shoes etc

I dont keep track because i just buy here and there. I mostly buy stuff in the next or jd sale. Often I have bigger sizes bought and put away if its a good sale. The only bit i budget for is school uniform because its a one off high cost and needs to be the right size at that time.

As I didn’t really buy any clothing last year for them I don’t think it’s too bad. DS is 5 and DD is 7 so there aren’t many things we can hand down, except the odd jumper or jeans. We always buy a size up generally and it lasts a while.

I seem to be rubbish on eBay as generally everything I’ve found hasn’t been far off the price of something new when you add in postage.

We did used to like getting a bargain at a car boot sale but obviously they aren’t running at the moment.

I’m not getting into debt. I can (very thankfully) afford the payments. It’s worked out as £200 now and then two payments of £120 for the next two months... but that’s with a discount of £70 because of promotion codes. So it would have been £510. A bit of a bargain.

It’s literally mostly from h&m with a few bits from matalan. They seemed to have the nicest stuff at the moment.

Fingers crossed it fits. Thank you for sharing your own experiences.

DD still little (17 months).
I think we are averaging about £50 a month, so £600 a year. But she needs new sizes every 3 months. Hopefully it will slow down eventually!

I buy a lot 2nd hand but like to have lots of cheaper clothes for nursery so only need to wash weekly. We also buy outdoor things (2nd hand) in 3’s so we can keep 1 at nursery and 1 in each car eg puddlesuits, wellies etc which pushes price up.

New clothes are almost all from the sales and supermarkets, used are good brands like Frugi and Jojo and Joules. They wash well and fit for ages so good value. But we have a lot of supermarket too.

Very interesting thread thanks @NoseinBook3 I pass down what I can between them and have always been careful not to overbuy. Each kid will have one pair school shoes, one pair trainers, one pair wellies and a pair for going out and sandals in summer. All mine have refused to wear slippers and happily slipper socks are cheaper. I find good waterproof coats and school shoes to be the most expensive items by far. I could however weep at the amount of school uniform I have bought these last two school years that has had barely any wear at all in total this year I’ve spent about £1000 on them all