Hellobee Boards

It is a lot tougher. It's almost $24,000/year just for day care alone and I work less than pre-baby so I make less therefore savings is less. I really worry that we won't be able to save any money if we have another baby. I don't know how people afford several kids....I guess that helps explain why so many people, in the US at least, are in debt.

We still manage to save, even with the loss of my income. I really made an effort to cut out the impulse shopping and we have a budget plan vs. actual spreadsheet that we update every month.

If I had to do it over again, the one thing I would have done is purchase baby gear more intelligently. I would have purchased a stroller that could double, like a Phil and Teds or the Uppa Baby Vista, skipped the infant bucket and gone right to a convertible car seat, etc. We did decide to mostly cloth diaper, so we don't have the huge expense of disposables.

Right now we put aside a significant amount of money each month. Once we have the baby, then we'll still be saving, but obviously much, much less each month. If we had 2 babies right now, we would totally be stuck with living month to month and cutting down on our regular expenses. At this point, I'm just hoping that by the time we're ready for baby #2 we'll be making a lot more... or living somewhere less expensive!

@mediagirl: Us, too. I know we'll be able to "make it work" if we had no. 2 but there would be a lot less money worries if we only had 1. But as @AnnaB53 said, it is very sad about wanting to grow your family and worrying about being able to afford it. I like the retirement thread that you just started.

@annab53: That's so tough. Is your friend or her SO out of a job? We feel like, even if the economy got better, we would still be in this position!

Then again, if we downsized our house by $50k and moved closer to work (pretty much impossible to do both due to the cost of living near our work) we could probably afford two kids. There's always something.