Does It Really Cost $350k To Raise A Child In Australia? (hint, it could be more...)

Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Hi, welcome back to Reset. Today we are talking about a
topic that is quite interesting and I've asked my guests to dive
deep into research and numbers so that you and I can find out
everything we need to know. We're going to be talking about
the true cost of having kids, not just how much does daycare

(00:28):
cost and how much does giving birth cost.
Like we are diving really deep. And to go into this subject in
detail, I would love to welcome back my guest Jade to the
studio. Thanks Ash.
Thanks for having me. For anyone that's meeting Jade
for the first time, she is a financial advisor.
She has been a friend of Reset from the start, and we've got a
number of episodes together thatI can link in the show notes if

(00:50):
anyone wants to go back and listen to those.
But Jade, thank you for coming in for this important
conversation. Thanks for having me, it's quite
a a heavy topic I think there it.
Is Yeah. And, like, a perk for me, having
a podcast means anything that I'm curious about, I can just
invite very intelligent people to come and sit on the couch
with me, do the research and, like, tell me all the answers.

(01:13):
So I think this is, yeah, an important conversation that is
not really discussed enough because it's, as you would have
found out prepping for this episode, hard to find the true
costs. Absolutely.
How long is piece of string? Yeah, all right, let's get into
it. On average, how much do people

(01:33):
in Australia spend on having a baby?
I think the short answer is we're not really sure.
It's very different for everybody and whether you're
doing it kind of you can do it cheap and it can be really
expensive as well. So if you think about what we
need before we even have kids, like before we even trying to
have children from doctor's appointments, if you're doing

(01:54):
genetic testing, if you're doingany external help with your
fertility, just prepping like through nutrition and with a
naturopathy or anything like that, that can all be very
expensive to start with. And then when we start thinking
about actually having a baby andpreparing a nursery and all the
things that we need to get to actually house a baby like
prams, car seats, cots, that's very easy to walk into baby

(02:17):
bunting and spend 5 or $10,000 just like that.
But it's also very, very easy toget things second hand on
marketplace, especially in the city.
I think we're very lucky, those of us that are in the city that
there are things readily available very cheap.
I personally did a little bit ofboth, didn't go too wild.
But then there's also things like changes in lifestyle with
purchasing things like cars and bigger houses and making more

(02:39):
space. As I was reflecting on these
questions, I thought, oh OK, I got a bigger house and I got a
bigger car. So we went from.
Guilty. Yeah.
One baby in a townhouse with a Ford Focus and then we had
before we had our second four bedroom home and the SGV
basically, which is probably thenormal trajectory of what

(03:00):
happens when you have kids. And if I think about all my
friends, most of them did the same thing.
So it's just one of those thingsthat kind of naturally occurs.
I guess it was a little hard to put a rear facing car seat in a
Ford Focus with a husband who's 6 foot and myself who isn't
short, not much space and there's not much boot space for
prams and overnight bags and allsorts of stuff.

(03:21):
So your lifestyle probably is just going to get a little bit
more expensive as well from thatperspective, actually giving
birth, I guess. So if you go down the public
system, it is obviously significantly cheaper than going
private. Obviously there's there's
reasons why people do each of those.
And then that's great that in Australia we have those choices.
If we're going public, you're probably only about $1000 out of

(03:43):
pocket. If you're high risk, needs
special care, again, Medicare ispretty good at covering most of
that. Obviously there's always the
outliers, but yeah, public health system is pretty reliable
when it comes to having a baby. Private is obviously very
different because we need to make sure first of all that we
have our private health insurance with pregnancy
attached prior to having a baby,at least 12 months.

(04:04):
So that means three months before getting pregnant.
If you're going full term, please don't leave it that late
just in case Bob comes early. Making sure that probably when
we start talking about family planning that we get that in
place and we know what that looks like.
I can feel Rose kicking while we're talking, yeah.
She's sorry, mum. Are you talking about me?
So, yeah, so most out of pocket,you know, you're probably not

(04:27):
going to be out of pocket any less than at least $3000.
I've heard lots of people sayingover $10,000.
So I think that you could probably get a good fee
schedule, though, from your treating your doctors and
whatnot ahead of time to make the decisions about which way
you want to go. And then something that's
becoming more common is home birthing.
So this is where you're dealing with like a private midwife and

(04:48):
you're having a baby at home. I've been quoted some costs from
some lovely home birthing midwifier.
Tell us. So rangings out in the country,
you're looking at maybe 5 1/2 thousand, which is probably on
the lighter end. But also right up to $8000 is
still quite common as well. OK, Yeah.
So that's, you know, all going well, we can have love at home

(05:09):
not getting transferred. Obviously if you're being
transferred, you're probably going to public hospital anyway
and at that point there's probably no real further cost.
But yeah, it's it's not a cheap exercise to do private or home
birthing. Not at all.
And this topic is obviously veryfresh for us and Alex and I
talked about it on our joint podcast earlier.
But it's really tricky at the start when you first fall

(05:29):
pregnant to think that you need certain things like medical
stuff aside, like that's, that'simportant.
But you know, the bigger house, the fancy nursery that's like
just as beautiful as the Pinterest board and stuff.
But babies need to be safe, loved, fed.
And so it was, yeah, we went through that same transition of,

(05:52):
Oh my gosh, we're having a baby.Do we need a bigger house?
Do we need this, this and this? And we've, we've really tried to
be intentional at like strippingthat back and thinking, okay,
no, she doesn't need the Pinterest nursery that she's not
going to remember and we will beokay in our apartment at least
for the foreseeable future and things like that.
So I guess expectations versus reality.

