Can we afford to have a baby??

[Planningtobeamum1]

I want to start this thread off by saying I'm not moaning at all about my situation, just need some external advice!!

My husband and I are planning on trying to start our family soon. We've been married for nearly two years and both work hard earning about £40k each. We live on the outskirts of London, TW15 area, where property is slightly cheaper than in London itself. We bought our 3 bedroom 'family home' early last year in preparation of starting a family. We both work in London, meaning long days, my husband is in the Met and so works a shift pattern. We own our house but have a mortgage of just under £1600 per month, combined with household bills, food etc leaves us with about £700 to live off each month. We've worked on reducing our bills and cutting out luxuries, but transport costs add up for us (my train fare is about £300 per month). This is absolutely fine for us both now, but we are not sure how it can work financially with a new baby since our take home pay is unlikely to increase greatly over the next couple of years.

It's difficult to find out costs but childcare costs seem to be about £1000 per month and finding a drop off/pick up which fits with my commute seems virtually impossible. Local jobs in my field are rare and pay much less, we wouldn't be able to afford this house on one salary....

We just can't work out at present how anyone affords to have a child, let alone more than one. Selling our home and downsizing seems ludicrous, since property is just so expensive and now smaller properties cost what we paid for ours.

Thanks all, we are a bit more positive about this now. We had no idea that £450 per month for two was a lot!! We rarely eat out/takeaway and get our lunches out of it. It does include housekeeping stuff (toiletries/cleaning products). Smarter shopping it is (and paying off the loans from savings....)

Phones are £20 and £32 a month, not £55 each!!

Cat £80 does include litter so 'only' £60ish on food. They are still babies so on two wet meals a day. In a few months when they're 1 we will drop them down to one wet meal a day and increase the dry.

£450 a month on food is over £100 a week! I reckon on about £55 a week for the 4 of us... That's your biggest saving, right there. And reduce the amount you spend on cat food!

You can easily halve that phone bill as and when your contracts are up, though. Not a huge amount in itself, but you seem to have lots of bits and bobs that could be shaved down. When you add them together, that could be the difference between being able to make ends meet with a baby and not. Also always worth checking you're on the cheapest electricity and gas tariffs for you- your bill doesn't look that massive but again, if you can shave a few quid off it you may as well.

If you want some ideas on cutting the groceries bill, as well as the usual stuff such as checking out Aldi, Lidl etc, there's a credit crunch board on here and a number of cheap meals threads going. You'll probably find there are lots of switches you can make without really noticing the difference.

You are still spending way too much on your cats

Butchers tinned food is good quality and very reasonable about £3 for 6 tins, a 3kg bag of Iams is about £15. 1 tin of food will last my cats a few days and their bowl of biscuits is topped up every day. Plus cat litter in the supermarket is only about £3 a large bag. I would say I spend between £15-£20 a month on both my cats (only including food and litter.)

Come and join us on the frugaleers thread in credit crunch for lots of support when trying to save money and look for savings.

Sorry meant to say i reckon on the Iams lasting at least 6-8 weeks.

Yes - your lifestyle certainly changes when you have a baby and I think there is loads of scope for savings there.

Agree re food shopping - we pay £200 for 4, mobile phones.

You must pay off loads with savings unless they are free - although I would anyway.

Food is definitely an sea to concentrate on. My DP has been made redundant so we switched our shopping from Tesco to Aldi but buy our meat in bulk from Muscle Foods and store in the freezer (always buy one of the offer bundles never pay the full price). Our shopping has gone from about £500 a month to about £200 and we are now buying wipes and nappies that we didn't buy before. Meal planning means you waste nothing.

This bullshit makes me so angry. How entitled do you have to be to honestly believe you do not have to make way for a baby? Get rid of the cats, cut down your preposterously high food bill, fuck the motorcycle off and GET A BLOODY GRIP.

The food bill is not 'preposterously high'. Perfectly normal for a couple earning decent money to spend that much.

