To think people without kids have more money?

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Than people with kids I mean. Twice this week I've had single child free friends tell me how
" lucky" I am that I have my husbands pension to " fall back on". I don't even know what that actually means, he has his pension, I have mine, we both work, 1 pension per person. Neither of us will be able to retire early. We have 2 kids. Kids cost a bloody fortune.
I sort of let it wash over me the first time, but the second remark ( different person) bugged me.
She said " Well I don't have my husbands pension to fall back on" so I said " You also don't have kids costing you a bloody fortune"
I don't care about other people's life choices, or how they spend their time or money, I honestly barely think about other people! Except today obviously 🤣
Both of these women obviously think I am financially better off than them. I've never thought about it, but how could I be??? ( we all work in the same industry btw, on similar wages)

YOU CHOSE TO HAVE KIDS. FFS stop complaining.

I have one child and I have more money than my single friend who lives alone paying a mortgage.

DH and I had more money before kids than we had after, our incomes went down due to maternity leave and working PT and our expenses went up due to childcare, needing a bigger house (we'd be mortgage free now if we hadn't had kids) with higher bills associated with it and the food bill with teenagers is horrendous. Holidays require larger properties with multiple bedrooms rather than a single hotel room, and travel for 5 people in the school holidays is much more expensive than travelling outside the school holidays.

Now you can argue that having children is a choice but so is choosing to live alone and holiday alone. When I was single I lived in shared accomodation so my housing costs were far lower than they are now (where I'm paying a far greater share of the housing costs since we have 3 members of the household who don't contribute), and I would holiday with friends at cheap times of year and split the costs so again, much cheaper.__

Strange comment.

All depends on incomes, relationships, etc.

But generally, children cost money. They can affect your career. And your life choices.

But they also bring so much to your life.

But I think DS doesn't want children and would much rather have the money!

Why is it strange?

What I will say is not having kids certainly makes it easy to justify spending money on other interests.
Our camper van is currently in for another £1500 of welding work. That some people spend that a month on nursery fees blows my mind!

Well single people are worse off financially, that's widely accepted, it's much harder for them to get on the housing ladder with a single income, they can't share costs of utilities and meals. I don't think it has anything to do with having children or not. We have joint finances so although we have our own pensions now, they'll be combined in to family income when the time comes and if either of us does early than the other will get their pension alongside their own.

Yes children cost money although it depends on circumstances like family support, flexible working hours etc. We have 2 children but thanks to raises and promotions at work our income has gone up pretty significantly since before having them despite me going part-time.

It's brilliant having a campervan when you have kids too though, loads of cheap adventures and weekends away! We've just sold ours after having our second child because it wasn't set up for 4 people (only 3 seatbelts and 1 double bed) but definitely have a bigger 4 berth campervan earmarked as a future project!

You aren't comparing like with like.

You need to either compare a married couple with kids against a married couple without kids, or compare a single person with kids (and maybe no child support) against a single person without kids.

Of course people who don’t have children will have less outgoings than those who do have children.

The couple could have a joint income of £40k or £500k but ultimately, they will have more money without kids than if they had kids.

Kids cost so much money.

Between childcare, hobbies, extra clothes and food general expenditure on days out, holidays and toys/entertainment, potential career sacrifices, bigger cars etc, of course we have less money to ourselves to do with as we please compared if we didn’t have those outgoings.

Yes we chose to have the children but that doesn’t change the fact that we’d be better off if we didn’t have any.

Just because you are single it doesn't mean you have to holiday alone. I used to holiday and share hotel rooms with friends and also let out rooms in my house to Lodgers. True that couples may have a partners income if they lose their jobs but that can't necessarily be "relied" on to support two adults as well as children. I don't think you have any idea how much it costs to raise children.

It sounds like they're commenting on you and your husbands income, nothing about your children as they are likely single and only have one household income and you have two coming in so if anything happened to them they would be screwed, they don't seem to have mentioned anything about your kids so not sure why you have brought that into the question

Yes, single people are more prone to poverty, and having a partner is a useful support, financially and in other ways. Probably this is what she meant. Perhaps you could think that you are lucky to have a partner and kids and bite your tongue in the interests of being understanding of your friend's life?