(06:13):
And then just like stepping awayfrom it because I know our
social media feeds can just become so full of beautiful,
elaborate things and it makes usthink like, Oh my gosh, I'm not
going to be a good parent if I don't have XYZ and it's not
true. That's right.
I mean, it's funny that you say that because having your first
baby is so exciting and it's really easy to buy into, like

(06:35):
the aesthetic of having a beautiful nursery and whatnot,
which is great. Like, if you can do it yourself,
too, like DIY is half the fun. But I think about, like, our
first, I had his nursery ready probably three or four months
before he was born. Cute.
And my second was in his bassinet in our bedroom.
Yeah, really got too big for hisbassinet.
And then he was in a cot in the spare room because I was like,
oh, we needed to have, you know,our fourth bedroom added so he

(06:57):
could have his own room. But we weren't in a hurry.
And but yeah, so I think it's very much a first, second born
thing that you're very over prepared first time around a
second time you just make it work.
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting how many
things for babies and I'm obviously still learning this,
but they might only last a monthor six months or something.
And then so passing it on to friends and things like that to

(07:19):
just make life a little bit easier is absolutely a nice kind
of thing to do. Or looking on marketplace like
you said or second hand like youdon't need super shiny brand new
for everything. Yeah.
And I think you also don't know what your child is going to
like. Yeah.
So my first bomb was really fussy.
I bought the one thing I spent my money on was my prayer.

(07:39):
And I was like, that's like my car of the baby world.
Like, I'm having a good prayer. Yeah, probably about $2000 back
in, like, 2019. But he hated it.
Oh no. I sold it because he would not
stay in it. So for the first five months of
his life I baby wore him. So I got a baby wrap instead of
having the pram and eventually got a new pram and whatnot.
But yeah, things like that. And then he also hated being in

(08:00):
those swinging things. I don't know what your baby
rocker things because he had reflux so you'd lay him down and
he'd be uncomfortable. So again, we spent $250
actually, I think my in laws gifted it to us, but we ended up
selling it and getting somethingelse for him because he just
hated it. So you just, you don't know what
your baby is going to like and be like until they're here.
So holding off on those sort of purchases is probably ideal

(08:21):
until baby's here and you can test them out a little bit and
see what they like. Maybe buy a cheap one on the
marketplace and if they love it then you can maybe go and buy a
better one or something like that.
Such good advice, such good advice.
What happens if we add proactiveegg freezing or IVF on top of
this? Yeah.
So this one opens a bit of a canof worms in terms of cost.
So egg freezing will be start with because it seems to be a

(08:43):
little bit more controlled in terms of the costing.
So from all the research we've done and shout out to the April
Babies Facebook group that I'm apart of from 2020 who shared
some live stories about themselves, egg freezing was
really ranging from 5 to 15,000 dependent on whether it was
considered medically necessary or not.
So whether we're just choosing because we want to, we don't

(09:05):
have a partner or because we want to have kids later, but not
yet versus I know you actually, you know, you've your eggs are
declining and I'm not too. I don't want to use the wrong
terminology, but you know, they're you don't have enough or
they're not the right quality and it's declining as we age or
you've got endometriosis or someother medical issues, then you
may actually qualify for some higher subsidies from Medicare

(09:26):
to help cover that. Interesting.
So that's just for that, but then you've obviously got
storage fees to keep them depending on how long you keep
them, which range into the hundreds of dollars per year to
hold them. IVF was quite a hard 1 to get my
head around because there's so many different variations of IVF
which have different costs. Some people have said they
actually didn't really pay much out of pocket at all because

(09:47):
again, they had medical conditions that they qualified
them for additional support as some people actually use their
super to fund all of their IVF, which is released on
compassionate grounds. We did have a bit of a joke that
they had to get a report done, which was $800 that they had to
pay out of pocket to prove they needed access to their super to

(10:07):
pay for their IVF. But yeah, so, so I've seen some
that say $25,000 around, some say $7000 around.
But again, it's going to depend on the top of IVF that you need
and how many times. OK, these numbers are really
adding up. They do and I've heard them go
into, you know, $100,000 to haveone child.

(10:29):
This is not really anything you can financially prepare for.
This is just something that it'sgood to know the information if
you need to go down this path, but that there are avenues like
superannuation, which obviously being a financial advisor, I
don't advocate to go here as your first option.
But if you really want to have achild and your finances are not,
you know, going to report that and you need to go down the IVF

(10:52):
path, then there is options available to you to be able to
get that, you know, the gift of having a child.
Yeah. OK, so these are the costs of
getting the baby safely into theworld.
Yeah. Then I googled in research for
this, that the average age of moving out of home now is around
24 years old. Yeah.
You surprised me with that. Yeah, and it's on the rise.

(11:14):
So that means Baby Rose is gonnabe living with us potentially
until the year 2050. Yeah, I've never said the word
20 like the year 2050 before. And who knows, I might be like,
please stay forever. But what is the average cost of
getting a child to age 24? Yeah.

(11:36):
And I mean, again, this is goingto depend on all your life
choices, right? We're doing private school.
We're doing public school. But Ken Starr Blue did do a
report in 2024 about the cost ofraising a child.
Now, obviously, this is going todepend on your, you know, cost
of daycare, which is dependent on your income and whatnot.
But on average one child costs $1000 a month to have, which

(11:56):
most people probably say I'm sorry my daycare is more than
that. Yeah.
So let's talk maybe older kids. Again though you got private
cost but this is just on averagetwo kids, 1200 a month, 3 kids,
13104 kids, $1400 a month. I think the concerning thing
that I found with this was that that figure practically doubled
since 2018. OK.

