Having a child and saving for retirement. Advice from parents & non parents alike?

LHW99 wrote: »

I would say, with your income, you are, like us, looking at a small family.

We're looking at only one child So about as small as you can get.

It is easier IMO to cope when children are small, as they are perfectly happy as babies / toddlers with hand-me-downs and (safe) 2nd hand equipment. Costs really begin to mount as they get older and demand "everyone else has...". You and your wife need to support each other absolutely on what they can / can't have, maybe having a list from which things can be "called down" for birthday etc gifts.

I'll probably get called harsh here or criticised in some way but they would get the same thing that my wife and I both got growing up.
You want something you have to go out and earn it. (I'm talking more teenage years here as i suspect that's when the greater costs come). Our parents couldn't afford to hand out to us all the time.
I remember i used to get £5 a month pocket money. My friends got £5 a week. They had the top labels where i didn't. If i wanted something then i had to work for it. I got a job aged 14 and earned more than any of my friends at the time (how things change). And our child would be brought up that way also.
Some may over analyse what i say here and think i'm cold hearted and wouldn't even buy the child presents for Xmas etc, instead they'd be sent out to work but i think you get where i'm coming from with me saying they'd be taught the value of money.

However, we found you can still save, prioritising pension just a bit more than other things.
Many of our friends seemed to regularly change their furniture, kitchens, bathrooms, carpets. We didn't. Things were as far as possible kept until they wore out.

That's a very interesting comment you make.

A good workmate of mine is regularly doing exactly what you just said. His view on pensions? "Waste of time" was one phrase. "My money is in my house" was another (his house is not worth £500k btw).
An aunt of mine was also doing just that.

However my parents did exactly what you said you did/do. I still remember the carpets on the landing and in my bedroom were the same carpets when i was mid to late 20s as they were when we moved in there as i was 2. They'd worn through so bad in parts you could see the backing. Ok maybe you weren't that bad but i get your point. And the result? We were able to go away on modest holidays from when i hit 12 years of age and my dad as i said was able to put away in his pension to give a comfortable life after work.

Thanks. It's reassuring to read.

We had less expensive holidays - off season when children were below school age. Self-catering / camping / UK when older.

I'm responding to you as i read your post and yes that's exactly how we did it.

We have a number of smaller pensions + SP for when we do finish work, and expect these to bring in around £30k total by then, which will be plenty, as there will be no mortgage to pay.

What is an SP?
If our mortgage lasts the term then it should be paid off when i turn 60, my wife 61. We did it over 30 years instead of 25 as we needed the lower monthly payments at the time.

Yes things have been hard at times. But even with no kids you may well go through that if one of you became seriously ill, or became redundant unexpectedly, and those can hit you without giving time for any planning.
If you would be resilient enough to cope with those sort of emergencies, then, if you actually want children, you should be able to cope there too.

That is a concern of mine. My wife has been quite good medically but i've often had problems here and there which does worry me. As of right now i'm perfectly fine but i just had a bad run.



Anyway thank you very much for your post. Much appreciated.

atush wrote: »

I think you are doing the right thing and thinking about this.

But while you are thinking, bank your wife's entire salary and live on yours. In cash savings (if you dont have 3-6 months expenses saved) and then into S&S isas.

This will mean not only can she take 18 months off (if you take into account maternity pay) with no drop in income, you will see if you can afford to live on your salary alone.

Kids are expensive. I had 3, 2 of which were twins. Which meant i had to buy ANOTHER of everything incl cot, pram, basket car seat etc, and a sofabed (as had to gt rid of double bed in spare bedroom for their 2x cots). My annual nappy bill alone was ridiculously huge. So when I was 7 months, I started bulk buying them in different sizes on sale bogof or 2 4 1. And stacked them in the corner of their room (up to the ceiling lol).

But it can be doable if you save and plan. So get saving and planning.
And agreeing about doing it, how you will do it etc.

Also thanks to you.

That's the pair of you made that decision and the more i think about it the more i think it's a very good one. Even from not having a child standing. Could we just live off 1 wage? It's an interesting thought and I think we should see if we can do it.

Worst case scenario is we fail and dip into my wife's wage.
Other than that is we save a full wage so will have a nice amount built up over time.



Though your post did make me wonder - you mentioned so many nappies and a huge bill ... did you not have those terry towelling ones rather than disposable? I've heard they've changed from when i was a kid when they resembled pretty much just a tea towel. All news to me.

justme111 wrote: »

What do you mean - how did I come to the conclusion that your wife likely to want children ?
I would be happy if I was wrong in my guess that you thought people who did not consider not having children due to their impact on future retirement were wrong:D. Just the tone of your post made me think that , apologies if I was wrong.:)

Look, apologies also. It's no good me taking that tone with you either.

I'm fine with a lot of things but certain things do grate very quickly on me. One of them is people saying i mean something when i don't, i mean something else - this is both online and offline. Another thing is (online) like i mentioned earlier - picking apart my selection of wording. Personally i think that's going a bit far. It's like being in a courtroom where they're trying to flip everything on you.

Anyway i'll apologise for it.



To give you a bit of background info....

I always wanted kids. 3 was my number growing up. Maybe because my parents had 3, although due to the gaps i feel like an only child. I always wanted a brother and sister to share my time with. I was never a "i want kids more than anything else in the whole world" person but then i never get emotional like that about anything. My wife says i'm broken as i never feel 'excited'. Sure i look forward to events but i don't do a fiery ball of emotion. Maybe that comes from my dad.

So yeah, i just wanted children.

I met my wife some 14 years ago. She never wanted kids. There's also a huge gap between her and her siblings but unlike me she never wanted them and didn't like that they were around.

At some point between 14 years ago and 2 years ago, we briefly spoke about children here and there. I explained how i wanted them (this was before i even got in to money saving and waaaaaaaaay before i even thought about retirement - that's for old people right?), i asked my wife to consider it but that if she still decided no then i would respect that. She asked me to let her think about it in her own time which i did.

On and off for the past couple years (since we got our own place) we'd spoken about it. She started thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad which progressed to days where she thought it'd actually be quite nice followed by days where she felt that our freedom was a better option.

And that's how it went. Constantly going from one thought to another like a see-saw.

I've seen her with kids and she's great, although she feels awkward and self conscious. Funny that because that's how i feel around kids. Her workmates say she's great with kids (has to deal with them at her work at times).

On paper we're good to go. We're mid 30s, we're not scraping by but we're not loaded by any means.
As said earlier - we're actually a little boring, so we wouldn't be giving up a social life. We're actually socially awkward so it can't impact on a life you have with friends if you don't have friends - but we're both fine with all of that.

The only things we'd really be giving up is 'freedom' to do what you want when you want, but we can accept that, and then there's the money - hence me being here.

And still as time goes on it's the see-saw. One day of yes that would be really great followed by ...... but it's a scary thought, what about the disruption to my current life, what if it doesn't work out .... followed by ahh but it would be so rewarding, so on and so forth.


Everyone thinks it'll be my wife wanting them because she's female and it's what females do but that's not how it is at all.

So anyway there you go for a bit of background.