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"If you sat down to tally up the total cost of having children, you'd never have them," says Timothy Knotts, a father of four and a certified financial planner with The Hogan-Knotts Financial Group in Red Bank N.J. "It's a very expensive adventure."
Talk about a life-changing event. That's a lot of vacations, clothing, and restaurant dinners you may no longer enjoy.
This here is enough to scare me outta having kids.
Yes it is eye opening but I doubt these numbers will persuade people not to have more or even the first kid. A lot of folks just don't want to know the facts and go on "what the heart wants, the heart wants".
There are ways to do it without going broke. Late in life (REAL late) we decided to adopt 2 more. i bought everything we needed from furniture to clothes for the first 4-5 years at consignment sales. What I could make I did. Cloth diapers We decided to be very frugal with extra expensive activities like dance, play school, nursery school, etc.
I think the biggest shock comes with child care but that was not an issue for us. We also have great health insurance. And I do 95% of our food preparation with few processed foods. Eating out and processed food can get expensive.
Ultimately it comes down to priorities and we all have to make our own choices about what is best for our lifestyles and futures.
The saddest part of the article for me is the advice to pay off your credit cards and practice living on less before the baby comes. People need to be told this?
I rarely buy anything new for our son and plan to do this as long as i can get away with it. At some point I guess he'll notice that his Christmas and Birthday presents don't come in boxes and we may have to reevaluate. 99.9 percent of his clothes come from consignment sales. I read a post yesterday (I think it was on this site somewhere) where a person was angry that a family was supposedly poor but the kids were wearing designer clothes, while the poster bought clothes in Target. My son has a lot of Ralph Lauren shirts but they were $2 a piece! Now I wonder if people think I spend a fortune on his clothes when in fact designer consignment is cheaper than new from Target!
We used to spend most of our discretionary money on great vacations. They will be few and far between now and way less "fabulous" when we do go but I'm glad to make that small sacrifice. The rewards so far are worth it.
I always find these kinds of articles to be a bit exaggerative. Like all the "What you REALLY need to save for retirement!" articles that assume you're going to live a lavish post-working lifestyle in an expensive east coast city, taking a cruise or European vacation every year...
Yes MaseMan...very exaggerated......for each of our four children, we would buy a couple of flannel sheets and cut our own diapers....3 dozen/child was the perfect amount for the whole 2-3 years that they used them, at a cost of $20/child total...after that they made great shop rags.....momma breast fed (no bottles to clean and sterilize)...second hand clothes can be of high quality yet cost little...we used hand me downs....we ground our own baby food....toys are a dime a dozen....and when I really think about it...it wasn't expensive at all, especially when they were young...so fear not The Dissenter...if you really want children, they don't have to cost you an arm and a leg...that's just all commercial propaganda
I never understood these data points. I have four kids and it costs me $189 per year per kid. Food is practically negligible, they water and electricity they use is negligible. I save on taxes. Clothes are often hand me downs or gifts. The marginal costs are nothing. We'd still have a mortgage if we didn't have kids. We'd still have taxes and other expenses if we didn't have kids.
Now, I spend $800+ a month for the older two to be in competitive cheer, another five thousand a year for soccer and swim teams. I save $2K per year per kid for college in Education IRAs. They have typical kids toys like ipods (from craigslist) and cell phones (cheap, base models) but all of these are non-necessities and shouldn't be figured into the figures reported in the article.
The problem with the assumption of housing costs is in many cases, the marginal costs aren't that high. A childless couple will still have housing costs and they won't increase proportionally with additional kids.
The cost of everything has gone up so why would this be shocking to anyone?
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We decided to be very frugal with extra expensive activities like dance, play school, nursery school, etc.
99.9 percent of his clothes come from consignment sales. I read a post yesterday (I think it was on this site somewhere) where a person was angry that a family was supposedly poor but the kids were wearing designer clothes, while the poster bought clothes in Target. My son has a lot of Ralph Lauren shirts but they were $2 a piece! Now I wonder if people think I spend a fortune on his clothes when in fact designer consignment is cheaper than new from Target!
They Say The Cost of Raising a Child Has Soared
