How much should you earn to have a 'larger' family?

[sunshineoverthesea]

I always come across responses to posts concerning growing families with 'can you afford it?'

How much is needed to grow a family from 4 to 5 or 6 etc?

So,
How many kids do you have?
How old are they?
What is your household income after tax per month?

We have 2 children, 8 and 4, may consider growing our family.
Our household income after tax per month is around £7500.

I'm not sure if that is good or bad but we do live comfortably but definitely affected by cost of living.

I would say you need £7501.25 after tax per month to have 3 kids. You're close but I'm afraid you're not eligible for 3 kids until you earn £1.25 more per month. Good luck with that.

This made me chuckle. But when people say 'can you afford it?' do they have a figure in their head?

No I don't think they do.

You have to budget and work it out. Like can you afford going on mat leave again? Can you afford the child care costs until youngest goes to school plus the wrap around care for the oldest two. Will you be able to afford wrap around care for 3 kids at a time.

If you can live off one income then you can probs afford it.

I think it will depend on your rent/mortgage and lifestyle (private education? Etc)

I suppose it depends on your outgoings we could definitely afford a third child on your income.

It depends. Our household income is similar on one wage (I don't count my wage in our day to day expenditure as I work irregular hours 2 or 3 days a week at most and it just gets put into savings). We have one child soon to attend private school. Likely to have a second and they'll also attend private school. We have savings in addition to our income which means we can afford both children attending private school.

We have a small home and we're not flashy people so we don't own a great deal of things. Our lives are minimal and simple and we're happy with that. We'll stop at 2 children.

Really does depend on your set up: mortgage, cars, holidays, schools, hobbies etc.

We take home £6500pcm and we would easily have another child without changing our lives. However, we would struggle with the drop in salary for the year.

Depends on your outgoings. A family with a small mortgage who do not need to pay for childcare will need to earn a lot less than a family with a large mortgage and
childcare costs.

We have four and earn less than you as we choose for me to work 4 days a week. But no childcare costs and mortgage on a detached house (where everyone has their own bedroom) is less than £1k a month. We have been on the ladder a while though
We're comfortable. We spend fairly freely, run two reasonable cars. Go abroad for 2 weeks every summer. Both have decent pensions. No debt. Save for the kids from birth. Not a lot but enough to buy them each a car at 18.
Won't pay for uni aside from topping up loans etc but I wouldn't do this if I had one child and earnt more.
The kids attend various clubs, spend a lot on food! They get a good amount at Xmas and birthdays. Various days out.
We do have a good amount of savings which we add to every year so hopefully will be able to give them each some deposit for property in the future.
I find MN is an odd place when it comes to affording children. Seems a given that you pay for private education, all uni costs, cars, house deposits etc.
We have always avoiding lifestyle creep though. For years we had huge childcare costs. They ended 2 years ago and both of us have had decent payrises over the last few years. Cost of living has increased our outgoings but we don't waste money and neither of us have expensive hobbies so we have just saved our previous childcare costs and have managed to get a nice cushion behind us

Well I couldn’t become a SAHM and half that I guess, could afford it during maternity leave then would have to continue working. I guess my question to myself is can I afford the time.

Struggling to understand how you afford all this on that wage!

We earn probably 6500 a month and are frugal spenders generally, without being penny pinching. By the time we've paid for mortgage, essential bills, food, wrap around care, (cheap) hobbies, daily spends, one car, clothes, shoes, household items etc (most of which are second hand) we have around £2k left. £400 of that goes into a holiday and Christmas fund. We have saved most of the rest for 3 years but we are about to spend almost all of it on essential household maintenance which has hit us all at once and can't be put off much longer, and we'll need a new (second hand) car fairly soon as well, so will have to start again!

Depends on your outgoings and the lifestyle you want. Our monthly income is around £7k and finances are a reason we're not having a second child, never mind anymore.

Not because I'm stupid enough to think we can't afford it full stop, but because we can't afford the lifestyle we want and make the savings we want in our high cost of living area.

But obviously people value things differently. We were always ambivalent about having a second, so don't really want to make it work but could if we wanted.

We have four kids.

My husband is on £12 per hour and works 45 hours a week. I'm self employed and earn about £200 a week, so that's less than £3k a month. We get a small top up of universal credit (barely worth the hassle of my being self employed bur as I am registered LWRCA I get a small amount for that) & child benefit.

We have one 16 plate car, we rent an average 3 bed house, we don't go on fancy holidays and don't go on big fancy days out - but we do live by the sea so spend a lot of time there. We manage perfectly fine.