What is the usefulness of a comment saying that you have a child and have more money than a single person?

Well by definition two wages/pensions are better than one, and being child free is cheaper than having children.
There are all sorts of possible set ups: child free couple, child free singleton, couple with children, single parent. All we have different financial strains (childcare, paying mortgage or rent on one's own etc). It's easy to just focus on one aspect, e.g. X doesn't have to pay childcare, forgetting that X only has one income, 75% council tax to pay etc.

Your friend isn't talking about kids so I don't know why you are OP. She's talking about the additional costs of being single which is a valid gripe.

Everything costs more if you're single due to economies of scale. The worst is though that single people pay more tax. I mean, I get that buying things like holiday accommodation is going to be more expensive if you have no one to split the cost with, and that heating a home costs the same regardless of how many earning occupants are in that home. It's annoying and difficult but buying stuff is easier with two incomes than it is with one.

But tax?! How on earth have we ended up with single people paying 50% more tax - council tax, that is - than people who are in a couple? Tax liability isn't something you can opt out of - you can go to jail if you don't pay it. Absolutely ridiculous.

I’ve always thought it was odd that a lone person only gets a 25% discount for council tax.

That what the poll tax was about to introduce a level of fairness but of course no-one wanted that, well lets just say the majority group (2 adult households) definitely didn't want that

Minority group of people, like I said every budget there is more help for vulnerable people etc. (sympathy vote) and then you have those who had kids always complaining about the costs, have you ever heard anyone ever think you know what give I made this choice to have kids I actually am not the worst off. So every budget there is more and more help. Then there is no more money to help the single childfree group - we just get landed with paying for it all! Paying for other people's choices every single time and then have to put up with those people complaining us when we dare to have a moan.

The comments on this thread just proves it really.

Yeah wages have plummeted relative to outgoings for everyone in the UK over the last fifteen years but according to politicians the only people affected are "hard-working families". Single people just get told how fun house-sharing can be.

Poll tax was problematic in other ways though.

I don't know what the answer is but single people paying more tax is not it!

If you are single and childfree and earning the average wage in this country, I wonder what your lifestyle would look like?

I guess it depends where you live - but rents and mortgages are expensive. As are general living costs

This kids thing is a red herring here. YOU raised kids as a way to say you had less money than your friends.

It feels we are missing context here as to what triggered the comment in the first place. It’s not something someone would come out with for the sake of it and sounds more like a reply to you complaining about your own situation or making out you’re struggling compared to them.

It sounds like your friends believe (rightly or wrongly?) that your husband has a large pension that he will be able to claim in retirement and that the income from that will ease your financial burden come retirement. They haven’t mentioned kids.

Are you friends single? Or perhaps their partners are lower earners? So in response to whatever you were talking about that seemed relevant.

@Catsmere - if you ever do need help with that, please contact me.

I started work at my company at 50. They regularly employ older women.

Well to be fair, single people without children are incredibly vulnerable, financially.

If a single person loses their job they're entitled to pretty much nothing - JSA is something like £80/week and they can very quickly find themselves homeless.

Someone with a child in the same scenario is entitled to multiple times that, and is also protected from ending up homeless on the streets in other ways.

When this was me, I had no money whatsoever for anything other than essentials. I didn't socialise in a way that wasn't free or someone else's treat for years. I lived on the cheapest food I could find because rent + bills swallowed up my salary. It was miserable.

Don't get me started on the time I was on NMW and single - my rent + bills were more than I was earning and I was chronically in debt. Those were some of the worst years of my life.

I'm on more than average wage now and have a mortgage but housing costs + bills still swallow up about 80% of my income. I haven't been on holiday in 8 years and my ability to save is pitiful. By contrast, the parent couples I know are doing Disneyland every year and redecorating their homes every 2-3 years.

We single childless hear all the time that we're rich compared to parents, because parents look at what their income is and what it'd be without their kids. They don't seem to consider that not everyone earns the same salary, and that there are two of them versus only one of us.