biggest kid expenses I have seen:
- Daycare/loss of income from staying home.
- need for larger housing (not always, but many justify larger houses for ‘space to grow’)
- housing cost more to live near good schools.
- saving for college
- medical bills
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Are you in a house now? I think most people prefer to have a house with kids because it’s nice having a yard. And with a house comes school district which is the biggest, if not one of the biggest determinants of the cost of the house. It’s the biggest deal for High School although it’s no fun to move schools as a kid midway through.
Preschool isn’t cheap (particularly if you do montessori), particularly assuming they’re going full-day in the year (or two) before kindergarten.
Camps! You can spend an arm and a leg to keep your kid occupied through the summer…
If you want to fully fund your kid’s college education you need to put aside something in the ballpark of 650-1200 per month per kid…
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Yeah we just bought a house last December straight cash. Not a huge house but big enough (2650 sq feet). I grew up in 2400 sq footer and wife grew up in a 2200 sq footer so our new house feels very roomy. We currently only have one kid but since we both grew up with 2 other siblings we are strongly considering a second child.
There is a magnet school about 15 mins away but public schools are only 5 mins away. We will probably send our kiddo to just the regular ole public school so she won’t get stuck on a bus for hours each week. I don’t she her clamoring to go to the magnet school unless a ton of her friends go there or something.
My wife and I both went to low tier public school and had pretty decent experiences/outcomes. She graduated #1 in her class, went off to Yale, and is now a surgeon. I graduated bottom half of my class with a 2.6 GPA but got into college because of track/athletics. Now I’m a stinking rich FSA. So I never really understood the hubbub around going to a “good” school. Although I do understand the value of not living in or near the hood.
Hopefully my kids don’t decide to play golf or tennis or some other super expensive sport. I can see equipment/coaching/camps/competition travel+lodging costing us an arm and leg
Anyways my budget for child education is $0 except for local school taxes of course
Well there are a few reasons. One is that high quality schools are highly correlated with lots of other things, like safety. The other is that a higher quality (i.e. more expensive) school will tend to have fewer class disruptions because you’re basically using a wealth filter on who goes to the school. Lastly it’s basically one variable of many in the vast multivariate model that determines success of your kid.
So no 529? Did you/your wife graduate with much college debt? I’d argue graduating college without debt is one of the more impactful gifts a parent can give a child in the current US. Having substantial debt would have delayed my life/kids/etc.
Geez I make a heck of a lot less than yinz.
My goals are shifting. The new car was more expensive than planned. It’s fine.
Will still max the 401k but I will likely dial brokerage back to $20k to $25k.
We haven’t figured out priorities for our old home. I’m debating putting the porch on hold to focus on infrastructure. The roof is nearing the end of its life, and I’d like to do solar once a new roof is up but I guess that’s not urgent. Maybe a roof and new HVAC this year, and then work on the porch and solar in 2024.
Solar would pay for itself more quickly than HVAC, but our furnace is 24 years old. I’m afraid if I do solar first, I run a real risk of having to replace HVAC out of necessity.
At least for me, living in the ‘po helps with the budget.
If you want to have a laugh, point Zillow to Lawrence, KS.
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Yeah, $2k each year into each kid’s 529 is the plan for now. It should help with their room and board but hopefully they just go wherever they are offered a full ride and I can tap into that money when I retire.
No college and/or med school debt for me or my wife. I went to school on a track scholarship and my wife received a combination of scholarships and grants (I don’t think anyone who attends an Ivy for undergrad graduates in debt because the endowments are huge, although plenty of their liberal arts grad students graduate in debt)
If I didn’t get a scholarship I probably wouldn’t have gone off to college, I most likely would have joined the army, police force, fire fighters, or local train company (but in my home state you can go to community college for free, so I guess I could have gone that route as well)
On one hand I’d love to give my kids the gift of going to an expensive college of their choice but I think one of the first lessons of financial responsibility begins with picking colleges. I don’t want them getting in the habit of buying dump expensive shit.
Damn I veered off topic but I guess my point is: I don’t think kids are that expensive
You have to manage your expenses (much like any well run corporation)
That’s a mouthful. I guess if you’re sending them off to work at 8 or so they could be a profit center. Ask anybody who has them, kids cost money, usually a lot.
What exactly are parents spending boatloads money on? Equestrian lesson? Steak and lobster dinner from fancy restaurants every night?
The way I see it expenses for kids are like expenses for cars and houses - you can spend millions if you wanted.
Of course this is a very rough projection but I think on average I’ll wind up spending an extra $10k a year per kid. Maybe $25k the year in high school when I have to buy them a car or something.
