Soon to be mummy, is £300 a realistic disposable income?

fluffnutter

maman wrote: »

I disagree with this completely. You and your DH will still be in an adult relationship. You'll still have friends and want to socialise. I think it's a huge mistake to let babies take over your life.

Have you got children?

I'm not trying to be particularly challenging. I'm just wondering. Lots of people think that babies fit into your existing lifestyle. The reality is that they don't. Things inevitably change. You do still have friends of course, but I doubt many new mothers want to socialise that much - too tired, frankly.

If you're not prepared to let a baby change your life, why have one? They're not accessories. They're very small and need all your attention for such a short period. The best advice I was given was to write off six months of my life from when my baby was born. If you try to continue with your existing lifestyle, you'll soon find everything falling apart spectacularly.

Catty89

Thanks for the advice its really helpful. The money does include £80 child benefit and my maternity money and partners pay, i do not think we receive any other benefits.
After the 9 months i will either need to work part time or my partner will need to get a better paying job/ either way this is just the budget for maternity leave.

Thanks for the tips and has made me feel better i will just need to stick to a weekly budget and not buy juice snacks etc when im out as this is where alot of my money seems to disapear. Also little things here and there when im at the shop.

Seems strange but im quite looking forward to the challenge

Catty89

pigpen wrote: »

I didn't get any gifts of clothes when mine arrived so don't intend to rely on that! Mine just wore sleepsuits for the first few months, clothes seemed pointless, it isn't like they care. Plus going through several changes a day made sleepsuits much more practical.

Mine were fed our food from day one too improving our overall diet and we used cloth nappies with most of them.

I am also very lazy and breastfed all mine so no milk costs at all.. give it a go, if you don't want to continue at least you can smugly say you tried and hated it or whatever.

Car boot sales are the best places to buy baby stuff, clothes etc.. a £10 and you can get a massive pile of stuff.. ebay is so expensive by comparison especially when you factor in the newly increased postage extortion.

I have bought cloth nappies so i am hoping these work well and will hopefully save money. Also breastfeeding isnt lazy, from what iv heard it can be harder? I am going to try but have bottles etc just incase it doesnt work out.

fluffnutter

Catty, don't buy many toys or clothes. They simply don't need them, particularly at first, plus friends and family might help you out. Supermarkets do cheap packs of sleepsuits - these will be fine for a few months until you can work out what's needed.

Don't be proud about second-hand - most baby stuff is in great condition because it's used for such a short period of time.

Breastfeeding will save you money on formula. When weaning, a little imaginative and forward planning means your baby can eat what you eat. Remember that disposable and reusable nappies both have their pros and cons. If you're making purely a financial decision, reusables are cheaper in the long run but usually mean a larger initial outlay. It's probably better to simply go with what suits you - economising can be made elsewhere.

Things you can certainly do without - baby monitor, baby bath, separate moses basket (your baby can easily sleep in a cot from day one), baby toiletries (just use water to wash them), top and tail bowl, changing bag (any old bag will do), plus other stuff that I probably don't even know exists!

Enjoy your babe. They're very precious.

fluffnutter

Catty89 wrote: »

I have bought cloth nappies so i am hoping these work well and will hopefully save money. Also breastfeeding isnt lazy, from what iv heard it can be harder? I am going to try but have bottles etc just incase it doesnt work out.

Just buy one bottle. You can always get more. Don't buy a steriliser - if you need to quickly sterilise your single bottle, you can use milton fluid.

If you have to give up breastfeeding, then you can buy all the stuff you need then. If you intend to BF, it's sensible to have some bottlefeeding kit for emergencies but you don't need much.

neverdespairgirl

Catty89 wrote: »

I have bought cloth nappies so i am hoping these work well and will hopefully save money. Also breastfeeding isnt lazy, from what iv heard it can be harder? I am going to try but have bottles etc just incase it doesnt work out.

Breastfeeding can be hard work - especially at the start, and when they go through growth spurts and want to feed all the time.

But once it's established, it makes life a lot easier, you don't need to worry about packing bottles / formula / warming bottles up / steralising etc. Because it's there, on tap, sterile already, and even the most absent-minded mother doesn't forget her breasts!

