Cost of a Baby

[cookie25]

Oh my word that's a lot!

I think it's taken every possibility into account though - if you bought everything you could. You wouldn't need to spend that much.

E.g. I don't see why it would take £3383 to decorate and furnish the nursery. We just decorated our bedroom and spare room and furnished the spare bedroom (new house) and I don't think it cost more than £500-£600 for the 2!

Plus you'll get loads of stuff from friends+family - gifts as well as baby stuff they don't need any more.

So hopefully it wouldn't need to cost that amount!!

 

[Winter Belle]

Errrm Ouch!!...

My nephew and his parents have really found great bargains out there..
mamas and papas buggy, car seat second hand £50
Cot for free from freecycle...as they saved money they bought a flashy mattress for £99.
Huge box of 6month-18th month clothes from bootsale for £2 (all gap and next labels) they lasted about 6 months!
Almost all toys (except pressies) have been second hand.
A new nursery furniture set for £30 from newspaper.
Use mainly reusable nappies and make alot of their own baby food.

£18,000 sounds nearly impossible to me... that is £350 a week just on the baby. I guess if I put the effort into the extra shopping I could do it but I'm sure that would result in a LOT of unused baby toys being left all over the place and tripped up on

I reckon I could knock that budget down to an average of £100 per week comfortably including the big essentials like car seat, cot etc.

I was budgeting about £5000 for the year.. Maybe i need to recalculate...

I love your logic Rafwife... I might pitch that one to my OH... Definitely NOT telling him about the £18k average though!!! He would never consider ttc again!

 

[sleepinbeauty]

yeah, my OH would have a stroke if he heard that number...

 

[SpecialK]

Wowsers! That's a lot of money. That's about $32K (Canadian). That's almost half my salary!! I don't think it will cost near that - or I mean it doesn't HAVE to cost near that like many of the ladies are saying here. Second hand and nothing designer...that's going to be our motto!

 

[xCherylx]

I doubt it! I wish I had 18k to spend in one year though lol!

 

[sam#3]

god knows where these surveys get these figures from!!
our 3 kids combined havent cost us 18K!! i suppose if you buy everything on the market u could spend it but jeez.... why would you?!?!?

 

[bunnyg82]

Well the gurgle website do a costing for you and they've kindly said that my budget is as follows:
Fertility(£1295)
Pregnancy(£3726)
Year One(£7986)
Year 2(£4221)
Year 3(£5031)

Crazy total of £22,259!!

 

[sam#3]

thats ridiculous......what do they think you have to spend so much on in pregnancy and the first year?? xx

 

[Pops]

I hate these things, making the decision to have a baby is a big enough one without being made to think you are going to have to remortgage your house to pay for it.

It costs what you want it to cost. You need somewhere for the baby to sleep, something to transport it in, some clothes for it to wear and then nappies and food. It is up to you if you want to buy them from the most expensive shop going, second hand off ebay or somewhere in between the two.

It really shouldn't be all about who spends what and maybe they should do the odd study about how much happier or fulfilled people feel in the first year of being a parent....

xxx

 

[Char&Bump-x]

I've got everything for LO except the cot and i definatly havent spent over £500.

Thats including a quinny buzz travel system and extras (worth £600 new)
Lost count of how many clothes (over 80 vests, oops!)
Bottles/steriliser/nappies/toys/toiletries etc

It can EASILY be done on a budget, that figure is crap!

 

[bunnyg82]

It's absolutely ridiculous - part of the fertility budget they've included a £550 holiday!!???


Stupid website - can you imagine how scary that could be for people if they genuinely thought you'd need to spend all that money!!!

 

[Sherileigh]

That's CRAZY! So far I've bought a dresser (mom bought us the crib), getting TONS from others...from maternity clothes, to toys. So far I've hardly spent a dime...probably saved money being pregnant from not going out anyway...lol. I think those numbers are ridiculous and so wrong! Scary to people just thinking about having a baby!

 

[MoonMuffin]

Well it's certainly not hard to spend that much!
I've allready spent at least:
$400 + on clothes so far
$100 + on sheets, blankets, swaddling blankets ($10 each)
$250 for crib
$25 a week for can of formula
$40-50 a month for diapers
$100 + on bottles, sippy cups, bowls
$25 ish so far on baby food (baby cereal, baby yogurt and jars of pure are about 74 cents each)
at least $300 on toys, etc (bumboo, jumperoo, walker, learn and groove table, stuffed animals, rattles, etc)
at least $150 on misc. like first aid stuff (like baby tylonal), bath stuff, towels, etc.
$200 on a new tv table (our other one didn't have doors) so that she can't get into the wires and such
$50 so far on baby proofing (and we haven't got gates)
$6,000 + on co pays and medical bills that insurance wouldn't cover (my hospital bill totaled over $34,000! )

Then there are all the things we got as gifts, that a lot of people prefer to buy themselves:
Britax stroller ($300 ish) and Britax infant carrier/carseat (clicks into stroller-$200)
convertible carseat when she outgrew infant carrier ($250)
highchair ($150)
changing table (was a hand-me-down from my mom's rich friend, real wood and very nice, so was expensive I'm sure)
dresser (same as changing table)

So it is a lot, babies are sooooo expensive!