(12:17):
So we're talking $736 a month for two kids in 2018 versus
$12114.00 a month. Today, what do you think has
caused that? Inflation, cost of living, that
thing that happened in 2020. Yeah, Yeah.
And then if I guess you add on top the pressure to have a
bigger home, have a bigger car, all those sorts of things, maybe

(12:39):
that's not included in these costs, but that's your own
lifestyle expenses going up. And I know a lot of people are
really making conscious decisions these days of, A, do I
have children at all for a number of reasons?
And B, if I have kids, is it 1? And cost is a huge factor.
It's it's quoted as the number one reason for our declining

(13:01):
fertility. Yeah.
So it is, it's, it's really unfortunate that that's what's
become. Yeah, I'm going to talk about
that a little bit more later as well.
I've got some good stats around it, but that means that not even
allowing for inflation, rose is going to cost you about $350,000
on average. So if you choose to do things
that are cost more than average,you're looking at more than

(13:21):
that. An expensive life decision, but
priceless, right? Absolutely.
And you make it work, right? Everyone, Some people have kids.
We make it work. It is what it is.
My husband and I do joke about our life we would have had.
We have not had children. But yeah, no, it's can't put a
price on kids, can you? Yeah, interesting.
And and I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing a

(13:43):
life with no kids. I think we can be filled with so
much love and fulfillment as well.
But a? Lot of women are choosing not to
have children, and I think that that's really, you know, a
really, if that's what they wantto do, great.
That we have a life these days where lots of women are able to
make that choice. A few of my girlfriends have
made that choice and they have wonderfully fulfilling lives in
other ways. Yeah, and a bit of extra cash.

(14:06):
And a bit of extra cash. What are some of the hidden or
unexpected costs? Yeah, we've got the obvious
ones, but what might be surprising for people?
Yeah, So a lot of our conversation today is women
heavy because traditionally women are the the, the sole
provider or the the, sorry, the primary provider of their kids.
So that's probably going to be alittle bit of the focus.

(14:27):
So no disrespect for men. Now, I know there are a lot of
you out there at home who are the primary carers and I think
that is absolutely wonderful. But women are normally the ones
to take a step back in their career.
So whether it's, you know, working part time, taking a job
that's less stressful, taking a job that's school hours friendly
because I'm not quite at school hours yet.
But I can already see how challenging 8:30 to 2:30 is

(14:50):
going to be on trying to have a job and do all those things,
which obviously comes with a paycard.
So, and I think a lot of people who are very career driven in
their earlier careers can reallyalso struggle with this on an
emotional level because they've worked really hard to get to
where they were and maybe done uni or, you know, climb the
corporate ladder. And then all of a sudden you've
got a baby in your arms and you're questioning everything

(15:12):
that you've just done for the last 10 or 15 years.
Unpaid work. This is out of the Status of
Women report card that gets published annually around
International Women's Day by theAustralian Government.
We can link that in the showroom.
Yeah, it's really interesting Actually it's not.
Not a lot of it is necessarily child based, but a lot of it is
woman based and now place in theworld at the moment financially.

(15:35):
So women unpaid Unpaid work is probably one of the underlying
unexpected costs that people don't realise.
So when a woman is partnered andhas a child under 15, she's on
average doing 47 hours a week ofunpaid.
Work what gets bucketed into that like.
I guess everything other than cooking.
Driving kids around? What?

(15:57):
Yeah, yeah. Household.
Due typical kind of yes, trad wife stuff like yeah, OK, yeah,
so. I don't know what's going on
here, but the Single Ladies, so single moms are doing 40 hours a
week wait. So if I kick Alex out of the
house, I'm going to be doing, intheory, less.

(16:18):
You get 7 hours back in your week.
Oh. Wow.
OK, interesting. So I'm just going.
To shout out to all their husbands, like my husband, who
certainly don't add 7 hours worth of housework to the books.
But yeah, it's very, it's just really interesting to see that,
yeah, partnered women are doing more housework than unpartnered

(16:42):
mums. That is fascinating.
Yeah. And we should all be striving to
have a partner in our lives thatmakes our lives a little easier.
Yeah. Doesn't add to the chores.
In fact, they should be modern day men who know how to cook,
clean, help. Yeah, but it means 47 hours.
That's more than a full time. Job I know.
I wonder. We're all burnt out and my

(17:03):
hair's falling. Out.
All right, where are we up to ongoing care?
So a lot of aftercare. So there are obviously minor
complications in birth that can lead to long term, I guess,
damage, pelvic floor stuff. If you're having a caesarean,
then obviously there are some things there that might need
ongoing care. So whether that's physio, chiro,

(17:24):
psychological support, nutritional and naturopath, you
know, things that are going to support women, replenish what
they lost during pregnancy because that's quite a heavy
burden on the women's body. Which we are full advocates of
here at Research. Like you can't feel from an
empty cup. And we've had plenty of guests
on here talking about the importance of seeking help, and

(17:49):
proactively as well before it gets to that breaking point.
So those costs should almost be non negotiable.
Yeah. If you're going to have a baby,
then it needs to be factored in that you need that love and care
and support in postpartum. Yeah.
Because it does, it does, it depletes us.
And especially if you breastfeedand if you do that for a lengthy
period of time, it just continues to deplete our bodies.

