I’ve been thinking for a while now how relatively little we’ve needed to spend on MasterB compared to what we initially spent on MissB. There are some considerably benefits of having a very close age gap between two children and only a few extra costs in reality so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the issue.

Extra Costs

The essential items that we needed to buy were:

1) A good double buggy as MissB still needed one when MasterB arrived. We opted for a Phil & Teds Explorer initially so that MasterB could lie flat but to be honest after 9 months it developed a fault and so I got a full refund for it and opted for a cheaper model instead :) We’ve now moved onto a buggy board with my original pushchair.

2) A cot bed as MissB was still using hers, the moses basket got reused initially but after about 6 weeks MasterB was in his cot and MissB is still using her cot bed as a bed.

3) Clothes, we couldn’t really dress MasterB in girls clothes so buying some boys clothes was a bit of a necessity but if he had been another girl then we’d have saved even more money!

4) Nappies, milk etc – but to be honest you pay for these whatever the age gap so it’s not really a cost of having them close together.

Of course the one big extra cost for us is that we now have two children in nursery five days a week which to be honest costs a small fortune. This however is a necessity as we both work full time and we’d have ended up paying the cost of nursery for them both whatever the age gap. We haven’t had to resort to going down the cash for gold route just yet to keep them in nursery though.

Savings

1) Toys! The good thing about a close age gap is that toys get double the amount of use. We’ve never really bought any girly toys for MissB as I’ve always opted for nice bright, neutral colours and so we have had to buy so little in the way of new things for MasterB. For his birthday and Christmas we just re-wrapped up a load of toys that MissB had outgrown (at age 1 he doesn’t know any different). I have a feeling at some point MasterB will realise that he is always ending up with hand me downs, hopefully not for a few years yet. I have visions of buying MissB green bikes so they can always go to MasterB when she outgrows them lol. I think toys, books and games has been the area where we have saved the most money and it’s also helped us save in other areas, for instance we request vouchers for Christmas and birthdays to buy clothes with as we simply don’t need any new toys.

2) Staple clothes, here I mean things like vests, sleeping bags, socks, babygros etc. Because we didn’t know what sex MissB was until she was born, we already had a huge wardrobe of neutral baby clothes and we’ve always bought plain white vests, neutral sleeping bags etc so all of these have now been used again.

3) Bedding, blankets, towels, baby bath, moses basket, bottles (we did buy new teats), sterliser, monitor and all the other little items that you need to buy for a new baby which add up – all these have been in neutral colours or just white and so have been re-used.

In fact I’d say aside from the benefit of having my children growing up close together, the money we have saved through having them close together has been quite considerable. Of course it doesn’t help with the problem that I’ve hardly slept in the last 2 years but you can’t have everything right :)

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