Figure Out The Costs of Your Parenthood Choices

Having children is expensive. Not just having them, but the next 18 years (plus)! 

Estimates of the average cost of a child range from £120,000 to £250,000. But these headline numbers can be confusing. What's included? What's excluded? And how do these theoretical costs relate to you and your life?

The Preparental Calculator is here to help you plug in your assumptions about your parental leave, your working hours and your childcare, and easily see the financial impact on your household net income after childcare costs.

It will help you play around with different options you might be considering, and ultimately make decisions and have confidence in your plans.

What Does The Calculator Do?

The Preparental Calculator is an online tool to help you turn your assumptions into a comprehensive idea of the impact on your household income after childcare costs.

The two most significant costs of parenthood are usually:

• Your loss of income; and
• Your direct costs of childcare.

The Calculator helps you run scenarios on what these two factors might look like, depending on your assumptions about:

• Your family size and spacing
• Where you'll live
• What parental leave you'll take
• What your employer's parental pay policy is
• Your working hours as a parent
• Your unpaid parental leave throughout parenthood
• Your childcare arrangements and choices

Who Created The Calculator?

My name is Helen. I have 20+ years experience in financial planning. I've worked as a Commercial Finance Director for a FTSE-100 company and created more business financial plans than I could possibly remember.

Before I was a parent, I really didn't understand the costs of parenthood. I saw big numbers quoted in the media, like how the average cost of a child was £250,000. But I couldn't really relate these average numbers to my own life.

I've created The Preparental Calculator to solve this problem. It takes all the best data on childcare costs, all the eligibility rules and policies relating to parenthood, and combines this information with YOUR specific expenditure, income, assumptions and decisions. It has taken hundreds of hours of work to create.

And the outputs of this model? Simple graphs and tables that you will understand, which will shed light on your future journey into parenthood and assist your decision-making.

Join The Planning Hub to use the Preparental Calculator and get full support in using it:

• unlimited spreadsheet downloads
• a comprehensive (and super informative) set of Help Notes
• technical support

Get Started

Does the Calculator cover all the costs of having a child?

No. It does not cover all the costs of having a child, partly because these will vary dramatically based upon your ability and desire to spend.

Further tools which will be launched soon will help you draw up an idea of your likely expenditure on:

• purchases for the baby/child eg toys, clothes
• school lunches and school-related costs
• children's activity costs and parties
• additional food costs
• family holiday costs
• etc....

Are you a certified financial planner?

No. I'm not qualified to recommend any financial products, nor do I do so, and I'm not regulated by the FCA or any other authority.

I am 'qualified by experience' including my 20+ years in a financial planning related career.

My financial plans are designed to be indicative, and they focus purely on income and expenditure, not on investments.

I offer no guarantees of my financial projections as tax rules and macro-economics can change at any time.

Is this for future parents outside the UK?

No. It's only for UK residents.

Because of the country-specific nature of costs, government policies, benefits, taxes, etc, the financial impacts produced will only be applicable to the UK. 

Do you provide financial advice?

No. I provide analysis of numbers that you give to me, and a structure within which to understand your future cashflow. Nothing I do or say should be construed as financial advice, or relied upon for your circumstances without additional checks made by yourself.