How expensive is it to have a child?

[Missunknownfuture]

I'm thinking of maybe trying for a baby at some point in the next year but I am really worried about whether we can afford it.
I've read somewhere that in the first year alone a child costs over £11,000 and that figure goes up every year. If that is the case we will have absolutely no money for anything else. I want to give my child everything they need and want them to have a good life but I want to be able to have a nice life too and looking at the figures it's going to be impossible to be able to do anything else like date night or holidays or being able to live on more than toast! So my question is, are children really that expensive? Is there any way of being able to raise them cheaper? Thank you

Partly it is in reduced earnings: do you currently work? What is your company's mat leave policy - do they top up SMP? Are you planning to return to work at all? Do you have affordable childcare (a lot of childcare is expensive)?

In terms of spending, babies are cheap. Breastfeeding is obviously free, but not everyone can/wants to. Clothes, toys etc can be picked up second hand, cheap or free.

Once they get to school things can become more expensive: uniform, after-school clubs, days out. And when they get old enough to make their own choices, it can be even more so!

The biggest expense is childcare / loss of earnings. If you will need to pay for nursery etc, depending on where you live this can be very costly.

Actual baby ‘stuff’ can be bought quite cheaply secondhand, and you might be lucky enough to get lent some bits by friends with older children / toddlers.

How long is a piece of string? When the child is older there are activities, clubs - for some it’s more important than for others that their child/ren take part. Holiday childcare, birthday parties - small or big or none.

I agree with pp. The biggest expense of having a baby is childcare. So it is cheaper if you can find ways of reducing the childcare bill (eg using grandparents if they're up for it, or fitting your working hours around your partner's so that one of you is always around). Babies don't need much and there is loads of second hand stuff available.

It’s definitely not that expensive. I was on a low wage when Dd was tiny and we were fine. If you breastfeed and feed them what you eat anyway they don’t cost a lot at all! It’s just the big expenses of baby gear, but you can pick up pretty much everything second hand, and they only really need somewhere to sleep, some way of getting them about, and clothing/toys.

Now Dd is 3 is it getting spendy yes. Her nursery fees are around £850pm, food, clothing, shoes, day trips, savings etc. So I do probably spend 12k a year. But again this will go down when she starts school and I don’t have to pay for nursery anymore.

Have a really good look at your finances. Can you get better rates for your bills? Can you get rid of some non-essential things, can either of you get a pay rise between now and TTC? Things like that.

£11k in the first year?? Where did you read/hear that?

I agree with PP that childcare is the biggest expense. I became a SAHM and actually, babies are cheap. Clothes are cheap, breastfeeding is free, don't need to spend loads of money on activities, toys are cheap and you don't need loads of them anyway.
I think they get more expensive the older they get.

I'd also caution against "breastfeeding is free" - I spent an absolute fortune on trying to breastfeed! It was such a struggle, DD wasn't gaining weight and it was a nightmare. Looking back I don't know why I persisted as long as I did. From memory the costs were roughly:

£195 on three visits from lactation consultant
£280 on having tongue tie snip
£120 on rubbish breast pump
£47 per month x 5 for hospital grade pump hire
Probably about £80 on bottles/steriliser/milk storage bags
£20+ on lansinoh and creams

There's probably more, I just don't remember. But yeah - breastfeeding can be expensive

My DD is 14 months old, just worked out roughly spent 20k on here nice she was born.
Nursery is 160 pm for one day
Nappies/formula 30 quid pm (breast fed first 6 months)
Clothes/crib second hand maybe 200 quid.
Toys - 200 quid
Extra food/milk now - 70 quid pm
Loss of earnings last year and going forward 12 k Pa
Car seats - 400
New bigger car - 4 k

So yeah it is expensive lol it can be done though and we love her more than life itself

It’s childcare / loss of earnings. And yes, when you’re on maternity leave your loss of earnings can easily come to £11k over 12 months.

I have 3 children. My nursery bill is £550 a month for the nursery aged child and £1100 in total when you factor in wrap around care.

I spend about £13,000 a year on childcare. So that figure is before we have fed them / clothed them / been out of the house.

heynori But by becoming a SAHM you lost your wage every month. That’s a big expense!

Maternity leave and childcare are a killer.
My daughter cost me 5k in savings during mat leave, she goes to nursery 2.5days a wk and that’s just over 8k a year. My second baby will cost c.7k in savings as we now have nursery fees to pay for (although reducing due to free hours).
You can make it cheaper if willing available local family help, though that can come with problems as many a mn thread will show.

I think it depends OP. I don't recall the babies costing much except for pram, cot, car seat etc. It ramps up as they get bigger - nursery was about £800 a term (No vouchers then). Then primary school with uniform, lunches, trips, etc, plus swimming lessons, music lessons, ballet, football club, etc. We moved ours to the independent sector and added up that we'd spent about £250,000. Then uni (We have paid their fees and expenses). DS starts a PhD in September!

