How much does a baby add to your budget?

Person_one

Alikay wrote: »

Well for starters, the woman is the one who is pregnant and gives birth, and therefore physically needs a certain amount of maternity leave. Breastfeeding is also something dad can't do, so those are the biological reasons Mums will usually stay home initially.

Once baby is born, and the initial post-partum period has passed, there's still the issue of family finances: It is still the case that the higher earner is more likely to be the man - not always the case, obv, but still likely. Male-dominated jobs like engineering and IT are in general better paid than female-dominated ones like nursing and childcare. If a female engineer with a male nursery-nurse partner has a baby, I think there's a pretty good chance he'll be the one to stay home to look after it.

Actually, women without children tend to earn on a par with men of the same age these days. The pay gap only really kicks in when children come along.

Person_one

zagfles wrote: »

Well, yes, that was the point I was driving at Indeed. Equally, when a couple split, the mother often assumes that she'll get custody and the father will become the NRP, and it comes as a bit of a shock when the father decides to contest!

Well, that's because usually the mother has been the primary carer, all part of the same issue really!

zagfles

Person_one wrote: »

Ah, I suppose you could read that question both ways! I'm used to people spouting anecdotal evidence that they know loads and loads of stay at home dads and they're all the victims of terrible schoolyard bullying by evil mum cliques!

Yes I re-read the post and see it could be interpreted that way!

They're obviously rare because we as a society still expect that women do the bulk of childcare, that they are the 'primary' parent, that being a mother should be the most important part of a woman's life and those assumptions permeate pretty much every part of our culture around work and families.

Why do you think they're rare then?

Well pretty much the same except that it's equally, if not more, about society's expectation of the man's role, ie that he should be breadwinner and that he wouldn't be as capable of looking after the children as well as the mother.

As usual with this sort of thing - more women feel capable of escaping society's expections (by working) than men do (by becoming the primary carer).

Rambosmum

meer53 wrote: »

Might be just me but i always think people who use spreadsheets and the like to work out how much a baby will cost aren't really living in the real world. I'm not meaning to offend the OP, but a pen and a bit of paper usually does the job. Even then, the correct answer is "don't worry about the budget, just do it"

Babies don't cost much at all. Now teenagers, thats a whole new ballgame. By the time your child is a teenager, you're stuffed really, no spreadsheet in the world can prepare you for their demands. You just need to develop the ability to say "you are joking, aren't you ?" when the latest phone/tablet/games console/trainers/clothes come out.

I never once thought about how much it was going to cost. Because i knew that whatever happened, i would manage. I might not have the things i had before, but my children more than compensate for that.

I find typing formulas in to a spreadsheet much quicker than doing the maths on paper, but each to their own. I also find it easier to adjust and change.

I'm having a baby anyway, but to go in to it blind, financially speaking, would be stupid. And I can't just assume that 'I'll manage'. We earn too much to qualify for any help, whether I work or not but our outgoings are such that we have very little spare money, to not consider the financial implications would result in use being unable to pay essential bills such as our mortgage!

meer53

Rambosmum wrote: »

I find typing formulas in to a spreadsheet much quicker than doing the maths on paper, but each to their own. I also find it easier to adjust and change.

I'm having a baby anyway, but to go in to it blind, financially speaking, would be stupid. And I can't just assume that 'I'll manage'. We earn too much to qualify for any help, whether I work or not but our outgoings are such that we have very little spare money, to not consider the financial implications would result in use being unable to pay essential bills such as our mortgage!

I see your point, and i'm not meaning you, but wouldn't you find it really sad, if someone decided simply to not have children if it meant they couldn't pay their mortgage ? You can always downsize. Babies don't really care where their parents live or how much they earn. I know everyone has their own standard of living which they're used to, but for me, (and this is just MY opinion) if having children meant i was penniless, it wouldn't bother me. They are babies for such a short time, you can always get back on the job ladder when they're older.

How do you think the people who "go into it blind" when finding themselves suddenly pregnant cope ? You WOULD manage, it's not impossible.

