How do people afford kids?

[crumbsnamechange]

I feel like I'm missing a massive trick here!

DP and I earn around £72k jointly (I earn the bulk of that at £48k, but have ~£250 per month student loans, and high pension payments, and pay slightly more of the cut of the rent than him). DP is expecting to earn a higher salary in about 18 months' time, but it's not guaranteed, and it's uncertain how much higher.

If I went on maternity leave say within the next year, that would leave us with a severe shortfall as DP's salary alone plus maternity pay wouldn't sustain us (we live near London so our current joint income only just covers huge rent and current outgoings with a bit of savings).

How do people manage it? I've been reading on other forums about how you just make do, you sacrifice your lifestyle and don't go out as much etc. so more money for rent and baby, rely on relatives etc. so not paying huge nursery fees all the time etc. It just seems so hard, a huge stress, and unsustainable. And that's before I even consider the effect a baby would have on my career. Would it be foolish to consider a baby now since I don't even know how we would afford it?

@Notimeforaname

Are you sure you even want a baby?

I wondered this too

@crumbsnamechange

The very simple answer is - You need a comfortable income/outgoing ratio pre children In order to afford them. Systematically this makes it almost impossible for normal people in areas with astronomically high cost of living, like London.

The female doesn’t ‘have’ to be the higher earner. You don’t ‘have’ to have oodles of savings but you do have to have a fair amount of wiggle room in your monthly budget. Pre kids DH and I earn a combined £4700 pm but our fixed outgoings were only £1500 pm

2 small kids later we earn a combined £4200pm and our fixed outgoings are £2500pm

We’ve negotiated several periods of unpaid leave for each of us and just about managed!

We earn a similar amount, we don’t scrimp or sacrifice on anything, we live in a decent sized detached house in a decent area. We could have afforded kids on half what we earn.

When my maternity pay started our joint income dropped by £800p/m. It was a struggle but we done it, we didn't have savings but we cut our outgoings and we just made it work. It was bloody hard and I spent many nights worrying and writing down all our income and outgoings etc.

We had twins too and were very lucky as our friends and family were very generous with gifts, cloths, furniture etc. When I went back to work just before their 1st birthday my in laws had them during the day. We went to see some nurseries and it wouldn’t have been worth me working, but my in laws offered to have them which we were very thankful for.

I think looking back now if we knew the wage/costs beforehand we wouldn’t have done it, so i’m glad it all just happened.

@Dnaltocs

The first 30 years of a baby’s life is the most expensive. It’s never the right time financially to have a baby. If you move to a cheaper part of the county it may help. We couldn’t afford to live in London.

I disagree strongly with the ‘it’s never the right time financially for a baby’. There really is.

Shared parental leave and going back to work when dc is 6mo. Only having one child in nursery at a time (until free hours) so a 3+ year gap. And saving up beforehand.

Also for us the key is to minimise commute time. We’re in a smaller less pretty house so that we can get to work fast by bike.

they don't need a lot. Babies need clothes, nappies and milk.

@museumum

Shared parental leave and going back to work when dc is 6mo. Only having one child in nursery at a time (until free hours) so a 3+ year gap. And saving up beforehand.

Keeping working helps a lot. They cost money but they're SO worth it.

I live in London alone with my son and only had statutory mat pay and have a decent but not that high an income (44k), and am about to have another. I can save 1k a month when I have to so I am saving 7k to cover the drop in income during 10 months of mat leave (my work now has a six week maternity pay package so plus the six weeks at 90% so it will be six months I have a big defecit). I get a bit from my ex as well plus the 80 child benefit will go up to 140. I'm really surprised your joint income doesn't give you the chance to save a lot.... Is your mortgage really high? For my two bed flat in London it's under 1200 for mortgage plus service charge, council tax, Internet and utilities. So if I massively budget on food and other outgoings I can save a lot as my monthly income after tax is 2660.

And of course I'll need that spare income for childminder fees once I go back to work as that will cost 800 a month. Spacing out kids so one is 3 by the time the next one needs childcare helps a lot. Or even better if the older one is starting school by the time the younger needs childcare.

they don't need a lot. Babies need clothes, nappies and milk

I disagree. They need 24/7 care which makes them very needy and expensive, either you outsource at an eye watering cost or take a big cut income (for many people at least). So let's not underplay the cost of having them.

@DingDongThongs

they don't need a lot. Babies need clothes, nappies and milk.

!!!

And of course, they need looking after, which can cost £60+ a day!

£60 a day! Really, tgats bargains! More like £80 here.
We had 3 DC in 4 years. Our incoming was higher than yours OP but my salary would have been obliterated by child care costs so I gave up for a few years. We had no one to help.
We are determined to be here for our DGC and DH I'd planning to take early retirement next year to help our own DC out with their children, should they need it.