We have 4 kids aged 5 to 12. Our household take-home money is just under £4k (including child benefit). We have a very good life - 2 old but decent cars, a holiday abroad each year and several UK minibreaks, plenty of hobbies for DC, a gig, theme park or theatre trip most months - and we don't really watch what we spend. Our house (a 7 bedder) only has a mortgage of £600 per month as we live in a very cheap area and had loads of equity as we met in our teens and bought our first home in 2008. I think things will be a bit tighter now the kids are getting older so I have just upped my hours to 26 per week.

@Garlicnaan I'm a bit of a bore and like to know what we spend on so a breakdown of our basic costs is below (kids are aged 14 to 6) I did say no childcare costs but in fact our youngest goes to after school club once a week and another club after school another day so total of £60 a month for that.
We both work from home pretty much full time bar the odd day in office for me which isn't far so don't spend too much on fuel. I work 26 hours over 4 days so finish in time for school run on 2 of the 4 days. Start work after school run so no morning costs.
All DDs including mortgage (currently £900 but will likely rise to £1150 ish in 3 years time) come to £2050pm
This includes pocket money, dinner money, mobile phones for 5 of us, kids savings (only £30pm each) clubs etc. Don't have sky or anything like that but we do pay for Netflix. Gas and electricity and council tax both quite high. Nothing on finance, cars bought outright every 5 years or so (not flash) pay about £8k for a car.
Then we put all spending on a credit card for points and repay in full every month. This covers all food, fuel and general spends. Clothes, days out etc. Usual bill is around £1500pm. If its higher we just save less. Some months we spend more than others. This month we've had to buy new football boots for two boys, a new vacuum cleaner and a dishwasher and we've decorated my eldests bedroom and bought him a new bed etc.
Then I put £1000 into another account which covers annual holiday, birthdays, Xmas and things like car insurance and any car costs
That leaves us with roughly £1900/£2000 which we just stick in savings
We don't overpay mortgage but might consider that in the future.
We are coming up to mid 40's though and fully appreciate things would be different if we were buying now. We've been in current house for over 6 years and house prices have gone crazy. Our house is about 25 years old and we haven't spent tons on it. We could absolutely splash out on a nice new kitchen and bathrooms but they're perfectly adequate and we do bits and bobs ourselves as we go along. We've fully redecorated and spent a fair bit on the garden but we do the work ourselves and pay for things out of our monthly wage. A new kitchen would be lovely but right now I'd rather have the money in the bank

We have maybe £4.5-5k a month between us, I'm self employed so it varies, but I work 2-3 days a week.

2 children - 1 & 2. In nursery 2 days a week.

Own a 3 bed detached house. Low-ish mortgage, tho might extend again and savings went on downstairs extension, so prob up mortgage.

2 cars, a campercan and my work van
A long haul winter 2/3 week hol, a 1 week france campervan summer hol, France over Xmas to family and several no frills weekends in campervan.

We could afford another, but don't want one. With a third we probably couldn't do long haul hol every year

Yet we manage on a mere £6000 a month with three children. We went to Orlando last summer, have a week AI booked in Europe this summer and live a good life. We’re not extravagant but enjoy treats and day trips. Depends on things like mortgage etc.

Can you afford it or can you adjust to afford it?

You need £1 more than your outgoings a month. Ideally £100 to cover unexpected or the ability to earn extra

I'm 1 of 3. 1 and 3 were surprises and I think my mum would be very honest and say neither could be initially afforded. No 1 was with an abusive arse and she survived on the kindness of others. A neighbour who gave her free childcare who is still a very dear family friend even though she is well into her 90s. With number 3 she was then with a very supportive husband who had the flexibility to earn more. He took on over time and doing odd jobs for friends and family and then took on a contract working outside of the UK as it came with more money. My mum went back to work when number 3 was 5 weeks old and grandparents were always available to provide free childcare care and as there was an 11 year age gap between youngest and eldest we did start looking after ourselves.

Looking at situations theoretically it always seems harder to achieve than when in the thick of it as when there is an extra person there in front of you, you just have to make it work. My dad worked 8am until 4.30 and then my mum worked 5 until 9pm they waved a hello/goodbye as they crossed on the drive but it was away for both to work without paid childcare.

Your income is irrelevant if your outgoings are more

It’s a deeply personal decision, based on lots of factors and depends how much you are willing to compromise your lifestyle. We could afford a big family but not without sacrificing luxuries that we simply don’t want to!

Well, we have a total net income of under half what you do including the UC we claim for childcare. We have three children, we cut our cloth accordingly, don’t have any debts, don’t have cars on finance. I’ve unfortunately had to say no to a couple of school trips, we won’t be going even on a UK weekend break this year … but we manage. Hopefully it’ll get easier once the little one doesn’t have huge nursery fees.

But it depends, you mortgage might be double ours or more, you may have other financial commitments, perhaps you don’t want to cut down on spending on other areas if you needed to.

That is plenty of money! We are considering a third and we get a UC top up. I think you will be fine.

I suspect you could afford to do some of that if you wanted to.