(18:10):
So obviously I'm not a specialist in that area, but all
of your other lovely guests thatare, I'm sure have covered that.
But they're costs that obviouslywe need to consider and it's not
cheap. Like let's be real, it's quite
expensive by the time you go through the appointments.
And then any supplements and eating better food is expensive
too. And then some other things that
we know about women in general, but definitely affect women

(18:31):
who've had kids and time out of the workforce is that we still
have a 21% super gap. So we're getting to retirement.
We've got 20% less than, and this is comparing to males and
we still today have a pay gap ofnearly 12%.
So they're just some things thatit, you know, it's a struggle in
some areas, but they're just things to guess, to be mindful

(18:52):
of. Especially I remember saying to
my boss before I had my first, I'm going to do 4 days.
I'm going to come in four days aweek, but I'm going to do my
hours of five days. Is that OK?
You know, do a compressed week. And he said, look, Jade, I will
let you. I'm more than happy to support
you however you need, but I don't want to make this decision
with you until you've had your baby and you come back.
I was like no worries in my first week.

(19:14):
He asked me if I wanted to do that and I said no way.
I will just do my four days and get out of here and get home.
Because your I think your mindset just changes around
where you want to be at that time.
Like I was leaving my 10 month old baby in childcare four days
a week. So of course I just wanted to go
home. I didn't want to be at work and
then miss him going to bed and not see him and all those sort

(19:34):
of things that happen when you start to work bigger hours.
Yeah, it's so tricky because I love that that was a conscious
decision for you. But there's plenty of people
listening that are going to havea child and are going to think
that actually it is better for me and our family if I do go
back to work full time. But I know that that's not
always easy for people for a host of different reasons.

(19:58):
Absolutely, yeah. So, yeah.
So it's, you know, it just brings a different sort of feel
to life, I guess, having anotherlittle person dependent on you
that you do want to spend all your time with.
Yeah, yeah, I know that you're excited to talk about this part.
The Australian government has a number of different support
policies in place and they change all the time depending on

(20:21):
who's in power and what month oryear it is.
But what kind of options are available at the moment to women
and parents? Yeah, absolutely.
So in Australia today, I think we're in probably in quite a
lucky position that the government support is as
probably as good as it's ever been and it's only getting
better. So some of the, I guess more
common things that most people might know about are the

(20:42):
government paid parental leave scheme.
So from July 1, 2024, this is now 22 weeks of paid leave and
the government will also pay 12%superannuation on top of this
for the first time ever. That's a big win, yes.
I think is amazing. Hey, Rose, good timing.
Yes. Yes, that's from 1 July.
So you're OK? Yeah.

(21:03):
So the actual rate of that parental leave, it's $183 a day,
which basically is $915 a week over A5 day working week.
But you don't necessarily need to take it five days, OK at a
time, but I'll come to that in aminute.
At the moment you can share up to 10 days with your partner and
going increasing to 20 days by 2026.

(21:26):
So this is really helpful obviously for you know, partners
who want to have some time at home with their child.
What I also found interesting was that in 20/16/2017 we had
about 5% of men taking paid leave or taking primary carers
leave in Australia. Obviously it's always been a

(21:49):
little bit taboo with a male taking time from their business.
I've heard a lot of clients say they had the option to do it but
chose not to for various reasonswhich were mostly pressured
reasons. Interesting.
Yeah, yeah, guys, man up. Yeah, actually be better.
Yeah, but positive news, this isnow sitting at 17% of men in

(22:10):
Australia. Amazing.
Taking time to raise their kids.This is talking like, you know,
in the first kind of year of their life and being the primary
carer. So being home by themselves with
their child and their partner returning to work.
Hopefully that start continues to grow because children, if
they are lucky enough to have two parents, they want to spend
time with both. They benefit from spending time

(22:32):
with both. And I think that the splitting
the leave between partners is a really big player in that
because if you think about male dominated industries, and we're
talking about a female and male relationship here, that quite
often it's there's no such thingas parental leave.
There's no, you know, if you're a tradie, you know, those sort

(22:52):
of things. It's just not even spoken about.
So it's really good that everyone has this option, you
know, as a partner, whether you're female or male, as a
second, you know, partner, not the primary carer, you can take
this opportunity. You can also with the government
paid parental leave, split your payments.
So after you return to work, which I think is awesome because
a lot of people might initially want to start back at work part

(23:14):
time and build back up to full time.
And this just helps close that financial gap between maybe
having another month or two working part time, getting baby
settled into daycare, and then still having a good level of
income coming in. Now, to qualify, we must
individually earn less than about $175,000.
If you do earn more than 175, they will then look at your

(23:37):
family combined income, which sits at about 364,000.
Before, you wouldn't be eligibleto receive that.
So for most Aussies, they're going to be eligible for that.
There is also obviously family tax benefits, which are usually
for middle to lower income brackets, but offer some really
good support from a tax perspective.

