How much do you need to earn for kids?

[Anudawan]

a brief conversation at work today.

when I say kids, I mean how much for 2? How much for 3? How much for 4? Etc.

layering in some basic assumptions. Not living in London. Gross household income and average mortgage of around £1000. we’ll assume no private school for ease. Then bang on average expenses for everything else.

work answers ranged from £50k gross for 3 kids to £150k

I think the problem is there’s too many variables. Are you paying for childcare? Will you have more than one in nursery at a time? Will you be expected to fund them through uni? Are you expecting to be able to save money each month or just ‘get by?’
The various threads on here show that there are wildly differing expectations on lifestyle etc.

assuming average nursery costs for 1 child

and good point- I think there’s

MVP (minimal viable proposition) just getting by not in debt, holidays and modest savings but not too much by way of forward planning
moderate- more household savings and contributions for uni, niceish hols (1 uk 1 abroad)
enhanced package- covering uni, house deposits, luxe hols etc

Still too many variables.

How much on clubs?

Holiday- 2 weeks AL to family friendly hotel in August or a few nights term time to Butlins. How many holidays a year.

What quality food - this is the area we could cut back most on but I value good quality food.

I don’t know, I don’t have kids yet. So I’d assume the expenditure would increase as you move up the tiers.

the mvp I imagine would spend less on clubs than the moderate family and they in turn would spend less than the luxe fam

i Imagine a similar tiering of food quality from aldi/ Lidl, to Sainsbury’s to Waitrose

I am curious, because I’ve always wanted a large family

You'll just have to reverse-engineer it, surely.
Mortgage and bills + nursery fees (incl 15h free hours) + food + holidays + clothes + fun money. And then work out what your net salary needs to be.

So for me (a single person) it would be £1100 mortgage, £250 bills, £200 food, £200 hobbies, clothes, £100 travel (petrol, car insurance), £100-200 holidays, £980 FT nursery incl funded hours. So that's about 3k net which makes it around 50k gross annually minimum. More if I want savings and fun money.

Now, with any additional child you only need to increase food, holiday and nursery money assuming you remain living in the same property. So, I would imagine extra 15k per child will suffice.

We've got 3 dc and I feet that despite reasonably good, above average but not 6 fig household income, we do not earn enough.

It really depends on what your minimum hopes are. I really didn't want to have dc but not do much or go anywhere with them!

Things like clubs, activities, school trips, childcare in school holidays and family holidays/days out/experiences absolutely suck up so so much money.

We don't spend a lot on things like clothes, phones, material things or eating out but we do spend a lot on the stuff above. All mine enjoy sports and want to join in with trips and clubs and things. I want to do things like museums, cinema, theatre with them but even v occasionally it can cost hundreds for a family of 5 or 6. We don't do flash holidays - have never done AI or long haul but even a camping or gite trip to northern Europe is very expensive in school holidays (Cornwall is more!)

We are very lucky and live close to schools so have no travel costs for that but I know friends and colleagues who pay huge amounts for bus passes. Our uniform is widely available second hand but again I know of friends whose schools (state) need expensive blazers or sports kits that soon rack up.

We are soon going to be looking at helping with driving lessons, car, insurance and uni and it honestly scares me!

For quality of food I don’t mean aldi v waitrose but UPF v non UPF, lots of good quality protein including fish and oily fish, a wide range of veg and fruit. Then you may have added variables of catering with children with allergies. 2 children and 2 adults and we easily spend £200 a week on food.

Other things you may have to contend with children with SEN. We will be paying £3.5k next month on assessments for eldest child.

Lots of families with children do fine on a lot less £ than the average MN opinion.

Don't you have this exact same thread already?

Most of the people who have kids are the poorest, no point trying to add it up. Life is short, have kids if you want them, you'll make it work.

this didn’t get much traction so I posted in parenting (which seems more apt anyway) didn’t get around to asking mn hq to delete this

Will you let them shop in Smiggle?

People used to have 7 children as peasants with no real income. Decide how many you want and you will make it work.

When ours were at nursery only 4 days a week it was £1700 fees, including the 15 free hours. Don't forget that the 15 free hours don't go far, as nurseries usually open far longer than you actually use (7am-7pm here) so 15 hours is only just over a day, and they only include "term time" so not when you are using the nursery all the other weeks of the year.

I think when they're young you are generally spending a bit on clothes and shoes as they continually grow out of stuff, but obviously you try to shop cheaply - but still have to factor it in.

Think about if you want things like swimming lessons. Also holidays are really important and valuable imo, and with a large family it gets very difficult to travel abroad ever due to air fares (paying adult prices after the age of 2), and I wouldn't want to deprive my DC of not ever going to other countries.

My DH is from a large family and really resents how opportunities like school trips were cut back as his parents had 8 children they really couldn't afford.

😂

Depends on what you want from life. If you want to go on lots of holidays, do activities, have them in nursery etc then you need to earn more.

googles smiggle

I think My DD spends about £50 a month in there lol

"Not in London" doesn't really help; property prices vary so hugely. Do you own your home already? If not, do you have a deposit already? And so on.

Average salary in England is £35k. So £70k for an average couple. But obviously an average means half of people are below that. And most of them have kids...

Of course, below a certain income level, various benefits kick in.

You need to sit down with the calculator and do the maths; nobody else can tell you this. Your colleagues can't know everything about your finances, and they don't know what your priorities are. Work out what your housing costs would be in your area. Decide if one of you will be a stay at home parent or if you'll need a nursery etc. Will grandparents help? (Don't assume, ask them). If you're going for a larger property, find out what the bills for it would be. Decide what matters and what doesn't in terms of holidays, car ownership and everything else that costs money. Decide what you will / won't spend on activities and whatever else for kids. Only you can do it.

work answers ranged from £50k gross for 3 kids to £150k

Answers will vary widely because different people have different aspirations and lifestyle goals. Shocker.

We’re going for your moderate option, with the addition of a contribution to house deposits for each child as well as the general savings and university contributions. We have 2 DCs, one in nursery, one in school. We earn £115k a year so I’m going with around that amount needed for 2 DCs for the moderate lifestyle plus extras.

We could though live on a lot less if we didn’t want to provide those opportunities for our DCs, so a lifestyle that’s more just covering the basics I’d guess at £60k

2 kids, Home Counties, household income of around £100k (one of us working part time 3 days) huge mortgage and payments of £1600 pm.

We manage fine, have some nice holidays, not loads of expendable cash but we are careful, I feel lucky to have a role where I can earn more the harder I work eg bonus related.