I've had to adjust to being a single Mum with 2 children after my high earning ex husband decided to move on, i had to adjust my standard of living a huge amount. My kids don't care that they can't have what they used to have, i'm still Mum, we still have a home, they still eat. They just don't get the treats they used to. I don't care either, you just adapt to a new way of life.

Alikay

meer53 wrote: »

How do you think the people who "go into it blind" when finding themselves suddenly pregnant cope ? You WOULD manage, it's not impossible.

Very true. Necessity is the mother of invention, and most of us are pretty resourceful. I hadn't done the maths when we conceived our first child 28 years ago, and we knew nothing about childcare options (limited back then anyway) or welfare benefits since there was no internet to educate us, and no-one in the family had needed to claim before. We thought it was up to us look after the baby and pay the bills, so we did...DH tinkered with cars to make a few ££ in his spare time and I delivered the Yellow Pages and polling cards, sold Avon, and did pretty menial part-time work (riveting pushchair frames on the twilight shift was NOT the pinnacle of my career). So we technically survived on one wage (his) but supplemented it wherever we were able to.

Really glad we didn't look too deeply into it, as we probably wouldn't have considered children affordable until 8 or 10 years ago, by which time my body would've been 45+ years old and probably wouldn't have played ball!

FreddieFrugal

merlin68 wrote: »

I cant see a baby adding 50% to shopping bill max £20 a week if you bottle feed and use disposables.

Ha! £20 IS 50% of our weekly shopping bill
So yes it can!

Although I've actually had nappies as a seperate expense to the weekly shop

We're as frugal as can be, that's why I did the budget. We're already managing on a fairly low monthly outgoing, I just want to make sure that we'd be alright.

Be happy to be penniless but have children. Mum coped with three children on her own for years with next to nothing.

Currently trying to overpay on the mortgage by as much as possible while we're still fixed, my spreadsheet tells us that we should be able to afford maximum overpayment so should have it paid off in 6 years time. At the very least it gives us a bit more flexibility and less impact if rates are suddenly huge after our fix ends.

sweetilemon

onlyroz wrote: »

You need to do more than just hope. I would never saddle a grandparent with the task of childcare unless they volunteered to do it of their own free will, and fully understood the implications.

They have both offered. My MIL works in childcare so she will definitely understand how tiring it is. With both grandparents it should mean neither doing the childcare full time, between nursary and my finishing time it would only be a few hours a day from age 3. I meant hopefully as you never know what will happen in a year and a half when it's time for me to return to work. If I need paid childcare I will look into the options nearer the time, buying childcare vouchers through employment.

gayleygoo

FreddieFrugal wrote: »

OH! You can buy a huge set can you? Where from? Where on earth did you store them all? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick.

Oh are they reusable things?

I put £30 a month for nappies!

I used to be a cloth nappy advisor, and will say that while you can buy "birth to potty" sets, it is possible that the style of nappy might not suit every baby. I find it much better to buy a few different kinds and sizes and see what works in the first few months, before committing to a huge set. The cloth nappy tree forum has loads of advice and you can buy them preloved as well. I use a mix of nappies on my baby and that works for us.

gayleygoo

I was 20 when our first baby came along, 8 years ago. She was unplanned (loved nonetheless!) so our financial plans were pretty much non-exsistent. I had a four-hour contract in a shop, OH was a coalman on a £220 p/w full time wage. I think we got a decent amount of tax credits at the time, (but no housing benefit), but we felt richer then than we ever have since. Our household income is now much more, but it doesn't seem to go as far. Older children want "stuff", clothes, school uniforms, proper birthday and Christmas presents, they cost money to take on holiday etc!

I read a blog once about a couple who wanted to try not to spend anything at all on their baby in the first year of life (apart from necessary food and healthcare.) They acquired loads of stuff for free - because many parents are only too happy to get rid of their baby clutter, - borrowed from friends and neighbours, breastfed baby, made nappies from old t-shirts and towels etc. It is possible if you have the mindset, but equally, I know of people who have spent thousands on the fanciest of everything and that trend may well continue into later childhood and things get costly!