How much savings for a baby?

[freckly12]

I am a Waiting to TTC girlie due to my husbands reluctance, his want to get his business up and running and just being plain and simply 'not ready'.

So i am waiting... have been for nearly 2 years and he promised that we could TTC by December this year.

However, last night he started saying- how much savings do we have, will i have enough saved to cover a month unpaid ( i live in Dubai, so only get 2 months paid leave), and cover nursery costs etc.

I calculated that i will have by the time we actually have the baby ( end 2013 all going well).
But my question is- roughly should i have 20k saved or 30k or 40k?????

Any answers would be good so i have a response to my excuse filled husband!

What are the savings for - unpaid leave & nursery fees?

Unpaid leave, nursery, baby items- cot, pushchair, nappies etc. Cos we live out in dubai with no family, wont be getting much 'gifts' etc so will be buying all ourselves iykwim.

He is convinced that we can't afford a baby now or worse, i fear he will say we still cant afford one in December.

Just wondering if ppl had saved first on purpose??

WTF?? I have pretty much no savings and am due to have my pfb in 11 weeks time.
If you live in Dubai you are probably both on good money. You'll have less income anyway when you are back at work due to childcare costs so you'll have to get used to living on less anyway. Unless you save up all the nursery fees you'll need for the next however many years then you will have to accept that your joint income will be lower with a child.

Why is it you that has to do all the saving and not him?

Having a baby is not a major expense surely? We have spent several hundred pounds on getting the usual essential stuff in the house. We have made sure we can live on one income for a while.

If we had to save 20K to have a baby then my fertile years would be well and truly over before that ever could happen.

Does he simply just not want to have a baby?

KitandKat has said all I was thinking.

Also if people in England living entirely on the minimum wage can afford a baby, then two people with well paid jobs in Dubai can definitely afford a baby.

Well he isnt earning as he is doing his business idea, so its just me with one income so we have the one income living down quite well. But i suppose we just get by and dont have any extravagences ( like you hear about dubai), we dont go out for dinners/ clubbing etc cos we are skint after all things paid for.

Ok, that gives me some hope that we wont be too badly off if i can save up.

He does want a baby but on his time line which i find infuriating, especially since ive already waited 2 years, these next 11 months seem so far away.

Well i have about Tuppence Ha'penny and DC2 is due in 9 weeks, didn't get chance to save with DC1 either (bit unexpected ), and DH lost job when she was 7 weeks old, but we managed,

So if you have managed to save 20k bloody go for it, My children's children will be TTC by the time i've saved that up.

agree with Kit does dh actually want children?

Nope havent saved 20k yet at all... maybe things arent as expensive as i thought of my DH tells me?

My first pregnancy I saved about £1000 for baby kit. I spent a bit less, you can minimise the costs of a baby by being committed to breastfeeding and using reusable nappies, makes a huge difference! Here formula and disposables would have cost me £20 or more per week, so even if you did just one of the two it cuts the cost a lot.

I think you need to look into the costs of Nursery really to see if it is worth your while to save a bit or not. (Also things that cost on a weekly basis like formula and nappies) However, when you have a child you are not going to have as much money full stop they are very expensive! Saying that 20k savings is ridiculous! Good luck :)

With my first we saved about $2000. this was to cover our living costs for 2 weeks while my benefits kicked in ( 2 week waiting period in Canada). my husband was self employed and his income wasnt stable so I thought we needed it and also it was to cover extra expenses for the baby.
In the end, I saved mst of it and we went on holiday instead. This time I am not putting extra money aside as we will be able to live on Dhs salary while I am in mat leave ( we are moving to Thailand when baby is 2 months old)
I think 20 000 is hugely excessive. I agree with the others, does he really want a baby?

Gals, let's go easy on them ;-)

I am sure he wants a baby, but must be stressed about $$$ and his business idea and how to support a family etc..

... and maybe we misunderstand and the husband is more of a "planner" and thinks he needs to save up the 200k+ ideally needed to bring up a child from 0-18 before they have the baby.

to the OP - tell your husband to go for it... otherwise you'll wait until you're past your sell-by date. The time/money etc is never right and you need a bit of blind trust to do this.

Good luck!

there's a book called Babynomics. Not sure if it applies to Dubai, but it will give you an idea about how much stuff really costs and how much you can save.

Also, there must be other Dubai people/ Expats who want to sell/chuck out their baby stuff surely? We have been bombarded with stuff and as long as you don't want everything spanking new (a la Blue Ivy) you could get the basic baby kit for cheap/free...

In my opinion it is later on when it gets expensive (schools, clubs, childcare..)

If you're talking about money to buy equipment like buggy/cot/clothes etc and want to save that up first, I'd say you would be looking at maybe £2k to get yourself kitted out, not buying top of the range but buying everything new. That should be plenty. Hope that helps.

