Moneymakeover Starting a Family MM

Blackrock1 said:

Siblings have gone the approach of four kids in 5/6 years with two high pressure jobs and it seems to have worked well for them.

Just on the above, its the kinds of thing that may work for a period, but longer term its very hard, ironically kids are less work the younger they are if you have appropriate child care, its when they get older, get friends, hobbies etc is when they need more of your time (and you want to give it to them as well as they grow up)

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100% on this. Collecting kids from creche, you are home every evening and it all ticks away nicely. Fast forward to when you have kids going out every evening to sports or other activities, playdates and parties at weekends, sometimes needing to volunteer to get your kids into certain activities. It is a lot of juggling with 2/3 kids, even calling in all the favours and repaying them for lifts, supervision etc. It can be hard to get a nanny to do these things as well, especially if there are younger kids in tow as well. And you also want to be the person in the crowd for your kid, watching their progress at different activities and maybe motivating them to continue when it gets tough.

Look no-one would have kids at all if you thought about it but there is no harm in having a realistic view of it. I know I got great advice from an older sibling and also from watching how their life evolved. See if you can find someone who is ten years ahead of you and how your life might look and how your financial planning might fit into that to give you the choices you need. House set up sounds great and will give you loads of flexibility.

Unless the government increase the creche subsidy, creche is fairly unworkable with more than 2 kids. At 2 we stopped a creche and got a minder into the house (nanny). Planning a family is not like planning a career, house - its less predictable etc.
Good luck with it - planning 4-5 kids at nearly 40 is ambitious but go for it and good luck with it!

GAAmam said:

Unless the government increase the creche subsidy, creche is fairly unworkable with more than 2 kids.

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That depends on the creche. After the current minimum subsidy, the community creche our little person attended before starting free preschool cost the princely sum of €75. In preschool, the cost is down to €5 a week. The for-profit alternative would have been €20 a week more. The only real issue is capacity, which I think is an issue everywhere (in a lot of industries) for the last few years (we were also finding it almost impossible to find a nanny, the first 2 fell through and then we were lucky to be offered the creche place).

The point is, we would have had to have had a couple of sets of twins close together before a nanny made sense financially compared to a creche.

But we're outside Dublin (still in Leinster) so everything from housing to restaurants (with the exception of the major supermarkets) is basically half price compared to the extortion racket which seems to be de-rigueur in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. €1,100 a month for 2 kids post subsidy with one of them in free preschool is nuts- our equivalent would be less than half that with minimum subsidies.

There's lots of other major cost and other benefits to being outside Dublin but within the commuter belt- but that's a different thread!

Just a quick 8 month progress report.

Our first pregnancy unfortunately didn't work out. We're trying again

Our 2nd Buy to Let Property is on the market at the moment. After CGT, solicitor and auctioneers fees we should net just over €400k.
The immediate plan is to wipe out the mortgage on the first property, fit solar and batteries to reduce our current high electricity costs and dump the remainder into maxing AVCs and the mortgage.

I recently had some renegotiation at work following some projects I ran that worked out well for the company.
From next month my regular annual bonus is going away but my base pay is bumped to €150k/annum, I'll get four 10% of salary cash bonuses this year and next as one offs.
I'm also now in an equity performance scheme that should net 2-3 times base salary per year, over the next 6 years, depending on the stock price. Which should knock out the mortgage and allow us significant pension funding.
Work has bumped the 4 weeks paternity leave (2 weeks full pay, 2 weeks state paternity) to 16 weeks fully paid and doubled their contribution to my private health insurance.
Also promises about limiting my work hours... but we'll see how that works out.

My other half is thinking more seriously about the public sector job as our situation changes. Also there have been some policy changes in the HSE that possibly make it easier. The mental and physical impact and stress on her due to the pregnancy has hit home with us both. We've talked about it and still decided its worth aiming for the family size we both want, but that our daily life is going to change more and faster than expected.

We're still thinking about when to sell the last property, just want to do some work/maintenance on it before looking at selling. Also want to be fair to the current tenants who have always treated the place well. They have the possibility of alternative accommodation coming up in the next few months that they have been open about with us, so the tenancy may come to a natural close.

I've cut the mortgage to a 3.1% rate and paid off a tiny bit extra, with work and revaluation I hope to get it to below 50% LTV next year to access slightly lower rates again.

Just to echo the older posts your assumptions around what life with kids will be like is way off which is fine you'll have a better idea after the first one, but with 3 kids plus be prepared to live off one income for a few years at least, managing child care adhoc is a recipe for disaster as well with young kids. Derisk yourself by decreasing the ppr mortgage as much as possible and try maximise your income and find a more family friendly role for your partner.

Hi Tomwa, sorry to hear about your pregnancy loss - we've all been there (ourselves twice in a row between #1 and #2).

Great to hear you're succeeding in work.

I think its a reminder to us all to live in the moment and enjoy the time you have now - as many well thought out plans don't come to fruition.

Excuse me if i missed it, is your partner a true contractor - could she reduce her hours or take on more smaller clients so you gain flexibility within your weekly schedules to manage. If your answer to this is no, that may suggest a road where she is not a true contractor at all; she may have a claim for employment status (and all the benefits that go with that). I know it is unlikely most people would be interested in opening a HR or legal can of worms, but I flag it nevertheless.

What are the outgoings per month after mortgages, they feel super high. Either way, you are both in a great spot, its just a case of cash management.

You can also back pay pension to last years pension if not already done.