Raise a baby on £100 p/w

jonnysniper86

Hi all,

I'm new to these forums and am soon to be a new dad!
Starting to panic though re finances :eek:

My query is - is it possible to raise a baby with 125gbp per week after all bills and expenses paid (this includes feeding me and the wife too:) )?

What's the best way to budget? And are there any really good threads on here?

Regards and thanks .

lindseykim13

Easy peasy!
That amount would feed my 3 kids and me and DH for probably 2 weeks!
Nappies you can buy when on offer and stock up, although don't go mad as baby will grow out of them quite quickly. don't be sucked into branded, asda own brand or lidl/aldi i heard were good. We used reusable nappies which we bought second hand anyway from clothnappytree.co.uk. You basically throw them in the wash, dry and use again.
Baby food for the first few months is free if mum is going to breastfeed otherwise the tubs of powder are cheaper than those cartons.
When baby starts eating solids you can make your own food using veggies/chicken and a little gravy in a blender-freeze in icecubes and pop out and warm when needed. No need for jars of food.

Clothing-charity shops, friends, hand me downs. I don't buy hardly any of my kids clothing new i buy in charity shops or car boots where items are £1 or less. Babies grow far too quickly to get any wear out of anything.

You don't need to buy babywipes you can get lots of little flannels and use those as wipes-you treat them the same as the nappies and wash them together. Although some people have brown ones for bums, and another colour for washing lol

Food wise for yourselves get yourself over to old style moneysaving board where there are a ton of cheap recipes.

Think my post is huge now and covered quite a lot!

Honey_Bear

Read the Grocery Challenge thread to find out about food and household budgetting. All the information you could possibly need is contained there.

Sequeena

That equals £400 a month. More than enough for one child!

You can save a lot on nappies depending on whether you want disposables or cloth. Cloth is more expensive in the outlay but so much cheaper in the long run (wish I'd done it now).

I've used a lot of different brands and I have to say that Lidls or ALDI always come out best. My son is currently wearing 4 or 4+ and I bought a box of 84 in ALDI for £7.49 in their baby event. I am not sure if they do newborn nappies but I found Tesco or ASDA nappies to be very good in the smaller sizes. They always have a 2 for £10 offer and that's at least 100 nappies if not more.

Clothes people tend to stock up on before baby is born but if you are not adverse to second hand then you can get some amazing quality second hand clothing for next to nothing. Babies are in their clothes for such a small amount of time and all they do is wee, poo or be sick on them anyway. Better brands to go for are Next and H&M as they are bigger in sizes (baby will stay in them longer yay!) and they're so well made they will go through several children before fading and ripping. Supermarket clothes are good too but be careful as they can shrink/change shape in the wash and lose their colour. I'm a clothes addict, forever buying for my son but that's ok because 99% of it will be second hand.

Milk will be your biggest expense if mum cannot/doesn't want to breast feed. I was able to BF my son for 2 weeks before he fell ill with sepsis and my milk dried up. In the early days a tub would last well over a week but as he drank more I could easily go through 2 in a week. They're about £7-8 a tub/box.

I went down the baby led weaning route with my son so he's always had chopped up versions of what we've had but if you want to do traditional weaning making your own is so much better. In the beginning you can just boil one veg, puree and freeze and as baby gets used to food you can mix things together and even puree a sunday lunch. A lot of my friends get caught in the fruit trap and then wonder why their baby won't eat the veg... so be careful because fruit is sweeter babies will want that over anything else (and when you introduce chocolate that's it :rotfl:)

I never used a bottle warmer or any of those fancy gadgets. My son preferred his milk from the fridge but hot water in a jug will do to warm a bottle up.

When you really think about it it's very easy to bring a child up on very little (leaves more money for birthday and Christmas presents :rotfl:)

jonnysniper86

Thanks all for info so far. Sounds like saving money on clothes by getting second hand etc is key. Might get on the baby merry-go-round at work, lots of people lending baby stuff ^_^

Shop at aldi and lidl already - if their baby stuff is reliable too I think we'll stick with them.

