Cost of Children?

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My wife and I are considering having children, and I have embarked on an attempt to try and figure out how much money we're going to have to save every month to pay for a kid. I am feeling this is a quixotic quest I am undertaking, as I have NO idea how much a baby consumes. I am looking at the cost of baby food, formula, diapers, clothing, etc. The problem is I have no idea how much of them I need. How many diapers does a baby go through in an average day? How much formula? How much clothes per season? I've no idea!

So to the parents out there, in your own experience, how much does a baby really cost? I have devised a plan where we can save about $200 to $300 per month that could then be spent on a baby. My wife's mother can watch the baby during the day, so I am not factoring in daycare expenses into the cost, as I don't foresee daycare expenses to be an issue. Am I even in the ballpark here? Is $200-$300 close to being enough?

Also, I know that later on we need to do things like baseball practice or ballet lessons. I'm just looking at the base cost of the first couple of years of life here.

 

UK figures:

We're sticking with the dog.

 

After the initial investment (cribs, strollers, childproofing your house etc..) better plan on setting aside $60 a week (maybe more if where you live has a higher than average cost of living) bare minimum. There are medical bills that will surprise you, and clothes get ridiculous! There is a slight drop in cost as they start eating solid food, and then get potty trained, but it rapidly rises again as clothing expense goes up, and they start consuming more food. Buy the way, the second child is not less expensive than the first, IME, and that is having 2 boys.

I would have at least $2k or $3k set aside prior to making any decision to have a child, and I would make sure that you have already purchased a home, as many people who are renting and then have children have difficulty ever getting out of the rental trap.

 

Yes, they're very expensive, but ultimately worth every penny. Go for it!

You'll be surprised the things you'll find out you don't really need and can give up to provide for your children.

Plus, the government knows that it's horribly expensive to raise future taxpayers, so it gives lots of incentives to those who choose to do so. You've been paying for them for years, so when you have children definitely take advantage of them. Here are a few:

Tax deductions - you can deduct all sorts of child raising/educating expenses, plus each kid knocks about $500 off your total tax bill.

WIC - Women and Infants and Children Program. It's a federal program that gives you coupons, like food stamps in a way, that you can use to purchase food from your grocery stores to feed your child and pregnant/nursing wife. It amounts to like $100/month. There are income qualification guidelines, but if you're making up a budget before you dive in, you probably qualify. (No offense intended.)

Head Start - for when the kid is a little older but not in kindergarten yet and grandma has gotten a little tired of watching it. Again, there are income qualifications, but if you can get in it's a great program.

Non governmental helps:

GoodWill and similar second hand stores, in Minnesota we have a store called Once-Upon-a-Child. It's ridiculous how much new kids clothes cost. My God, they're just going to puke and poop on them anyway! They don't care if the jumper cost $1 or $35. Of course let your wife get that SOOOO Cute dress for $50, but for the daily routine clothes go for the discounts.

Friends and relatives: accept all the charity you can get. Clothes, help, money, you'll need it all.

Of course, once you have the little ball of love, you'll find it harder to resist buying them things, or maybe not if you don't have any money left. But my advice is to start now. Yes, you may have more money in a few years, but you'll be a few years older. It's hard enough running after the kids when you're not middle aged.

I forgot to mention health insurance. Hopefully you have something. Hopefully it's the kind where you pay a co-pay, and not a percentage of the total bill, even if the co-pay for a birth is two to three hundred dollars. A normal birth costs probably from $8000 to $10,000. If there are complications like a C-section or neo-natal intensive care, it can quickly go into the too-bad-for-you-looks-like-you'll-have-to-declare-bankruptcy-oops-the-laws-just-changed-you-can't-you're-screwed range. So definitely get a good insurance BEFORE anyone gets pregnant.

Good luck whatever you decide, and remember, the really fun part about having kids is making them.

 

@ Scot - no offense taken. Some additional info for those who have not responded yet - I work for the government, so while the pay isn't great, I do have good benefits, and an excellent health plan. The most any hospital visit could cost me is $200.

Because my salary is decent, we probably wouldn't qualify for any programs. If my wife goes back to work, we definitely wouldn't, so WIC and Head Start are probably not happening.

