Do you ever wonder...?

elvis86

Emmzi wrote: »

you can never afford children and then when you have them you cope...

if itnis what you want now, get on with it :-) there is no good time!

Whilst I appreciate the sentiment of this kind of advice, I can't help but think that it's an example of the kind of attitudes that have led so many people on here to get themselves in trouble..:cool:

If the OP can be debt free in a year, then it would make far more sense to stick to her original plan to start trying for a baby to coincide with that. Whilst I do understand the "you just will afford it" mentality, the somewhat careless attitude that people seem to adopt to having children nowadays does concern me.:(

Do people have no aspiration to offer their children the best they can? And by that I don't mean "only have kids if you're loaded", but why not do like the OP and choose to have your kids when you've more of your income available to provide for them? To afford you the optimum flexibility RE the amount of time you need to work to stay afloat etc?

elvis86

busiscoming2 wrote: »

If you are a teacher and hubby has a reasonably well paid job, unless your mortgage is huge I dont see how you cant afford to have children. I know you have your £5k debt which you are paying off but do you spend a lot on clothes, cars and 'labelled' goods? Sometimes it is easy to forget where the money actually goes.

You don't know enough to say that really.:cool:

ellissa

busiscoming2 wrote: »

If you are a teacher and hubby has a reasonably well paid job, unless your mortgage is huge I dont see how you cant afford to have children. I know you have your £5k debt which you are paying off but do you spend a lot on clothes, cars and 'labelled' goods? Sometimes it is easy to forget where the money actually goes.

Honestly, no, not at all. We don't have designer clothes, in fact we hardly spend anything on clothes. We don't have iphones or similar gadgets, no ipods or docking stations, no flat screen tvs, no sky/virgin tv, no games consoles (though OH would love one!), no gym memberships, no nothing!

Our outgoings are the same each month - mortgage (£850), MPI, life ins, home ins, car ins, tv licence, gas, water, elec, council tax, petrol (£90pw), food (no more than £40 per wk), national insurance for self employed earnings, 2 mobile sim only contracts on low tarrifs, home phone and broadband, CSA for 2 stepkids, the dreaded credit card.

That's what I mean, I budget EVERYTHING. I watch it all closely. We are SO careful. We never go out socially as we're always working. I cannot understand how our friends do it. They think we're rude for always declining invites out, maybe we are! I think we're too cautious. Once the debt is paid, we will have a little left to save each month (after we've packed in the 2nd jobs) so we will be able to afford our own kids. I suppose all I'm getting at is that until the debt is paid we feel we cannot afford kids but would most people carry on having a family and simply take longer to pay the debt?

Indie_Kid

Have you looked into cheaper deals for phone, internet and insurance?

pigpen

Because they WANT to do it..

They may have designer gear.. but is it bought from shops or 'off the back of a lorry' .. I spent many a long arduous year living on estates with high proportions of families on very low incomes/benefits and they never went to the shop as everything was bought from 'the man with van'.. BUT, they didn't have holidays, fancy meals out or complex diets (Iceland is a luxury!) Depends on what you want to portray.

children come with their own income, it may not be a lot but it is better than nothing. £20 a week is more than enough to feed and clothe a baby for the first year at least.. they don't need half what people think they do!

In a years time you say you will have paid off your itty-bitty £5k of debt.. it takes 9 months to grow a baby.. here is no guarantee you will conceive immediately.. I'd start practising now!

I also think if you are both in reasonable jobs with such a minor debt your other outgoings must be immense so maybe there are a LOT of cutbacks you can make within your budget that you haven't yet thought of.. there is no reason you would struggle financially.

jcr16

i think what your thinking is the same as what most couple think at some point.

hubby and i had our first child when i was 22 ( he was 23) we were married owned own home both worked ( been married two years at the time). money was never lavish but we got by. we were happy . having your first child is the biggest and scariest yet most wonderful time in your life. you will always think is the the right time, should we wait, should we go for it. but at end of day there is never a right time, but times which are just better . and you make it work. and it does work.

when i was 8 months preg i got made redundant. it was a blow but i had always planned to return to work. after my maternity i found another job back in my local hospital. my dd was 7 months. and i just couldn't do it. loved the job but the guilt i had at leaving my dd was too big for me. hubby was more than happy to support us and i became a stay at home mum. since july 2004 i haven't worked. yes things have been tight but we managed. we have everything and more than we could need or want. we now have 3 children. they are clean, fed, loved and most of all very happy confidant wonderful children and never go without.

we go on holiday once a year or every other year to a cottage in the uk which we all love. we have family days out using tesco clubcard vouchers. there are ways and mean to do anything if your really want to . nothing is impossible. My kids love nothing more than a day down beach or the woods followed by a chip supper. cost's max of £10 for the 5 of us.

a baby doesn't really cost that much, if you don't want it too. yes you can spend hundreds on clothes, cots, prams etc etc. but you can also buy everything you need in sales , second hand, ebay for a fraction of the cost and no one would know because the items can be immucalute.

