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?

My DH is the sole earner and earns below that and we manage just fine.. actually more than manage. We pay the mortgage, bills, food, activities and have spare for savings? But we've always saved to buy cars outright so don't have a monthly expense there.

@onlyfoolsnmothers we are saving to buy a house but only have about £12k so far, we're saving about £600 a month at present. We aren't eligible for Help to Buy or any other first-time buyer scheme as I'm already on the deeds of another property which I can't get out of for potentially years (v long irrelevant story) so anticipate renting for another couple of years at least. I imagine by then any mortgage we manage to get near London won't be much cheaper than our rent anyway. Sorry to be so negative...just feeling really stuck right now

You must struggle on £72K.
How do you manage?

@crumbsnamechange

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!

How much would the commuting costs be-it’s worth working that out?

Think carefully about the ‘fun’ area you are in now as well. What do you like about it in particular? Will it be fun for a baby? Toddler?

Mine loved the park, the woods and the beach when they were little. Kooky cafes and wine bars were not so handy!

Despite the cringeworthy quotes you’ll read on IG. Sadly mate, you just can’t have it all. Personally, couldn’t think of anything worse than raising children in London, we moved to a town a fair way out of London with good links in. Our daughter goes to a nursery that is in a forest and comes home muddy every day, there are dog walks galore and we are in London with 45 mins if needed. Unfortunately kids are a sacrifice, but the reward is endless x

We had a joint income of £22k when dd1 was born 16.5 years ago.

We managed. Money was tight, but as I didn’t have a “career” as such I worked around the kids and so didn’t have to pay for much childcare. We were also young and didn’t have a good lifestyle we wanted to maintain. On that salary we managed to buy our first little 2 bed house. Babies are cheap, but childcare is expensive, so that’ll be your biggest out going, unless you have family willing to help out or one of you is willing to change career to do evenings and weekends around the kids.

There will never be a good time to have kids, but if you want them enough you will make it work. If you’re not prepared to make the sacrifices, maybe you just don’t want kids that much 🤷‍♀️ and that’s ok. Teenagers are way way more expensive than small children btw, but by that point you’re back to earning more and working more hours again. Our income now is 3 times what it was when dd1 was born, but we still don’t feel well off.

[quote ToykotoLosAngeles]@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![/quote]
It’s astonishing when people downplay the cost of children. I was one of the unlucky ones with insufficient milk supply, and being able to combo feed (rather than exclusively formula feed) cost me well over £400, not including formula itself. Breastfeeding cost me a fortune. I had to over demand from my body to be able to produce even a tiny amount which meant triple feeding, so I had to buy a pump. The manual ones didn’t work, no let down and shit supply, so I needed a double electric. The first one I tried was a cheap one that bruised me and as you can’t keep trying them as you can’t return them I ended up with a £250 one as it was the only affordable version of the hospital pump brand that had worked for me. We tried to rent from our local childrens’ centre but they didn’t have any available!

Then a couple of breastfeeding friendly tops, sports bras to cut into to make it hands free (when your supply is so bad you need both hands to force the milk out), nursing bras, nipple cream and pads, the increased calories (!), bottles, steriliser, formula, milk storage bags, bottle brushes...

If we hadn’t had any money then the option to bf would have been completely closed off to me. Of course my babe would have thrived on formula alone but that’s expensive too. There was no cheap way to feed my baby with my supply issues!

Lol I've never been able to justify the cost of a jacket from Jigsaw nor have I stayed at a boutique hotel in the last 6 years! I do spaff far too much money on Asos and travel though (or at least I used to). I can definitely see where I can shave off about £300 a month on my spending, taking my remaining money up to about £800-£900 a month but this still wouldn't quite cover nursery fees plus baby expenses in London. I'm going to have to really push DP for that promotion...

YABU because your salaries are high OP. It might be the people around you or social media is skewing your view on things. You just have to do it if you want to be a parent. It will cost you time, money and sleep. So what? What else would you be doing? 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20? What do you want in life?

