How Much Does a Baby Cost?

On January 23, 2021January 21, 2021 By A Way to LessIn Baby Way, Finances, Frugality, Optimisation1 Comment

6 Months In

How much does a baby cost if you’re frugal? It’s really easy to spend a fortune, but we found it hard to find examples of those who are more careful with their money.

The Big Issue

Money can be up there with the biggest worries for new parents. Baby costs are often cited as a reason why couples decide not to have children.

This is understandable considering the commercialisation of anything baby-related. There are endless gadgets and fashion statements out there for new parents. Clever marketing teams are tasked with guilt-tripping you into buying their products. You’re led to believe that if you don’t buy the latest gadgets your baby will be left behind!

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Life Design for 2021

On January 9, 2021January 8, 2021 By Miss WayIn Baby Way, Coronavirus, Education, OptimisationLeave a comment

We have previously written about ‘Life Design’ and our approach to creating a life we are happy to live. As with everything, our ideas have begun to evolve and develop. For me, this has been strongly influenced by personal and world events of 2020.

I was originally going to write a review of 2020 from my perspective. After thinking about it I have decided to write a forward-thinking post instead. I want to consider how living through 2020 has affected my/our aims for the future.

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Annual Spending – 2020

On January 5, 2021January 4, 2021 By A Way to LessIn Finances, FIRE, Monthly SpendingLeave a comment

Summary

Welcome to our annual spending post! Our total spend for the year of 2020 was £22,858. For context, this is for 2 adults plus a baby, born in July 2020.

If you’ve been following our monthly spending posts, you’ll know how this goes. Throughout 2020 we managed to keep our spending pretty low. We’re really happy with the total as it’s below our £2,000 per month target by a healthy margin.

This is partly due to being in lockdown and not having much to spend money on. But to be honest, this has had a minimal impact for us. Our spending is low even in normal times, so this year was always going to be a low total. We had already decided we wouldn’t be spending much due to Baby Way arriving in July. Settling into parenthood was our top priority!

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Monthly Spending – December 2020

On January 2, 2021January 1, 2021 By A Way to LessIn Finances, FIRE, Monthly SpendingLeave a comment

Summary

Welcome to our December spending post! Our total spend for the month was £2,454.

Finally, we made it! Sometimes it felt like 2020 would never end, but here we are. For more of a review of the year, see Mr Way’s 2020 Personal Review and our Financial Review too. We’ll also be posting a summary of our total spending throughout 2020 in the coming days.

Our total this month is slightly over our £2,000 target, but that’s down to Christmas and our car insurance renewing. We also paid a deposit for some wedding food. See below for more detail!

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