Indie_Kid

jcr16 wrote: »

a baby doesn't really cost that much, if you don't want it too. yes you can spend hundreds on clothes, cots, prams etc etc. but you can also buy everything you need in sales , second hand, ebay for a fraction of the cost and no one would know because the items can be immucalute.

You also don't need everything that everyone says you need.

jcr16

yes sl1305. it very easy to get swept along into buying lots of things which look cute or must have but you find in all honestly you really don't.

i found also it better to buy a few basic items of clothing while pregnant and save some money up so once baby born you can then go shopping. My youngest was 7lb 14 when born so a good weight. but no new born clothes i had fitted as he was tiny. he wore prem clothes for about 4 weeks. but because i had only bought a few items before hand i was able to buy suitable clothing. ( i did have some bits left from last baby tho) i remember maternity ward leanding me a pink cardi as it was the smallest they had,lol. but he was warm and snuggly and thats what counted.

JodyBPM

I think it might depend a lot on where the OP lives. In the SE a teacher's salary is mediocre in comparison to the salaries of peers, in the NE it's likely to be seen as a high salary. Yet apart from a K or so outer london weighting, it'll be the same salary!

Depending on your age, I'd recomend waiting til you can do it without the second jobs! Apparently you can never afford children, but actually you can! DH & I calculated that we could afford to live on 1 salary before we TTC (in fact I still work PT, but that's a bonus!).
But in the SE it is much harder when literally keeping a roof over your head costs at least a K a month!(eg rental or 90% mortage for a 2 bed flat where we live). The benefit system is scewed to cheaper areas, if you live in the SE, your salaries are bound to be too much for any level of CTC, yet childcare, commuting costs and living costs are so much higher!

Good luck - wait until you are ready to enjoy having a baby, rather than worrying all the time about it (unless you are 35+)

elvis86

pigpen wrote: »

What an outrageous and irresponsible statement! The benefits you can receive for having children shouldn't factor in your decision to have them!

But they'll get it all the same, and of course potential income needs to be taken into account.. maternity pay, tax credits, child benefit all play a huge part in many peoples decision to breed. It isn't about the name of the benefit it is about affording the necessities.

Factoring in your maternity pay when budgeting, is entirely different to choosing to have a baby because "they cost less than £20 a week to keep, the child benefit will cover it", which is what you were suggesting to the OP.:cool:

pigpen wrote: »

I'd hardly consider a £5000 debt to be "itty-bitty" or "minor", especially if a couple are spending only £40 a week on food and doing second jobs in order to pay it off. Yet another irresponsible thing to say.

I would expect a couple to only spend that a week on food.. with plenty of luxuries in there too.. if it were much more I'd be horrified at their extravagance. Some people on here owe tens of thousands.. £5k is nothing in the broad scheme of things.. what is it maybe 2-3-4 months wages.. some people owe 5 years wages!

Plenty of luxuries on £40 a week for 2 adults? Where are you shopping?! Or what are you considering "luxuries"?? I bargain hunt with the best of them, spend about £15 a week on food because I'd rather direct my funds elsewhere. But there are barely any items I'd consider "luxuries" in my fridge/cupboards. Barely any meat etc. As I say, I choose to do it so I can spend elsewhere, but in an ideal world it'd be nice to have more like £40 a week to spend on groceries (£80 for a couple).

pigpen wrote: »

Honestly, just because you might choose to have children whenever you fancy/can't be arsed to use precautions, just because you want to, because it's somehow you God-given "right", because you figure that the child benefit will cover the cost, and that the debts can wait..doesn't mean that the OP (who thankfully sounds a lot more responsible than you) should do that too.

And this paragraph shall be ignored because it illustrates perfectly the type of 'person' you are..

A "person" (I won't lecture you on the use of inverted commas, but the last time I looked, I was 100% Homo Sapien) who's just about got the measure of you, perhaps?:D