I guess at some point they don’t want to spend time with you anymore and the newly found freedom might even hurt a bit
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Some tips based on personal experience over the past 1 year.
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If possible, buy diapers, baby food, formula, medicinal stuff in Germany or France. This saves us 40% in costs. As an example Aptamil formula is 25 CHF in Switzerland and 15 Euros in Germany.
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Get hand-me-downs from friends and family. For e.g. we get baby shoes (even bigger sizes) from friends. I never knew that baby shoes were so expensive until I checked the prices on Galaxus.
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If possible, get family and grandparents to look after babies. This saves a LOT of money. For e.g., where I live, I would have to spend 560 CHF for every 20% of daycare. Instead, my wife’s mom comes over and stays with us for 3 nights/2 days and that itself saves us 1120 CHF per month.
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If you have a lot of accumulated holidays or flex-time, now is the time to take it. In my case, I had 60 accumulated vacation days in Sep last year. So we took the decision for me to deliberately reduce to 80% (only practically by taking 1 vacation day every Friday). I still work 100% and get the full salary but the extra day off means that we save an additional 560 CHF every month. I plan to do this until my vacation days (until 31-Dec-2020) run out, sometime in Nov this year
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Batch cooking: I was never a fan of batch cooking before, but this has been a life-saver for us. We usually cook a load of food on Saturday/Sunday and then slowly eat it over the course of the next week. Yes, I do agree that this robs us of diversity (and maybe some nutrients), but this has meant that we dedicate our evenings to spending time with the little one.
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Finally, lack of sleep is a brutal reality. Some people advise to nap when the baby is sleeping but this just doesnt work for me. What does work tho is going to bed earlier, say 2130 and then waking up early when the baby is ready to get up. This has been a great benefit.
Finally, having a baby is one of the most amazing experiences that one can go thru. Yes, the expenses will go up, but with smart budgeting and not being afraid to ask for stuff, you should be able to keep costs reasonably down.
Enjoy the experience and dont forget to savour every moment of it! 
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3500 per month. 
I would hardly have any money left to live.
Reaffirming my long-held belief: 50 seems a good age to have a kid (though of course that’s biologically difficult for females). Best if you have retired early already - you can then afford some sleep during the daytime, while the child is at school.
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mmm… I think or generation / category is becoming quite selfish… our grandparents generation had plenty of children without having as much $$$ as us and they still survived…
In my case, I’ve had 2 (now 15 and 12.5) with a single income, in the meantime bought a house (with a mortgage, of course… 
) and had my NW grow by at least 500k.
Kids arrive if/when they want to, not at our snap of fingers ! (ok, maybe finger is not enough 
)
Not regretting one single minute, btw !
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I agree that it would be best to first FIRE and then have kids, but I think 50 is way too old also for men, if you want to be a present and fun father that is. I already will have issues keeping up with them at 40 
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when on FIRE you should be more present than a working father. The Fun factor depends on you. I suppose what you really ment is “less energetic”. You can’t play all day long football with them or other stuff you only see on tv.
You can still be the best father ever at 50. Go on @San_Francisco !
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I share a bit from personal experience 40+ father, but of course depends a lot on how one “ages” (some people at 50 act/feel 60 and others 40) and other personal situation.
I believe a “sweet spot” for having a child (as a man), considering FIRE and having a child, is more near 45 than 50.
Consider that having a child at 50, he/she will become independent/“move out” when you are over 70. This may be “too old” for some, a child becomes a “life sentence” on your independence.
Consider that a man having a child at 50 means one’s partner is most probably more than 10 years younger, if not more. At about 10 years age difference and up, a few major things begin to change, like have different generation/mentality, be in very different life phase (one in the peak of career enthusiasm/ moving-up, one in the easing into retirement phase), less interests in common, etc.
Obviously if you want to have a child at 50, you will want to have that suitable partner a few years before (say 45), so at 45 you have to find a lady who is 32 max., it may be a challenge. Also planning is one thing, but what if it takes longer to get pregnant, all of a sudden you’re 52, a Plan B is impossible etc.
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Thank you all for the good tips here 
I have some related questions that I hope to get your support:
1- Me and my girlfriend are not married and plan to have a kid soon. Will we need to do a common tax declaration for the family even if we are not married?
2- We are currently working (me) 100% and she 90%. Total income around gross 230k/year. What would be the optimized formula to maximize time with the baby and income to the family considering the 2000 chf for the kitag. Maybe both working 80%, does it make sense to go lower? How can I simulate what’s the best solution for the family? Any experience?
