I have a 5 year old who has to do before and after school care - About $300 per month
My 3 year old is in preschool 3 full days per week - $750 per month
We have grandparents that help out a little and they are free. We live in a HCOL area and can't afford to buy a home, so we spend $2200 per month renting a 3/2 duplex. I would love to be able to buy a home with a yard but the prices are ridiculously high. A 3 bedroom home right up the street from us that looks a little old and dated is going for $1,088,000.
I think having a second child has made things tight...we don't go on many vacations. A vacation to us is 4 days camping in the woods....no Disneyland at this point. I still would never go back to just one. I love my littlest one to the moon and back and giving up on certain luxeries like trips and material posessions would never make up for the love I have for my little nugget. You make it work basically.
It will be really tight, actually. We're currently saving the amount of the second daycare per month. But we're saving towards a new truck down payment for H, so while we don't save $600/month anymore, we'll still have something like a $200 payment. I've also got a couple of side projects underway that will bring in about $5k extra this fall. I plan to pay off my student loans with it. They're low interest, but the $130 payment means we can't cash-flow daycare in the future. So, best to get rid of them.
Basically, I think we can make it work but it will be tight.
When DS was about 11 months we switched to an at home that was almost half the price of our center. So we know we can do it even if it hurts temporarily. We decreased 401ks a little and moved some emergency fund money to pay off a couple loans for better cash flow which went straight into the 529s. We're not saving much and only contribute $100/mo each to 529s but that will have to do for now.
Since both boys are late Sept/Oct bdays they will be almost 6 when they start K which means 4 years of double daycare payments. Ugh.
I quit because we were trying for #2, so I can't help with the work thing. But I truly believe the second kid is only as expensive as you make it. Diapers and formula are the biggest after daycare. So plan for daycare and bump it up for those. Obviously clothes if your second is a different sex, but still... even that can be "cheap".
At the end of the day I know we have enough to make it work, and there was no material thing or part of my life style that was more important to my fundamental life happiness than having another child. And it wasn't super easy to get pregnant for me the first time, so here I am. I couldn't be happier. Two in daycare come November is going to be awful but it's not forever.
Post by autumnfire on Aug 27, 2015 13:43:13 GMT -5
I was in the same boat as you worried about the financial aspect of Baby #2. We knew roughly what our finances were but sat down and realized a second baby was possible.
DD will soon be potty trained and diapers for 2 will likely be only for a short time or if we're lucky not at all. So no change in expense there. We have all of the big ticket items from DD and if it's a girl all the clothing as well.
We also talked to her daycare as we wanted to be sure there would be a space available. Lucky for us we let her know at the right time so that she could decline taking on any newborns between now and when we deliver. We also asked her what the price would be Instead of $110/week we'd be paying $200/week. $40 savings instead of having to pay in full helped to know when coming up with our budget allowance. In the short term we're paying more. Long term we're actually saving a decent chunk then if we spaced #2 out further. However we'd really be saving if we just stopped with #1. Obviously.
I think for me the start up cost I kept thinking we had like with DD. But we really don't have any where near the expense we did with DD in that regard. Overall for us we knew we'd make it work even if that meant things were a little tight for a while.
I will probably take parental leave once the baby arrives and spend several months with both kids. Assuming #2 is a girl, we won't have a lot of extra expenses as I plan on BFing and we already have girl clothes and baby is due around the DDs bday, so same seasons. For future daycare, we get subsidized daycare, so I don't expect it to be too ridiculous. Our main cost increases will be for travel and once the kid starts eating real food.
Post by whitepicketfence on Aug 27, 2015 13:54:59 GMT -5
I have 3 but I wanted to respond anyway
We are saving adequately for retirement but, otherwise, we are saving very little (mostly, we utilize save-to-spend accounts and throw some money into the kids' 529s each month). I currently work part-time and on second shift so we do not have daycare expenses. We're also fortunate in that my mom is retired and healthy enough to help watch the kids when DH and I have an overlap in our schedules (he works FT and attends school PT). We are currently paying $390/month for the older two to attend Pre-K (5 days/week) and full day K at a parochial school.