Thanks 2or3, yeah there are second hand stuff out there.

maybe its just Dubai and everything is so damn expensive.

DH has a work collegue who just had a baby and all she does is moan about the cost of a baby so think it set him thinking.
Think he does subconciously feel bad that he isnt earning etc so its probably scaring him but i just cant keep putting it off forever.

Thanks for the help ladies!

Just keep a record of your monthly spending and then make your calculations. You'll know how much you need to save to cover x months of both of you having no income. And i know that nannies are cheap in Dubai... so childcare shouldn't be that costly to begin with.

Yeah il do up a little expense calculation, it should put things into perspective.

There arent nannies out here (in the true sense of the word), there are 'maids' who ppl leave their kids with. but im not 100% happy with that idea as they arent trained with any childcare qualifications etc.

Nurseries here are expensive, i think nearly 1k a month - is that high or normal for the UK?

Well if he isn't earning he can surely take care of the baby, no? Does his business idea have decent potential to provide a family income for you or not? If not then he needs to get realistic about it. If it is taking off, then you need to look at the long term plan of how much money you can realisitically expect it to make over the next 2-3 years and make calculations from there. Without knowing what his business actually is I don't know if he could do it part time/flexi hours so that between the two of you, you could share childcare some of the time and only need half-time nursery?

1k a month is expensive round here, but probably totally normal for London prices.

This is one of those how long is a piece of string questions - some people will have no savings, others will have enough to see the child through university.

Instead of a random amount why not take a look at what you think you might need for the baby in terms of equipment (plently of lists on here) and price it up as if you were buying today - add a little bit for price increases and contingencies.

Then think about how much unpaid leave you might want to take - how much do you need to cover your salary for those months?

The two amounts together wil give you an idea of how much you need to save.

Nursery fees are surely going to come out of income once you go back to work - no need to save those beforehand but it is probably worth getting some information now on fees etc. so you can both look at how finances will work once you are back at work and have to pay childcare.

well I have a grand total of about £300 in savings pretty much enough to buy food for a few weeks if times got really hard. Dh is also self employed we set up the business together when i was pregnanct with dc4. It is a risk but then again so is everything and tbh if i waited until i had 20k in savings then i would still be waiting for dc1 at around 85 years old i think. The fact that you can realistically put aside that much tells me - you have enough to have a baby

Thanks ladies, feel a little relieved that its not really that important to have such huge savings....

Albeit it would take me the guts of 2 years to save this i was just fearing the worst.

Will def do up a few calculations and see how it looks just to buy all the baby gear and time off work!

Thanks again :)

My hubby and I are "risk adverse" so we did want to make sure we have abit of spare cash before we have babies. Eg to cover mortgage payment while Im on maternity leave. (right now a huge proportion of our salary go to mortgage payment)

I guess different people have different views and different attitude to "risk" but bringing up babies doesn't have to be super expensive eg prams cost 200 quid - 1000 quid, depends how much you wanna spend!

I am in a similar position to you actually. I'm 11+5 and I'm planning to take 8-9 months of unpaid leave. I am also the main earner. DH is a PhD student, and we can't quite live on his stipend alone, so we will need to save enough to cover the shortfall from not having my salary. Hopefully I will have another 5 or 6 months from now till the time I leave work to save up for the shortfall. I have quite a bit of annual leave owing which I can take during maternity leave, so I can count that towards my "savings" as well.

As others mentioned, it's a bit hard to say whether you will have 'enough' saved without knowing what your likely costs are.

What I would do is break it down focus just on the amount you need for:

1. Living costs for the 1 month that you need off (ie approximately one month's salary after tax).

1. The extra baby-related costs in the first year. There is quite a helpful website which gives an indication of what you might need in the first year www.plunket.org.nz/your-child/welcome-to-parenting/family-and-whanau/finances-for-families/baby-budget/. It is New Zealand-based, but you could do a bit of research in shops locally to get equivalent costs:

If you can get things second-hand (maybe from an expat mums' group?) it should be a lot cheaper.

1. A contingency amount for emergencies of say 2-3 months of your living costs/after-tax salary - eg if you need to take early maternity leave for medical reasons.

As others mentioned, you'll have childcare costs for a long time to come, so you will need to look at factoring that into your income for the long term. I just don't think it's realistic to try to save for those.

Presumably you won't need childcare for at least 2 years (if you are waiting until December to TTC), so hopefully your DH's business will be up and running by then?

Dont know about saving 20k, we were 20k in debt when ds was born and have managed and not on benefits either, I just had to go back to work sooner than I wanted. All the best

why not just start buying/collecting bits now and then start TTC - unfortunately it's not always an instant process so chances are you will have a fair few months more to save than you'd probably wish.

I hope you don't think I'm being cheeky but depending on your age maybe you can look at it like this: the sooner you start trying the better chance you have of conceiving naturally. IVF is about 6 grand a pop minimum and no guarantee of success. Don't leave it too long.