 

[MaryJ]

I that 18K includes all the medical stuff it's really not all that much. If I wouldn't have gotten Medicaid I'd have needed to pay around 10K out of pocket. After that 8K is about right for what I'll spend on diapers (50/mo) and formula (130/mo.) and everything else that's been bought. If that 18K doesn't include medical I'd say that's way high. There's is no way that I've got that much wrapped up in Danny even if I count all of the gifts.

 

[bunnyg82]

I guess it depends if you're looking at it in dollars or £ though? Cos £18k is an extortionate amount!! x

 

[lozzy21]

I guess it depends if you're looking at it in dollars or £ though? Cos £18k is an extortionate amount!! x

It is in £ bunny, they have got over 3 grant to decorate the nursary wtf???!
To decorate my nursary it would cost i dunno 20 quid for a border, the walls are cream, allready have a wardrobe and draws in there, Ill be using the moses basket from when i was a baby and cots get passed about in my family so that would be free.

Edit: iv done something on their personal baby calculator thingy and aparently its going to cost me

fertility £1295
pregnancy £3726
first year £7986
second year £4221
third year £5031

WHAT THE FUCK? excuse my language but eh??!!!! No way is it going to cost me over a grand to get pregnant, id say 50 quid at the most for some pregnany test, folic acid and if it takes me a while some opk's
Over 3 grand in pregnancy??? i am planning on breast feeding, as iv said wont cos me anything for the nursary, ok maybe £500 for a pram and car seat. I wont be dressing my child in anything but babygrows for the first month or 2 unless theres a party or something.

 

[tasha41]

I can definitely see how it would be POSSIBLE to spend that amount, especially if you do up a nursery for the baby and paint the walls, buy all new furniture, accessories, rug, etc. and buy top of the line stuff and have NOTHING given to you.. I've done well though, I'm 19YO, I have much nicer baby stuff than I can truthfully afford because my family has helped me tremendously.. our costs have been just:

TTC: $25 (for pregnancy tests)

Childcare: $0 (we get a full year off here, if I ever need someone to watch her, it'll be family, who do it for free)

Formula: Okay if we do one case a week (which we don't right now) it would be $40/week x 52 weeks = $2080 for the first year

Bottles: I think I only spent like $50 on bottles and nipples so far, Elyse hates the bottles I bought and I had to buy new nipples because she only takes the ones she got started on at the hospital. Arg.

3D/4D ultrasound: $130.. ours was a steal!

Prenatal vitamins: probably about $60

Maternity clothes: probably around $300.. I was able to wear normal clothes for a long time and I got some good deals on stuff!

Diapers: we bought enough for the first 6 months while they were on sale for $9.77/pack.. I think we have like 13 packages? So about $130.. and we had to buy 4 packs of newborn diapers so add another $60!! So far, we've spent less than $200 still for the first 6 months of her life.

RESP: $50/month for now x 12 months = $600/year

Bathing supplies: again, got it on sale, I think I have enough for the first year TBH I have like a baby STORE in my closet.. possibly enough diaper creams etc too for the first year really.. umm so all that would be like.. less than $100 with coupons included

Christmas & birthday: not sure yet! We'll probably spoil her though..

Diaper bag: $200. Splurge purchase, a Christmas gift from my OH. Nestle sent us a free one.

Misc. (fitted crib sheets, change pads): I went to Babies R Us and picked some things up I needed and spent about $100, $50 of that was a gift card I got as a gift at a shower

BATTERIES: holy crap, this is where A LOT of money is going to go!! No idea how much yet.

 

[tasha41]

We had a $500 stroller bought for us, a $1000 crib, got 2 playpens from friends/family that their babies had outgrown, a baby swing my cousin outgrew, we already had a baby gate (for my dog), had LOTS bought for us at my baby shower- and I still have another baby shower coming up!

 

[WTTMommy]

Tasha, can I ask where you got the crib from?

Sorry if it's TMI, in which case don't answer

 

[bunnyg82]

I guess it depends if you're looking at it in dollars or £ though? Cos £18k is an extortionate amount!! x

It is in £ bunny, they have got over 3 grant to decorate the nursary wtf???!
To decorate my nursary it would cost i dunno 20 quid for a border, the walls are cream, allready have a wardrobe and draws in there, Ill be using the moses basket from when i was a baby and cots get passed about in my family so that would be free.

Edit: iv done something on their personal baby calculator thingy and aparently its going to cost me

fertility £1295
pregnancy £3726
first year £7986
second year £4221
third year £5031

WHAT THE FUCK? excuse my language but eh??!!!! No way is it going to cost me over a grand to get pregnant, id say 50 quid at the most for some pregnany test, folic acid and if it takes me a while some opk's
Over 3 grand in pregnancy??? i am planning on breast feeding, as iv said wont cos me anything for the nursary, ok maybe £500 for a pram and car seat. I wont be dressing my child in anything but babygrows for the first month or 2 unless theres a party or something.

Yeh, it is defo in £ by the looks of it - absolutely crazy! OK, maybe if you were loaded, you might wanna spend that sort of money cos you'd be buying top name stuff - but I think I would really struggle spending over £3k on a nursery!! Ha!