Is this really true about cost of having a child?

[Childcostss]

Me and dh want a baby in the next year and have started to ttc. We have saved 10k to pay for childcare costs and felt pretty confident that given the new funding, this would cover it all before school starts. We’ve estimated we will need around 600 a month for clothes, food, trips out etc when he or she starts school. We thought this was a high estimate… but, chatting with friends over the weekend some were saying age 1 to 5 is the worst (all the costs of car seats and furniture etc and childcare)… others said they felt it got FAR worse when school started.

This has worried me a bit as I want to go part time after maternity leave but dh doesn’t earn well (less than 30k) and no prospect of earning more in the role he is in. It’s just made me apprehensive… I don’t want to be permanently skint but I’m also 34 and don’t want to wait too long either!

This is very difficult to answer.

Obviously there are some unequivocal things, eg:
£40 per week on wrap around care
£5 per week gymnastics class
£6 per week swimming lesson
£10 per fortnight on average for birthday gift + card for parties
£10 per month or so on hair cuts
Maybe £10 per month on clothes/shoes etc (that’s very rough, I reckon I spend probably £100 a year all in for DS1)
etc

But beyond that, it’s very difficult to pick apart. For example, we have altered what we eat for the better with having kids. We spend a lot more on fresh fruit, fish, meat and more obscure carbohydrates than we used to. Obviously we all benefit from this, but the increase in cost is definitely more than DS consumes. Entertainment is another one. DS loves checking out museums in our city. We maybe go once or twice a month to different ones. By the time you’ve factored in train fair, food etc it’s easily £50 for all of us. Obviously its not all spent on DS - DH and I enjoy these trips as well. But it’s money we wouldn’t have spent if we didn’t have kids. Transport as well. DH and I used to both walk/cycle to work. It’s still thankfully a small cost but we now use the car a lot more with the school run and for activities etc. Again, petrol benefits us all but its an expense we wouldn’t have had before DC.

So it’s complicated really!

It depends on the kind of lifestyle you want to have. I find teenagers are the most expensive. Their clothes are still 2nd hand or from asda but they eat like locusts and our food shop is huge. And everything is so much more expensive than when they were little. We bought a climbing frame/slide thing when our eldest was 8. Cost about £200. It needs replacing this year or next as it's going to fall apart soon. We now need something suitable for teenagers which is going to cost around £1.5k. Soft play during term time is around £10 for a few hours. Most Soft plays around here only let children up to 12 come so for teenagers we have to go to the trampoline park which costs £14.99 for 1 hour.

No hobbies/activities out of school ? Christmas presents? birthday presents? gifts for friends birthday parties? Own birthday parties? garden play equipment? holidays? days out? Extra petrol to do all these things? Swimming lessons? School trips?

Lol wait till you have teenagers.
They know how to spend your money.
(Especially girls)

@Childcostss Even with the 30 hours (which we stretched over 52 weeks, so was approx 22 hours a week funded) our full time nursery invoice was £1100.

Your 10k will last a year at most if nursery is full time.

You'll get child benefit and tax free account for child care which takes 20% off the cost of childcare which you can use aswell as the "free" hours.
Childminders are generally much cheaper that nurseries.

Free hours but usually you have top ups and other costs. I would check with a local nursery what the actual bill will be for the hours you want assuming they have space available.

op i agree with all the PPs who said £10k will last you a year for childcare fees.

I don’t know where you live or what your mortgage is like etc, but I am on 40k and my salary is wiped each month since i started paying for nursery for 1 child. When DC2 starts, i’ll need DH who earns more than me to pay more as I won’t be earning enough.

It's not that bad, you sound like you are in a good financial position. The 30 hours childcare equates to 2 days spread over the year. I know there have been people saying top up fees are charged, that isn't the case at my child's nursery so its worth looking into. Working part time will reduce your childcare costs and the free childcare is being extended to children from 9 months old so if you have maternity leave up until them being 9 months and do part time you will not need 10,000 to cover childcare. You can also apply for tax free childcare or UC to cover any extra hours you might need.
I'd say £600 a month is more than enough. Don't go overboard on baby clothes as you may find people will buy lots for you. You can buy really nice baby clothes from supermarkets which are cheap. You would probably regret buying and expensive clothes as not only do they outgrow them quickly they often get stained, especially during the weaning stage and when they go to nursery.
Days out are fairly cheap for little ones, they're happy with a nice walk, play on the park or soft play which is usually about £5-10 . In my area there are free play groups and a nice library.
I've found it's when they go to high school that it gets more expensive but you may want to be working full time again then anyway.

Hmm. I can't really figure out how much I spend on my 16yo per month but it probably is around that amount. Feeding him is the most expensive bit. I definitely did not spend that amount in primary school though.

Oh op, another thing just to be mindful of just in case. Breastfeeding didn’t work for me, so a significant cost we have for the first year is formula. It’s bloody expensive.

On the soft fruit question what happened to apple puree ( cheap as chips, often free and it freezes), smashed up bannanas and ripe pears ? I only buy berries in season.

£600 a month didn't touch the sides for my child at primary, £400 a month for wrap around care for starters, her extra curricular is £200 easily now she needs food, clothes, footwear etc

Childcare.
My colleagues typically pay around £70 a day. Big Yorkshire city. How many multiples of that depends on how many days you need. Please read all the many threads of here about how early years funding does not really reduce the cost for parents that much!

I have 2 dc. My youngest is 12. I tried to work out how much we'd paid in child care for her and her brother up to leaving primary school. I got lost somewhere around £65K. That was on 3 days a week.

I have a very detailed budget spreadsheet so can answer this quite accurately for my 9 year old.

