To ask you to breakdown the costs of raising your child/ren?

[DragonMama3]

I will start - my daughter in KS1 - Universal Free School Meals. Son in KS2 - 2.85 x 5 per week, rainbow guides subs and 2 gbp per week.

smellies 1gbp.

So its a sort of top up fee to State education? Seems a sensible system.

Comparing educational systems can be fascinating.

Oh my god, I don't even want to think about it:
Dd 17 Riding lesson £39pw , tutor £50,pw driving lesson £36 pw allowance ( includes lunches and clothes) £250 pcm
So £800 pcm total in addition we pay for travel and hair cuts. Best guess £12,000 pa post tax income
DS 19 ( at University) £500 pcm living expenses, £5,000 accomadation costs. In addition we pay travel. So similar to his sister.

We are both higher tax payers so the £25,000 they cost us is around £45,000 pre- tax income.

I reckon that would easily cover half of my additional cost of having mine....
But he's old enough to be out of nappies and young enough not to be into clubs/hobbies so I'm sure that'll change in time!

For most people the biggest extra cost is probably housing, heatinf and either childcare or loss of earnings.
Clothes, food obviously also cost (and more than in the past).
The cost of activities probably varies wildly between families. It’s not something we spend money on but then I had lessons in everything as a child and didn’t much enjoy it. So I’m quite content for my kids to have a more chill lifestyle.

I lost about £10k in wages/pension contributions by taking maternity leave + whatever pay rise I’d have gotten by changing jobs and/or qualifying a year earlier.

Childcare will have cost us about £30k by the time our daughter leaves nursery.

All the other stuff like nappies, clothes, Christmas presents, extra food, and petrol going to nursery etc probably about £2k per year.

Me working part time for the last 26 years which would average at around £20k a year before we even buy a pint of milk. I’m not even going there 😂

Yes, that's a good way of putting it. So you get a choice in what sort of schooling your child has, and generally the school is better resourced than the state schools. There is always room for students who want to attend but who cannot afford the top up fees, too. Some are subsidised by better off families and there are also bursaries available through affiliated organisations.

Son - code club £163 a month
Cello lessons £57 a month
Swimming lessons £35 a month
Pocket money £10 a month
Mobile phone data £12 a month
School pack lunches about £10 a week

Daughter - gymnastics £35 a month
Swimming - £35 a month
Pocket money £5 a month
Free school meals as year 1

Uniforms - £250 a year roughly for both

Clothes, shoes and coats - really not sure! Maybe about £500 a year

Got past the point of needing childcare. Roughly £25000 for both kids over the time they needed nursery etc.

Kids room furniture, bed linen etc, maybe about £1000 between them.

Christmas and bday - about £1500 a year, including their bday parties costs.

Food costs a month.. not sure say about £200 a month

There would be other things like days out, meals out, cinema, holidays etc. can't be bothered to calculate all that, but 2024 have 2 hols planned kids part roughly £1300 for first holiday and £2000 for 2nd hol.

I have never done the maths before! Think it was best me not doing it! Lol

What a great idea for a tread. We only have one five year old and we're in London. I've just totted up what we spend on nursery and it was £50k for 3 days a week. We spend around £32 on swimming month on swimming lessons. Music lessons £270 a term. After school club two days a week £115 a month. And no idea how much days out clothes etc are.

DS19
Nursery fees 6k a yr for 3yrs (19yrs ago) less 15hrs gov funded from 3-5.
School fees from 4-18 160k
Uniforms - at least 3.5k
Clothing - at least 6-10k
Trips with school - 5k (2 trips abroad )
Sports clubs - 5.7k
Private health - 7k
Phones and electronics -4k
Food - 40-50k (19yrs at £40-50 per week average)
Bus travel ( school) 2.4k
Taxi service - who knows
Repairs, renewals and losses -5k
Petrol and car -2.5k ( includes insurance)
The above figures are for costs so far. We still have the university years
We pay for car insurance and running costs because DH had a stroke and DS had to have a car to get to 6th form. We live rurally and the public transport is non existent. To travel by school bus we had to drive 3 miles to drop him at the bus stop.

I have no idea of the total, I really don’t want to know. And I would probably add another 50k for overspend, heating, lighting oh and the dog is his so I should include her costs.

I think people grossly underestimate the cost of raising children.
You don’t have to pay for private education but DS would still have had to travel the same distance to our state school and uniform and equipment would have been the same. DS’s private school uniform was cheaper than the state school.
School trips would have been more expensive at state. The trip sports trip DS went on was heavily sponsored and the boys did a fare bit of fund raising towards all the kit. So there was no extra cost on top of travel and accommodation.
Without school fees you are probably looking at well over 100k from 0-18.
Food costs go up exponentially from early teens. Despite being lean and very athletic, when DS is mid rugby season he will eat 6000 calories a day just to maintain his weight. He’s also now very nutrition conscious so food is cooked from scratch and has to be balanced, he prepares all his own meals one of the conditions of taking a gap year. Fortunately he’s on a gap year and is recovering from surgery so not eating much. Hopefully he’ll start working soon, once he’s fit ( orthopaedic surgery so can’t lift or carry at the moment) so will start paying his own way.

All of these except food are optional. My parents paid for extracurricular, but not driving lessons, house deposits or private education. Also I'm unsure how your children are to blame for you choosing to move and have a larger mortgage. My child isn't school age yet but children are expensive. You haven't mentioned things like school uniform, shoes, travel (if they use the school bus).