3- How much taxes you can deduct for the kitag and for having 1 baby?
Thank you all for the support!
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No. Separate.
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You don’t say how the salaries are split, almost equal, you much more etc. That would be a factor to know. However it’s a bit theoretical, maximise personal baby-time lowers income and vice-versa. To.calculate like an “optimum” one would have to put a CHFvalue on time spent with child, no? The lower income person spending more time with baby means less income loss. The higher income person spending more time with baby means more income lost, however more taxes saved.
I work 80, my partner 60, Kita 40%.
If my partner increases to 80, she earns more than the extra day Kita would cost, so we’d have more income but less baby-time. We’ve never calculated the CHF lost per hour baby-time. It’s important that she stays in her career. -
Varies from Canton to Canton
Generally approx 4000 each per child deduction from your income.
And generally there is an approx max 10000 to 20000 CHF per child deduction for “Kinderbetreuungskosten”/Kita.
For 40% Kita we can deduct approx our (maximum deduction is 10000 p.a.) effective Kita costs. So that may be a point, like over 40% Kita, the Kita becomes “more expensive” because we can’t deduct these costs any more from income.
Thanks a lot!
Stil some questoins about your comments
1- how are we suppose to do it separately? do we split by half the child costs? any guidance here?
2- I am like 130k 100% with good 2pillar contribution from my company and my wife salary is around 115k but working 90% (103.5k) with minimum 2pillar contribution from her company. My question is to understand what’s the inflexion point where it does not make sense to work since you will be giving the money to the KITAG directly. Also, since we are not married, does it influence?
3- What’s yoru kanton? with 40% you can deduct the maximum in your kanton?
Thanks for the calculation. One question.
If she works her salary is 100k but she only works 90%, does she get compensated with the 196chf (100%) or they will do a 90% of 196chf ?
But that’s exactly the solution: Being (semi-) retired early will enable you to be a present father.
And why shouldn’t I be a fun father at that age?
Well… you aren’t doing this full-time, are you?
Well, I know people who are 65 or 70, retired - and bored in life cause they doesn’t have children anymore. Of course they sound “younger” than other 60- or 70-year olds.
Well… it’s not like I need to have children and plan accordingly. Having a suitable partner comes first. Once I have that, we might think about having children - and then let it happen naturally (it might not).
Well, I’m retarded anyway?!
I don’t really fit into my age bracket socially. And I’m not saying this purely on the basis of setting my age 10 years younger in hopes of getting younger/more attractive Tinder matches.
Fair enough. What I want to say is you’re 66, they’re 16, you can’t leave them alone, but they don’t want to spend much time with you (probably). So in my opinion, chances are high that you’re going bored at home and not independent enough to go travel or something because you have to be home most evenings.
I’m sorry if something I wrote came across insulting or patronising. I was sharing my experiences, and if it’s “duh obvious” to you, cool. I don’t really fit into my age bracket either and for a long time one just hangs out with younger people acc. to common interests, and the age difference between one and the others grows, up to a point where some akwardness can start creeping in, in the sense of “so who’s the old guy?” etc.
- Yes the Kinderabzüge are split 50:50 (strict)
The Kinderbetreuungskosten also but not strictly. It can be applied for to be split differently, if for example one person earns much more than the other, it’s reasonable to expect the one person is paying all the Kinderbetreuungskosten or 80:20 or something. - But that’s a good salary, that’s almost 10k per month, after tax maybe 8k? Each! With 100% Kita expenses of 1.3k each. I don’t think there is going to be an inflection point. I think it’s only a decision of how much time you want with child or how much that “is worth to you” since to you lose “a lot of income” staying home.
- 40% Kita costs 12k.
Max. deduction possible is 10k.
Max. Deduction varies strongly. 10k is quite generous. The usual conservative cantons (where mother should stay home anyhow) probably has the lowest deduction, as they don’t want to promote such “behaviour”.
There are some drives to increase the max. deduction strongly, to 25k.
by that time you’re 56 or so…
Yes, I meant energetic.
You are right that once (semi)retired one would have more time to spend with them, but the later you get children the higher the chance you’ll die before they are adults. Of course it’s also very valuable to have a wise father rather than a 20 yo.
I have only the information in English available, so it may be wrong, but they call it “up to 80% not more than 196/day allowance” - which in my layman terms means the break-even point for the 196 CHF (still unclear to me if gross or net, assuming gross) is ca. 85k p.a. - which your s.o. has already passed…
Either way, you’re talking in the worse case about a difference of 19.6 x 14 ~= 280fr. total.
