How much to budget for 1st child arrival

[VAO]

Hello,

New to mumsnet!!
I have a question around planning and budgeting around a 1st child's arrival. (We are not yet expecting)
My husband and I are both working full time and I am trying to anticipate and cushion our expenses for the first 6 -12 months of baby arrival.

My thought process:

1. Saving the amount of 12 months worth of mortgage.
   I anticipate to be on maternity leave for only 3 months, then 3 months working fully remote then hybrid from baby 6th months. (I am unfortunately not entitled to maternity leave without my income considerably diminishing due to existing tenure)

2. From a childcare perspective I was hoping for us to get a full time live in childcare person (nanny or au pair) debating if we should get from birth or months 3 when the fully remote work will start.

3. private healthcare for baby will be provided as part of some of the perks of my existing employment.

My husband will still be in full time employment

Can you please advise how much you did set aside when preparing for having your first child? I am sure I probably have missed few basics

Thank you so much!!

12 months mortgage is too relative an amount for anyone to help with but assuming average house prices it sounds generous. I presume you know the childcare costs - is the amount your saving to include this or in addition?

You have a different situation to most others so no point comparing to their £ spend.

You'll need a nanny if you need full time care from 3 months. Au pairs are more child minders- they're good for fetching kids from school etc.
you need someone who is experienced with newborns.

Saying this as someone who got Au paid for my 8 week old baby and it didn't go well. She was a young girl more used to looking after toddlers 3-6 years.

Also are you formula or breast feeding? This is the biggest expense with our baby (formula fed). Other thing: ours was born in winter so heating bills were huge for those first few months.

This was to include childcare as I should be back to work in some capacity at the 6 months mark

Thank you for the feedback the mortgage budget was just make sure that we are covered for a max of a year if needed.
I would ideally like to breastfeed (but as you know baby couldn't not latch, I don't produce enough milk...)

Well a nanny will be the most expensive part. Your looking at Min £20 per hour nowadays for that age. Plus you will pay various other employer costs. Online suggests the average full time nanny now costs £43,000 a year.

Otherwise for non childcare, if you buying average amount of baby items, not secondhand. I found we spent around £3000 in first year

Thank you so much that so helpful.
So the nanny cost is what I am a bit confused about I know it might not be the best benchmark but looking at Gumtree families advertise for full time nannies between 300-600pw
Will the fact that I want a live in - help with the cost or live in costs more? I did think it was the other way round....

If you have a live in nanny don't forget you'll need house insurance, to feed a nanny, maybe to put him/her on the car insurance, and you may want to pay for a payroll company for wages.

Sorry I don't understand won't she be covered in our existing house insurance? Does that mean I will need to add her as an additional adult living in the property?
I believe to add her to the car insurance that will be pretty easy.
For the payroll option I was looking to get a self employed nanny as I do not want to deal with other costs of having a person under payroll

I'm assuming you are U.K. based.

You have to employ paye for a full time employee, but theres payroll companies that will handle it. Its illegal not to.

Live in is cheaper usually but you need to calculate the extra cost of utilities, food etc. assuming you need 9 hours per day £600 months per week which includes employer costs may be enough if you are ok with a youngster straight out of further Ed childcare course. If you want an experienced nanny it's will be more, a fancy norland nanny even more.

Yes you're right I didn't realise nannies have to be on payroll.
I am happy with the cost of having someone at home!
I love to plan and prepare but this is give me anxiety more than anything!!!! Not sure how people cope 🙃

You'll need to tell your house insurer you have an employee working from your house. I don't think it will increase the premiums but it's like having a lodger.

You will be your nanny's employee (but potentially not their only one) so you need to think about all this means (e.g. how to cover their vacations, sick pay, SMP etc) - the payroll company will have templates for employment covering all this (I don't know how pensions work).

Which country are you in?

UK

3 months maternity leave is doable but ambitious. Leave some room for post birth recovery as you never know what May happen etc. I ended taking a year. You just don't know how it's going to go xx

I would take this opportunity to talk to dh about how things will be if you don't want to or can't return to work after 3 months. Parenthood causes you to have every single emotion you've ever had, often all in one day and the tiredness is like nothing you've ever experienced, especially if you're breastfeeding.

If planning really is your thing then you should at least consider the possibility that you may have post natal depression, the baby may need extra care, the baby may turn out to be twins. Some women feel they want to go back to work, some feel reluctantly that they have to, some feel that they want to be a sahp and honestly no one really knows until baby arrives. As pp said, 3 months is a not impossible but very ambitious target, try and at least look at other options.

Thank you for the feedback

-Hence my financial planning to save 12 months worth of mortgage (I think it goes without saying that this will allow me to stay home if needed)
-Live in help

• the option to work fully remote and to be home for some months with baby and nanny facilitating breast feeding and other childbearing aspect.
• We have a great support system mum and mother in law

When it comes to dh being a doctor (having delivered few babies himself) actually gives him a better understanding in comparison to me (as of now) when it comes to childbearing, childbirth, postpartum depression...etc

Anyway I can only plan to the best of my ability nothing is perfect.

Why aren't you entitled to paid mat leave? Are you self employed?

Is dh entitled to paid shared parental leave?

What's the plan for working those 3m to 6m fully remote? Will you use childcare?

Still familiarising myself with the app I don't know how to respond directly to your questions:

Why aren't you entitled to paid mat leave? Are you self employed?

. No I am not self employed.
. I haven't worked at my company long enough to be entitled to company paid mat leave of course I assume I will be entitled to SMP

Is dh entitled to paid shared parental leave?

. Yes

What's the plan for working those 3m to 6m fully remote? Will you use childcare?

. Yes full time live in nanny
.We have an office in the house so I will work at home I believe my employer will be VERY accommodating if I decide to go back to work that quickly after 3 months.

I’d also like to add as I’m currently expecting a baby. I plan a lot and am exceptionally risk averse so the below may seem OTT to a lot of people but just sharing my side.

I planned extensively and ended up with HG meaning I’ve missed 2 months of work due to severe sickness. So if you have a poor sickness policy at work - random things like that can cause financial issues. These things are luck of the drawer. Some women end up with a lot of time off work during pregnancy for different reasons, hope this doesn’t happen to you but budget for the possibility! Pregnancy is hard enough without also worrying about money.

In terms of saving, this depends on your own expenses and what safety net you think is needed in case you need additional maternity leave or your pregnancy ends up with complications meaning you can’t work. We went into super saving mode and restricted a lot of spending before we even started trying. We aimed to be able to survive on one wage essentially if we had to.

We also ran the numbers on the off chance I’d have to become a SAHM - you don’t know if you will have a child with additional needs or health issues meaning you may not be able to work. Check your mat policy, mine for example says I have to pay x back if I don’t return for x amount of time. This can come as a shock.

You also need to check the new childcare allowances that are coming in for working parents (30 hours from Sep 2025). If either of you earn over 50k I believe you’re not entitled to it so I’d have a look around childcare options if a Nanny ends up being too complicated or expensive.

In terms of things we’ve bought, I have budgeted barely anything. We’ve been getting a lot of 2nd hand items as babies grow so quickly. E.G - You can get massive bundles of barely worn clothes at boot sales, saves you a fortune for your savings pot. Nearly new prams are often being sold for 1/4 of the price on FB market place etc.

Thank you for the feedback I am not entitled to maternity leave so either way