Not read the whole thread. When I was a kid, 1970s, sending us all out to work. Now, due to blasted laws about (not) working below 18, indulging the little feckers.

Best thing that ever happened to me was a dead end job aged 15: spurred me to do other things!

You can't have it all - it's all to do with priorities and what you actually want and what you are willing to compromise on.
I live in a much cheaper part of the uk (small mortgage), with probably similar combined salary. We have holidays in the uk, are able to afford days out etc but my car is 10 years old and we have been saving up for a new kitchen for at least 5 years and haven't got there yet!

I'm the lower earner and I have worked part time since ds2 was born - going back to full time soon as dd now in school - I have always been the one to make career sacrifices, as the lower earner, but it was what I wanted and it isn't forever. I'm a nurse though and it's the type of career where you can kind of pick up where you left off, and many people do.

Childcare costs are crippling. Some people space out babies so only paying 1 set of nursery fees at once. I started too late for that!

We have 3 children, meant to say.

@crumbsnamechange

Lol I've never been able to justify the cost of a jacket from Jigsaw nor have I stayed at a boutique hotel in the last 6 years! I do spaff far too much money on Asos and travel though (or at least I used to). I can definitely see where I can shave off about £300 a month on my spending, taking my remaining money up to about £800-£900 a month but this still wouldn't quite cover nursery fees plus baby expenses in London. I'm going to have to really push DP for that promotion...

How do you and he feel about him going part time and taking some shared parental leave? It would have to be a heck of a promotion to get him up to your salary; you earn twice what he does.

Radically reorganise your spending, and move to a cheaper area, before you have kids..

I started saving for maternity leave as soon as we started trying for a baby. I fell pregnant quicker than expected but was able to save £10k. With that added to my mat leave package we managed comfortably throughout my Mat leave and had £3k left when I went back to work. My partner and I discussed finances and spoke to a number of nurseries regarding their fees, and then worked out the minimum I needed to earn to pay our bills, accommodate nursery and still have a life. I was fortunate that I was able to go back to my previous job on 4 days a week. It’s true what they say - you just amend your lifestyle to accommodate. I earn £44k a year, my husband £31k. We claim child benefit of £85.

Move somewhere cheaper? I'm not sure if want to be in London unless our income was rly high.
I earn about 45k gross, DH is in 65k gross approx. We have 4 children. We're late thirties. When we had our first I was on 22k and then 25k and DH was finishing his PhD and then on similar amounts. But we're in the north west.

Now that I've finished with my pregnancies i can re focus on my career a bit as it did slow down naturally but I don't regret it one bit. I still have plenty of time!

I know quite a few couples who are both in professional roles who both work four days a week and then pay for nursery for 3 days. Don’t forget it’s quite short term, just a couple of years, assuming you have a full year of maternity, nursery spaces are heavily subsidised after age 3.

You will manage fine if it’s what you want to do!

“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.”

Not sure if we count as reasonably high or not but I earn £49k and DP earns £65k. We had our first baby when I was 38 and DP was 45. The advantage we had was DP got on the property ladder at 19 and I got on the property ladder at 29. We have 3 properties between us now. Student loans both paid off long ago.
My work has a generous maternity package - 6 months full pay - and generous annual leave which means after mat leave I used my annual leave accrued to effectively work part time for a year while on full pay. DP is self employed so his hours and days are flexible. So we only pay for 3 days a week childcare and look after DC ourselves 2 days a week. Most baby stuff was given to us by friends or we got cheap. We shop at Costco and are too knackered to go out and do much these days so are saving more than before DC. Am pregnant with no.2 and planning to take another full year of mat leave and then go back part time but on full time pay until my leave runs out. By that point our oldest DC will be eligible for some free childcare hours, and nursery fees reduce the older they get. Our main luxuries are a weekly cleaner and the odd takeaway but we live pretty frugally now, me because I always have (instilled into me by DM) and both of us now because there is little energy for anything besides TV these days

“nursery spaces are heavily subsidised after age 3” - sadly no, this is not actually the case. Price does go down but it’s still a huge expense!

