planning pregnancy and childcare costs - aka convincing partner we will cope

[startingnow]

after lots of frank conversation DP has agreed that ttc is the way forward. I'm concerned that he is still seriously worried about how we will cope with the financial side of things. Anyone got any information that I can share with him to help soothe his nerves.

Ha! 10 months after ds's arrival and I'm still not sure how we'll cope... but we will.

Obviously you need to do some planning - how you'll manage during your maternity leave (good news is that since April you get 9 months stat mat pay though it's still not a lot). If you go back to work how much you'll have roughly after childcare and whether you can pay the major bills, but..

..you will find yourself saving money just by dint of having all your time taken up with a small child and I'm not sure if that's the sort of thing your dp will want to hear at the moment!

Good luck!

My DH and I had this conversation a little while ago and I did what you have done and came on here and someone (sorry, can't remember who ) said that although it would be naive to think that having a baby didn't cost that much, they don't actually cost as much as you might think. As for when they're older - you can be sensible and start saving ready for school/uni/general teenager type money related needs as soon as you start ttc.

Most baby related paraphenalia is not necessary and the essentials can be bought either second hand or very cheaply.

Plus - doesn't matter how long you wait, if its the financial things that worry most, remember that you will never feel there is a 'right' time to start ttc. There will always be the next holiday/car/repairs to house etc. to pay for so no point in waiting!!!

(I should point out that I am childless - not through want of trying - and therefore not fully qualified to make these sweeping statements but they are what convinced me when we decided to ttc!!!)

Not sure if thats any help or not!!!

You are so right pick n mix! We have 3 DC's with #4 on the way and If you'd have asked me 8 years ago if I would have more then one or two I'd have said no way, can't afford it - I earned twice what DH earns, so we've had to go onto family credit (I'm staying at home until youngest is 3,or i start talking to the furniture, whichever comes first) and despite still only getting half of what we used to have coming in, we manage well, no one goes without, we take our caravan away instead of going on package holidays(which the DC's love, sleeping in a house on wheels in a place where theres loads of new kids to meet).I sometimes yearn for the days when i could blow a couple of hundred quid on something pointless, but nor very often.
lisa x

i knew i could rely on MNers to take me seriously. whenever i have mentioned anythin glike this to people i know at work etc they just poo poo the thought of DP having a view on this.

The actual costs of feeding/clothing/housing a baby are minimal, especially as people are incredibly generous when it comes to babies, and you will get lots of stuff given to you. The only thing that you DO have to think about is childcare. We're on one income now, and we're OK, but it does make a big difference. You can go to a website called entitledto and plug in what your details will be if you have a child. It covers tax credits, child benefit etc. You can also get pre-tax vouchers from a lot of employers for nursery etc. Cold hard figures usually work well on DHs I find!
The other thing is that we found that our entertainment costs went way down, as we don't have the energy to go out very much any more, so money for restaurants, pubs etc can now be used for DD.

I think your dp sounds very sensible and normal. It is natural and right to worry about these things.
I believe that people manage. My friends husband just got a huge pay increase and funnily enough they now spend more and still have zilch left at the end of the month. My dh was out of work for over 4 months. We managed. People just do.
You will ahve to cut back. But then, you life will change ever anyway and you may very well find that you don't want to spend the money on ........ booze, drugs and rock and roll .... or an expensive meal - you might find that whilst enjoying, you really want to rush home to your little one.
And you might find that you prefer to spend your money on another babygrow that your child really doesn't need.
I agree with mrstittlemouse - if you can sort out working, full time/ part time/ not at all - childcare. That is the main thing. Everything else will fall into place, once you have adressed that.

Just for your info we don't qualify for working tax credit bu a smidgin but still applied for help with childcare not thinking we'd get it and it arrived, so DD'd nursery place is paid for which although not alot a month is a huge weight of our financial shoulders, so that is one avenue for the future.

As others have said, actual baby paraphenalia costs hardly anything in the greater scheme of things. Its the childcare that may be the problem. It might be an idea to work out a couple of scenarios of whether you will be working or not/what sort of income/what childcare costs there will be? Though the biggest cost for us was actually conceiving - tens of thousands of pounds!!

agree there will never be a 'right' time, you live within the means you have at the time. In our experience we ttc when we both had 'good' jobs, by which i mean stable, secure, enjoying them (so wouldn't want to leave any time soon) and i had one with decent maternity provision.
So far i only have a 6mo but hes not cost that much, big things (cot, pram, high chair etc) havw been bought by family, but i realise not everyone is that lucky. He gets loads of toys and outfits as presents, i buy sleepsuits/vests/toys/books etc as part of weekly shop.
Although we are having to move as the previously mentioned clothes and toys no longer fit in our house, so that's a fairly big cost
Queenofbleach, what did you mean by help with childcare? we don't qualify for the working famuily tax stuff either, i didnt realise there were other options?

janinlondon

oh and if you haven't already get a boots advantage card, join the parenting club. You can buy loads of branded stuff through the boots website (including mamas and papas). I don't go to boots that much, do most of my shopping in supermarkets and somehow I have £60 on my advantage card to spend! I only got the card about a year ago!

get down and dirty with budgets/salaries/expenditure in Excel
tis a pain but you only have to do it once to convince him

for the record, IME once the baby arrives money is the last thing on your mind - when you do worry it's about sleep, milk, poo and mysterious rashes - so if you can do the budgetary legwork in advance this is a Good Thing.

Yeah, we drew up a ttc plan, which involved me conceiving, erm...about now
The plan's the same, we just don't have as much in savings

Oo! I forgot one thing that we did. When we were TTC we lived on DH's salary, and saved mine. It got us into the habit of budgetting properly, and reassured us that we could live off DH's money if we needed to. As it happens, we took so long TTC that we had saved a good nest egg, and just as well, as I ended up having fertility treatment.