“How being child-free has impacted us and the way we plan our wills”

Could you share a little bit about you and your life?

I (47F) have been married to my husband (45M) since 2012 and we are both child-free. We met in 2008 on match.com and both ticked the ‘I don't want kids’ box, so it was never even a conversation we needed to have. We fully committed to merging our finances together when we got married because at the time I earned significantly more than him and having conversations about stuff we wanted to do together and what he could afford felt unfair and unnecessary.

When we joined finances, the conversations became about what we could afford as a unit. Any non-standard expenditure over £100 gets discussed. Some of those conversations last 10 seconds, some a lot longer, depending on what it’s for. We’ve both always worked full time in well paid jobs (£40-60k range) with short periods of unemployment, and no period was/are stressful financially due to our healthy savings account.

What was your reason for being child-free? (if a choice at all)

I spent my 20s assuming I would have kids because that's just what everyone did. But then I came out of a long term relationship when I was 30 and was single for a year, which gave me the space to think about what I actually wanted without having to consider anyone else. It didn't take me long to realise it just wasn't something I wanted. I enjoyed my social life, my career, travel, sleep and having some disposable income too much, and honestly I have just never felt any maternal urge. I also think that we could do with less people on the planet from an environmental perspective, so people deciding to be child-free by choice are reducing their impact, while people who really want kids are still having them. That feels like a good balance to me.

I'm 47 now and I have never regretted my decision, and my family and friends have never questioned it which I very much appreciate.

How has being child-free impacted your financial life?

We are significantly financially better off as 1. we haven't had the expense of children, and 2. we have both been able to work full time consistently throughout our adult lives.

There are probably some people who have made the decision to be child free because they feel that they just can't afford it as life is so expensive, and it makes me very sad and it feels completely wrong that that might have to be a factor in some people's decisions who might otherwise have decided to have kids.

What are your financial goals and how are you making them happen?

We own our own home and one of our goals was to pay off the mortgage, which we calculated to be possible by the time I was 53. So we have overpaid consistently for the last 5 years to decrease the term, and thanks to an inheritance that I was not expecting and some of my redundancy package, we can pay it off this year. That will put us in a position where we can pay all the bills using my husband's salary, and anything I earn can be put towards pensions, savings, house renovations, holidays etc.

Another goal is completing house renovations. We avoid borrowing money as much as we can, so when we moved into our current house in 2015 we spent 5 years saving before doing our first big renovation job. We then save again for a while and then tackle the next job on the list. There are still some major jobs on there so that process will continue for probably the next decade until everything is done!

Another goal is to try and live a more environmentally friendly life, so our next car will be an EV and one item on our house renovation list is solar panels with a power wall.

The other major goal is retirement. We definitely work to live and wouldn't work if we didn't have to! We have lots of travel aspirations, hobbies etc, so we want to retire as early as possible with a good level of income to allow us to do a few big holidays on the bucket list, and have a comfortable life.

We don't have expensive taste in terms of things like shoes, bags, cars etc, so living day to day when we retire won't be particularly expensive until the point where we have health related needs and might need care. I've seen examples of what that could involve in the last few years with older generations of my family, so we are starting to understand better what resources are out there and what they might cost when we may need them.

Once the mortgage is paid off we will sit down and plan how best to make retirement happen. We have a financial advisor that looks after our private pensions, and we expect to spend a good few months retirement planning and looking at options, doing our own research etc so that we have a solid financial plan in place that we both fully understand and are comfortable with.

Who will inherit your wealth and how have you made that choice?

We have 12 nieces and nephews between us and currently we have mirrored wills where they’ll all inherit equally. The only exception is that I have left my engagement ring to our oldest niece and my wedding ring to our second oldest niece. They were both between £100-£200 when purchased so that's more for sentimental reasons than financial ones.

When we had our wills drawn up we paid upfront for unlimited changes for free so we have the flexibility to change them as often as we want without it costing us any additional money. We haven't formally told any of them that we are doing this. A couple of them that we are close to know because it's come up in casual conversation, but for some it will probably be a nice surprise when it happens (assuming we don't have to spend loads on care in our last years).

We will also try and leave our affairs as ordered as possible so that our executors have a straightforward job. That involves clearly filing and labelling paperwork, keeping the house decluttered so there isn't huge amounts of stuff for them to go through, organising and paying for our own funerals (which we haven't done yet), and leaving instructions on what to do with stuff that no-one wants - charities to donate to with contact info, auction houses and details of items they will take etc (which we also haven't done yet). I project-plan for a living, so while this might sound tedious to some, it's not a problem for us to do.

What would make you reassess your wills?

We may decide to adjust this at some point depending on how often we see them. For example, one we very rarely see or have any contact with because we aren't close to their parents (no animosity, we just aren't close emotionally or geographically). If we get to the point where we've had no contact with some of them for over a decade we may decide to remove them. Again we wouldn't communicate this as they don't know they are in the will in the first place!

We also may add some donations to charity to our wills at a later date, probably post retirement when we have a better understanding of what we are likely to be leaving behind.

We would also adjust the wills if there is a significant change in circumstances either for us, or for a family member where we agree that leaving them a share or a bigger share would be the right thing to do (for example health issues that would impact their financial situation and make life hard for them).

What are your opinions on inheritance tax?

We aren’t trying to find ways to reduce inheritance tax. If we had children, our view may be different, but we view any inheritance our nieces and nephews get as a bonus for them, and they should still get a good amount after deductions. We are very comfortable and are fully aware of our financial privilege, but neither of us want to live in a country where vulnerable people are not taken care of, so one way of contributing to taking care of them is by not trying to avoid inheritance tax.

We do think that the rules need amending to take into account how expensive life is today so that children can inherit more of what their parents leave behind (with a sensible cap in place so the very wealthy pay their fair share), but as we don't have kids that isn't an issue for us personally.

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