(23:58):
Parenting payment, which we typically see more for our
single parents. And obviously then the childcare
subsidy which caps out once you have a family combined income of
around $530,000, which is actually quite a generous figure
I think because two years ago itwas about 300 and maybe 350,000

(24:18):
family income. So a lot of a lot more support
for Australians now. Is there a nice summarized list
somewhere of all of these that we can link in the show notes?
Yeah, it's probably, I would sayon the Social Security website,
so Centrelink, Australian Service, whatever Services
Australia they call themselves, yeah, there should be.
You can actually go in there andtype in your scenario and it

(24:41):
will come up with all of the payments that you may be
eligible for the calculator. We'll link that one because
that's good. Yeah, nice.
That sounds very practical and helpful.
Yeah. So we've got paid parental
leave, family tax benefits, parenting payments, childcare
subsidy and a whole host of other things depending on mostly
based on your income. So there's always obviously a
little bit of conversation in Australia that, you know,

(25:03):
families are getting these benefits when maybe people that
choose not to have children obviously may not be entitled to
any of this. But I think it was just worth
sharing why it's actually in thegovernment's financial interest
to ensure that we continue to have children in our country.
So the Australian National University did a report in March
22 for the Australian GovernmentCentre for Population, which

(25:28):
stated that the total fertility rate for women is 1.5.
So that means we're having 1 1/2children in our family.
So most people having between one to two children.
In the 1960s, this was actually 3 1/2.
Children. Oh wow, that's a big woman.
That's a big change. When you hear it over not that

(25:49):
long history, it's a huge change.
We need 2.1 children per household to sustain our
population. Oh, OK, No pressure, Yeah.
So this is without relying on migration.
This is why we have migration toensure that our population can

(26:10):
continue to be sustainable. Because if we have a decline in
population, we just run into a whole host of other economical
issues down the track that may not be present now, but that
will certainly be present later down the track.
And it actually noted the contributing factors to this
decline, relating mostly to finances, women having women

(26:31):
children later in life, which isjust probably more the modern
day woman who wants to go to uniand start a career in trouble
and maybe buy a house and do allthat first, with good reason,
because kids are expensive. Yeah.
So it all sort of is, you know, we need the government to help
support Australians in having more children to sustain our

(26:53):
population without them having to rely further on on migration.
Yeah, interesting to hear that sort of political and economic
rationale as to why they're heavily investing in supporting
families. Yeah.
And I feel like they're only moving in the right direction.
Like we've only ever had improvements.
Even when I had my first child, we got the childcare subsidy,

(27:14):
but there was no second child hire subsidy.
So once you've had more than onechild, your subsequent children,
while ever you have a child under the age of 6 will receive.
I think it's about a 20% increase or something like that
to how much of A subsidy they can get.
So it makes it significantly cheaper for your subsequent
children to go to childcare. But without that, I, it's

(27:38):
really, it made a huge difference.
You know, I, we just happened totime it, that we had children
around then that we had our two before that came in.
But I went and did the maths recently and I was like, oh wow.
Like we actually would have beenout of pocket quite a lot more
than we are. So they are making it more if
you can get your child into daycare to start with, but they
are making it more affordable, thankfully for us to be able to

(28:00):
go and work and have our children in care.
Yeah, OK. If someone's listening and
they're on the fence trying to consciously choose, do I or
don't, I have kids. And if I do have kids, now that
I have all these big numbers swirling around my head of just
how much they're gonna cost, as a financial advisor, how do you
recommend people plan for that? Yeah, it's really overwhelming,

(28:23):
obviously. Like this is all this is a
lifetime of costs on one page, you know, so it doesn't happen
like that. But some of the biggest things
that we can be is starting just to take control of your
financial health now. So just making sure we have a
budget, know what we're doing interms of what we're spending our
money on, freeing up any cash flow that we can and reducing
debt as much as possible so thatwe're not, you put it, you're

(28:45):
putting ourselves in a position that's stressful when we're not
maybe having as much income as we might normally when we're on
leave or maybe having to return to work sooner than we would
have hoped to otherwise. And strictly speaking, kids
actually reduce our borrowing capacity as well.
So if we're planning to have children and we do want to buy a
home, we sort of need to think about what we want to do first.

(29:07):
I guess potentially depending onhow many kids you might already
have or you want to plan to havein the future, every child that
you have will actually reduce the amount of money you can
borrow to buy by. By how much do we know, roughly?
I'm actually not licensed, probably.
OK, Google it. But that's my good mortgage
brokers. There are mortgage brokers out
that look. I have been quoted by a mortgage

(29:28):
broker that it's about $70,000 per child that you have, so not
an insignificant amount. Yeah.
So each child you have, you can borrow approximately $70,000
less. Yeah.
No, that's, that's the number that I was given last year.
And it would depend on interest rates, yeah, income and all that
sort of thing and other factors in your life.
But as a rule of thumb. OK, interesting.

(29:48):
Yeah. So note to self, get the
mortgage first before declaring the because.
Okay, if you can, there's hard. Things to think through.
Yeah, talk to your workplace, Understand any paid parental
leave schemes you may be eligible for, research,
government support available just to help you plan a bit of a
budget for when you have your kids.

(30:09):
And many women return to work, women in particular return to
work part time. So do have a think about if this
is something that you would liketo do after you have kids and by
how much it might impact the family budget and whether you
feel you can afford to do that or whether you may need to
change jobs to make that happen or whatever that might look
like. Yeah.

(30:30):
Or if you do want to go back full time, which I'm sure a lot
of people listening to this lovetheir careers and don't want to
give that up. So I guess it's just factoring
in, OK, if I'm going back to work full time, is my partner
going part time or do I need additional daycare fund or
something like that? Yeah, absolutely.
So it's obviously going to cost a little bit more working full

(30:51):
time. And there's a little bit of a
debate as well around working four and five days because of
the childcare subsidy and actually working out whether
you're financially worse off going back to work five days a
week. So that's really interesting
calculation as well. It's obviously dependent on
everyone, but I've had a couple of people that we did some
calculations for that they were better off by $50.00 for the

(31:11):
week for doing 5 days versus 4 days.
And for them, they felt that $50wasn't worth that, and they then
chose to do 4 days instead of five.
And yeah, I mean, everyone's different with what they want
and what's important to them, but it's just interesting.
It is so interesting, and I knowthat having a lot of friends who
have loved and thrived in their careers and then wanted to go

