How do you cope with the fact pre-kids you were saving 3k per month additional, and now can no longer save anything on top of 401k?

likehelpfulsmart
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Your income will increase over time especially if you upskill and make a job switch. Over time the children will grow and be in first grade and your daycare will be reduced to aftercare expenses.

Other items are to examine your family and friend options for some daycare help and look into monthly spending to find some areas to adjust.

Personally I’d get a secondary contract side hustle going if you have time to bridge the gap.

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When our kids were young enough to do daycare, that's pretty much the position we were in. Kid #1 was $300/week, kid #2 was $350/week for daycare.

Food and all the other daily items for the kids were pretty low in the grand scheme of things (between Costco and the kids being picky but basic eaters, our grocery bill only went up ~$100/month for them, our entire bill went up about $250/month for clothes and toys, etc, along with food), but the ~$29k we paid per year for daycare for them definitely took a hit on our savings.

As soon as they were old enough for kindergarten, we moved them to public school. We're lucky to be in an area that has a decent number of good schools and happened to be in the zone for one of them, so that was an immediate financial relief when they hit that age.

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Sell the kids for profit to make up for the lost 401(k) savings?

likefunnysmarthelpful

I’ll hire kids under the table. Any profit is a win-win-win for us, my fren

smartlike

We got back to higher savings once kids moved from daycare to (public) school. But those first 5 years, savings rate took a hit. Nothing but a blip in the long term.

likehelpful

We are hoping for the same!

kids > $

likesmart

Don’t have kids but curious where does all the money go to?

likefunny

It depends on where you live. I’m in Dallas. The daycare my kids go to charge by age. The younger the child, the more expensive it is. Since we have 2 kids there, the older kid receives a discount. We pay about 2700 a month for both kids each month. I have an older child in private elementary and it’s about $12500 per year, excluding lunches, extra activities (think swimming, soccer, music club etc), and then of course summer school is about $1200 per month. So if you do the math, it all adds up. Cost of vacations, entertainment and clothes because they’re in one size for a very short amount of time, compared to adults.

OP it does not get any better. Wait till they start their extra curicullar activities and see how the expenses sky rocket. Good luck

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Easy. I love my kids

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Is that more than you expected and planned for?

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It depends on what is the dream..is it having children or having money or having both,,,

OP, your HHI will rise. We weren’t even saving much beyond 401k max and bonuses at 270k HHI. It was poor budgeting more than anything. You will adjust!

Now at $400HHI able to max 2 401ks, HSA, save bonuses, and save $2,000/mo. This is with $2,800/mo in daycare and third child on the way. Also at $6,600/mo PITI.

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What do you and your SO do to pull in 400?

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Bought a house within a 3 mile radius of both sets of grandparents as well as extended family. Childcare is still going to be ridiculous and eat into savings but glad we're close enough to some free childcare to save on some costs.

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This. I highly highly recommend living near family. Even if the $ savings aren’t that significant, your QOL goes up so much when you can off-load the kid(s) for a few hours or days depending on what you want to do (like pretend to be child-less adults for a hot minute). It’s fantastic and one of the best decisions we have made in our entire lives.

Plus the grandparents get to enjoy their grandkids and vice versa, so literally everyone wins.

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Yeah, we are at 250HHI, both maxing 401ks and saving an additional $3400 a month brokerage. Now that additional is gone and I feel like I’m getting so far behind my goals and there’s no end in sight.

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Based on your HHI it seems like you could be saving more if FIRE is a high priority to you:
401k - 40k
Taxes - 50k
Childcare - $35k

That still leaves you with around $120k. You could cut expenses and allocate some extra to savings.

Otherwise you can make peace with working a few extra years to live a comfortable & fulfilling life.

There’s no wrong answer here. Your choice.

Wife got hired by FAANG right after having our child and our HHI increased by $80k vs her old job - at current lower stock prices :)

Are you complaining that your children are hindering your savings?

I don’t think that was the intent

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I'll let you know in a couple months. I'm gonna guess that the answer is "badly" even though I'm nowhere near $3.4KK in monthly savings. If I had to guess, I'd say you just wait for the rose colored glasses to settle over your eyes.

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