How expensive are your children?

[PirateWeasel]

I've heard so many conflicting opinions from my friends IRL. Some say babies are the most costly because of high nursery fees. Others say school age because of uniform, extra curricular stuff etc, and others say teenagers because they want high tech gizmos, driving lessons and so on...

So apparently kids are always going to cost shedloads of money whatever age they are! But I'm curious to hear your experiences of which stages you found the toughest financially. I need to prepare myself... and my wallet! 😂

The under five years seemed expensive as we had nursery fees in excess of my earnings and there was no free or subsidised child care then.
However the 18 to 22 have been more expensive in the end because of university costs. Even with student loans we have had to subsidise heavily.

The biggest expenses are salary drop if you go part time, lost pension contributions, lost salary whilst on mat leave, nursery fees (I spent £47k on nursery fees).
Now mine are age 11 I reckon on they cost me about £1500 per month for 2 children that does not include school trips, holidays days, Xmas, birthday's

The biggest hit is loss of earnings or the cost of childcare. If you can find a way to mitigate that, then you're winning. We had to quite radically rearrange how we worked before having kids to deal with that one.

My teens cost me a fortune. School fees, uniform for which they have to have a separate sports outfit & footwear for each of the 5 sports they play at school, trips, pocket money, endless haircuts, orthodontic treatment, Subways, McDonalds, replacing endless lost calculators and pens, subs to cricket clubs, driving lessons, insurance, taxis home for when Ive had a wine or 2 and can't pick them up, clothes, trainers, Xbox games, replacing smash phone screens.... the list is endless.

2 DSes, 5 and 7
Private school (not UK so not mega bucks) + one activity + after school childcare (subsidised and only 4 days) = 12.6K€ a year.

Add on:

• food (they both have good appetites)
• clothes (the eldest destroys most his clothes and the youngest is a lot slighter than the eldest so can't have hand me downs and there are no charity shops here)
• day trips
• holidays
• birthdays, Christmas
• books
• school supplies

It all adds up.

I did notice a different in price for clothes once DS hit the 7-8 age range.

Under 5 seemed to rip through our money. Full time nursery fees in London were just astronomical. Plus every week we seemed to get a note home saying ‘grown out of wellies/coat lost/cup broken, please provide more’. Good practice for the university years I guess

We have one preschool aged child in nursery part time and one reception aged child. If we average our the cost of clothes (they get used twice) then they each cost around £12k a year. That’s including expensive trips abroad to visit family that are non-essential though. If we were to remove that it would be something like 10-11. They’ll get more expensive as school fees rise and they start adopting hobbies I suppose but nursery is definitely very expensive.

Really teenagers? We paid £12,000 a year for nursery until they started school.

Currently more expensive than uni and certainly more so that bus passes and trainers!

@Passthecherrycoke yes I can only assume those saying teenagers haven't had to pay full time (or even part time, as that was still 4 figures for me with 2) childcare. Plus I was earning less back then being further down the career ladder. I appreciate university is a bit of a special case but even then if it costs me £1600 a month for them to go, they won't be going ha or they can get a job or study here, there's more flexibility than with childcare.

Passthecherrycoke Our 3 boys were at private nursery till they were at school and it was about £9k a year each. Their school fees now are £20k each (day pupils). And thats before all of the expenses i have listed above.

Little kids are a doddle financially i reckon.

@BigusBumus and goady post of the day goes to.....!! I don't believe for a second you're that ignorant to assume the majority of people send their kids to private school or that your experience is anyway common. Cringe.

Yes but private school obviously isn’t a necessity. If you’re going to continue to work you have to pay childcare.

The title of this thread is "How Expensive are your children" and i answered about how expensive my children are! Not your children or anyone elses, but my children!

6months to 3years has been most expensive IME

£1k per month nursery costs

Grows out of clothes and shoes super fast.

Some funded childcare kicks in at 3 giving some relieve.

As a teenager I’m confident I won’t be spending £12k a year on clothes and tech

totally depends on circumstances. Our biggest cost has been me giving up work whilst kids were pre school. No nursery fees however. And whilst buying all the equipment and never ending new clothing in the next size up, we went out far less often so saved a fair bit there.
Breathing space when the kids got to school and I could start earning again, clothing required less often but they now need more expensive entertainment.
And then we hit SEN troubles. Eldest is no longer attending, work is understandibly becoming impossible. Long wait for a new school. If we don't want the school offered which is closest to our home we get no transport. This could cripple us.
And we still have teens to look forward to.
Don't worry about the cost, you can't possible estimate it, forecast it. If you want a family, it's worth every penny x

Babies don't cost a lot. When they are little nursery fees can cripple you though. I do believe when they start school that's replaced with school trips, hobbies and more expensive clothes and activities. So no real saving.

Then when they get to teenagers, they cost you an arm and a leg. They eat everything in sight, more than most adults. Clothes and shoes cost a fortune and they grow out of them so quickly. Need lunch money at school, pocket money, money for mobile. Start costing adult prices to take on holiday often. Birthday and Xmas gifts also get more expensive. Oh god I'm not looking forward to those years!

People who say that teens are more expensive than babies have presumably never had to pay childcare fees (or have forgotten).

£17,000 here for one baby with a childminder, would be more if we used a nursery - plus nappies, clothes, food etc. Unless private school is involved, I defy your 14 year old to need more than that!

@BigusBumus

"Little kids are a doddle financially i reckon."

It’s kind of got cheaper as she’s got older as an income % primarily because , as I continued to work FT , the nanny in her preschool years and childcare costs after school and in the holidays took up a significant % of income .

I think the baby years are expensive as in you go on maternity leave etc and then possibly working part time and just having less income but baby stuff you can get for cheap, cheap nappies, cheap wipes, cheap clothes but I've found it's school that's now expensive!! School dinners a week are £11,so for 2 children that's £88 a month!!! Once my youngest is too old for free dinners, I try to push for packed lunches without saying this is because your dinners are expensive! But 88pounds is a food shop! And they're not even that nice. Daughter does an after school club and this term it cost £45 and all they really do is make up a dance but you don't want them being left out if their friends do it so you pay it! I think just stock up on a baby items, throw a couple of packs a wipes in the trolley when pregnant every week to start collecting

@Shelbybear I've paid up to £1600 for childcare a month, uniforms, school trips, school dinners etc have no way ever exceeded that, not even for 1 month, not even with the fact I still pay for out of school club. So I don't quite buy into school being just as expensive, or even teenagers.

I'm going to say 1-3 (when the free hours kick in!). DS costs me £1150 a month in childcare fees. He costs me an extra £15 a day on the days DH can't do pick up. It's absolutely going to cripple us when I start my new job it'll be worth it long term though while I'm retaining.

I don't think we spend a lot on clothes, childcare fees mean I stick to eBay bundles generally anyway.

I'd say about £1300 ... a month ... on a good month.

newjobnerves Your children are 5 and 8. I really don't think you can comment on how much teenagers cost as you haven't had teens yet.

You can have a good guess though, can't you bigus, so long as you aren't interning to send your kid to private school, it's reasonable to assume that they aren't going to spend £1k/ month on shoes, trips and subways.

@BigusBumus yes I can, I will not be paying £1600 a month on teenagers, I can tell you that now.