We have a similar wage between us, and I am the higher earner (about the same split as yours), but my company offer an excellent maternity package. And I was lucky enough to sign up for the old childcare voucher scheme just as eldest was born (before it closed to new people) and have been saving that amount even when we weren't using childcare.
We bought a 1 bed flat (before kids) in zone 2 in a really fun area, but a considerable amount of equity so much lower mortgage. Honestly, the fun area was useless once we had kids. We held on for as long as possible and then the move out of London when it made sense to us.
Even on a high wage you have to plan and balance every £. But we live a good life, and could definitely make cut backs.
Save hard. Make sacrifices. Move to a 1 bed if you can - look at close areas to where you are but little cheaper. Put every penny you save on the rent difference into savings.
Once pregnant I saved a lot on alcohol alone!!
2 big things making it more difficult for you - maternity pay and rent costs. It's hard to know a companies maternity policy before starting with them, but see if you can find one with better mat pay.

Once the baby is here, could you/your partner condense hours and do 4 day weeks? Different days off so you only have to cover 3 days childcare.
Grandparents are a huge help to us, not sure we'd manage without them. I wouldn't recommend moving away from them.

Look at your long term plan. It might be tough for a few years, but only in comparison to what you have now. You earn enough to make it work, and when the kid turns 3 it gets easier.

I'm a LP and get by on around £24k. Cut your cloth according to your income. I'm amazed when people say they can't get by on a joint income similar to your own. Ok, I am quite careful with money, don't often go out to eat / drink etc, and always buy second hand clothes, use Gumtree for things I need etc, shop around for gas elec etc. I manage modest holidays too. When I see what others spend money on I am often amazed. And I consider my income to be relatively good (although many people won't feel the same way). Challenge yourself to cut down where you can. You might be surprised how much you could cut back.

@crumbsnamechange I felt compelled to answer.. You have a joint income of 70k plus, the question here is what's a priority to you..

I earn 42K live in london very central location with market rate rent I raise my child alone no child support. There is no scrimping... We holiday in lush destinations not by credit card or falling short elsewhere. I also have student loan and a decent pension paying into.

At the end of the day it about what you truly desire because if your worried about salary during maternity of which some will be full pay imagine when you have to pay for childcare👀

[quote SHONNYSMUMMY]@crumbsnamechange I felt compelled to answer.. You have a joint income of 70k plus, the question here is what's a priority to you..

I earn 42K live in london very central location with market rate rent I raise my child alone no child support. There is no scrimping... We holiday in lush destinations not by credit card or falling short elsewhere. I also have student loan and a decent pension paying into.

At the end of the day it about what you truly desire because if your worried about salary during maternity of which some will be full pay imagine when you have to pay for childcare👀[/quote]
42k would've barely covered the rent on my tiny 2 bed London flat

We have a salary only slightly higher than yours and we pay mortgage on a house. We decided to move out of the London area for the baby-years. Best decision ever. Public transport is great into/out of central London, and the money you save will coves expenses. Our child was in full-time nursery since he was 1 year old. With what we saved we are now living in a 3-bed house with garden. You need space and safe space when you have small kids. As soon as they grow older you can then move back to a more central area of London.
With tax free childcare you get between 15% off your nursery fees, and from age 3 nursery fees fall to about 60%. So if you’re savvy with money and decide to be disciplined with your spending you should have more than enough to have at least a couple of children.

In our case we bought a house in cheaper area of outer London beforehand. No car.
My job paid 6 month full pay maternity and 3 month half pay - public sector. DH who is lower earner took a few years sabbatical as SAHD.
I got a promotion a year later. DH went back part time.
For DC2 DH stayed at work which more than covered part time childcare (waited until DC1 was starting school to have DC2).
Public sector also good on WFH/flexi hours so minimised after school childcare costs.
DH now earning very little setting up own business but mortgage is half what the rent would be and we have no childcare costs as both at school so it's manageable.