did you save up before having kids?

Redbedhead

We have been saving up for children, however that is partly because I am the higher earner, and will take a huge drop in wages while on maternity pay.

We have tried really hard to get to the point where we are debt free while also saving for our wedding and we cleared the last debt a few months back:j

Once we are married we will reassess the situation. We have no target savings limit before kids, but now we are debt free I am less concerned and we will decide to start trying when it suits us on a personal level.

This is just the way we have done it - I also know stacks of people who have not saved and have managed perfectly well - I am just super cautious!

sandydog_2

We didn't save, but we were both relatively high earners (well, 14.5k was the highest I ever earned!)

Anyway, nearly everything I bought was 2nd hand - a few clothes and obviously car seats from kiddicare were new. I found a charity that recycled baby things, and stocked up from there.

Finding out I was having twins from very early on prepared us for the fact that it was not financially viable for me to be working, but we've coped and haven't got into debt, thank goodness.

Good luck!

GuidonTheBee

My OH will only get the 26 weeks Statutory maternity pay but will need to/wants to take a full year (As a wheelchair user the bump gets seriously in the way so she'll need to quit work very early - she'll be darn near housebound long before her due date)

Because of this we have a 3 phase plan for the first year, worked out to keep our income constant:

Pre arrival of stork: Saving an amount to leave us with X amount of salary at the moment.

Post Stork weeks 1-26: Just save about 13 quid of SMP which still leaves us with same X income

Post Stork weeks 26+ : Pull savings as req. to bring income to X

It'll not help with the extra expenses, but at least monthly 'money in' will be the same post-stork as it is now.

BFC

A friend of mine managed to buy lots of baby things through eBay (ie travel cot/baby bouncer etc) saving her a huge amount of money. Anything sold locally can be collected rather than paying the postage. She even bought a bin bag full of clothes for a baby girl for £5 - even if only a few of the outfits are OK it's still a huge saving!

essexhoney

im currently expecting my 3rd child. infact i only have 8 weeks to go!
although i only had my daughter 14months ago i started panicking that i wasnt going to be able to afford it as my dd is still using her cot so i wouldnt have that to use and id need to buy a double buggy and another single buggy for when i only take one out as the one i have at the moment is only from 3mths+.
My main concern was clothing the baby as baby clothes are so expensive and they wear them for such a short space of time. I bought a few bits off ebay and was really unimpressed tbh things turned up dirty with holes in and out of shape and i personally wouldnt buy second hand baby clothes from ebay again. Up until last week i didnt know whether i was having a boy or a girl, worked out well as its a girl and i still have all my daughters old clothing a lot of it she never even wore as she had far too much.
But the amount of hand me downs that have been offered to me have been amazing! A girl that was moving out downstairs had a cot, a moses basket, and 2 black bag fulls of baby clothes and she sold them to me for a tenner! Another friend bought down a huge box full of baby clothes for me and wouldnt let me give her anything for it, and i had another friend tell me yesterday she has 6 black bags full of baby clothes me from newborn to 1yr! This baby is going to end up with more clothes than all of us put together lol
Freecycle has also been excellent i have had people who have had things that i have offered find out that i am pregnant and offer me baby bits that they have! It has all been in superb condition.
All my children have been lactose intolerant so there milk comes free on prescription from my gp anyway so that has never been an issue.
I have bought silly little things that i needed off of ebay for next to nothing all in very good condition.
I got my double buggy from ebay which was brand new for £80 so that was a right bargain.
I also bought bottles in bulk from ebay and paid £30 for 72 bottles - beats paying £10 for 3 avent bottles!
As for nappies i do use disposables but i make sure i get them as cheap as i can using vouchers from pampers/huggies/boots parenting club etc.
I think at the moment i have spent around £150 and i did that using all the old bits i had around the house and selling them on ebay.
All i am left to get now is a travel cot which is going to cost me around £40 and another single buggy which im not sure how much thats going to cost me as i havent found one that i like lol

Having children doesnt have to be expensive, it is as expensive as you make it.
Though had you asked me this when i was pregnant with my daughter my answer would have been completly different lol but you live and learn dont you.

