Stupid time to start a family?

earwig

babies are not to much money in terms of milk and nappys even the bu6ggy and cot dosnts need to cost that much but when they grow into children they cost a fortune but you always find the money for the things they need and want rember you will get 60.00 child benifit and child tax credit to help out and as people on here have allready said you can never aford a baby you just get on with it when you have them and the joy of having them far out ways the cost of having them if you both want a baby then go for it

Starry-eyed_surprise

This might sound corny but children are riches in themselves if you are lucky enough to have them. I have three and I can honestly say they are the best things (? people?)ever to happen to me , they are WONDERFUL and worth all the loss of income, debt etc that we have had to go through (and are still going through). They are all teenagers now and it flies so fast. Children truly are a blessing. I wish you the best in whatever decision you make.

Judi101

I agree with whats been said, if you wait you will never afford to have a baby. Our DD is 7 months (I got pregnant as soon as we started trying so it does happen). The costs of equipment clothes and things can be worked around through friends with children, freecycle, charity shops and ebay. The expense we have found is childcare.

I reduced my hours to 3 days a week and so we are down 2/5 my salary. Add to that the £500 per month for 3 days childcare a week and it comes in as a big hit in the wallet. Before we started trying I looked into the cost of childcare and as we were putting away £600 per month for a short while before hand I knew we could afford it. So think about what you will do for childcare. If you are lucky you will have family close that dont mind helping for free.

Additionally think about what you will do to replace your income while you are on maternity leave. You will probably find you dont only want to take 6 months off if you are allowed 12. We had to save alot to get me to take my full 6 months allowance off.

Best of luck - having said all of that our DD is fab, highly recommended!

lil'H

Go for it!!!! Ok you need to consider finances but at the end of the day your debts aren't enourmous, you've seent eh light so won't be exessively spending on designer baby gear etc, and it often takes a year to concieve so you may find you'll have cleared your debts by the time a baby arrived anyway.

I believe in fate when it coems to babies, if you start tryign now you'll convieve when it's right for you anyway. Even in the cases of unplanned pregnancies I think they all come along at a set time for a reason (I didn't plan my son, but he turned my life around, for the better, I was only 19 but I wouldn't change anything). Sorry me drifting off there,

Lil'H

PS I could be biased as I too am very broody at the moment!!

thriftmummy

Although I do partly agree that there is no right time financially to have a baby, it does however make sense to have your debts paid off and perhaps a 'safety cushion' of savings. I wish we had done this before we had our son as I had to return to work part time when he was 6 months old. I would have liked to have taken the whole year off, and if we had planned for this it would have been possible. The biggest expense for us with having a baby was the loss of income having to go part time and paying for childcare. As mentioned above there are lots of ways you can have a baby without spending a fortune. Good luck whatever you decide

abbecer

Go for it. You will actually find that 9 months is quite a long time to sort out a lot of your debt. You will have the motivation to do it and will find you are actually better at sorting yourself out. We tried for our first son one month after moving into our new double the mortgage house. Admittedly it was a bit of a shock to get pregnant more or less straight away as we had always thought there was something wrong. We had not used protection for 7 years and had just been 'careful!'. Then i had to change jobs because i worked in a violent environment and took a £700 a month pay cut. We still managed ok and just became more aware of the money we had previously wasted. Please don't be too proud to accept good quality hand me downs. This really helped us. Good luck with starting your family.

Rebecca x

Brassic

We are rather more in debt than you are and we now have a 14 month old. Admittedly we hadn't faced up to quite how in debt we were, but we knew it was bad. OTOH, my dh already has 2 and is nearly 40 so there was no way we could wait until it was cleared. We have survived by buying baby stuff off ebay/car boots etc, and getting quite a lot of hand me downs.

I breast fed exclusively until she was 6 months, and still breast feed her now, so have only bought a couple of tins of the horribly expensive formula for nursery.

I also bought things like nappies, as soon as my 12 week scan was ok. Every shop I bought a thing of nappies and something else from Tescos, like some baby suits, or wipes etc etc. I was well stocked by the time she arrived.

If you can ignore all the hype and advertising telling you what latest and greatest 500 quid pushchair you just *have* to have, you'll be fine

Budget for it, see what you can give up which will pay for nappies etc, and I'm sure you'll be able to work it out (but looking at my debt levels maybe I'm not best qualified to be giving out such advice )

Keep us updated

judi24

The National Childbirth Trust are great - they have nearly new sales about twice a year in most areas - great for evey type of baby item - all in really good condition too. Also great for making friends an cheap entertainment for you and Junior.

mrs_mug_2

We had 4 times the amount of unsecured debt that you have now (and another £20k secured on top of the mortgage) when we had our first. We've just had our second and I haven't worked for 2 years. It is absolutely do-able. We use cloth nappies, breastfeed and use home cooked meals to reduce the cost. The inital outlay is the biggest but ebay and nct nearly new sales are good - also we asked for money for our birthday/christmas presents to put towards the cot etc. I've also never had to buy new baby clothes yet - my oldest is 2 now so I'm doing pretty well.

Good luck.

Julieboo

In my experience there is never a right time, the right time is when it happens. I see so many people waiting for the 'right time' and then when it comes find it so hard to conceive, then the more they 'try' the more difficult it gets, stress and all that.
I had my 4 kids fairly young early 20's and none were realy planned-just let things happened, we were skint, I stayed home and studied, partner worked for minimum wage-but we managed and do you know what those were the best days ever (but didn't realise it at the time). I got into the rat race, earn good money but work flat out for it and its made me literally ill...what I would give to give up the big mortgage, the debt, the car to go back to those days of being car less, balancing shopping bags on the pram, living in our cozy 3 bed terrace with only £15K mortgage...unforunately we got into that trap of thinking we should be more, do more, have more and ended up now with a £166K mortgage ouch and 30K debt. Ah if only I knew then what I know now, I could have been mortgageless, debtfree and have a large disposable income only working PT. Ah well, but what I say is there are no 'right' moments, live for today and enjoy every minute and go for it, kids bring so much happiness and its amazing how resourcefull you can be. I remember once cooking with the kids from scratch a pizza for my kids and their friends tea (because that's all I had in) and the friend thought it was the coolest thing ever that after that all her friends wanted to come home for tea!:rotfl: