Did you save up before having kids?

[shhsecret]

Hi All☺️

Just a general question really where I am intrigued to see what the answers will be!

Did you save before having children, if so, how much did you have saved? Or did you just wing it? For those whose babies weren't planned, did you just adapt to your situation?

We're thinking of starting a family next year but have no idea how much to have in the pot before. My DP wants to have a decent kitty behind us, as well as saving during the 9 months.

So basically I'm being really nosey!

No. I had savings anyway and we can live on one wage so we've been ok. Once the big expenses had been made (cot, travel system etc), I've brought pretty much everything either in the sales, second hand or using gift vouchers he's had for birthday/Christmas. He did wear some terrible, not our taste baby grows that were presents to start with though. I found that my day to day expenses have gone down considerably compared to when I was at work (no more daily trips to Starbucks!)

Yes. We saw SIL have three children with two absent fathers, car repossessed and always scratching around for money and MIL ordering us to help out because we were childless. We never wanted to be in that position.

As it was it took years for us to conceive so we’d paid off the house by the time it happened so now, with just the one child, we can afford a super school and a great life.

SIL’s eldest has left home, living with her boyfriend and is continuing the cycle of having children on the breadline. I would have hated that.

Yes we saved for each one around 10k. Took a long time but worth it so we didn't have to worry about car MOTs and eating healthy etc.

@Smile19 10 thousand pounds?! Wowza... I don't think we'll be saving that much but I like your dedication 😅

Started saving for a baby/mat leave but took much longer than expected so we had a decent pot saved. We used a small inheritance to fund IVF and would’ve used our savings if we had needed to pay for another round, so as it was my savings + maternity pay funded 18 months off work (including being signed off sick for majority of pregnancy).

We saved enough to cover the difference in my income - so when I was on SMP we had enough in the mortgage/bills account to live comfortably.
I also had a little pot so I could treat myself, go and drink wine with friends without having to ask husband for money.

No, not really, but we were on a pretty limited income and going to be for a number of years, and my age was such that we didn't want to wait for years.
That said, back when I had my dc, we only had 3 months maternity leave so weren't thinking about funding a ear without salary. Child benefit was about equal to the cost of a tin of formula and the nappies for the week, so babies weren't really that expensive.

I too was more than happy to accept things given to me 2nd hand, and my parents bought us a pram and dh's parents bought us a cot.

Ideally, lovely to have some savings behind you, but everybody's circumstances are different.

No, we didn’t save a penny, just winged it, but didnt have an expensive lifestyle. Cut out things like hair colouring, new clothes for self. Stopped eating out.

Only had SMP. We did get WTC though as XH had a shit year in self employment. I went back to work part time when DC was a year old.

DH is a good saver anyway and is naturally frugal.

I’ve started saving as of January and really cutting back on food, coffees, lunches out, takeaways, clothes etc.

Depending on how things go with promotions etc, we’re planning to TTC from July and I’m aiming to save 5k this year.

Depending on how long it takes, some of it may go on new furniture and house move.

The actual maternity leave can be relatively inexpensive - so long as you can cover basic living on one salary /maternity pay, you can live quite cheaply especially if you can buy second hand, including perhaps cloth nappies, and save by cooking from scratch, going to free playgroups etc. The thing we hadn't fully realised with dc1 was the cost of going back to work - childcare is crazy, and as he was new to nursery we also had to take days off for sicknesses, plus I was so tired and wished we could afford a cleaner, some takeaways and some new work clothes. We had run through our savings a bit when I was on leave, and then when going back to work we weren't making enough to build savings back up again.

With later DCs we've tried to save more on mat leaves to allow for some padding when going back to work.