Young couple cannot afford a family on 100k per year!

[dottiedodah]

All subjective of course.Young couple feel they are unable to afford a family ,With lots of expenses .YABU they should just save and keep going .YANBU if they want children then they would have to cut back .Apologies DM link!

As many are saying, it comes back to priorities. I had no qualms about not having much money because having a baby was more important than anything I could buy. Plus, as I said earlier, we started out as just 'managing' when our DS was born, but time passed (as it does) and we're not just managing any more. There's no reason to think that whatever situation you have when your child is born is the same situation you'll have ten years later (good or bad).

If they wanted to kids, they'd make it work. It sounds like they don't want to compromise their lifestyle, which is fine, but don't make a sob story out of it.

I don’t know how old you are or where you are but I also couldn’t afford a studio flat at 24 and that was a while ago now…I lived in house shares despite having a degree and working full time.

That was the norm.

I think moving out happens older now, I left in my teens.

My income is about £20,000 a year after tax, including top up benefits, and that's for myself and one child. We're very comfortable on that and I can afford holidays and savings. (To be fair, ex pays for music lessons, computer games, trainers, etc., but we could cut down on those or on other things to pay for those if we wanted to.)

Ah yes…. The deftness of some people who think that you get to keep every penny of your £100k. When in reality you pay a big chunk in tax /ni, childcare, commuting cost. then someone pipes up that they only get £12k… but forget to mention all the top up benefits they get

Have you ever heard of tax?

If people think they don't have enough money to have kids, then they don't have enough money to have kids. That is not for others to decide. It is up to them if they choose a certain lifestyle over kids. As long as they aren't trying to blame others at that income. Maybe they have to work a ton of hours to get that salary and would have to take a cut if they worked less, so having kids would take money and reduce their income. So, a double reduction.

As previously mentioned I raised mine on £2k a month INCLUDING all benefits. So yes, I did (and still do) manage on less than half of £5.5k a month.

Assuming take home pay is £5.5k, childcare £1k, mortgage payments £1.5k, bills another £1k, that still leaves £2k a month spare. That's still far more than most people. And childcare costs are a temporary evil.

A mortgage payment of £1.5k for a recent ish buyer in the south east is ambitious.

Chuck it up to £2.5k and you still have a spare £1k a month.

And that's STILL more than most people have. I have less than a grand spare a month and manage fine with 1 child.

Oh yeah, I wasn't disagreeing with your point. But I think people can be a little unrealistic about the costs of housing, chilcare and commutes in the SE. Full time nursery is more than that round me too.

Yeah, childcare is a temporary thing though. Pretty much everyone struggles for the first 3 years. That's just how it is. If they don't want to do it, fair enough, but it's not a case of "can't afford".

Oh absolutely. They could cut their cloth if they wanted to.

She said they're paying £160 a week commuting too and that nursery fees were around 1.5k, not 1k

We don't know what their mortgage and bills are though.

Or maybe we do, I'm not paying to read the article 😂

I think any sensible, degree-educated person that knows they want children would have the research and maths skills to look up child benefit, look up child care costs and free child care hours, look up their company’s maternity or shared leave policy and pay, look up Statutory maternity pay and so on. Hopefully by their mid-20s if it is something they genuinely want to do.

There is no excuse in this day and age when in my day you had to 1) go to a library and borrow books on pregnancy, childbirth, 2) visit citizens advice in person to find out about child benefit (the rest did not exist) and 3) call HR to see whether you could get advance sick leave or leave without pay as there was no maternity leave. You could also get a feel for whether you might end up pregnant and screwed (unemployed).

Today it is all available using a phone while lazing in bed in your PJs on a Sunday morning. I have no pity for faux helplessness for couples who likely spent more time online researching a new car to buy or a holiday than they have spent on planning for a child.

I guess my point is that in 2014 two people in their mid 20s on track for that sort of income probably assumed they wouldn't need any additional support to afford to raise a child. Now in their mid 30s, life is less affordable than it was ten years ago, childcare costs are higher, housing costs are higher, food costs are higher, and wages aren't any higher.

But I get it, in your day you had to walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways, etc...

They have a £500k character property which requires costly renovations and want a family on £100k joint salary. Has basic maths changed or something?

They don’t need any additional support to afford a child. Their assumption was correct. They have a big family sized house they own and their household income puts them in the top 10%.

Their little sob story is ridiculous. They can well afford a child.

As for the life is more expensive than it was ten years ago…so what? There has never been a time where life gets cheaper! It always gets more expensive. We can all recall older relatives whinging about paying 20p for a loaf of bread when it used to be a penny for a loaf. Or boomers whinging about paying £35k for a house….

This is not a new phenomenon. It is entirely predictable.

£2800 a month, they said they instantly doubled when they moved to that house.

More fool them then! Where were they living before?

Yep and the new house needs loads of work done apparently so she said the few hundred they manage to save each month will go on a new roof, landscaping, decorating it and modernising the kitchen and bathroom to bring it back to life.

Of course landscaping etc isn't essential but as I said earlier the article came across as very disingenuous as they said year after year they had to put off plans to have a baby but yet it was only last January that they bought that house so it's their financial choices that mean they can't have a baby.

They could be on 200k and be in the same situation because they probably would have bought an even more expensive home 😂

She didn't say the location of where they used to live, just that it was a very small 3 bedroom that they quickly outgrew.