People overestimate how much children cost on here?

[Bankin]

Yesterday found an old bank statement from 2019 and worked out after paying my rent I only had 400-500 a month to spend on everything else with one child.
No idea how I managed that but I did and now it has me wondering about all the threads where people say they can't afford kids because they'd only have a couple thousand left after the mortgage/rent? Am I unreasonable to think these people are being a bit dramatic?

They likely don't want to ''manage''. They want more than that.

and again, that's very easy to say when you don't have to worry about childcare costs.

Many of these people would still have more than 400-500 leftover even after the childcare doesn't stop them moaning that they are skint though

Nursery fees are a lot, but quite short term.

Apart from that, yes, people seem to make out like their children cost a fortune on here (often in relation to maintenance payments, as in saying £200-300 a month is an insulting amount for half of the costs of raising a child).

I've worked out that DD costs me £470 a month and she's spoilt rotten.

I can only assume that people are much more frugal than me when they say their kids don't cost much after childcare!

I have started tracking what I spend on the kids and it's over £600 this month! this is before I have paid the childcare bill (which fortunately isn't that high now they are both in school). SOME of it is optional (we went to a trampoline park) but the rest I would say is essential.

Even if you said £500 after mortgage & childcare, it’s still not doable. The cheapest council tax in our area is still £122 a month, so there’s £378 left. The cheapest gas & electric even on a 1 bed flat would still probably now be an absolute minimum of £50/60 a month, so that’s £318, then you’ve still got water, insurances, wifi, TV, transport costs whether that’s a car or train/bus tickets, not to mention food shopping, toiletries, cleaning products.

That's right it was tight but I'm not lying, that's what I did. I do not have a car though

What I’m saying though is it’s not just “tight”, it’s physically not affordable, it wouldn’t be for me or I can’t imagine for many now.

£500 wouldn’t even pay my absolute basics: gas & electric, home/car/life insurance, water bill, council tax, wifi- there would be £0 left for ANYTHING after that, no phone, no petrol, no food, no TV. That’s not “tight”, it is physically not doable.

if you are used to a certain standard of living and feel you spend all of your money on fairly essential things it is hard to think how will I manage with 2k less (childcare) plus any other costs. For instance we found a child added 20% to our food/grocery bill.

It's much easier to get used to having more money than it is getting your head round having less.

You don't have the monopoly on moaning about being skint though, @Bankin ~ everyone is entitled to feel how they feel, and allowed to talk about it. People have explained - over and over again - why they wouldn't feel comfortable on that much. Where I am, it would be impossible to get by on less than £1,500 after mortgage/childcare without moving areas and changing jobs (and losing money!)
Sure you can raise kids on a wing and a prayer (I was raised like that!) but those who want to plan it out to make sure it's affordable the way they want to do it and plan for any contingencies that come up. I think it's quite sickening to find out when you've been doing things 'right' your whole life, build a decent career, home ownership, marriage etc, that you can't afford to have kids without making major lifestyle changes (moving cities/becoming a stay at home parent) and that's what people are worried about - not whether it's physically possible to squeeze a life out of £400.

I don't know if you're insinuating I'm lying or something but I'm telling the truth I was a student in 2019 so didn't have much money then I couldn't get a job until covid ended because of the lockdowns

When I had my first DC I was working 52 hours a week and earning less than £11k a year. It’s not that long ago, the child in question is still at school.

When it came to childcare, I literally couldn’t afford it, so I couldn’t use it - I had to find another way to work and live. We adapt to the situation at hand.

I'm not moaning though I just found an old bank statement that shocked me then it made me think of all the people on here that say they can't survive on 1.5k for groceries and bills

Forgot to quote @Mrsttcno1

While broadly I disagree OP- and 400 quid a month sounds pretty miserable- I do always laugh at the posters who come on and declare that you need at least £250k a year to live in London comfortably.

No one I know- even with decent professional jobs above the threshold for any support bar TFC- earns that much. I'd consider us reasonably comfortable.

What they mean is they want to live in a chi chi area, private school and ski trips. Which is fine if you don't want to compromise your lifestyle - and are possibly measuring against a different peer group- but we have a very nice life on a lot less than that!

Depends how much your bills are though doesn’t it? Our essential outgoings after mortgage, so food, bills and childcare come to £2300 a month. We can’t cut down on those things. So no, we couldn’t survive on anywhere close to £400 a month after mortgage costs. Then add in our priorities like savings for both our and our DCs futures, family days out, experiences and opportunities for our DCs, a holiday then we’re gettin on for £4k a month of what we would deem essential for our family.

I think, to some extent, children cost as much as you allow them to cost.

I often see people mention teens "needing" expensive hobbies and branded clothes etc. That's all optional.

I have boringly put £500 into an inflation calculator and it's £625 now for same buying power and then increased it by 1/3 to take account of the extra adult and that about £812.

A student doesn't tend to have the costs associated with work either (ie two commutes)

I do agree some people seem to think you needs hundreds of thousands though.

They also likely have commute costs, more than just 1 adult and 1 child to feed etc it soon adds up.

Why the extra adult though? This was just me and my child up until 2022 this was. Things started getting more expensive in around 2021 with Cobid inflation etc

But you can hardly compare. £500 with still all your bills and life to pay for is very very low. It’s barely existing. You need at least £250 a month for a reasonable standard of food and toiletries for an adult and a child.
How you are covering council tax, internet, utilities, insurance with the rest of the £250 let alone commuting and clothes for the growing child. I genuinely don’t see how you can account for all bills and every else within that. I would love a breakdown of your bills.

Exactly this.

People don’t want to live in debt with absolutely £0 to have kids, and nor should they. It’s sensible to have children you can afford without having to put basic essentials like food and shampoo on a credit card/loan, which you would have to if £500 had to fund everything bar rent.

Because most threads are a couple saying can we afford this and two adults need more than one.

I'm not suggesting you didn't manage in 400-500 based your statement from 2019. I was just curious how inflation impacted. It would need 625 to buy the same today. Yes prices started to rise in 21 so thing must have got increasingly tighter for you.

Near London I imagine though? Either way £1200 is about right I guess and a long way from 1.5k-2k and beyond.

Physically not desirable, but physically doable. When you don’t have the money, you don’t have it, you have to make choices.

For example, when my oldest was a born I couldn’t afford a car, it went for scrap, so no car insurance or petrol costs. I cancelled the home insurance and life insurance and crossed my fingers. I couldn’t afford to heat the house so I heated one room, and when the boiler broke we lived without hot water or heating for the nine months it took me to save enough money for the first instalment on the repair. I put the mortgage onto interest only, and only paid one utility each month, one month the water, one the council tax, and so on, so that no one bill ever got behind enough to seriously flag up, and I had the others put onto prepayment meters. I didn’t have wifi or TV package but I did have a TV license. I had a £28 a week food budget for one adult and a formula fed baby. I picked up as much work as I could and worked as many hours as I could to manage our lives and our future but sometimes we have to do what we have to do.

But this is exactly my point, it’s not a way anybody would choose to live, hence why people do think carefully and post here about finances before having a child because they want to avoid precisely this situation.

Doing it because you find yourself in a position where as you say you “have to do what you have to do” is one thing. But choosing that is entirely another.