Not at all, you didn’t, don’t worry. 
I meant it, in the literal (though admittedly increasingly outdated) meaning of the word: I’m lagging behind my age group in some ways. I’m less worried about the about the “mental” age gap, as I can quite well relate to younger people. If anything, I probably should rather worry about my physical aging - and wealth prospects (and, though politically incorrect, mating and dating behaviour).
It depends on the employer. Some have maternity leave at 100% (salary doesn’t change) for 5 months. For example
I’m catching this long post on the fly, didn’t read everything but as a parent of 3 kids under 6 year old as of today, I can tell you the following with some fact and advice.
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Every kid is different and every parents are different. One apply for one family does not necessary apply to all other and even in the family, what apply to one kid, doesn’t necessary apply to the others.
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If you start thinking about how much they will cost you because the kid(s) will slow you down on your life project, FIRE plan, career, traveling, hobbies or whatever, you are already going in the wrong direction. I mean it’s OK to think about the fact that you will have to adapt your budget, maybe reduce your saving rate, and re-organize the family (percentage of work of each parent vs daycare time and cost). If you decide to have kids, you decide it as a couple and as a family, and this will be your biggest project and top priority for the next 20 years if not the rest of your life. If you don’t agree you should really discuss this together to be sure to not end up breaking the couple and the family and ending both poorer and less happy than before.
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If your couple is not perfectly stable and you are able to work out difficult situations, radical changes in life and adapt to a new level of organization and yes lack of sleep and also lack of sex sometimes (it might affect some more than others). There will be conflicts, there will be tough times, there will be uncertainties and fears and there will (unless you are already very wealthy before starting the adventure) difficult end of the months, but it shouldn’t be a big problem and you have to work all of these together as a couple and as a family. And please, please, DO NEVER get kids in an attempts consolidate the couple or re-start the romance, to please the other one or anything like that. I have seen some friends trying that, it will most certainly FAIL, and nobody will gain anything from that. If you are not sure about if, how many or when having kids and if yes about how it is in each other mind, how the couple will get organize to the new status of family, TALK, TALK and TALK about it, as much as necessary, better have a couple of fight or I should said argumentation, before it’s too late and one or both will be sorry.
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Following point 2 and 3, you have to think about organization. If both are working 100% with a high paid salary job and a good started career (not our case), it’s not the same as if one if working 100% with 70% of the couple income and the second work 40-60% (or even 100% with much less salary) to bring 30% of the income (more close to our case). The more the salary gap is large, the less interesting it will be to both continue working at the same percentage, economically it will be more interesting to have the one earning less at home or working at a very low percentage and the other one working 100%. Otherwise, and I talk form experience, you will be crushed by taxes, daycare expenses, travel expenses and more importantly you will commute much more between home, daycare and work (unless you are really lucky to have daycare at your work place or very close to, the ideal situation, thus it might only be with private daycare, so cost will be easily double). In our case we were extremely unlucky with public daycare, despite that we had open literally in front of our house, 15m away, and that we were on the list since 6 months before birth we got a spot only when our first kid was 18 months and it was not in this daycare facility but another one at the other side of the city, in the exact opposite direction of both our workplaces! It was such a fight and a lot of stress, with one to woke up very early to be able to travel to work,m do the 8h + break and back at the daycare before the kid spend 10h there, while the other one drop the kids and work late to do the work day. This is not a situation I wish any parent to be in. With the third kid we end up to split 100%-0% work load, and moving to another area where we can have a large enough apartment with a garden and very close to the (new) job.
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For you life decisions, past the decision to have kids in the first place of course, be aware that the tax rate for family change a lot per Canton and the family allowances as well. Geneva you have one of the lowest tax rate for a family with 2 or more kids and the highest family allowances in Switzerland, 300/month for the first 2 kids and 400frs/month starting from the the third one. Yes 3 kids in Geneva bring you 12’000frs per month and maybe almost as much in tax reduction, depending on the family income of course. Then you move to another Canton, and the family allowances is the minimum, 200frs/month per kid flat and not so much tax reduction. On top of that you might be granted health care support in one Canton and not in another (could be another 100 to 200frs per month). So if you plan to change your job location and/or you home, make sure to take all of these into account for your income calculation, otherwise you might have some bad (or good hopefully) surprises. Fortunately I did when we decide to move, because we were in the situation to reduce our allowances and taxes reduction and even use it to discuss my new salary, and it worked!