Honestly, having #3 and having to now pay for tuition for the older two plus the cost of their activities has really made money much tighter for us. Our mortgage/property taxes also increased significantly this year due to the large addition we built on our home in order to have enough space for all the kids. It's the first time we've really felt the impact of having multiple kids.
We didn't have any start-up costs with DD3 since all the kids are girls and diapers/formula were a drop in the bucket compared to everything else. Because of the added expenses, we've sadly had to come to the realization that having a fourth would probably get us in over our heads financially. For us, babies are cheap. It's the older kids that get expensive!
@vicmo, we do have pre-k, but spots are limited. We're hoping to get in, but I don't feel like I can count on it from a financial perspective. And by the time we'd know for sure, it would put us close to our 4 year timeline anyway.
I'm sure we'll have a second kid eventually, I just wish money didn't play such a big role in that decision.
God, I spent so much time in the last year trying to figure out if we could "afford" 3 in daycare and whether we wanted to cut back enough to afford it.
Raises entirely paid for the first two. I used to make $23k as a graduate student pre-kid and I make more than triple that number now. (Full time care is about $12k a year here, for reference.)
Half of daycare expenses from this one will come from a big raise DH just got. I'm also hoping for a decent raise this fall, which will help. Ultimately, we will have to cut back on savings - specifically, we will stop paying down debt early and stop adding to the e-fund. We will still save $250/mo for vacation (no Disney for us, lol), $250/mo for major home repairs, and $100/mo towards car maintenance.
Honestly, I'm more concerned about facing 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave than I am about cash-flowing daycare for 3. We've actually started our post-baby budget and are banking the "daycare" money for my maternity leave until baby actually arrives.
If she had not gotten into public prek we would have had 1 year of 2 kids in DC. With the public pre k we just had to pay for after care for dd1. Summer daycare for both this summer came from our dependent care account.
And now things are more comfortable because DH picked up a nice paying side job and we are 50/50 on #3 a few years down the road.
@vicmo, we do have pre-k, but spots are limited. We're hoping to get in, but I don't feel like I can count on it from a financial perspective. And by the time we'd know for sure, it would put us close to our 4 year timeline anyway.
I'm sure we'll have a second kid eventually, I just wish money didn't play such a big role in that decision.
That's fair. Bas will start public pre-k at 4 years, 3 months, so we only have an overlap of 5-6 months of full time daycare after mat leave ends. I wasn't sure if that was an Ontario thing only.
That's the only thing that is making IF bearable right now. Every month that goes by is a month less of two in daycare. If I get pregnant anytime after next June then we will not have to deal with two in daycare at all. I have a little chart written out with the savings for every one has that goes by. #everycloud
Right now, we are able to aggressively save. That will not be the case with two. We do plan to save money by moving out of our $$ neighborhood. While we pay well below market for our apartment, daycare here is insane (would be almost $70k per year for two -- nope nope nope). I figure we'll have a few years of pain and then we'll be fine.
DD will be 4.5 when we have another one so she'll be out of diapers and we'll have 2 in daycare for 13-14 months and then DD1 will go into kindergarten. I pray we have another girl so I can reuse all of DD1's clothes!
I found a random to trade clothes with when I found out I was having a girl. Highly recommend if you find yourself with a boy.
DH's yearly bonus covers more than a year of daycare so we could just use that if needed for #2. We also could actually stick to a budget and watch our frivolous spending.
What's really going to happen is I'm currently getting my master's and by doing so I will move to a new pay scale and that will more than pay for daycare and extras for #2. I always planned on getting my masters before kids but that's didn't happen. Getting it between kids is actually working out pretty well because it just absorbs the additional cost #2 brings (and still leaves some left over!) without us ever really feeling it.