can i ever afford a baby? how do other couple manage?

[setayharas]

Hi, just a question.

Im a a 25 year old and my Partner is 26,
We both work full time, he earns 27k and im on about 16k. After our mortgage payments and all our other bills we are left with around £800 a month disposable income.
We have been thinking for a while about perhaps starting a family in the not to distant future, however i cannot seem to stop worrying that there is no way we could afford to survive.

Obviously ill get my 39weeks smp, but what after that?
we have discussed that i would either quit work or go back to work part time, and the grandparents who are close by and also work parttime could help with child care.
Obviously the more time i would get to spend with the little one the better.
It just doesnt seem that we would be able to survive without my money without a baby, let alone with one.
How do other couples survive? am i missing a trick here? from what i can see we would qualify for child benefit £20 per week, but that isnt going to go anyway to replacing the money we would loose from me either being out of work or cutting my hours.

Any tips would be much apprecitated. Of course we wouldnt dream of bringing a child into the world unless we were completely sure we would be able to feed, clothe and take care of the little one.

Thanks

You would probably qualify for child tax credits or working tax credits if you work 16 hrs per week. Also may qualify for childcare money. There are benefits calculators that you can use to run through various options and see what you would be eligible for.

Other than that babies don't have to cost a fortune, breast feeding is free. Second hand baby equipment is very cheap and good quality. As an example my the highest price I have seen my £330 pram on ebay for is £30 in excellent condition! You can get second hand clothes by the bin bag full and toys for a few pounds too.

Overall though you probably will be down a bit on your income, but as long as you can get by and not have to struggle too much you just get on with it.

If you stand to be in a better financial position in a few years then perhaps it is worth waiting, but I did that, DP and I worked the clock round for a couple of years (my own business) so that it was in a position that I could step out of it and be a SAHM. All went well untill the economy went tits up . All the best laid plans and all that! But we get by, we juggle child care and I now enjoy being both at home and at work.

Wow 800 a month disposable income sounds loads. Obviously I don't know how much your mortagage and bills are but me and my hubby are on 16k a year between us and we manage as the short fall is made up by tax credits, otherwise we would not survive.

lol yeah it is alot, although alot we have been saving and our mortgage is massively high, and doesnt seem to be getting cheaper. OH keeps telling me that it will work itself out, we wouldnt be the first people to struggle for the first couple of years.
I am a bit of a worrier and im sure it'll all work out, as he explains we have very close family how are all paitently waiting for an announcement that i know would surrport us 100%.
I spose its called growing up. The best things arent always easy.

Life changes a lot after a baby. We survive on a LOT less post baby (and go out less, drink wine less, go on holiday less, buy clothes less... etc). A lot of those things seem less important post baby.

It's also possible to spend a lot less on a baby than popular culture suggests you need. NCT sales are amazing. Most people around here manage fine on "just" your husbands wage so its perfectly doable.

You are also in a much better position than most that you have supportive family locally. That's been something I would seriously have found helpful.

When we were planning, and trying, for a baby ( it took a while!!) I saved £100 a month. I then used this savings to pay myself when I was on maternity leave. It took the edge of our sudden drop in income! we also cut unnecessary direct debits, sky, gym membership, etc and cut back in other areas, this has yet to be returned to pre children status, but it meant we wernt as poor as I had feared when ds1 arrived!!

My Dad told my mum 30 years ago that you can never really afford children.... He was right but I am now sat here cuddling my 4 week old daughter! You make it work. I just thought I dont't want to look back when I'm 50 and think I didn't have kids because of money & a few sacrifices. Good luck xx

when we met all them years back it was decided we wanted to be parents well before we were 30 and by then we would be completely prepared. Here we are getting nearer toopll899 that age and i feel as completely unprepared now as i did then.
But as you say if we dont do it, we'll regret it much longer than we will struggle.
The replies have settled the nerves a bit so thanks and I think ill start putting my £100 away next payday and see what happens

Hi. I know where your coming from, i can't tell you the number of times i cried thinking how the hell r we going t cope financially. I earn £19k and my husband £16k, with mortgage, bills, running two cars (a necessity) we were left with about £600 a month spare, before ds. I would say 95% of what we bought for ds was either donated, borrowed, given via freegle or bought from charity shop/ebay; we just got the very basics of what a baby actually needs.

When on maternity leave, what i would get would all have t go towards the mortgage n bills which left us with about £250 a mth. I rang benefits office n they were just bloody useless so i started scouring internet n rung revenue n customs, i found we could apply for working tax credits and child tax credits and then there is also the childcare element of the working tax credits. We couldn't claim working tax credits as i earned more than £17k; however we could claim child tax credits which gave us less than £50 a mth as it was based on my previous years salary so i called revenue & customs t let them know what my expected salary would be for the current tax year and it increased t £300 a mth. Once my ds started at nursery we were able t apply for the childcare element of the working tax credits and this pays around 80% of his childcare fees as i'm back at work full time. Plus you get the £20 a week child benefit. We find we have around £200 a mth disposable income, so we know we can afford the odd takeaway or night out (obviously nothing lavish).

We've learnt t shop more savvy and only buy what is needed with the odd treat.