On a related topic, when you change your job, try to get HR document to see what extra advantages you might get as a parent or future parent, extra paternity leave (but now with the 20 days it might be more rare to have more than that), free days off when kids are sick and you have nobody else to take care of them, I even have free days off when you are in a couple and the other parent is 100% taking care of the kids and fell sick, you can get days off to take care of the kids instead of your partner (but I guess it is quite rare). Also I remember that my dad’s employer was giving present at the birthday of the kids of their employees, we even got once a gold coin (Vreneli), one each for me and my brother, I remember I went to the bank in a special bullet proof booth hidden inside the building to sell it for 80frs at the time to then buy a GameBoy, best purchase ever, no regret. Thus I’m wondering if such gift still exist now in any companies. -
Having kid is a live changing experience and you will have a lot of emotion. Try as much as possible to use your emotion to spend quality time with the family and not to do crazy uncontrolled shopping on Baby Watz / Verbaudet / Orchestra / Etsy or whatever. I know baby clothes are so cute, baby toys are so nice, I know you kid is newborn only for a short period and a baby for a couple of year top, then a small kid,… but try to target the spending on things, especially clothes and toys that really matter to you and that will really bring something to your kids and yourself. Same for
And every time it’s possible try to check your family and friends if they have clothes, baby bed, basin, car seats, baby accessories, even some toys or any stuff you need that they might lent, give or sell for cheap, then check the second hand market on Anibis, Tutti, in Brocki and even more efficient, in sales made especially for baby and kids stuff, they are quite a lot everywhere if you look for them. Then if no other option, find something new but don’t get trapped by marketing and shop seller, you don’t necessary need a 2000frs stroller from Bugaboo, you don’t need 4 different scarf or baby carrier that you will use 3 times each. Take time to select the right products, try them as much as possible, find other parents that can show you what works fine or not, what is really useful or totally useless. They are introduction/training to baby carrier that might worth it as well, up to you and what you need, we did one and were able to try almost all possible baby holding scarf and carrier you can imagine, thus we still end up with 4 or 5 of them and used only 2 more than a bunch of time. -
Following the previous point, once you don’t need something, get rid of it as soon as possible, sell it (Anibis, Tutti, garage sales, special baby/kid stuff sales,…) or give it. Don’t stack up hundreds of usesless stuff, even if you sell/give 20 stuffs and figure out 3 years later you need one of them back, just buy it back second hand, no big deal, you might loose a few bucks but at least you will not full up every corner of your house with stuff you never use.
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Finally, I’m not yet at the stage when kids may ask to have their own tablet, console or smartphone, hopefully they can use ours under our strict control for some more years but still request for toys is escalating very quickly. Please don’t make the mistake to get your kids used to have non stop some new toys, some sweet when you have to stop by at the shop or the worst, the cheap toys or ugly plush or stupid stickers that you will get at Migros/Coop when buyer for 2000frs of food. I know it’s hard to always say no, I know you will feel like a monster and you will have people looking at you in the shop when the kids scream or roll on the floor to have a toys or a Kinder chocolate, but it must stay something exceptional not the norm. Otherwise you will get into a sprial you will have a very hard time to get out. And try to talk with the grand parents or other people that might spend time often with the kids and might spoil them in your back. I don’t say never, I say that it should not end up being something that the kids will think they are entitled to get whatever happen. And at the end these cheap toys that you might buy in front of the cashier, get for “free” from Migros/Coop/McDonald’s, at the kiosk with a magazine or in a rush just to calm down the kid, will be 99% of the time cheap crap that kids will play with for half a day or a couple of day top and then will end up in a big toys box or crappy toys and figurines that they will spill on the floor every time they play just to find that one they like and you will end up having to put them back in a box with shovel every evening. Waste of money, waste of time, waste of resources and useless plastic waste that are bad for the environment. Same for the sweets, it should not be to calm them down because you stop by the shop on the way back from school when they are hungry (worst idea ever) and then they will not eat their meal because they are full of chocolate and syrup.
So, after this long wall of text, sorry I should really start a blog, every time I post here I end up with a wall of text, it’s not a parenting guide that I tried to write here, I would need a full blog if not a series of books to do that and I don’t think I’m the best placed to do this, but all these points are more or less related to the finance, money you will spend or save with a family. I hope these will be useful for some of you. Now I have to leave, I have 3 new boxes of useless stuff to sort and try to sell online until baby/kids sales will happen again. If you are looking for something, send me a message, we never know.
More importantly, don’t forget to enjoy all the little moments with your family, you will never regret it.
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