Does it really cost you around £15,000 a year to raise your child?

[alittlebitmanic]

I've just been reading an article about this and I am wondering how realistic this figure is. Obviously if you aren't careful with your money I can see that spending this and more yearly is easy to do, particularly if you buy excess, premium items and designer brands. Or if you have a very expensive nursery.

But if you're careful with your cash, budget, don't buy more than is needed and shop around to get good value items, can this be reduced slightly? Or significantly?

My partner earns well and I do OK, probably around the average salary. I don't understand how people can manage £15k a year of their joint income to be spent on raising children (30k for 2 seems barbaric!) and this is making me worry!

I know our lifestyle will be affected, but my partner earns enough that I don't think we can claim any child benefit so I'm concerned we'll be struggling if it does indeed cost this much.

Would you say this is accurate? And how easy have you found it to spend less?

Really interested to hear everyone's opinion!

Easily 15k,because of childcare.

At 86k, I'm sure you'll manage. How do you think people on half of that do?

Our take home is 1/4 of yours (dh works full time, I'm a stay at home mum). Money is tight but we manage, and have just bought a lovely 3 bed semi. I think with nursery it can easily become 15k, but with your take home money I wouldn't worry.

This average is linked with the loss of income (not working but also missing in promotions etc... which means that women wages go up slower once they have children), bigger house, one bigger car etc...

Fwiw, I think that childcare costs are a big issue when they are little.
But as they are growing up so are the demands for the latest gadget (iPad, telephone and the like). Then we have the school trips (secondary p, about £1000 each trip. Obviously you don't have to but they will be taken into account when calculating an average), uniforms etc...
Fwiw we probably spend about that for two dcs who are teenagers.

Not for me as I gave up work and became self employed so little child care but I did take a cut in wages.
I guess you just get on tho and make it work.

Actual things like nappies food etc nothing like this amount. My biggest sacrifice was the drop in salary but I'm much happier for it.

My annual childcare bill is around £38k (3 under 5s, have a nanny and DTs also go to preschool which I have to top up as the preschool's costs are way more than the govt 3yo funding and they are amazing). Shudder. That doesn't account for any food, clothes, toys, activities, babysitting for freetime, holidays (they've only been on a plane to visit my parents so nothing fancy), bigger car, bikes, car seats... the list is endless.

We have two preschool aged DC and full time childcare for both would come to approximately £2,000 a month - so £24k a year. And that's before the factoring in of at least one extra bedroom for them, plus a larger car (I also have DSS and the other two are in car seats), costs of holidays etc.

For the stress levels and the fact that DH needs to have relative flexibility for his job, I'm currently a SAHM. My salary was well over £30,000 so in terms of loss of earnings that's a factor - and who knows what impact it's going to have when I do actually return to work?

But of course it's an average. People cut their cloth to their circumstances :)

I have 2, 8 and 13years and the expenses are: clothes (nothing special), school trips, piano lessons, Brownies, swimming, cinema, birthday parties, family holidays x2 a year, days out, summer holiday clubs (sailing, etc). We can afford it and they are lucky children. Food! 13 year old eats a lot (and a girl!).
Childcare - au pair. £500 a month I estimate (all in) and for another year or 2. (we both work long hours)
So they can continue to be expensive - but these are largely not essential. I've no doubt you can have happy children without most of this!

Give us a breakdown of your 86k. I find it hard to reconcile. 2 dc on that should be easy.

But it's really, really not about the premium baby brands and having a really expensive nursery is it? All that baby tat is a drop in the ocean of the actual cost of raising a child to adulthood. They need constant care and that's either you doing it (and so not doing paid work) or paying someone else to do it. Unless you are lucky to have family on hand to help out for free or you can take your child to work.

I went part time when DS was born 10 years ago and my career has never recovered, partly because I've been a lone parent for the past 5 of those years which limits my employment prospects even more.

When DS was pre-school age and in nursery full time it cost more than our monthly mortgage payments (on a 3 bed house in the SE).

Now he's older, there's still childcare to cover, plus extra curricular activities, clothes, shoes (all the shoes!), food, days out etc etc.

It's all doable though, you just cut your cloth and find a way to make it work.

This sounds about right to me, but you cut your cloth to fit what you choose to do. There are higher costs initially (childcare) if you go back to work, but the cost of other items is lower (there's a robust second hand market in small kids stuff, because kids use it for such a relatively short amount of time). Then the costs decrease for a while (primary school). But my friends with tweens and teenagers tell me the costs pick up again as the children want more of certain things (e.g. to buy lunch with their friends; to buy stuff for school; clothes etc). My budget comes out at about this.

My income is 25k and we manage on that.

Looking at it another way, from a child maintenance pov- if each parents share is £7500/year, do you think £625/month from the nrp sound a reasonable amount then? A lot? A little? About right?

I have 2 kids, so on 25k i am definitely not spending 15k each. They are in years 5 and 7 though so childcare days are over...