Pink.

This thread has lots of ideas that may help:

Having a baby Old Style???

Pink

hilstep2000

Don't buy anything, friends and family can give you cots etc as gifts. Secondhand is fine, baby doesn't care! My DD uses Lidl and Aldi for nappies too. Solid food, baby will eat yours, just get a hand blender. Value ones are about £5. I buy toys and books for my DGD from Charity shops, a good wash and they are fine. Clothes are often advertised in bundles in our local free paper too.
Good luck with your new role!

[Deleted User]

My DD feeds her family on less than this and she has four healthy growing lads who can eat for England
Whe mine were small they don't need designer clothes just a good cuddle from Mum or Dad.I bought from a jumble sale (not many charity shops around in 1967) a pair of flanelette sheets and sat and cut them up into cot sized sheets and hemmed around the edges (I had two December babies so I wanted them cosy in their cots)It did both of my girls.I also bought a dozen Harringtons nappies and used them over and over again. Nappi liners had just come on the market when my second DD was born in 1969 and I thought they were the best invention since sliced bread
In fact I still have three of my left over nappies that I use for cleaning and polishing around the house.They are very thin now, but extremely soft and make excellant dusters after the babies have grown out of them.Food isn't a problem as Mum can feed baby but if someone asks what you would like as a 'baby present ' ask for a mouli mix so you can 'mouli' up what you eat when baby gets big enough to eat your food .Jars of baby food are only a waste of cash, and your own home cooked food is better ,it must be if you eat it :)
Don't be persuaded to buy stuff you baby doesn't need its just a waste of money.Folk have been raising children for thousands of years without some of the tat thats sold as 'essential to babys well-being'
Babies want several things, to be warm, dry,fed and most of all loved. That can't be bought in Mothercare's

Dobie

Are you a member of your local Freecycle group? There's often baby and children's clothes and equipment being given away by parents whose own children have outgrown things. This is a brilliant way to cut your on costs and reduce what goes into landfill. When your child has outgrown them, if they're still in good condition yo can gift them on to someone else.

HappyMJ

jonnysniper86 wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm new to these forums and am soon to be a new dad!
Starting to panic though re finances :eek:

My query is - is it possible to raise a baby with 125gbp per week after all bills and expenses paid (this includes feeding me and the wife too:) )?

What's the best way to budget? And are there any really good threads on here?

Regards and thanks .

Raising a baby...easy...raising a demanding teenager not so easy.

thriftwizard

Can't stress enough that when it comes to feeding, if your partner can get through those first few days of thinking it's totally impossible, breast is not just best, it's free & it's also far less work for Mum - no sterilising, no measuring, no worries about amounts etc. You will need to support & encourage her all the way as it's not easy at first; some really can't do it (which, by the way, depends on the individual baby as much as the mother & may be quite different with each one) but many give up in frustration or because they're feeling pressurised for one reason or another. But I can't even begin to estimate how much money we saved because I was lucky enough to be able to feed all 5 of ours, even the twins.

And yes, cloth nappies - my first was in disposables as I'd fully intended to return to FT work & commuting, but couldn't bring myself to hand him over to a nanny in the end - but second & subsequent all wore reusables most of the time & disposables only when we were travelling. I had 4 under 5s at one stage and there's only 7 years between first & last, but washing etc. was more manageable than the cost of disposables & pull-ups would have been. Ditto HM food - not much work, very much cheaper, plus you know what's in it.

And yes, tap into your local Freegle/Freecycle groups, & Gumtree and Fleabay; keep out of supermarkets if you can, too. It's all quite do-able & in the long run you will both be picking up useful skills that will keep your head above water now & repay you handsomely in the end. Friends & ex-colleagues thought we were quite mad back then, especially when the interest rate went up to 15%, but now our house is paid for, we've supported two of the kids through uni, one's working FT, one runs her own business and the last looks as if she's going to team up with her sister & take the world by storm.

There are plenty of ways & means to keep your heads above water & keep a family & have fun on a shoestring, and asking on here is one of the best!