The huge rent looks like your problem.
I had my first DC quite young, I was earning 25k at the time and my DH about 30k. At the time we lived in a flat with a mortage of about 600 pcm, I spread my enhanced maternity pay over a longer period which was an option with my work at the time. Went back when she was about 9 months old. We had another DC a couple of years later and hobbled through the two-in-childcare phase for a year before DD got some funded hours. We also then bought a do-er upper house which was cheap-ish and kept our mortgage payments a bit lower. They're 6 and 8 now, we both earn much more and are about to move into a much larger property - it's all a distant memory now but yeah, you tighten your belts and try and keep your housing costs low. A couple on 72k shouldn't really be agonising over the affordability of 1 child.

We were both reasonably high earners. I went back to work really quickly (just a few weeks) after each one. We initially paid a childminder, then they went to nursery. I work close to home, so was still able to express/ feed regularly.

[quote crumbsnamechange]@DrSbaitso that's what I suspected, which worries me, because it would mean DP would do the bulk of the childrearing/responsibilities, and he'd have to make earning sacrifices to do so.

Are there any examples of two reasonably high-earning parents who have made it work? I feel like I've always been surrounded by high-earning dad and part-time or low-earning/SAHM, and would love some different inspiration.[/quote]
I have an almost 3 year old and a 16 month old. We are on joint income of roughly £75k and I am the higher earner (I earn around £50k) I work as a nurse full time and do three night shifts per week as it means I then only need to put the kids into childcare three days and despite only being there three days my nursery fees are £1200 per month. I'm permanently exhausted and constantly dream of another job but being the higher earner and with my husband on a fixed term contract it's not possible at the moment. I would also love another baby but finances will probably not allow until my husband is in a permanent job and by that time I'll probably be too old. At the point both my kids have their funded nursery place I'll definitely look into a job with more social hours and just take the pay cut.

@DingDongThongs

they don't need a lot. Babies need clothes, nappies and milk.

Lol, this kind of silly stuff always makes me smile. The amount of money it costs to keep a tiny baby in up to 84 nappies per week, buy formula and bottles and a sterilising method if you don’t or can’t breastfeed (and maybe a pump if you do), and kit them out in next size up clothes every month or two is significant.

But let’s not forget the fact that they don’t stay tiny babies for long. And for the vast, vast majority of people, they do want to be able to provide things like books and toys, baby groups (for the social aspect). The most significant factor is loss of earnings and the cost of childcare, but kids cost a bomb even if you do it as cheaply as possible.

Oh, they need furniture too, ya know, somewhere safe to sleep. And bedding for it. They don’t stay in a Moses basket for long.

Even if you manage to tell yourself that for you your baby was cheap, your baby got bigger and had more needs right? They all do. Not an ideal plan to have a child based on the myth that a baby doesn’t cost much and then wake up one day and realise your baby actually grows into a toddler and child...

@crumbsnamechange I am a single parent and I earn the same amount as you (the 48k bit, not joint) part time. I have 3 dc, i own a nice but unexciting 4 bed detached in a lovely area. Comfy life but not lavish at all, high street/ebay clothes and modest car. I own it outright so there are no monthly bills and student loans are long hone (I'm 45)

I waited until I had got to a 50k full time salary before having children, when I returned from each maternity leave I worked part time to a varying degree and with inflation my wages have crept up to nearly where they were before. My costs have changed, but not gone down (or up) I suppose once I got over the nightmare years of paying for nursery.

The biggest factor I suspect is housing costs- the lovely area I live in is 2.5 hours from London. My mortgage is nowhere near as big as a 4 bed detached in a leafy city suburb.

Our high rent really is the problem, added to that DP's current low income. I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place though. If we move to a cheaper area (further away from London) then we will have high commuting costs, be more tired (from baby and long travel times), and will still have nursery fees to consider as well as living in an area that is not nearly so fun. I honestly don't see how it's doable. The nursery fees are horrifying me!

@Monday26July

Yes, this amuses me too! They ruin outfit after outfit with that awful yellow poo. It's generally good to have somewhere to put them in your living area such as a bouncy chair and we went through 2 of those as he grew. We needed a specially sized bedside cot which was £160 at the time (new on market) and then after 6 months a cotbed. Yes, you can get secondhand bot beds but a new mattress is about £70. He outgrew the newborn car seat at 5 months so we had to buy another, same with travel system at 18 months so he needed a buggy. The outlay in year 1 and 2 without childcare and food was well over £1500 and I breastfed!

Do you have a plan to buy op?

I was the higher earner so I went back to work pretty quickly and DDs dad was a SAHD for years. We also moved to a cheaper area and I saved hard for 3 years before having DD.

You make sacrifices. You go camping instead of hotel holidays. You shop carefully and second hand. You reduce pension payments to absolute minimum. You don't have expensive hairdressing, nails , facials. You don't meet up with the girls for cocktails. You don't buy another irresistible little jacket from Jigsaw. You don't have impromptu weekends away in little boutique hotels...Believe it or not you can still have a fabulous time doing all the free / cheap stuff that's on offer, wearing what you have, buying less etc. If you're fortunate enough to fall pregnant and have a baby you'll find people are falling over themselves to give you things and a lot of the gear the media says you need for babies is really unnecessary. Lovely and trendy to have maybe , but not essential. The joy of a child outweighs the sacrifices a million times over but this is a very personal decision only you can make.