(31:32):
back to that after having kids, they actually found it really
difficult to find jobs that weremeeting their skill level and
that would light them up and inspire them that were anything
less than five days a week. And so I think sometimes it's
important for us to remember that it's not just financial and
that there's like our own needs and fulfilment and our own

(31:56):
mental health that can come in does need to come into play as
well when making those decisions.
That's right. And some other industries that
just like if you're FIFO and allthose things that just don't
allow for this. So you know, healthcare
industry, any shift works sort of thing.
It's a bit of a curveball. And personally I don't have
experience in those areas. So speaking from a corporate

(32:18):
world, a little bit more flexibility and probably being
quite grateful for the types of roles I've had that have been
very family friendly. Yeah, yeah.
This next question I have on my mind might be one that is almost
best directed at a psychologist,but what's your advice on
couples that are thinking about having kids to kind of navigate

(32:38):
these conversations around finances and splitting
responsibilities of parenting and careers and things before
deciding if they have kids or not?
How do you have those conversations in advance?
Because I think even though we have progressed so much as a
society, there's still this kindof stigma around, oh, well, the

(33:02):
male will go back to work full time, the female will sacrifice
her career. I don't necessarily agree that
that's how it should be done, but I think these are important
discussions to have with your partner in advance of just,
well, what is this new version of our relationship going to
look like once baby arrives froma financial perspective?

(33:23):
What did? I'm sure you've worked with
plenty of couples navigating is like.
What's your recommendation there?
Yeah. So my first point here, I said
is your current relationship will probably give you a good
insight into what life is like with kids.
So if you're already fighting about finances, you're already
stressed about finances, a childis going to make that worse.

(33:44):
The same with the household workload.
If you already feel like it's not fair or you know, it's
really hard on you or one personis not pulling their weight,
it's only going to get worse when we introduce a child.
So we do need to have those conversations.
And like you said, I'm sure yourlovely psychologists who you've
had on the show would have some great tips on how to navigate
those conversations. But I did read something

(34:06):
recently only about two people in a household can't have two
big jobs at one time. And what they went on to
elaborate was it wasn't too financially high paying jobs.
It was 2 jobs that might take a lot from you as a person that
there's two of you in a household and you're drained and
you know, your work is taking a lot from you.

(34:29):
So it's sort of said this, it was in a book and I just cannot
recall the name of it. I'm sorry.
It was like in passing, but it was basically saying we kind of
always need someone there who isgoing to be the designated sick
day person. Who's going to be the
designated. I can go and pick up the kids
when they're sick. I can do appointments like some
children need to have speech therapy or OT therapy.

(34:49):
And who's going to navigate that?
Because business hours are usually 8:00 to 5:00 and trying
to fit that into a job if it's really challenging.
So having conversations about who is going to be, I guess the
available parent. And sometimes that might mean
changing jobs, especially if it's not something that you can
just drop and run away from. And having those conversations

(35:09):
earlier, I feel can sort of set the expectation and avoid any
conflicts later down the track with that and money
conversations before you have kids.
So because you're setting up a family, you want to treat your
finances like a family unit. It's not yours and theirs
anymore in terms of money, it's ours.
And absolutely, if you each wantto have your own accounts to do

(35:32):
the things you want to do, go for it.
But generally speaking, we don'twant to have one partner paying
the other partner and allowance or things that might make it
feel unbalanced from a financialperspective.
So taking care of things as a family unit is usually a little
bit more ideal than having, you know, my pay will pay for this

(35:53):
and your pay will pay for that. When it becomes especially
different if there's one of you that has to take a pay cut in
line with part time work, maternity leave, paternity
leave, whatever it might be thatthey're taking.
Yeah. And I feel like these things are
maybe easier when you are in a two parent relationship that is
still together. Yeah, but once, I mean the stats

(36:17):
unfortunately on divorce of 50%,approximately 50%.
So it gets a lot messier if thathappens.
Yeah, so I think obviously having these conversations well
before children arrive can just help.
I mean, even the smallest things, like when we had our
first Christmas after we had oureldest boy, my husband and I
were getting kind of presents ready.

(36:38):
And his childhood grew up with big presents from Santa and just
one from mum and dad. And mine was the other way
around. And we were both standing in the
lounge room going, well, where do we put these presents?
Because you you've had it this way, we've had it that way.
Like there's just so many thingsthat pop up as a parent that,
yeah, you just have to learn to navigate in the moment and just
figure out. But money is probably not one of
those that you want to be leaving until.

(37:00):
The last minute, yeah. Yeah.
OK. My list of things that fashion
me has to deal with is growing. Assuming that one parent and
stereotypically like we said, isthe female has to take a bit of
a step sideways or backwards in their career in the early days

(37:21):
of parenting, what are some waysthat we can kind of equalize the
financial burden? I suppose we'll call it like I
guess, can partners be paying into super or like what are some
things we should be thinking about?
Yeah, so much, like I said just a minute ago, with treating
family income as a whole, not just as yours and theirs.

(37:42):
But we can do super splitting when we're talking about super,
so that if you don't have any extra money to put into super,
that's OK. You can actually split up just
85% of your partner's superannuation into your own
super. And there's good reasons for why
we want to keep an equal as muchas we can super balance as we go
through life and into retirement.

