Was watching the news today and they were talking about how a couple would have to earn around £30,000 a year in order for one parent to stay at home and look after the child/children and avoid high childcare costs.

Myself and my partner only earn around half that and couldn't possibly afford to stay at home,

what does everyone else think about this?

Childcare is definitely a high expense if both parents are working. I am amazed at how much it costs yet, at the same time, if both parents are working it can be more affordable. Usually, anyhow.

I'm not sure that's true necessarily because it depends on your living costs. If you were earning more before children then you might have a bigger mortgage and then higher fuel bills and higher council tax. I think you'd have to be earning more than that to be comfortable unless you are mortgage free.

That said, it does surprise me how little you can live on when you have the motivation of children. Having lost my job whilst on maternity leave (a long story maybe I'll post it up sometime) I never thought we'd get by but I've saved an absolute fortune on things like petrol and lunch.

We've been dipping into our savings the last few months so I know work of some kind is beckoning. Ho hum!

Well my OH is on a really low wage- £12k...And i dont work at the min apart from the odd bank shift which can be as little as 1 shift a fortnight!

We just get by...but thats only cus of tax credits.Otherwise it would be impossible. I want to work part time but cant aford childcare and we have no family nearby to help with Oliver either. I would have worked around my OH but as he works at a hospital he works shifts all over the place so its impossible for me to find a job with set hours each week. So difficult. But my point is, we earn peanuts and we are just scraping by so it is possible to raise a child on less than £30k but certainly isnt easy! x

My husband earns about £8k a year at the moment, and I stay at home with Aaron. I didn't work while I was pregnant either (I was at uni before, and couldn't get a job once I was pregnant), so we didn't even the extra help from my wages and from maternity benefit. We managed to scrape by until Aaron was born, and tax credits have made things much easier now. We don't have a mortgage though, we rent.

It's surprising what you can go without when you have to. I don't intend to go back to work until Aaron starts school, as personally I would rather spend quality time with him than spend lots of money on him. I might try and work from home though.

So in my opinion, £30k is a ridiculous figure!

My OH makes between $24-$25k a year. Which is only like 16k euros. We get by fine right now, but we live with his mom and only have his truck payment, our cellphones, and my credit cards. We are working on our own place though. We will have it paid off, because it's just alittle trailer, but we have like $14k in it right now (I got $5,000 back a semester from school! + just his odd paychecks). We still have siding and have to finish the drywall/paint before we can move in though. But when we live there, we will also have our house bills, which I figured up and we will have just enough left over from his paychecks (with no overtime.. which he usually gets) for groceries and $100 baby expenses (diapers and wipes). So, for us.. it is very possible to get by on less than that, but we wont have a mortgage/rent payment.. if we did we would be screwed!

Even if I worked.. with what I was making when I was pregnant I wouldn't even be able to pay the babysitter.. none teh less gas and lunch for work! So, we decided I would stay home after the baby was born.

guys, I don't have any relation to those figures at all!!!

in London you could not even live from 8K per year as a single person!!!

so, looks like it strongly depends as to where you are living!

I completely agree we live in London and couldn't live on 30k a year for both of us and a baby. The cost of our mortgage alone is £1k a month plus council tax on top, bills, food shopping, running a car etc you just couldn't do it - the way inflation is going it is only going up sadly

my partner earns about 12k and we struggled now tax credits have come through its so much easier! we rent though not a mortgage but think it would prob be cheaper getting a mortgage lol its just getting one though

I only earn about £6k a year from looking after kids (I'm a nanny) and once I go on maternity leave I'll lose one family I work for and might lose the other one (the parents have split so the mum might not beable to afford to keep me) so I might end up jobless! My OH earns £22k and we struggle as it is so I've no idea what we'll do if I do lose my job. I don't want to leave my children and TBH I'd have to have a good job to beable to afford childcare anyway! Luckily at the moment my daughter comes to work with me so childcare isn't an issue but once the other one is here I'm not sure it'll be so easy to find a family that will let me bring 2 children along! I've just got to hope some friends have babies soon so they can employ me lol! x