How much do you need to earn for 3 kids?

[Allthegoodnamesaregonegone]

When you don’t live in London and have very average expenses?

for arguments sake, I googled and saw the average mortgage is £1400
average heating for 4/5 people is £200 a month (British Gas website)

assume no ‘bad debts’ and no private school

id love another kid, if possible, but I do see on here often on the cost of a third and that being a large factor, so I’d like to understand what is the amount people think you need to earn pre tax to live comfortably with 3.

too many questions

so i’ll bow put 😆

Wasn’t it just the one? How much do you believe one needs to earn to afford 3 kids comfortably? 😀

DH is on 33k a year, I'm currently a SAHM with 3 under 5. We do absolutely fine, but saying that, our mortgage is only 300.

It depends if you can reduce expenses and what type of lifestyle you are happy with. 50k total gross household income is doable but tight, no foreign holidays, vinted clothing, much mortgage less than 600, old house we are doing up slowly ourselves. Lots of home cooking.

We dont have 3 yet but are planning on it. We know we won't be able to help them in the way some can so hope to increase earnings as we go but its a very loving and very comfortable family. Never worry about food on the table or debts.

Hard to say, but we have an income of around £3600 per month (net, between us) and have brought up 3 kids (now all young adults). We managed fairly comfortably on this, had some foreign holidays and some camping holidays, car loans, paid for cheap clubs (football, scouts etc). We were able to cover costs for the kids such as mobile phones, some driving lessons (but some they had to pay for themselves), some support at uni (only the youngest went though). But our mortgage was fairly small (£600pm), and we don't have expensive tastes - pub meals out rather than fancy restaurant, clothes from Sainsbury's/Next rather than high end etc.

Of course, almost everything is much more expensive now, so I'd say that another grand per month on top of what we had would give a similar lifestyle now.

So we’re more in line with the ‘average’ mortgage, ours is £1300 a month, bills slightly less than average.

so would stand to reason our income probably needs to be double yours?

Depends on ages of kids and childcare situation. If you both work full time and need nursery and you have 2 in nursery you need to earn well above the national average.

My husband and I earn 70k roughly before tax and manage fine. We have a mortgage of £1350 and pay around £200 in energy costs. Food costs seemed to get a lot higher. (We shop based on offers and spend around £100-150 a week). Swimming lessons are expensive (around £75-90) a month. (I know it's not a essential to some, but we live near a beach).

Its more when new uniform, clothes, friend's birthday parties, days out come around all at once that things get expensive.

Mine are 7.5, nearly 6 and 1.

I think its more about how you currently deal with money and how well you can cope budget wise with 2.

We take home £10k a month but have 2 children at PS. If we didn't send our children to PS, we could have 3 children very comfortably.

it’s a lifestyle question as well as a 3 kids question surely.

Our gross household income is close to 100k. We have 3 kids who all do sports and music/drama, so not cheap hobbies, £1k a month mortgage on a 4 bed house, 1 U.K. and 1 abroad holiday a year, 2 cars owned outright. No other debts, no private school. A comfortable and boring middle class lifestyle in a southern city. I can’t see how you’d have that on much less without a smaller mortgage, personally.

having 3 kids makes holidays and popping away for the weekend and cars much more expensive, is a thing to consider. Our second car is a runaround 20 year old tin bucket that cannot fit the 5 of us and the dog in!

There's too many variables to give a figure due to the massive range in lifestyle expectations, especially with grocery shopping.

Half of MN seem to think that a punnet of blueberries per person per day, a bottle of shower gel per person per week and two bottles of bleach a week is normal basic grocery shopping for example.

I mean if you can’t work it out for yourself 👀👀👀

We have a take home of £6500 after pensions, mortgage and average bills listed in the OP are about right for us. I wouldn't dream of having a 3rd on our salary, of course we'd be technically fine, but not to the standard of living and lifestyle I want my children (and us as parents) to have.

Honestly I'm not even sure how much more would make me comfortable for a third because if I had £1000, £2000, £3000 more a month I could find something else I'd rather us have/do than a third child. I think I'd need to be very well off to get to a point I'd be financially happy for a third.