(38:02):
There's certain caps and thresholds where extra taxes are
applied, so if we can equalize it as much as possible, it gives
us the most amount of time before these extra taxes would
likely. Apply.
How do we make that happen? You'll need to just talk to your
Superfund. So they'll have a special form
that you'll be able to do that with the same with a spouse
contribution. So if you do have some extra
money, maybe your partner is quite a high income earner, they

(38:24):
can make a contribution to your Superfund on your behalf and
claim a tax deduction. So in Australia, we're always
looking for a tax break. So that's just one of those that
can help. But yeah, the the biggest way is
treating your Ant income as family income.
Just because there's one person being at home and not being paid
doesn't mean that it's unworthy or worthless work.

(38:45):
It's just not paid. So yeah, one person's keeping up
their end at home and the other is in paid employment and it's
shared money. And if I think about again, just
plenty of examples within my friendship group, I know that
I've spoken to some of the dads and they are the ones back at
work full time and that's easierfor them than being home caring.

(39:09):
And I relate to that. I feel like work is a fun,
creative, inspiring place for meand being at home all day might
not feel as inspiring. And so even if you're not
getting paid for what you're doing, it's still work, yes.
Yeah, it's very important and I'm the same like I going back

(39:30):
to work, I found that far more challenging for my mind than
being at home. Found that physically
challenging because like sleep deprivation and quite mind
numbing tasks for me doing household duties.
So I really looked forward to going back to work to use my
mind. Yeah, yeah.
And also liked making some money.
Too, of course. Don't we all?

(39:52):
Yeah, OK, so when I was researching for this show, I was
looking at the stats of divorce and single parent households and
I made some notes here that there's over 1,000,000 single
parent households in Australia and 79% of those are run by
women. If anyone's listening that is

(40:14):
considering divorce or is already divorced, what advice do
you have for them? Yeah.
So I guess more so for people that are already in their
position where there are single parents would be having a clear
budget, know what's coming in, know what's going out, know
where you're at all the time. It's really important, I guess
really for anyone to have a goodbudget.
But I do notice that my single parent clients need to take a

(40:37):
lot more notice of this. If you can and you have the
capacity to do so, create some additional income, whether it's
a side hustle or whatever it might be, you just try and get a
little bit more income in if you're in a position where you,
you know, you need to do that. But again, only if you have the
capacity to do so, because it's a lot to be looking after a
child, especially if you actually don't have any family

(40:58):
support outside and you're, you know, relying really on yourself
and your village is quite small.Find out about any additional
financial support that you mightbe eligible for.
So like I said, go through the Government Services Australia
website. They'll be in like a calculator
that you put in your your financial information into in
your situation and it will spit out the amount of different

(41:21):
subsidies or support that you may be eligible for.
Probably the most important one is to create a support network.
And whether that's people in your situation or just close
family and friends, it's really important to have people like
that around you as a sounding board.
And I would also consider them to get a financial advisor.
And the reason why I say this isour family and friends mean

(41:43):
well, but sometimes there's a lot of misinformation spread and
we can do a lot of damage with alittle bit of information, but
not knowing the full picture. So I do have a number of Single
Ladies from 25 to 85 that I workwith.
And I especially notice the older ladies are really
vulnerable when it comes to finances.

(42:05):
And obviously then elder abuse and whatnot, which is a whole
different kettle of fish. But yeah, if you have a good
support network around you and especially someone that you can
talk about your finances with, Ithink it takes a lot of burden
away from that whole financial side of things.
Yeah, just building on that, I'mguessing that the increase of

(42:26):
financial abuse within relationships really starts to
rear its head when 1, you go from maybe a dual income
household to a single income household.
What counts as financial abuse in Australia and what are some
of the kind of warning signs that we should look out for?
Yeah, so I'm going to, I'm just going to read these because I
don't want to get them wrong. But the Attorney General's

(42:48):
Department, so the government defines financial abuse as abuse
that involves someone controlling your ability to get,
use or keep money or economic resources.
The Australian Bureau, Bureau ofStatistics in 2023 stated that
one in six women reported experienced financial abuse by a

(43:09):
partner. So that's a lot.
They went on to define financialabuse as monitoring your
spending and not letting you choose how to spend your money.
Forcing you to buy things or sign contracts.
Making you lend or give people your money or belongings.
Creating debt in your name, which is a really big one.
Stopping you from accessing yourbank accounts.

(43:31):
Making you give them your account details or not telling
you information about your money.
Making it hard for you to get orkeep a job.
Not making child support payments after a relationship
has ended. Making demands for further and
or excessive dowry payments. Now This is Money or gifts that
are given in some cultures at a wedding for their bride.

(43:55):
So basically forcing the brides family to give them more money,
which was the interesting point that I put on here because
obviously Australia is a multicultural nation and
something I've never heard of before.
So I found that quite interesting that they've pointed
that out as well. Very, very, it can be very minor
and very unnoticeable and innocent and there might be

(44:16):
nothing in it. And like we were talking before,
there might just be one person that does all the finance stuff
and that's well and great. But I guess if the relationship
turns sour then it can become problematic.
Yeah, one in six is a scary start.
It's a big. Start.
Yeah. What can we do if we think that
we are in that situation or maybe one of our friends, like

(44:39):
one in six? Chances are there is someone in
our world that's going through this.
Are there any helplines or anything we can call?
Yeah, there's a number. So there's a number of them.
So we've got the national debt line, which I think is
particularly helpful for when we've had debt put in our name
that we were not aware of. We've got 1800 respect, Good

(45:00):
Shepherd and for older Australians, the Older Persons
Advocacy Network. So if we're worried potentially
about our parents or our grandparents, we can seek some
support there. This is just a small amount of
them. There are a lot of them if we
just Google Financial abuse helpor hotlines.
There are a number of websites available and you can chat to
people over the computer if you wish, rather than having to call

(45:22):
them as well. OK, great.
We'll put links to all of those in the show notes because I
think that's important. It is, yeah.
Jade, what haven't we spoken about today that you wish more
people knew? Yeah, so there's a lot of big
scary numbers and everything that we spoke about today.
Having children is obviously a huge financial decision, but
obviously it can't be too bad because the Australian, the

(45:44):
Institute of Health and Welfare report states that parents in
Australia reported a higher thanaverage life satisfaction
rating, Their satisfaction with life in Australia 8.2 stars out
of 10, which is higher than the general national average.
So I think there's something to say there that yeah, you know,
parents in Australia are generally pretty happy.