They are 25 and 22.

Agree with others, that most of that figure is loss of earnings and childcare. Other than those things, I don't think the baby cost us a huge amount. We were lucky that my parents bought us a travel system and DH's parents bought us a cot (which are the only "big" items you really need). Most of the clothes and toys were hand me downs/freecycle or charity shops. We used reusable nappies (initial outlay but then don't really cost). I breastfed and they don't eat much in the first year!

Teenagers
University

My baby cost £40k in fertility treatment to have in the first place, so...

Childcare is likely to be your biggest expense in the early stages. It's somewhat individual to circumstance - if you happen to be someone with kindly retired relatives nearby who look after your child for free, then that's obviously a very different proposition to paying for it. When I go back to work, the nursery costs for my baby will initially be double what I pay for my (admittedly fairly reasonable) mortgage costs each month. However, after a few years, free hours start to kick in such should help.

I do think there's value in sitting down with a spreadsheet and working out what your likely budget would be with a child, and what things would need to give in order to make it work. But I also wouldn't be overly put off by the fact that it's likely to start out quite tight - that's the reality for most people, and most people do make it work.

This is an unusual question to ask. I would consider your job and your housing situation. Anything you would like to do before having a baby. Clearing things like any possible debt. You can’t exactly plan the cost of a child.

It depends whether you intend to use paid childcare - big expense. How will it affect your earnings and earning potential? A lot of the extra costs listed are optional. We didn't buy a bigger car etc

You can’t exactly plan the cost of a child well you can to a certain extent. There was a thread recently about a woman who hadn’t realised the cost of childcare and so couldn’t afford to work/ not to work with no family help.

Agree with others especially when they are babies they don’t cost in terms of stuff. But you will need to think long term in terms of loss of earnings and/or childcare. For example although I paid a fortune in childcare when they were smaller once number 1 went to school I basically gave up a well paid career to become a sahm. We’re lucky in that dh earns enough. Most families aren’t that lucky.
Also they get more expensive when they get older in terms of stuff they want, activity clubs and also being charged almost the same as adults for holidays etc. Babies themselves are cheap! You can get almost all the “stuff” very cheaply/free if you’re sufficiently determined. That gets harder as they get older.

We saved up to cover my reduced maternity pay and knew the cost of childcare plus my part time wages when I returned to work so had a fairly good idea of the day to day. But that was when a nursery place cost £27 per day, 16 years ago. That same nursery is now £48 per day and wages have definitely not risen in line with that.

Childminders are cheaper, each of you dropping down to a 4 day week means only needing 3 days of childcare.

As everyone says, clothes/toys etc can be bought cheaply or second hand, the childcare element is the killer.

Ps the way to make it cheaper is to have a parent living down the road who is happy to be a permanent, free of charge, baby sitter. Most of us aren’t that lucky and even if we are, circumstances could easily change

As others have said childcare and/or loss of income are your biggest expense till the School years. But you kind of get used to it. There is a golden time when they’re at school so childcare is cheaper (assuming you don’t need wraparound and holiday childcare), they don’t have a lot of clubs and hobbies, You can get away with a child’s meal in a restaurant and they will happily wear clothes from Asda.

Teenagers are ££££

As @MumOfFraggle said- bf only free if it works out! I have just spent a fortune on bf support due to various issues and after all that it has still failed in the end and we are now on ££ formula.

With our first child we were eligible for child benefit and that was enough each month to cover a lot of the extra bits she needed - not including the initial 'set up' costs and things that were added to our grocery order every week.

Childcare is the biggest cost so look at all the tax free options. No reason you can't improve your career /earnings while having a child of course!

If you do your research then it's easier to plan and it's more doable. With our first we worked out our deficit in income with me taking mat leave and we saved the money in advance. With our second I have 6 months full pay and then smp so didn't need to save. With my 3rd smp covered it for us. Childcare costs are expensive but there are options. Our first went to nursery and we used childcare vouchers to cover some of the cost. Our second went to a childminder which was a bit cheaper and we had some tax credits too. I also went back to work part time. After my third mat leave I became a Childminder myself and so didn't have any childcare costs.

You also get child benefit unless you earn over £50k (I think it is). The best thing you can do is an example budget and factor in things like childcare vouchers (or the current equivalent which is tax free childcare I think). 3 & 4 year olds also get some funded hours, depending on how many hours you work.

I don’t know that it goes up; the first year it’s loss of earnings and then it’s childcare that costs the most and then as they get older it’s the things they want. I don’t know about the 11k figure but it depends on what you buy as well; you can buy a £900 pram or a £150 one.
We haven’t managed a holiday in the last 3 years since DD was born although we were due to go away in the UK this year but now she gets funded hours at nursery that will make things easier. We also spend less on things like nights out; we could have easily spent £100+ on nights/meals out and now we rarely get to go out.