All the very best and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Xx

To be honest, I think you are in a very good position, but only you can feel comfortable with changes in your finances :)

To put it in perspective for you: DH and I are 31 and can't afford the deposit for a mortgage. I earn 40K, DH has just started self employment. He has debts, I don't. I save £400 a month as I am currently 21 weeks pregnant, we can't be sure how much DH will bring home.

We live/work in London. Costs are astronomical. We will never be able to get a mortgage unless 100% mortgages come back, or we inherit some money or have a windfall. Or move. I am actually very jealous of your position :) You are young, you have the security of home ownership, you have some disposable income and you have family nearby. Don't be afraid of having less money - always put something away, don't let your finances stop you from having children, and good luck with the future

It's really good to think about your finances and how things might change but agree with other posters about finding a way. As I've got older with more disposable income, I find you just live to your means relatively anyway and I can't believe how much I used to survive on and still have fun :).

That's quite a decent amount left over IMO. Wish I had that to work with.....

Best of luck Xx

Thank you all, i think im being a bit selfish really and greedy, I think we'll start over paying hes car loan get that out the way and just see what happens.
Who knows.

Don't feel bad, I was the same. Hopefully you will get there& will all work out x

As some other people have already said, I too am quite jealous of your position. My DH earns pretty good money while I have a bursary for doing a PhD. We're both early 30s and not currently in a position to buy a house due to huge cost of rent inSE and of rail travel for DH to commute. Because of DHs wage we won't be eligiable for any child tax credits which is fair enough, but meas we're currently having to choose baby over saving for mortgage. We chose this however as hopefully our income will increase but our fertility certainly won't.

As other people have said though, it's really about deciding how much you are comfortable compromising finanially. We used to think we couldn't but then the ticking of the biological clock started getting louder.

In our case we were skinty mcskint when we had Dd1 - but dh's earning power has gratifyingly increased in the intvening years. Have not got a clue how we would have managed otherwise - a lot of help from the grandparents I guess.

Yy to second hand baby stuff btw. My kids adore hand-me-downs. The items get referred to by the name of their original owner, which is a more powerful brand than any designer, belonging as it does to an aspirational slightly older friend! Like I said, we're now earning very comfortably - but DS2 birthday gifts have been picked up second hand.

I think that on your incomes and since the new budget changes to the rules for tax credits, you wouldn't be entitled to working tax or child tax credits. I have lost all my payments and get no help at all towards my £650 per month nursery costs. So don't rely on tax credits!

However, you will afford a baby! It amazes me how we manage, before children we both worked full time and rented. We now have a mortgage, nursery fees and I work part time. Not sure what I did with my money before but we manage now! We've cut back on holidays and new clothes and so on but then life changes with a baby anyway so there's less time for meals out etc.

You can wait forever for the 'right time' but I'm just not sure there really is one :)

to put it lightly; your disposable income is about what DP earns a month. I'm 32+5 now and money is tight, it'll be worse when baby comes but at the same time I know we'll be OK; we simply won't be able to have any luxuries for a long (long) time. As others have said, shopping savvy and swallowing pride to accept hand me downs is a big help; the only thing we've said no to so far is offers of 2nd and 3rd baby baths... people are desperate to get rid of them! :o

We will be minus 70 pounds a month before we even start never mind how much we would have left over.

currently burying head in the sand and intend to stay there!

You'll be fine! Everyone always worries about how they'll cope regardless of salary level.

Our DD1 was a surprise baby so we didn't get the luxury of choice. Although we were married and owned our own home we were both in the middle of professional exams and on relatively low salaries. Anyway it all worked out well. We now earn six times what we did then and still don't seem to have anymore disposable income as you tend to upgrade houses, cars, holidays etc! I'm now expectivg DC3 and will hopefully give up work. I'm not worrying about finances as it always works out in the end. Goodluck with starting your family!

My god, I wish I had what you have to work with!!
£800 disposable income a month is the sort of money that I - and many others - could only dream of. I don't think you realise what an advantageous financial position you are in, compared to most.
You will make it work, people manage with far, far less.

Absolutely no way you couldn't afford it, even if you stopped working completely.
Unless of course you want to be able to spend ridiculous amounts on the baby, which they really don't need you to do!

we're on less than £20k joint income.

i work, but don't get a wage (yet - i'm self-employed)
we get tax credits.

most of our baby's stuff is hand-me-downs or gifts.(eg clothes, bedding, toys, pram, car seat)
other stuff - we got some very cheap nappies (cloth) from someone we know and have added top them whenever we've found special offers. we're BFing, so food is free (apart from the extra sized portions I need! )

we still have gift cards left from when she was born.
You have to make sure that you have friends and relatives whose babies are approx 1 year to 3 years older than yours (they'll still most likely have the stuff to hand down)

we often comment that this baby is really, really, really cheap!

don't forget , even if you don't get Child Tax Credits, you'll still get Child Benefit, which is £20 a week. That goes quite a long way, especially if you're using cloth nappies and BFing.

you know what I used to do when I was in a proper job?

When I got paid, I put what was left from the previous month into my savings account.

eg: I get paid on the 1st of the month, I had £23 in my bank account at the moment my new wages went in - that £23 I put into my savings account.

the theory is, that you only need to spend what you've spent. Therefore, one month pretty much indicates what the next month will need.

You've still got those savings if things don't quite work out like that, or you've got them for long-term plans.

I think I managed to save about £1000 in one year, and I was on minimum wage at the time!