Affording a family

[Doio]

If I really sit and think about it I don’t know how we will afford a family.

We are probably combined on about 60k more or less depends on the month due to commission. DH is wanting to retrain and so he will be taking a small pay cut (equivalent to about £100 less a month). It’s absolutely the best thing for him and means with each passing year he will earn more, and when qualified in five years our household income will jump up significantly. Short term cut for long term gain for sure. We are talking it going from £4000 a month to possibly £3800 a month. Our essential bills amount to £2100 a month leaving 1700 disposable between both of us.

We have a small house at the moment which is certainly big enough for one child. It’s basically your traditional terraced house, 2 up 2 down. When income goes down there’s definitely not a chance we’ll move to anywhere bigger, not with these 6% mortgage rates. We live in an expensive area and can’t move now because of work.

For personal & family reasons I don’t want to put off TTC.

I think the cost of living stuff/inflation talk has just set me off on a wobble and I look at my sister who can afford to stay at home and bought a large 4 bed detached before starting their family, and wonder if we will be mad to have a family now.

Of course there is the reduced pay on maternity leave and the cost of childcare, my friend pays £1300 a month and another friend is lucky enough that her mum does it. I think we would only need a part time place as me and DH can work around one another.

Basically, I want to know if it’s possible to overthink these things too greatly? My friend says if we all thought long and hard like I did you’d always find a reason against.

Bump

There's no perfect time to have a family, and even people that have it planned perfectly (in your eyes!) Can have changes which can't be foreseen.

You'll make it work, everyone does :) if you want to TTC and now's the right time, then do it! There are no guarantees in life and sounds like long term things will improve in any case.

Best of luck x

Can you save, hard, for the next year or so to fund the shortfall in wages for maternity leave and the first chunk of childcare? That's what I did.

You make sacrifices, but it is harder/more of a worry with the cost of living. We bring home about the same, but live in a medium £££ area and don't go away every year, live within our means. I think you'll be fine with 1 child at least. Also remember childcare won't be forever. The majority of people get 30 hours free after 3 years old, I'm sure?

I was absolutely like you, I started mentally totting up the cost of everything in the future - and there is alot when you think about it.
You will find however that your spending habits change as your lifestyle changes with it.
The best thing you can do is sit down with an excel spreadsheet and look at a proper budget including factoring in maternity leave. While on full pay I put aside money to offset the months with the reduced pay.
The thing to be most realistic about is childcare. Pre-child I was very disconnected from the reality of it and just presumed I would find a way to drop them off at 8am and DH to collect them at 6pm. Once DD was here the very idea horrified me, and we then had to look at how we could utilise flexible working to make sure she had more time at home. That came at the sacrifice of promotions for more money, as time is more important than payrises.
We also found that many colleagues just accepted going into a level of debt over the childcare years.

Thank you, I know I won’t want to leave them & I think at the moment I really stand by going back full time but accept I may well feel differently when the time arrives.
As we have opposing work patterns and kind offers of family help we are hoping that we will only need two days of paid childcare. There is also talk of funded hours coming in for 9 month olds plus from September 2025, whether it does or not is of course another matter but we are hoping both these factors mean childcare will be a v small cost for us as a family.
I think for now I’m more worried about the drop in income for maternity leave given that DH will be earning slightly less. It’s interesting you say spending habits should change as I never thought of this but you’re probably very right x