(46:06):
We have a pretty good lifestyle here and we have good support
networks available to us if we need it.
That is a nice start to end on because we've we've discussed a
lot of numbers today and some ofthem feel heavy and
overwhelming, but yeah. OK.
And then on a personal note, you're a mom.
Yeah, two kids. What season of life are you in

(46:26):
at the moment? Yeah, it's big season of lots of
change, I think. So for me personally, I was sort
of doing a little bit of reflecting as I was doing my
notes on the things that we've changed in our life since
becoming a parent. And I've gone from being
employed to being self-employed.Now I'm actually going back to
being employed, which I think isa really important thing to
share because I feel like we cansometimes feel like we're stuck

(46:49):
in a situation that we're not enjoying anymore, but there is
always something else out there for us.
So I started my business in January 2024, sort of 18 months
in I suppose now. And it it's gotten to the point
where most of my reasons for starting it have turned into
reasons why I've realized it's probably not the right season of
life for me to be doing this in which revolve around my kids.

(47:12):
Interesting. Can you share some of these
reasons? I think it's really insightful
for people. Absolutely.
So me, I'm curious. Yeah.
So I, I guess we set our lives up to have kids in a way that I
wouldn't have to work full time because I really just wanted to
have one day a week that I couldplay mum, I guess.
And so my kids have always gone to daycare between three and
four days a week. They've just started this year

(47:34):
five days a week, simply becauseI'm very grateful.
We have gotten so busy in my business, which is fine that
that's fine. But the days are becoming longer
and longer. They're being there bigger and
bigger days. Everybody's really tired in my
house and it just kind of felt like it was just really, really
hard work. My husband is also
self-employed, so we've got about 8 to 10 staff in his

(47:56):
business. We do a lot of, I do a lot of
work with him in terms of like the mental load of his book work
and all of that sort of stuff. So it just kind of got to a
point where I went, hey, this isactually, you know, the
flexibility that I can do what Iwant in the day.
Like, no, boss, this is so good.But I'd be up till midnight
making up for it that night. So it kind of was just like, you
know what? I need to be able to leave my

(48:18):
office and close my door and notthink about it until tomorrow
and be really present for my kids because I found I'd be
sitting on the ground playing Duplo with them and my phone
would buzz with an e-mail and I would duck off to my office to
take 10 minutes to do that, which would then turn into, Oh,
I forgot to do that one last thing.
And 20 minutes later, I was like, Oh no, like I've just

(48:38):
stolen 20 minutes off the kids because, you know, it's take an
opportunity to do that. So I realized it was just taking
away a lot of who I intended to be as mum, which is fine.
We change as we go through life with what we want.
Yeah. So luckily for me, I have a
beautiful friend, Dalene, who has a business called Mazi
Wealth, who I speak to all the time.

(48:59):
She's a good confidant of mine. And she said, don't worry, why
don't you just come and work forme?
And I thought, you know what, that's actually a really good
idea. So by the time this show goes
live, I will have been working with Dalene and Mazi Wealth for
a of months, but I'm really looking forward to having a bit
more time with my kids. So I'm returning to part time
work, which again, there's a lotof what we spoke about today and

(49:21):
taking that, I guess step back and it's a big decision in
closing a business. It took 12 months to get going
and really felt like I'd finallyhit my stride.
And now I'm saying, hold on a minute, it's not really what I
wanted. So, and that's OK.
I'm a, I'm a better person for having done that experience the
last 18 months. I'm a better employee, I think,

(49:41):
than I would have been otherwise.
I think that's really important to share because I think it's
easy when you're in a corporate nine to five job to think the
grass is greener in the world ofentrepreneurship, which anyone
that's ever dived into that knows that you quit A5 day job
to then start running a seven day job where you're always on.

(50:03):
And that can be perfect for people in certain seasons of
their life, but clearly not for you right now.
And I think it's so beautiful togive ourselves permission to to
grow and change depending on where we're at.
And this might not be you forever.
Yeah, absolutely. But it is for right now.
It is so. And like, my kids were one and

(50:25):
three when I started my businessand I look back and I think,
wow, that was so young. And then now 5:00 and 3:00.
And yeah, so when they grab somemore time with them before they
head off to school because they're boys and they probably
want to just hang out with dad and fish when they're teenagers
or play 40 or not. Noah so.
Hey, mom can fish and play footytoo.
I do, I must say, country girls who grew up doing all that sort

(50:47):
of stuff. But yeah, so now, now's the
time. I'm just going to, I'm going to
do this for a while and see whatit takes me.
Yeah, beautiful. Well, Jade, thank you so much
for joining me again today and for diving deep into the numbers
for all of us. Thank you for doing the research
on behalf of everyone that's listening, including myself.
It's been so nice to have you back in the studio.
Thank you, I always love chatting to you Ash.

(51:08):
I'm sure we'll see you again soon.
Yeah, sounds good.

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