I must admit that there is a selfish motive here. While I fully believe that my wife and I can afford to have a child, we are more or less analyzing how we are going to have to curb our spending once we have a child, not necessarily deciding whether or not we could afford one in first place. Basically, we're trying to maintain as close to our standard of living as we currently have as we possibly can, and then assessing whether or not the decrease is worth having kids soon, or waiting another 3-5 years.

@DW

I forgot about initial purchases like cribs, stollers, car seats, etc. Damn these little critters are expensive. I need several hundred dollars that I hadn't accounted for just on this kind of stuff! The good news is $60 per weeks works out to about $240 per month, which is in my range of $200-$300 that I had guesstimated.

 

You're budgeting $60 PER WEEK?!?! You'll spend more than that just on diapers. You should go price diapers -- forget about baby food for now (or that matter the $500-1000 worth of stuff you'll need: bottles, crib, changing table, clothing, car seat, playpen, any of the above in portable versions).

Then look at clothing. Those sizes -- INF, 3MO, 6MO, 9MO, 12MO, 18MO, 2, 3, ... -- that means new clothing every three months for the first year, an entire wardrobe every three months. And you want A LOT of clothing or you'll be doing laundry 2-3 times per day (babies have a tendency to leak out of 'leakproof' diapers). My kids went through at least 3 changes of clothing per day for the first nine months or so.

I think the latest poll said a child cost about $250,000 -- it keep rising as the cost of college is growing faster than the cost of living index.

Of course, you can shift all entertainment expenses to baby stuff -- that little one will be your only entertainment for a while....

Rallymama should chime in on this....

 

Things to consider:
1. Breastmilk is free.
2. IN GENERAL, breastmilk makes for a much healthier baby, reducing medical expenditures.
3. A good breast pump is about $300, or about 15 cans of formula powder. I'm not exactly sure how many servings one big can makes, but considering that babies are on formula for at least a year, you'll go through way more than 15 cans. Have a second kid and the pump is effectively free.

OK, off my soapbox. For your specific questions...

Guess about 8 diapers a day - a little more in the beginning, a little less later on. It averages out.

At 4 months, Marcus is taking 24-30 oz from bottles over the course of his school day. This is in addition to nursing 2-4 times when we're together. I'm told he's a big eater!

Consignment shops and yard sales are great places to find baby clothes, furniture, and sundries. The only thing you must never, EVER buy used is a carseat. And interestingly enough, spending more money on a carseat doesn't necessarily get you more safety, just more bells and whistles.

When it comes to clothes, think of this: babies don't care what they're wearing, as long as it's dry. You have to assume you'll go through at least two outfits per day, and more likely three (again, it'll average out). Get enough to make sure you don't exceed your personal "it feels like I do nothing but laundry anymore!" tolerance.

Sorry for the lack of hard data, but maybe some more quantifications will come to me later.

@T2Bruno: - I wsa chimin even as you were posting!

 

@T2B - I was only basing that $60 per week on Darkwolf's estimate. I thought it was a little low. I was assuming at least $75, and more like $100 was a more reasonable estimate.

 

Excellent stuff.

My views will be a little different because it is hard to compare costs from New Zealand. But I've just been through the first year of parenthood so I can add my thoughts to those above.