I didnt save with any of my children, i am a stay at home mum and although we are far from made of money we manage because we only live my our means. If we dont need it we dont have it.

le1

I agree with everyone else.... you just can't save for them. I'd believed this for ages yet still thought we could get into a "better" financial situation before planing to have them. "better" as opposed to "debt free" I thought was possible but no. For a start we moved house for more space so the mortgage more than doubled!!

Anyway, I got pg after 2 weeks of trying (rather unexpected) so we sat down and worked out how much money we would need to cover bills etc whilst I was on maternity for 6 - 12 mths, then worked out how much we'd need to save to do that and from there worked out how many months I could have off work. Considering we'd "never had the money to save up", we managed to save £500 a month over the following 7 months till baby was born, we bought all baby equipment outright from that money (I put a strict budget together) and then I had 7 months off (been back at work 4 weeks now!). Unfortunately I am back full time and it's really really hard.

I was amazed we could do it cos when we moved to this house, everything was really tight but when you open your mind, it's amazing what you can do. Suggestions:-

1) can you take payment hols on your mortgage whilst you're on mat leave?
2) can you restructure any loans/visas? I know it's not ideal but we put everything onto a loan (APR so low at the mo) and over a longer period of time than we wanted. Brings the monthly payment down and I reckon if we could save that much before, we can afford to start clearing the debt now (we're moving it again now into our new offset mortgage so we can pay lumps off it).
3) I know many people who remortgaged to release funds from the house - I wouldn't do this but could be an option.
4) childcare - can you get into the government voucher scheme? both of you? We're doing it and have worked out that £217 worth of childcare "voucher" only actually costs us £98 so that's a massive saving.
5) use cheap websites to buy your stuff - https://www.kiddicare.com is great but mind if you need to return anything, you have to pay the cost which if it's a cot could be quite high!
6) if you're not pg yet, take out one of those hospital plans that cost about £2 a week - apart from being really good value, they pay out £500 per child when born (I didn't do this, kicking myself now).

that's my main ones for now!!

good luck! having a baby is well worth it :-)

Le1
:j

le1

Tesco nappies are brilliant and almost half the price of pampers!!! One of my friends works for TENA and she said that the Tesco nappies are actually the main brand used in Europe but over there they're called Libero. Whether or not that's true I am not sure but they really work well.

Also, join as many baby clubs (tesco, boots etc) as possible cos they send you vouchers for money off baby stuff. So long as you don't buy things for the sake of it and use them sensibly, saves you loads of cash.

Le1

tanith

Brilliant idea in an ideal world , but 'stuff' happens and babies have a habit of 'happening' when you least expect it...

Had a wedding booked and deposits paid when we realised we were going to be 3 but we just carried on with the wedding and managed somehow with donations from friends and family . As someone else said a baby costs what you are prepared to spend on it and you can manage it on a lot less than you imagine.... as long as its loved, clean and fed then a baby will thrive even if its not dressed in the latest designer gear.....

rackstar

In theory babies shouldn't really cost much at all, although finding a house with space can be expenisve these days. Traditionally people used to manage without all the junk we rely on now. I agree with everyone who says it's as expensive as you make it. And to be honest, sometimes the cheap (or free!) options are actually best for your baby.

Read this if you have time: http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/307/308/1267/1/1

A brilliant article.

fannyadams

With regard to childcare...
some of the grandmas near where I live took the childcare course run by our local council, got police checked and got to be registered childminders for their own grandchildren then the parents can 'legitimately' claim child tax credit coz they are using a registered childminder to care for their child...
Dunno about he legality of it all but this is what the majority of grandmas do in my village. If anyone rings up for a vacancy then if they don't feel like taking on anyone elses children they just say they are full up.