I have only had my kid for a year but she has only cost us an extra $2k in food, diapers, clothes, and toys. I truly do not know what to expect next year.
Am I forgetting any major expenses? I don’t want my kids to grow up deprived and resent me. I feel like as long as they have food to eat, clothes to wear, and friends to play with they should be pretty happy. Kids are fairly low maintenance, but it’s not like they can dump me for a richer/hotter dad 
Food and clothing are our biggest expenses right now (10 and 7 year old boys). We also spend a lot of money on entertaining them - allowances to teach them about spending, toys and games, birthday parties, their friends’ birthday parties. We don’t need childcare, but that’s a huge one.
I honestly didn’t understand how people spent so much money on kids, but truthfully…I make twice as much now as I did before I had kids, and I’ve never been poorer.
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How much do birthday parties run you?
My wife is currently planning our baby’s first birthday bash and is on the fence about dropping a grand on a photographer to document the occasion (this would be the largest expense by far)
You can’t have a party without food, drinks, and decorations. But turning birthday parties into photo ops with smash cakes and photographers seems a bit over the top and unnecessary. I blame instagram for this shitty new trend
The most we have ever spent on a single birthday party was maybe $1k, and I believe that was a joint birthday party for our kids (they are a month apart). We have never done anything extravagant. My younger son has only ever had two birthday parties, I’m pretty certain. My older son has only had three.
It’s not any single thing that is expensive. We aren’t buying them a pony or taking them to Europe. It’s all the smaller things, they add up. Can you parent cheaply? I suppose so, only shop at thrift stores, buy cheap and unhealthy foods, not buy them toys, not participate in school activities (like field trips, even) - but would you want to if you could avoid it?
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Wow that seems cray-cray to me. Camera technology has come a long way since my first birthday in 1972. I have occasionally glanced at the pictures over the years but they spend the majority of the time tucked away and unnoticed. I had an 8mm videorecorder that got a lot of use when my kids were ages 0-6 and that was fun. I even created a DVD with lots of clips of them - around 1998-2005 long before we were doing videos by phone. But again I haven’t watched that DVD in ten years now. If I could go back then and have the phone I have now, I wouldn’t want for anything else to capture the moment.
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Yes I fully agree. I don’t want my kids to suffer because I am a miser. I am well aware of my tendencies to view everything as an unnecessary expense, but when it comes to my family I like to freely give (to an extent of course!!) rather than withhold.
So in this particular example I understand birthdays are joyous occasions that should be celebrated and documented. But do we need a professional to take 50 photos an hour for 4 hours? I don’t think so
When it comes to the health and wellbeing of my family I will spare no expense. We don’t eat trash, not even fancy expensive trash like fine wine. But I’m not going to buy prime organic porterhouse steaks every night instead of just regular ole T bones for $10.99 a pound, the flavor/nutritional benefit do not justify the 4x higher price tag. I’m not even sure I can taste the difference (I am not a fancy man)
But I’m not going to feed the family bologna and mayo sandwiches everyday for the sake of saving money (maybe just occasionally when I’m too busy and tired to shop and cook)
I guess my point is I will spend the bare minimum to a point. I think by simply using my judgement and common sense reasoning I will be able to save money while ensuring my kids lead enjoyable lives
My wife and I are constantly snapping pics of our baby and recording videos. I have actually started sending pics of my baby to my family via Snapchat because of the sheer volume of photos and videos they demand (pics and videos on Snapchat go away after a single viewing, this is great otherwise their phones would be clogged with daily updates, they can screen record and save any snaps they find particularly cute)
As for professional photographers, we spent $3k on a wedding photographer pre-pandemic (the same photographer charges $4k for weddings now). We got roughly 300 photos. We printed 4 photos to frame and hang up. What a rip off.
By my calculations we will get 1 good photo out of the batch from the birthday party to frame. I think I’ll just have my iPhone out ready to snap when baby looks cute
Last year we spent around $6k on medical expenses - diagnoses, medications, and therapies - for our kids, in addition to the $2k+ extra we pay to have them on our health insurance. So, I guess that’s a big cost I didn’t even consider.
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Ah yes it’s been an extra $80 per paycheck to insure my baby.
Fortunately all of her medical care so far has been fully covered and paid for by Blue Cross with the exception of her doctor applying silver nitrate to her belly button to get her umbilical cord stump to peel off. If I had known it was going to cost $100 I would have just waited an extra week or so for the thing to pop off on its own. I thought it was part of the two week check up.
She is going to need braces though, seeing as both me and her mom required braces. Lord knows how much that will cost (I think my current plan only covers $1.5k for the cost of orthodontia per member per lifetime)
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Well, if you have a family plan, the next kid should be free to add to the plan at least!