To ask how your finances changed after having children?

[Friedbanana]

Sorry if too vague!
But roughly how much did your expenditure go up/income go down? And how many children?

Our second daughter was born with a genetic condition that means she is severely disabled. I had to give up work to care for her & the costs associated with having a disability are astronomical so, financially, having kids has been a nightmare for us!

We've spent 200k on nannies to allow us to both continue to work full time (full time at first, now wrap around care as she is in primary school). It's a massive amount out of taxed income.

In a word, ruined. My youngest is 6 and I am only now starting to get back to where we were before kids.

I used to work full time and had loads of spare cash. I had savings. I could spend what I wanted and not even really check the amount at the till because I just knew I had enough.

Then I stupidly said I'd stay home with the kids, and just do the odd days here and there, and do could work full time. When we had dc 2, who was a nightmare baby, u realised how much I hated staying at home so started to make myself more available for work and the dc went to nursery which cost us a fortune and financially ruined us. When they went to school we had to pay for a childminder which was almost as much as nursery. Our combined wages plus benefits weren't enough but I knew that if I gave up work completely then I'd really struggle to get back into it at all so we persevered.

Covid hit, dh was made redundant, our childminder went out of business and things were even more bleak! Now we're surviving, just, on my wage, benefits and parental help.

I am very busy with work at the moment though and our big loan and a smaller payment plan thing comes to an end this year though so despite the rise in fuel prices I'm hopeful that our outgoings will fall slightly so that I can support us with my wage and dh can retrain.