The category “DS stuff” covers his clothes, days out, pocket money, books, haircuts, whatever. That averages around 150-200 a month. We spend about £600 a month on food but that includes booze and things. Say £100 for him above what we’d spend as a couple. Holidays about 5k a year let’s charge him a third so about 1.7k a year let’s call it £150 a month. About £500 on Christmas and birthday including a party. His clubs are about £50 a month.

So overall around £5-600 a month - seems a lot when I add it up!

He was much more expensive before he started school as we had two days a week of nursery at about £900 a month after utilising a voucher scheme and the 15 free hours.

My eldest gets the 30 hours free (but it's not really free) she goes all year round so it's stretched out. Our nursery bill for her is still £450 a month for 4 days.
The bloody soft fruit is an expense I had no idea about until we had kids. And the mind boggling amount of milk we go through with 2 young kids in the house.
Rugbytots is £40 a month for each. Swimming lessons £60 a month each. Clothes and shoes maybe £100 between them.
We probably spend £150-£200 each month on trips out.

Have the baby, you'll be fine if you work finances out properly. It'll be tough. But you make it work. 2nd hand etc, don't snub it.

We’re looking at about a £500 a month saving for baby (even after top up fees taken into account) and £50 a month saving for our school age children with the funding, a very significant sum for us!!

You'll be fine OP. You've earmarked £10K as a head start. That's amazing. There will still be earnings coming in on top of that. If you and husband are each earning less than 60k-80K you can claim child benefit every month. You can also get tax-free childcare if you earn under £100K a year.

Look into childcare as that's the biggest expense and weigh up when it's worth you going back to work if you've got flexibility there. I didn't go back to work until my son was 2, when he started nursery. Funded hours start soon when he turns 3 and you need to look into the cost of that as "funded" doesn't mean free. There will still be a cost. We opted to pay for a few days a week for a year of nursery as I wanted to get back to work. I'm in a practice profession and wanted to keep a hand in for a couple of days a week.

Clothes and toys needn't be expensive. Some of our big purchases in the beginning were bought by family: cot, pram travel system and ergo carrier. These will all be fine to use again for second baby except for the car seat which we will renew. Family were so generous to us.

You need to be savvy to avoid the shite that's marketed at you as new parents. Things like Lovevery look beautiful but you can make baby a treasure basket of interesting bits and pieces for a few pounds: safe metal and wooden utensils, silks, cups, different textures etc. My son has very few new toys, they're mostly second hand from charity shops or Vinted. Charity shops are great for books and we visit the library every week for books too. Don't get suckered in by marketing that makes you feel guilty about not buying endless stuff for your child.

Breastfeeding, if you can, saves a lot of money. No need for formula, bottles, steriliser etc. I didn't even have a pump, just a couple of haakaas in the early days.

The things we don't scrimp on are: car seat, bike seat, helmet, play mat (totter and tumble), and shoes.

We have saved 10k to pay for childcare costs and felt pretty confident that given the new funding, this would cover it all before school starts

You really, really need to ask around with this. It depends where you are and what provisions are available. DC2 is a summer birthday (so in effect, equates to a year’s less childcare than say a September birthday) and I would agree 10K would probably be just about fine for ages 1-4 (he won’t turn 5 until the end of reception). He’s with a relatively cheap childminder and will transfer to school nursery (free) plus wrap around care at age 3 for a year. We are lucky to have family help for school holidays - this is another big consideration as well as holiday clubs are not cheap.

My SIL has an October born child. She lives in Surrey, has no local childminders and primary schools don’t routinely offer pre school. I don’t think 10K would come close to covering her ~ 4 years of private nursery at all, even with funding.

We’ve estimated we will need around 600 a month for clothes, food, trips out etc when he or she starts school

This sounds quite high for a 5 year old but it depends what you are into and what that means - is it £600 for all of your food and trips out or purely on your DC?

We thought this was a high estimate… but, chatting with friends over the weekend some were saying age 1 to 5 is the worst (all the costs of car seats and furniture etc and childcare)… others said they felt it got FAR worse when school started

You can make babies/toddlers v cheap. Get everything second hand. Church playgroups and local parks cost pittance. I would probably agree with your friends in that from age 5 plus they want more expensive entertainment so, week on week, they are more expensive.

This has worried me a bit as I want to go part time after maternity leave but dh doesn’t earn well (less than 30k) and no prospect of earning more in the role he is in. It’s just made me apprehensive

Do you earn more than DH? I earn more than my DH so we both reduced our hours a little instead of one of us reducing a lot. This could be something to look into. Unless you earn a very significant salary, dropping to say 3 days with a partner on <30K would be tight, unless you happen to live mortgage free or something like that.

I think you pay for what you have. Yes it’s very expensive but unless you’re on the poverty line, you just reduce your lifestyle. The fact you have savings is great.

Remember you’re also earning every year.

Yes of course, but a lot of that is optional and a case of doing what you can afford.

DD does swimming, acrobatics, Brownies.
Going to birthday parties is maybe 4 a year… £10 a go.

We don’t do many days out that cost much. Not much extra petrol as we live in city centre so can walk everywhere.

birthdays and Christmas vary depending on what they want and what we can afford.

but overall, we spend far far less now than we did during the dreaded nursery years. They were painful even with “free” hours and tax free childcare.

Yes but they are funded at much less than nurseries cost to run and are term time only. For full time nursery you'd need to budget well over £1k per month, more in London

Have to agree, we spent £1000+ on nursery fees when DS was a baby (now funding coming in which would reduce that significantly as it did when he turned 3) the £13 a month we spend on beavers, £30 on swimming lessons etc very much feels like small change in comparison and feel very fortunate to have that spare for us to give our DC those opportunities. Yes some parents will spend loads on expensive days out, the cinema etc but they’re not really necessary all the time, once or twice a year as a special treat enough