to think I can't afford to have children?

[HildegardVonBingham]

Hi all,

I will try and keep this short. This is as much a social mobility q as anything else, really.

My partner and I live in London in a rented flat. She works in the public sector and I am a trainee solicitor. I am 30, I used to work in FS.

I'm at a mid-tier firm, and don't intend to qualify into a corporate seat. But if I qualify as planned - into private client or something a bit less gruelling - I should still earn what would be a good salary anywhere else in the country - c.£70-80k. Today I sat down and did the maths on how much it would cost me and my partner to buy a two-bedroom flat, as we'd like to try and have a baby a couple of years after I qualify (this isn't factoring in the cost of IVF, sperm donor etc... we have loads of gay male friends...)

Neither of us have family money behind us, and it would cost us c.£2k per month to buy a two bedroom flat on c.90% LTV. It seems manageable on paper. I then looked at nursery fees in London (c.£1600 per month), how much tax I'd be paying, the fact that you're basically ineligible for any kind of state child support at past c.£60k. I thought about the fact that I work loads now and that if we wanted more money I'd have to try and move somewhere where I'd have to work literally every hour god sends, which sort of defeats the point of having a partner and child. With a mortgage and childcare we would be 'on' c.£700 per month less than we are now, even with my benchmark post-qual salary. This would not be manageable as I find things quite tight as is.

I'm not asking for sympathy because I know I'm lucky but however I try and square it, it's not feasible for two young professionals in London to buy a flat and have one child without either family money or one partner on a monster salary. For a monster salary, you have to work monster hours - and so then you don't see your family.

Again, I know I'm lucky, but the whole thing makes me feel a bit despondent. My mum had to work two jobs when I was small, and we always worried about money. My dad lost all his money getting divorced twice. I really want to be able to have just one child but increasingly I think I would rather have none at all than have one and bring them up in financial precarity / insecure housing. I know some people would say that we should leave London, but all our friends are here and we both love it.

AIBU to worry that I can't afford to have kids? Putting hard hat on as have seen that some threads like this don't go down well.

It's not 2 high salaries though? At the moment it's not even one! She's talking about future earning potential.

My partner and I live in London in a rented flat. She works in the public sector and I am a trainee solicitor. I am 30, I used to work in FS.

That's why virtually all parents I know and meet now who live in London whose eldest child is 7 or under, were over 35 before they had a child.

Move job to earn more money - you need to be ruthless.

Move to a somewhere cheaper where one of you, probably the lower earner, can work while the other may need to commute.

We are on £50k and have 2 children and are doing fine. I know many people with more kids than us on much, much less so something you're saying is just not quite right op...

You need to leave London. You can earn that as a lawyer in Manchester

But in London, with childcare costs? Round here a nursery place is £2,200 - and that's AFTER the funded hours 😬

We did what jimhalpertswife is recommending. I was considering going a year with no real income, so we put my entire income into savings immediately in arrival. Not only did we discover that we were fine living on less, we built up a huge savings very quickly.

It may be in London but to be honest unless you have no mortgage due to the cost of heating, electricity, food etc. then you would be struggling.

No one can ever afford children. But you make changes and sacrifices and it all works out eventually. You just need to work out what changes and sacrifices you are willing to make.

Does it? My mortgage on my three bed house and train into London is less than you quote as your costs for a two bed in London.

As others have said, its all about choices. My area might not be fashionable-but its 30 minutes to London Bridge. It all depends on your priorities

@LittleRedRidingHoody we used to live in London but left to have children. Im a sahm so no childcare fees.

My husband and I are both doctors. We moved out of London as we couldn’t afford to make it work with children, especially given the long hours/unpredictability of our jobs. We had to live relatively centrally to be able to get to work in different hospitals with early starts. Rent on a one bed flat was very expensive. Nursery for one child, 4 days a week was 1800k after government support.

We loved living in London and would move back in a heartbeat if we won the lottery. But we left after our second child was born. Obviously this was our choice - we wanted two children more than we wanted to stay in the city. We could probably have stayed if we had stuck at one, so it might be just about manageable if you do that?

My friend is a solicitor and lives in St. Alban's, could you consider somewhere like that? There is absolutely no way a solicitor needs to stay stuck in London. My friend makes an absolute fortune!

I moved out of London 10 years ago to have a child. I did take a significant pay cut and moved away from my family. I had a mortgaged flat in London worth 600k at the time and bought a lovely 3 bedroom cottage in a good area for 250k. The expensive bit of childcare only lasts for a few years. After school club here is 7.30am to 6pm so working full time hours is no problem x

There a jobs outside of London. You don't have to commute into London to work.

Many many many people earn substantially less than you both in and out of London. They have kids. They make choices. Hard choices sometimes. But that's what everyone has to do (bar maybe a very very small minority).

Finances was one of the reasons I was very late 30s. Would have loved more time with my children and the chance to see them become parents and even grandparents as many generations do, but they have had a much better quality of life than if I'd been skint in my 20s or early 30s.

There’s a low point where you’re paying for full time nursery hours.

However, you spend a lot less on social life.

You like that up with longest term mortgage you can get.

And you pick your priorities.

What you can’t do is afford children without a lifestyle adjustment. But that’s very different to can’t afford.

Having children these days is a luxury. Also not everyone can move out of London. Most people I know are having none or just one and making a lot of sacrifices to make that happen. I'm not in London, but I used to live there and have friends who still do. Often access to intergenerational wealth is essential there and is becoming so in many UK cities if you want to buy a home and be able to have a child or two.

So, you'll be taking home about £3.9k and your wife about £2.4k (I'm assuming she's on £40k and you're both putting 5% in a pension and repaying a student loan).

Total monthly income- £6.3k
Mortgage £2k
Nursery £1.6k
Everything else £2.7k- this seems loads. What am I missing?

You may not earn that much less l, there's an element of you not being fully aware of what is out there - eg house prices where I am are half but your salary at firms here would be £50k+ by 2 or 3 yrs pqe as a middling performer and you would leave the office by 6pm ish and childcare bill would be lower too

My point being that you can have a decent salary vs costs and good work life balance to be able to have children elsewhere in the country without sacrificing career either

Have you done the sums with whoever is the lower earning partner working part time after mat leave alongside funded nursery?

The tax free childcare will take £1600 a month down to £1430 a month alone. Then you have the funded hours too.

Tax free childcare gives you up to £500 every 3 months so it won’t do that

What’s your partner earning?

You do not need to move out of London. How much does your partner earn?

Your sums don't take into account taxfree childcare, which gives you £2000 per year towards childcare fees and the 15/30 funded hours that you will get as long as individually your salaries stay under £100k. When DD1s funded hours kicked in, our bill went from £1600 per month to £800.

DH and I were mid 30s when we had DD1. We bought a small 3 bed (2 double plus boxroom) in an unpopular bit of zone 3 SW London. We could have spent even less if we had gone further out. Our joint household income was around £120k (split fairly evenly at the time). We managed absolutely fine and that was without the extra 30hrs funded childcare that is starting from Sept. We could have managed on less if we had cut our cloth accordingly.

Add up how much you spend on going out every month at the minute and deduct that from your costs, because frankly, you won't be heading out into bars / entertaining when DC are small. Baby groups cost much less. Change your supermarket. Be ruthless about stopping frivolous spending. There are loads of bargains on FB marketplace / vinted for good quality second hand baby items. Think of it as short term because as your earning / promotion potential goes up, you also get out of the nursery years. I think you are excessively worrying for no reason.