Can i be nosey and ask how much u live off each month?

[TwoLeftHands]

..just somethinleft with friend said to me. Me and dp between us earn 2,000 a month. Our bills are around 13,000 so were left with 700 and thats not covering petrol and food.. So say were left with 300 odd spare. We currently don't have any children (dp has two to ex partner) and we both want 3/4 kids. My friend said to me we won't be able to afford one child. Is this true? I don't think we'll be entitled to any benefits. How much do ur large families live on a month? Can we live on what we earn?

I have three kids btwn 15 & 8 and spend 750 rent, 150 bills, 130 on kids spends &activities,100 petrol, 700 food & household things, about 200 on everything else. Plus holidays and internet purchases which goes on the visa bill that never seems to change whatever happens.

Well I won't give specifics but I earn more than that alone and we have two children and more would make things tight.

We don't have a big mortgage or extravagant life style. We have practically no Childcare costs.

At three things start getting a lot more expensive IMO, cars, holidays, housing, clothing, you name it. Not to mentioned Childcare for you both working.

Plus if your DH is already paying for two children I really don't think 3 or 4 more is possible on that sort of income. There will be people who do it but it requires a level of budgeting and sacrifice that we wouldn't cope well with.

Many families live off less than that and don't consider themselves to be that badly off. When you have kids your priorities change and you can buy less clothes/take-aways/nights out/holidays etc. There are always ways to cut costs too. It depends on what you think is essential and what you are willing to not have so you can have your family.

A lot depends on your housing costs as these vary so much from family to family.

We have 3 small children and all our bills food and petrol come to more than 2 grand and then theres uniform, activities, school trips, clothes, birthday parties, Xmas, holidays etc on top of that.
£2000 means different lifestyles in different parts of the country so hard to compare
Min only have logos jumpers but even with supermarket uniform, once you include shoes, lunch boxes, coats, water bottles, pe kit etc etc that's £150-200 per child a year, school trips etc are probably another £100 per child (rapidly increasing as they get older) plus normal clothes, shoes, wellies sanders, hats and gloves, coats, su hats etc etc.
Mine do ballet (£3.50 week x1, swimming £4 per week x2, beavers £3 per week x1, gymnastics £4 per week x1, guitar lessons £4 per week x1, violin lessons £1 per week x1 and th youngest hasn't started any clubs yet as only 3. School snacks are £20 per child per term, youngest playschool is £8 per week (top up to funded hours) school dinners is something like £80 per term but we do packed lunches

I would say £2000 would mean living very frugally, having to say no to a lot of stuff. We were like this for a while and I have to say it was miserable. We still have no money left at the end of the month but food in cupboard, things all paid for etc just run out of disposable cash. I definitely would not want to plan children on that income.

Don't worry about whether you can afford 3/4, I always wanted 4, I have 2 and I'm sticking with that for a few reasons, only one of which is financial.

I'm a sahm, dh earns approx £35k and we have a small mortgage. Our dcs are 7 and 3.5 and tbh we definitely feel like another child would cripple us. Like someone else said I'm sure it is doable but not in a way we, personally, would like to live.

When you have kids your priorities change massively but also there are costs you just never considered (or I didn't!) eg next week I have £15 beavers fees (6monthly) £18 karate fees (monthly), £60 football fees (termly), £10 school dinner (week), £18 nursery snack fees (termly) and £3 weekly beavers subs. It all adds up. The week after it'll be a whole other set of unexpected costs like birthday presents for friends, new school jumper, new shoes which dd needs, etc etc.

However, as the saying goes, if you wait until you think you can afford them you'd never have them. How much does your dp pay for his children now? Does he want 3/4
Kids with you and think you can afford it?

We have 5, both work f/t. I earn 24k a year, dh is SE and earns roughly 15k a year, but is paying off business related debt so deduct 4k a year from that to live on. Monthly income 1.5k for me (before my student loan kicks in and takes 200) and 800 for DH.

We have never sat down and worked out exact figures but our bills and mortgage come to £1300, food £300 a month, and normally spend 600 a month on credit card (paid off in full each month) for bits and pieces like clothes, socialising, kids outings. Big things like car insurance we pay when they come in.
We get cb which we save half, other half saved then pays for our holiday (we get roughly 300 a month). We also get tax credits, 250 a week but that mostly pays for childcare for our youngest (160 a week). Ex gives 150 a month for my oldest two, dh gets nothing from his ex for his two.

We are not rolling in it, I am always careful to seek out best deals for our big spends but I do not feel worried financially. Like others say though, there is a lot more cost involved with more dc's. For example, DD1 and 2 wanted a onesie, so I bought them one, however now the 3 boys want one and in the name of fairness I have bought them. So rather than spending £20, which is not a problem, I am now spending just over £50 which is a bit harder to swallow! With less children I would definitely treat them a lot more often. The more children there are, the rarer the treat.

Income: roughly £2,000/month. Regular outgoings: £1,200, not including food and petrol (the latter fairly minimal). DS is at a state school and has one music lesson a week at £40/hour. There's always a bill every month that falls into a less regular category (car servicing, new tyres, boiler breakdown, that type of thing.) Child benefit, but no tax credits. We don't have holidays much. We manage. But I think two children would be tougher.