That made me laugh

We have a gross income of about £70k, we have 5 kids and mortgage is about £1k. We are comfortable on that so if we had 2 less kids I'd guess a bit less than that would be fine.

Ok so this is comparable to us, we have £6.3, mortgage £1300 but will go down. Childcare costs are low, youngest is nearly 3.

what do you define as very well off?

there scope for progression for both of us in the next few years

My neighbour wanted a 3rd child. She is expecting twins!

I don't understand how knowing what everyone else has/does is helpful? Work out what YOU currently spend on each kid and add another lot of that? If you'd have to move house or buy a bigger car etc then add that on. It's irrelevant what anyone else earns or finds "comfortable" because the latter is so subjective.

It’s not what everyone has but what one thinks one would need with the assumption of very average expenses, that’s different.

@Allthegoodnamesaregonegone well it depends on what lifestyle you want surely? Our house is a 4 bed detached with 3 reception rooms which is plenty for us as a family of 4, I'd probably want a 5 bed detached with 3 kids so they each got a decent sized room then DH has the box room for his stuff, I take one of the receptions as an office. So our mortgage would increase.

We like to holiday twice a year, spending about £12000 a year would be the goal but that budget would need to increase with a third.

We spend quite a lot on birthdays and Christmas so we'd want that to continue and would require more.

DH and I have our own interests and hobbies so we like to make sure we each have our own spends to a decent level, we are saving to help the kids in uni (which we will have to do because they won't get max loans) so that would be another £20,000ish needed.

All of the above is just what I want from life, it completely depends on what you want as to what you think is an acceptable level.

Household income is currently 98k - 3DC and comfortable enough to have a holiday per year, two cars, savings and overpay mortgage. DC1 being in uni has stretched me a bit tighter (DC are my children, DH has no children but he tends to pick up more household expenses as my income goes into ££ school trips, ponies and general teenage child expenses).

I would say it is quite hard to answer your question, at one point when I was a lone parent, my household income was 9k - I was working two min wage jobs 20 hours a week and doing a post grad degree. Even then I managed - they were fed, entertained and clothed. But I think the mass expense comes as they get older - university top ups have been the real tipping point and tech for studying - two of the DC need specific tech for subjects they are studying. If you want your DC to go into higher education start saving now.

Depends what is important to you? Think of the older years rather than the younger ones (childcare bills aside)

Holidays for 5 adults (13+) are expensive.

Do you want to help them learn to drive. Lessons are £40 ph. First year car insurance usually around £1.5-2.5k

Do you want them to go to university? They will only get minimum loan based on your income which is around 4.8k. Halls ranged from 6-13k plus they need living expenses. Yes they can work alongside studies but that's not as easy as it once was.

With a take home each month of £6300, then yes, I think you could easily manage with three children. BUT it does depend what lifestyle you want to have. It certainly wouldn't be extravagant, and you will almost certainly find that things you can afford now without thinking about it will have to be cut back on. No-one on here can really say what would work for you, and what your tastes are.

However, there are many, many families in the UK that take home far less than that and manage to bring up 3 children. You just have to cut your cloth, and only you can decide what's worth it to you.

Groceries and heating and all that are largely neither here nor there. Going from 4 to 5 people will affect those things minimally. We have added two adults to our household and it has not affected these things much at all. If you needed to move house, that would be a definite cost.

Can you comfortably house a third? Can you fit three car seats in any vehicle you may own. Pay for another child/adult on any family holiday you take? Pay half as much again on DC activities/wrap around care etc. etc. Save half as much again for their futures (uni?). Extrapolate theoretical expenses for 3 kids from your current expediture on two. Only you know your situation.

Where do you go on holiday to spend that much for 2 adults and 2 kids?

we do 2 holidays a year abroad and a uk one, last year we spent 4.5k (Disneyland Paris, centre parcs and a 5* AI abroad, so not camping) and this year 7k but we over spent because I had some extra money from work.

we have a small 4 bed (2 double 2 singles and one open plan downstairs) so enough for us now but unlikely long term. Surely 3 reception rooms isn’t necessary?