OP - I think you can afford it, but you will have to keep a grip on the budget. Rather than trying to cut back and cut back - is there a way either of you can increase your income so you can pay things off quicker, save some money for baby kit?
My DH was made redundant when DS1 was only 10 months old. I had just decided not to go back to work so it was a tense time. He was able to find new work very quickly, and much better paid, and every day we count our blessings for that happening. It got us out of the mind set of being stuck in an employment rut, waiting for promotions and so on, which unless you are in a career that rewards very well once you hit a certain point is never going to see you take a big step forward in earnings.

A change in outlook and thinking could really help you here.

That food bill is no less outrageous than paying four quid for a bowl of cereal. What is wrong with people?

I wouldn't pay £4 for a bowl of cereal, but my shopping bill is a lot higher than the OP's!

Congratulations.

Handmaiden what exactly is your problem. The op doesn't need to " get a grip" she is ask for reasonable advice re affording the costs relating to a baby. Maybe you should keep hold of your grip yourself.

Your contributions to this thread are fucking bizarre handmaiden.

And did you miss the part where OP said the motorbike is needed for DHs commute and is cheaper than the train? He's a policeman, they do funny shifts. Why would getting rid of the bike save them any money, based on what OP has posted?

No couple on eighty grand a year need worry about the cost of a baby; they simply need to stop spending in the way they have been doing or one quit their job and downsize. It's not rocket-science is it? You simply can't have the stuff you like having now.

What do you want more? A baby or your stuff? First World bloody problems for the rich.

It's the entitlement of a couple who spend £450 a month on food and eighty quid on the cats that flabbergasts me. Yes, I may sound angry...because I bloody am.

This kind of couple don't have a clue about real life.

You just sound over-invested and unable to rtft, to be honest. Some of the advice you've given would actually cost them money.

...and perish the thought of the wealthy young couple who have to spend money instead of save!

We were in the same situation...wondering whether we could afford to have a baby on £26,000.
As much as I hate doing it, we write a strict budget every month, and check off receipts so we know exactly where every single penny is going. We have managed to cut down our food bill drastically (I have been converted to the wonders lurking in Aldi and Lidl!), changed our car insurance provider (payments have dropped to less than half of what we used to pay with the old provider), cancelled our Sky TV and got a Now TV box instead, so we still get all our Sky programmes, but it's not a contract, so we pay £9.99 a month if and when we want to. We also go without lots of things that we used to have. I used to be a Starbucks addict, but that had to stop. I stopped smoking, DH stopped buying crap for his games console, then eventually sold his console. All the little things make a massive difference! Now we have 6 month old DD and have more money going spare than we used to purely because we can't go out and spend willy bully like we used to! And like other people have said, make a "childcare pot" that you put spare money into. All the money I used to spend on cigarettes has gone into ours, and in 6 months, there is way more in there than I thought there would be! (Kinda embarrassing when I think how much I used to spend on cigarettes )

That makes about as much sense as your cereal remark. I hope you've not scared OP off.

I would suggest you keep a spending diary and see where the money is going.

It is all about cutting your cloth accordingly.

Our story was DW was a deputy head on 40k. I was on about 15k. Our mortgage was £500 per month. We looked at what we spent on lunch and other things. We where spurning around 50 a week on crap at lunchtimes.

From when we started planning we lived on my salary and cleared debt and saved what we could. We could survive on one wage and put food on the table.

Even now 15 years later we only earn about 60k a year but have a fantastic life. And spend less than you do on food for 4 of us a mixture of Aldi, local butcher and green grocer.

It's doable in your situation easily but will need to curb your spending.

I hope the OP has gone to take a look at the thread on Chat called 'What Is Wrong With People?' to get some perspective.

You too, perhaps, von twat.

Your utterly fucking ridiculous posts would provide plenty of content for a thread about what is wrong with people swallowing.

A fantastic life on £60k a year! Who'd'a thought?!

Shocking isn't it.