I have never added up the exact monthly cost of our food bill, petrol, electric etc, but do know that 3 teenage boys eat us out of house and home and our food bill (with 5dc) is a lot more than others have said. Children definitely get a lot more expensive as they get older.

My dh is a higher rate tax payer but although our mortgage is only £100 per month, we cannot afford to go on holiday,have nights out or takeaways. We don't drink or smoke but we also have managed without any credit cards or loans.

So would we be entitled to working tax credits?

For one child, the cut off point is 26k gross so with 2k income net you are getting close to that point.

Right now I would seriously suggest you dont rely on any in work benefits to plug a gap in your income because there are likely to further reductions in thresholds unless things change.

Also bear in mind that the childcare element doesnt cover the full cost of childcare even if you are entitled to claim.

And hats off to the poster up there who manages to feed 2 adults and 5 children on 300 a month

We are on about that now and we feel well off. When we had 1 dc we were on a lot less and it was harder. I could easily afford another on this income, and have a decent lifestyle.

Yuo cna check what benefits you would be entitled to (inc tax credits) by playing around with different figures on this site :
www.entitledto.co.uk/

With both our incomes we earn around £3500 a month. We pay household bills, petrol, groceries, gifts, child stuff etc with that money. Money for school fees are paid for from my trust fund. Health insurance and childcare is covered by DH's work.

Plus DH seriously likes to budget and keep records of our money which really, really helps us save money for the next coming month. We save up for holidays, buy Xmas and birthday presents throughout the year when things are on sale and toys are mainly bought from charity shops. I don't see the point in buying new toys or even baby products i.e swings or bouncers. We also buy cheap clothes and use the DC hand me downs for the little ones. We use cloth diapers - passed down from when oldest were babies to save on money plus other stuff.

We also go by the rule that if we want something new and it's somewhat expensive, we sell what we don't use or want and raise the money that way.

We mana

We spend about 4k a month, maintaining a good standard of living for 5DC with support as needed (au pair, cleaner and gardener; essential with both of us working). We give quite a bit to charity and do a fair share of entertaining, but otherwise there aren't many luxuries: State schools, holiday = fortnight in a static, one very basic car. Haven't had a takeaway in living memory. But can do treats for kids such as riding lessons once or twice a month if we're careful.

Our joint income is about £2200 a month (most of that coming from dh as I work part time) We have 2 children. Never had any childcare costs. We have 2 cars. Both girls have ballet and swimming lessons.
Holiday every summer (may not be abroad but still decent holidays)
We go out for meals, take aways, days out, nights out.
We don't have any disposable income at the end of the month but we have food in the cupboards and everythings always paid. The moneys there to spend in my eyes. Thats what we work for.
Saying that, we have decided to stop at 2 as any more would probably cripple us financially in their teenage years.

We jointly earn approx £5k (after tax and ni). Our main outgoing re the kids (2 DCs under 5) is childcare. If you have grandparents nearby who are willing to take your dc on a regular committed basis then that will reduce childcare outgoings. We don't have any help and so for 2 dcs our childcare costs are approx £1500 a month for 4 days a week and we live in the North! This is something you can't cut back on if you dont have any other help although nursery costs do vary massively across the country so yours may be cheaper than that op. Even once they start school there will still be childcare costs of dropping off and picking up from school unless you have an employer who will let you work around school times.

Our other monthly outgoings are approx £1500 plus we put money into savings (general and for each of DC) and pensions each month before classing the rest as disposable.

Before we had kids we paid off the majority of any debts we had and managed to pay down some of our mortgage which helped reduce our monthly outgoings and buy a bigger house when we needed to.

That said, i did give up work for a while and we easily managed to live off a lot less as you learn to manage with what you have. Even now we probably live off a quarter of what we spent before we had dcs and don't really notice not having the nicer things we did before and would not have it any other way!

We earn about £2k plus CB & maintenance makes about 2500. We have 4 kids , run 2 cars and have a mortgage. Things are tight but we have holidays, meals out etc
But we live oop north, each owned property before dh & I got together and don't have CC costs.

That includes 2 teens btw^^

rhonda We shop at Aldi. I expect our food bill to increase as they get older!

Well I am pretty sure you can afford a couple of kids on that. ;)

You learn to adapt and you live to your means. For example: DH earns £2500 a month. Mortgage is £700, other bills and car loan, council tax, internet bill, gas/ electric etc takes all our monthly outgoings to around £1300 a month so not too dissimilar to you really. We have 2 children and I wouldn't say we're skint. We shop sensibly and eat well but don't go on foreign holidays (well we did last year but that was put on credit card which we STILL are paying off!) but we are careful not to do that every year! We have everything we need and the boys are well dressed and loved.

My main point was that when we first bought this house, our mortgage was still £700 a month, our other outgoings were similar so around £1200. DH earned £1800 a month, we still managed (although I will admit we only had one child then!) . Despite being on more money now, I don't feel that we're any 'richer' because you adapt to whatever lifestyle you can afford.

We have about £2k income a month, 1 DC and I have posted tonight about feeling very skint

Think it depends massively where you live, how many cars you have etc. Our house is a large (ish) 3 bed detached but because we live up North, our mortgage is similar to rent on a studio flat in London! What we spend up here is totally different to down South.

Have three children living with us- £1600. It works out quite easily tbh, one of my friends manages on just above £1000, though.

Oh, and we live in inner London.