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

I think you just manage to be honest. Things that seemed really important before you have children become not as important!

You have a lot more income than we do - my dh earns £14k, I earn £4k part time but currently on maternity leave, we have a mortgage on a 3 bed semi for £390 a month (I own the other half of it from a time when I used to earn £30k working in marketing!) and all our bills and outgoings come to around £1000 (including a food budget of £400) and we have one dd aged 9 and another baby due later this week by c section! :) We receive about £77 a week in tax credits - this will go up by £50 a week when the baby is here (or so they've told me).

We manage okay, we don't have debt, we drive an old banger (!) and we save hard for anything we want, including holidays - which aren't flash but we do manage the odd one!

The biggest things I can suggest is sort out your finances NOW so that you are both sharing a joint account and everyone is split equally (saves tons of arguements later on, believe me!) - if you haven't done this already, having kids together and not having a joint account is just a recipe for arguing and disaster in my opinion although I do realise not everyone agrees.

I think you will be better off than you think you will be.... And if all else fails do what we do and buy everything from Aldi and downgrade everything you can to the cheapest of everything! :)

DH and I had about the same amount of disposable income before we had DS; he's 2 and we now have about £400 a month so roughly half. Honestly, as long as you aren't struggling to pay bills now then you will be fine.

We got some advice from a much older lady with 9 (!) children: "If my husband and I had waited until we could afford children, we would never have had any." They are now very comfortably off.

omg, £800 is loads!!! Babies dont cost that much! Obviously they need some clothes, nappies and a few key essentials (buggy etc) but other than that, daily life is pretty cheap

• breast milk is free, the park is free, the duck pond is free, playing/singing/cuddling is free! I too am 25 and I spent more when I didnt have a baby to be honest!Remember, you dcan't out that often to restaurants/bars/clubs etc when you have a baby so you save loads. We have the same amount disposable per month as you (I stay at home - no income at all, bf works) and we still manage to go out for dinner (avec baby), take baby swimming/to the zoo/to baby yoga...even on holiday.. We dont get any tax credits or anything like that either. You can def afford a baby if you budget wisely