If you don't work and have a child and carry on not working the child itself will cost you very little.

As others have said the cost it childcare/lost earnings.

It would be pretty insensitive to the majority of posters here to be worrying that on a combined income of nearly £90k you couldn't afford to have a child - that would be bonkers

I don't mean to be insensitive, but my partner gets taxed one hell of a lot. This makes a huge difference to his take home pay.

In terms of the split, he earns just under £60k and I earn a bit over £25k. By the time we have a baby it'll probably be 90k or so. This means if I stop working we have no child benefit and hefty taxes.

I'm just trying to be responsible and find out as much information as I can in advance. Yes, he earns well, but that doesn't mean he might not be at risk of redundancy in the future.

His mother doesn't currently work and has expressed she will gladly do the childcare for cheap, but maybe she will realise how intense it is and change her mind there. I also worry if I leave my career I will struggle to go back.

We only plan to have one child, I suffer a lot with fatigue and I think more than one will definitely finish me off!

I reckon it costs me more than that really to raise my dd. My childcare is 3650 pa. Then an extra 3k per year renting a two bed flat rather than one bed/a houseshare. Cost of running a car when I could do without if I didn't have her. Food/clubs/uniform/clothes/birthdays. All adds up to more than 15k!

Having my children has cost me any chance of having a full time job (eldest has severe disabilities), so has cost me more than £15k (I have degrees and qualifications, so would potentially be earning a good wage). And that without any additional standard costs they bring (food, clothing, housing, etc) and without the enormous expense we had securing a Statement and decent school provision for dd1 (eyewateri g when added up), plus the incidental costs we've had for the younger two (also disabled, but not as severely).

We have to buy in care too, as not eligible for respite or other services, and that doesn't come cheap (when we can find it, which sadly is not consistent).

I dread to think what the final cost would be if all added up, but well over the £15k mark.

Allowing for loss of earnings and child care, I'd say it's fairly accurate.

But the amount wouldn't double if you had more than one child, as you only lose your income once, if that makes sense. Although child care fees would be close to double if you were working.

I always consoled myself over those calculations by reflecting that dh and I never earned that much in the first place, and since we are not in debt and have not been repossessed, we can't possibly have spent it on bringing up our two.

Again, how much you lose in earning if you have to go part-time depends on what your earning capacity was in the first place in my case, in the early years of our marriage probably about threepencehalfpenny

There are cheaper options than nurseries for childcare: childminders tend to cost less for a start.

KP86 makes a good point about not losing your income twice for additional children (though possibly over a longer period of time). There are other costs you don't have to have twice either: pram, cot, clothes, the more expensive toys.

I don't mean to be insensitive, but my partner gets taxed one hell of a lot.

Why does he pay more tax than other people on the same salary?

I'm willing to bet, even paying a "hell of a lot of tax", your household income is still twice mine, at least.

Costs depend on where you live. Like people said, childcare is quite expensive if you live in london. I had to stop working after having my second because salary didn't cover the cost and wasn't worth it to go back, as in i wanted to be there for the kids and wasn't willing to pay to work for a few years. If you are willing to get hand me downs from friends for clothing, shop at charity shops for toys and clothes, breastfeed to save on formula etc. I am sure you can keep costs way down. But some people, like me wanted brand new clothes for kids and enjoy shopping for them...so ended up spending more then i prob should have! It really depends. Also on your discipline to save. I constantly like buying them new books, toys, arts and crafts stuff, sign them up for extra activities after school. But my partner also has a really good salary.

Hi

I can't speak for older children as mine are still small but it hasn't really cost us anything yet. We just spend our money on different things!

I no longer spend my money (as much!) on clothes, spa breaks, expensive meals, big holidays and other things I like! I now spend my money on baby clothes, days out, plastic toys etc.

We do pay nursery fees for two days per week which is pre tax and split 50/50. I wouldn't include house cars etc as we would have that anyway.

You will be fine on your income xx

Nope it costs alot more! Childcare is hugely expensive and they keep growing so need clothes, shoes, food etc!

lillieslamb what did you do before you had a child? You need to factor the loss of that salary into the cost of the child, so unless you earned under 15k you're over that amount already.

Not necessarily.

Until a child goes to school full-time nursery is around £9,000 to £10,000 a year in my area. But since starting school my childcare bill has dropped to around £3,000 a year.

In addition to childcare there is also food, clothes, clubs, entertainment, books, toys, hobbies, trips, holidays, Christmas etc which I estimate costs around £4,000 a year (£76 a week on average). I am a fairly frugal, because I don't earn much. So from age 5 to 18 I think I spend around £7,000 a year in total.

Loss of earnings when on maternity leave or if you return to work part time plus childcare costs are the biggest.

When my children left nursery having gone there 3 days per week age 15 months -4.5 years my final statement was £47k spent.
Now I would say it's more like £15k for two per year bit that doesn't include loss of earnings as o work part time, we moved to a bigger house etc.

So yes, that seems overall about right to me. Food and prams are not the big costs!