Child 1
wraparound care - £195 pm
gymnastics - £45pm

Child 2
Nursery - £1300 pm

Clothes for both are usually second hand expect shoes. Child 2 Xmas presents this year were also second hand.

Context we're both low wage at 23k and 24k.

@DragonMama3 is it safe to assume you are forgetting essentials like school uniform, dress down days (was it you who posted about Christmas dress/jumper availability the other week?), school trips etc?

DD costs us a fortune. Average costs.
school meals - £60pm
Fuel on school run/activities £80pm
tutor £35pw
uniform £270pa
school sports subs £30pa
school trips/dress down/bake etc £320pa
pocket money £15pw
gym membership £35pm
gym kit/trainers/chalk/gloves £120pa
dance lessons £75pm
dance exam prep/exam fees £325pa
dance uniform £300pa
phone £10pm
haircuts £90pa
shampoo/toiletries/make up £15pm

Thats all before housing, utilities, food, birthdays, Christmas, holidays, meals out, friends birthdays, cinema trips, theatre tickets etc. I get it’s not all essential but not at all unusual either sadly.

We also have two at university but that’s just upsetting to add up.

I worked it all out for my financial order for my divorce and it came out as £50 per day on average for two teens.

That includes (in decreasing order of costs) bus pass for school, dance, school costs (quite a lot of 'voluntary' contributions), swimming, lacrosse, friends parties, food. Holidays are much cheaper (even if we go somewhere) than school days as their extra curricular and bus pass are mostly term time.

When a bus pass costs £10 a day, there's no point adding how much toothpaste they use to the list, so the 'food' element above is my weekly shopping divided by 3.

Childcare £20/day term time, £52/day holiday time, school holidays, teaching strikes etc (*2)
School club £2/day term time (*2)
After school club £12/week term time (*2)
Dc1 £8/week all year (*1)
Dc1 club £15/week all year (*1)
Grocery costs £50/week (Inc packed lunches)
Cost of reduced hours at work £500/month (arranged solely for DC benefit)
Clothes £30 month (*2 on average? Not so sure of this one!)

I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of. Haven't included things like TV subscriptions, internet etc as we'd have those anyway

Where do you begin? Nursery fees, after school clubs, breakfast club, toys, golf, football, rugby, swimming, water polo, flute, violin, guitar, (all lessons plus the addition for equipment and clothing), ski trips, outward bounds, then you have phones, X boxes, PlayStations, games, gaming computers, driving lessons, university, clothes, pocket money, going out money, without thinking about how they eat you out of house and home!! I could have probably bought a new home twice over with what they’ve both cost! But we do it anyway lol

Well I work part time so I don’t use wrap around care so that’s a 9k pay cut.
Dance £60 a month
Swimming £40 a month
Drama £25 a month
Athletics £25 a month
plus you know… feeding them, clothing them, going places, an extra person on holiday. Not sure how I’d add it up!
When she was at nursery that was £80 a day 😱

This doesn’t include toiletries, food or school uniforms but DD5:

karate - £46 a month
swimming - £38 a month
squirrels - £3 a week
Universal free school meals
before school club - £6.50 a week (one session only)
after school club - £8.50 a week (one session only)

Monthly. Childcare after the 30 free hours 165. Half groceries: 80. Family swimming included on my gym/swim membership of 32 pounds. Clothes and shoes broken down monthly maybe 15 (I get a lot of second hand clothes from the neighbours children). Softplay 20.

It's hard to put a monthly cost on it because there will be expenses that pop up here and there, birthdays (both theirs and the cost of getting presents for their friends parties) christmas, school photographs and trips, holidays and trips to the zoo.

Per month (ish):

School meals for DS: £48
School trips/dress down days: £5
Childcare for DD (preschool age): £160
Childcare for DS (after school care): £60
Swimming lessons for both: £60
Football for DS: £5

And that's just the bare recurring charges that can be attributed to them.

Not including savings for their birthdays and birthday parties, saving for Christmas for them, gifts for their friends' birthday parties, pocket money items, clothing, the extra food needed for them including packed lunch items, costumes (Halloween/themed days at school), bottles, school uniform/shoes, haircuts, days out with them, extra gas/electricity that I probably wouldn't use without them...

Same. I stopped counting when childcare cost us 94k.
One child has SEN so we can add (significant ) repair costs to the typical child activities bill

To add to my post - that childcare bill was only up to school. (And we are not in London)

3 under 10. I'm a permanent sahp so childcare costs are zero. Two are in Scouts so 12.50 each pm, oldest has school lunches every day so £12.50 pw, other two have lunches every now and then, about £20pw. No extra curricular activities as too expensive for three kids, plus inconvenient times due to various ages, locations etc. Toiletries aren't that much, few quid every now and then. Clothes are usually from charity shops so, again a few quid here and there. School shoes every term = about £40 for the 3 of them, depending. Aldi school uniform once a year which is about £10 per child.

Greater London.

DC 17 SEN.
College lunch money £25 per week so £100 pm
Cricket training £300 per term
Karate £35 pm
Crav Maga £35 pm
1-1 cricket training £120 pm
Allowance £120 pm
Fuel driving teen around to college and his clubs or to meet his friends
£500 pm. His college is 29 miles away so I often drive 140 miles each day with him.