Firstly I am aware we are in a more privileged position that a lot of people so apologies in advance if this comes across as not reading the rooms, but a blasé conversation with DH about booking a holiday suddenly has me spiralling about our financial situation, and I needed to write it down. Will try and give as much information as I can without being too outing. Mum of 1yo DD, recently returned to work after maternity leave, gone back part time at 4 days a week. DD in nursery 3 days a week, looked after by paternal grandparents one day a week. DH working full time, earns less than I do l, no issues (or so I thought), we contribute equally to joint account to cover mortgage and bills, since I’m back at work and earning more I’m paying for DD nursery and most of DD costs (clothes, nappies, toiletries, etc). Mortgage went up with interest rate rises by £800 a month end of last year. Managed to get through maternity leave and pay my share of mortgage and bills/DD costs with my savings and a couple of months at full pay per my company policy, plus statutory maternity pay. Having a blasé conversation with DH this evening about using a companion voucher with BA to book airlines flights for May before voucher expires, and DH says can we afford it? On my salary, yes in theory, but each month his outgoings are less than earnings so he’s slowly chipped away at his current account balance each month. As I said I’m also covering DD most of DDs costs, and so I don’t want to pay for the whole holiday. So I say ok, we can’t afford it right now, we won’t book the holiday, not the issue. But this got me thinking. We were planning to have a second baby this year (if it happens for us, had a chemical last month, possibly a blessing in disguise). I’ll be back at work for at least 10 months before second baby born in theory, so hopefully will have built up enough savings to be able to contribute my share to mortgage and bills along with my maternity pay same as first time round, and nursery costs using savings. But I said to DH, can we actually afford to have another baby right now? Fine, second time round so we won’t have a lot of the initially larger expenses. We haven’t made a decision yet about private schooling, I went to private school but DH didn’t, and I feel some sort of responsibility to give DD the same opportunities in life that I had, so we have put DD in a nursery known in the area for having great success rates for private schooling entrance - at least this gives us the option when the time comes. Obviously it is a few years away, and ideally we both progress in our careers and earnings capacity goes up, and we can afford it. But even then, based on current situation, we couldn’t afford 2 lots of private school fees. DH response to my question can we afford to have another baby was we’ll just sell the house and downsize. Not unreasonable in theory, but we chose the area for schooling and transport links, and there is a price premium attached as a result. And while I may be being unreasonable, it doesn’t sit right with me at this point in life to be taking a ‘step backwards’ and downsizing when actually if we were to have another baby, we probably need to upsize at some point in the future. Am feeling slightly frustrated at DH’s apparent solution being to downsize rather than finding a job that pays more (I know it’s possibly easier said than done), and resentful that this isn’t how I pictured my life - I didn’t think I would be sat here questioning if we could afford a second child (even if we didn’t send them both to private school), and DH talking about needing to downsize to be able to do so. I realise I had a very privileged upbringing, went to private school, got a good job after university and was able to save a good deposit to buy our house (we put in equal amounts towards our deposit). And I also know that the current economic situation means tightening purse strings so we may have to forego luxuries like holidays for a bit. But what was a blasé conversation about booking a holiday turned into can we afford to have another child, and do we need to downsize our house. Am I being unreasonable to have a conversation with DH about retraining to get a better paid job, or taking on a side hustle to supplement income? I don’t want to put undue pressure on him or make him feel like he can’t provide for our family, but I am feeling resentful at where the conversation went, and having to make compromises to be able to have a second child which has always been in our life plan.