Kayalana99

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Not if you breastfeed, then you just need extra food for the nursing mother.

My point was if once you get to the weaning stage your shopping bill goes up (regardless of if your breast feeding or not) but if you was bottle feeding when weaning the only thing you may need less of is milk..but the differnece my baby is drinking less is not that much although his milk has changed to stage 2.

Nothing to do with the first 6months when baby is milk feed anyway in most cases.

I still don't really *see* how with weaning shopping bill can actally go down, people make out that fruit and veg is so cheap but the reality is it isnt! And you need to buy a variety of fruits and veg for baby as they are experiancing all the new tastes!) And your meals would have to generally get bigger as time goes on even if at first you can just give him a little of your own.

I can see how proper planning of the food budget could make it go down but this is due to you changing habits that you did before, for an already healthy family eating the right diet (which dont get me wrong we are not. ) your food bill MUST rise even if its only an extra £10 or so as thier is only so many meals a baby can have with you...and they do need quite a quanity of food my baby eats a whole bannana and yogurt for breakfast which admit is one of the cheaper meals but it still is an extra 20-30p for a meal which in itself would be £7 a week if he was only to eat that!

If someone had managed to actally lower thier food bill I belive this is the exception as babys are expensive!

Kayalana99

fluffnutter wrote: »

Just buy one bottle. You can always get more. Don't buy a steriliser - if you need to quickly sterilise your single bottle, you can use milton fluid.

If you have to give up breastfeeding, then you can buy all the stuff you need then. If you intend to BF, it's sensible to have some bottlefeeding kit for emergencies but you don't need much.

Thiers being cheap and cheerful and thiers just making life plain difficult!!!

Sorry but 1 bottle? When a baby wants feeding at 1am and 4 am the last thing you want to be doing in the middle of the night is washing them and sterlising

fluffnutter

Kayalana99 wrote: »

Thiers being cheap and cheerful and thiers just making life plain difficult!!!

Sorry but 1 bottle? When a baby wants feeding at 1am and 4 am the last thing you want to be doing in the middle of the night is washing them and sterlising

If you'd read my post you'll see it's for emergencies. If it becomes obvious that bubs will need formula, then you can buy more bottles when you buy the formula. 24 hour supermarkets stock an incredible range of baby stuff.

I bottle fed my baby expressed milk every other feed, so five times a day, for two weeks and I've only got one bottle. Even so, that's not what I'm advocating. If the baby is bottle-fed it will need bottles. My point was that, if you're planning to breastfeed, you don't need to buy loads of bottles 'on the off-chance'. You need one. For emergencies. You then have about three hours to get some more. If you can't even manage that, it's not that much of a hardship to sterilise the original one until you can.

notanewuser

Kayalana99 wrote: »

My point was if once you get to the weaning stage your shopping bill goes up (regardless of if your breast feeding or not) but if you was bottle feeding when weaning the only thing you may need less of is milk..but the differnece my baby is drinking less is not that much although his milk has changed to stage 2.

Nothing to do with the first 6months when baby is milk feed anyway in most cases.

I still don't really *see* how with weaning shopping bill can actally go down, people make out that fruit and veg is so cheap but the reality is it isnt! And you need to buy a variety of fruits and veg for baby as they are experiancing all the new tastes!) And your meals would have to generally get bigger as time goes on even if at first you can just give him a little of your own.

I can see how proper planning of the food budget could make it go down but this is due to you changing habits that you did before, for an already healthy family eating the right diet (which dont get me wrong we are not. ) your food bill MUST rise even if its only an extra £10 or so as thier is only so many meals a baby can have with you...and they do need quite a quanity of food my baby eats a whole bannana and yogurt for breakfast which admit is one of the cheaper meals but it still is an extra 20-30p for a meal which in itself would be £7 a week if he was only to eat that!

If someone had managed to actally lower thier food bill I belive this is the exception as babys are expensive!

Our food bill hasn't increased since before DD was born, and she's 2.5 now. She's never had "special" or children's food. She's had normal food - the same as we've eaten - since she was 5 months old and grabbed a handful of salad off my plate.

No pur!e, no mush. Just normal food. They don't eat as much as you think between 2 and 3.

If you think babies "need" pouches or jars at £1+ a pop - :eek: