Whats better? Babies close together or far apart?

From an financial standpoint.. what is better?

To have your babies close together, so the single income/ time off work is compacted into one continuous block...

OR

To leave a 3-4yr gap between kids so you can recover financially between them?

Hubby and I both knew we wanted our kids close together. Him because he's older than me and didn't want children after a certain age, and me because my sister and I are close in age and we love the age gap.

From a financial point of view I think there are pro's and con's for both.

For us, we both wanted me to be able to stay home with the kids until they were both at least in school. That means that having them close together results in a smaller amount of time between leaving work before my first child's birth, and going back to work after the second child is at school. Although recently hubby said he actually doesn't ever expect me to go back to work and would be fine with it if I didn't! Lol! I just hope my own business takes off so I can share the "breadwinning" ;)

For a family with a larger gap between children, I guess if you wanted to go back to work between having the children and have the first child in daycare or something, then you would obviously make more money and probably be better off in the long run financially. It all depends on what you plan on doing with work (eg going back to work between kids, or wanting to be an exclusive SAHM), and whether you want to have your child/children in day care or some other form of child care.

Financially its working out better with all our kids 15mths or less apart so less time before I can go back to study fulltime and eventually work BUT sanity wise its been h e l l and if I could go back and spread them out a bit more I would.

Thanks, I'm trying to convince hubby to have another , already! hehehe