£18k to have a baby?!

[EstherOnions]

gurgle.com say that the average cost of having a baby is £18k for one year and £27k for three! only if you're Madonna, maybe - or do you reckon it's a fair price? You can work out what it'll cost you to have kids too with this budget calculator they've got: www.gurgle.co.uk/tools/baby_budget_calculator/default.aspx

yeah, I spent at least £16,000

Can you link again, I cannot get on it with copy/past.

FWIW all mine came free of charge and I am pretty sure they did not cost that amount of money to feed and clothe in the first year!

I wonder if the cost of not working is included?

cant possibly be true...I earn nowhere even close to £18k (neither now nor when they were born) and my 2 kids have everything they want need

YOu either lose the full time wage - average £20k and many of us earn 5x tthat; or you hire a nanny which is what we did which may cost you out of gross earnings not far short of £30k. So yes that figure may be true. Baby equipment we bought second hand and didn't bother with most of it.

I saw this in the paper earlier.

It had something ridiculous like nearly £2k for education and classes in the first year (and only £800ish for yrs 1 to 3) and £868 for maternity/birth equipment. What do either of those figures include? I might have bought a new nightie for the hospital and some breast pads but they didn't come to £868!!

The childcare costs were only about £6k if I remember rightly and loss of earnings £2k.

The numbers were all over the place and made very little sense.

I'd be surprised if DS1 cost us even a third of £18k in his first year. DS2 even less.

I could easily believe it if they were talking loss of income if you took your full maternity leave and only got SMP. Income loss for 6 months, followed by nursery fees for the next 2.5 years would add up to well over the quoted £27k for 3 years for us, even before we'd actually bought any baby equipment/clothes, etc.

I reckon yes, in lost earnings. I have two now and it wouldn't be financially profitable to work (childcare costs for two would be more than I'd earn), so in that respect, yes, has cost me at least 18k per child per year.

childcare costs would only be 30k for certain sectors of society: those who can't afford a nanny find cheaper childcare

I'd be surprised if my CM makes 30k out of all her mindees together

I liked the cost of toys in the first year - £1,279. If that is the average spend then how much are some people spending on their newborns? I reckon I spent about 10% of that and thought that was a lot.

dd cost erm...
11 k for ivf treatment
less than 1 k for furniture for her room, (it was completely bare), clothes, mat clothes etc etc
i lost no wages as went back to work when she was 4 months
2.5 k for childcare up to first birthday

so 14.5 k total.

as most people don't have to watch their life saving disappear into the bottmless pit of ivf, i should think most babies are cheaper.

we didn't buy a single present for dd. not one.

before she was born, it was still too indefinite that things would go well, until the last few weeks, when i was too ill to go out. then she was born and was given so many presents we didn't buy her any. nor did we buy her anything for her first christmas!!

Kickassangel, thank goodness you got your baby in the end. Not that you can put a price on a baby, but to have spent so much money, and end up without a child would be so soul destroying.

Well i'm embarrassed to say that I own 4 buggies (one bugaboo, 2 strollers and one double buggy) and I only have 2 children, one of whom can walk, so I agree with the 18k. Oh and I definitely cannot afford this kind of money, but if I add up how much i've spent so far I can feel myself blushing!

I'm glad that I got most of it second hand-the baby doesn't care. I would save the money until you have teenagers-a figure for those years would be interesting!

It will cost whatever money you have, not more (if you have any idea of budgeting).

It will lose you in earnings whatever you would have earned if you hadn't had it, not some statistical average person. In my case, that would be considerably below the national average.

Mine are easily that expensive. They are 6 and almost 4 now.

food
clothes
activities
childcare (over a couple grand a month)
two more little people on holiday
and so on...

I think I prefer not to add it up. It will only depress me.

My little angels are 10, 4 and 4 months and i believe the older they get the more they cost. dd1 costs around £12000 (estimated)a year with school trips, clothes and her social life whereas dsi (4 months ) has only cost me around £500 for all his equipment, clothes and cloth nappies, so i think £18000 is a little extreme

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I think our total household income over the 3 years since DD was born is about £18,000. And that's before the bills are paid.

I'm sure that if I had access to unlimited money I'd've spent loads more on her, but £18,000? What for, gold plated dummies?

It really annoys me when people say they would only have a child if they could afford it, how much do they really cost??? Child benefit and tax credits easily covers more than what our dd (2yo) costs. Maybe slightly more expense in that we have to rent two bedrooms in our house instead of one, but even that isn't vital.

Well after customising their calculation based on the fact that this little one won't be having anything new as he/she has an older sibling of each sex, I am a stay at home mum so won't be losing a salary and I kept all my baby stuff I get a shockingly low total of £2779 for 3 years!