1) The initial investment is colossal. I had no idea just how much 'stuff' a baby needs. Cot, bassinet, bouncinet, changing table, play mat, car seat, pushchair, play pen, travel cot, blankets, clothes, toys, bottles, bottle steriliser etc etc. Try and get as much of this stuff given to you as gifts.
2) In addition, we ended up having to move to a bigger house and a bigger car about 4 months after the baby was born because he had so much stuff it couldn't fit into our existing ones!
3) Nappies are really expensive. To help costs in this area, we get two types. We buy some cheap ones in bulk to use during the day (when you change more often) and better quality ones to use at night (when you want the baby to stay dry for much longer)
4) A big cost is clothes, for two reasons. Firstly, in the first few months they grow out of everything after wearing them once. Secondly, if your wife is anything like mine, then she will view her child as a fashion accessory and continually buy him new 'cute' outfits. I ended up buying shares in our favourite baby shop so I wouldn't feel so bad about the amount of my cash that goes there. Also, make sure you buy some of the baby clothes for sale in the SP Shoppe!
5) The surprisingly inexpensive part of the baby is his food. After about 4 months, you can start giving him solids and if you make it yourself (chuck some fruit or vegetables in a blender) it can cost almost nothing.
6) Yeah, breast-milk is free, but formula is not that expensive if you get it in big tins. Plus, when they're really little, they don't drink much (maybe 600ml a day), then there are a couple of months before they really get into solids when they might drink 1400ml a day but by about 6 months, solids start to take over a bit more so formula costs plummet again.
7) Healthcare for babies is free in New Zealand.
8) Don't worry about curbing your own spending. That will happen automatically when you get a baby because you will no longer have time to spend money on yourself, on restaurants, on movies etc. Our discretionary entertainment costs have fallen to almost zero in the last year (previously one of our biggest costs).

Phew, hope that helps.

 

T2Bruno,

You can buy 228 size 1 diapers for $30 (the damn link won't work here, just go to samsclub.com and search diapers). Given Rally's estimate of 8 diapers a day that is 28 days worth of diapers. What kind of diapers are you buying, and where are you buying them at???

Formula is about $30 for a 38 oz can of powdered Enfamil, which should last at least a week (probably more like 2 weeks).

That is about conservatively $37 a week for the 2 essentials. Now as I stated, I am talking about a bare minimum after you have everything that you need to bring the baby home, and I intended that to include his/her first set of clothes, crib, diaper pail (Diaper Genie rocks!), changing table, bassinet, car seat, etc. Now you still have $23 a week, over $100 a month for other expenses. That should cover clothes, wipes, bottle liners, Tylenol, and the normal Dr. visits if you have good insurance (and if you don't, sign up for it before you get pregnant, do you know what a c-section costs, even with insurance, I do, I have 2 of those t-shirts).

This is a bare minimum. This assumes that you will be buying second hand clothes and does not provide for toys (something I definitely believe in, stimuli is good for babies), in a average cost of living area in America, if you live where the cost of living is higher, you have to adjust up.

 

Darkwolf - what is a bottle liner? and what is Tylenol?

Yeah, toys are important but your kid is likely to be given more toys as gifts than he or she will ever be able to use, so it would be possible to spend nothing on toys and still have plenty.

The other thing to bear in mind are unpredictable hidden outgoings such as the fact that we are now on to our THIRD pushchair. We started with an all-purpose one which was quite nice, but then Mummy decided that it was too heavy for quick trips so we got a lighter one, then she decided that neither of them was any good for walking along the beach and rough terrain with so we had to get a three wheeled chunky tyred one as well.

My opinion is that it is not the regular costs that get you but the big, supposedly one-off costs.

Oh, and I don't think anyone has mentioned 'decoration' costs for the kid's room........

 

Well cloth nappies (diapers) would save tons of money and they are better for the enviroment. As for breastfeeding, I cannot name any disadvantages to this, but milk formulas are not so good and if not made correctly, they can be very dangerous.

 

I was a terry-towelling baby. We even have specialist nappy cleaning services in Britain now-a-days to encourage their use!

http://www.realnappy.com/

 

HB,

Bottle liners are plastic bags that are sterile and used in a popular type of bottle (at least in the US) that was originally introduced by a company named Playtex, though there are generic and other brands using them now (Gerber made a good knock-off when my kids were young, not sure if they still do). We tried them all, and kept going back to the bottle liners, they are just too convenient.

Tylenol=Acetaminophen. I am pretty sure that acetaminophen is sold in most countries, but just in case; acetaminophen is an non-steroidal (I think, there has to be someone with more medical expertise than I here) anti-inflammatory medication that is considered one of the safest drugs to give to relieve pain and reduce fevers, at least here in the US. For more info, see www.tylenol.com.

Major props to anyone who chooses to go the cloth diaper route, but if you don't have a stay at home parent, good luck.

 

Nappies are an environmental disaster, whether cloth or disposable. If everyone used cloth nappies, the landfills would be smaller but the water system would be full of more high powered detergents.

Also, let's not get into the breast feeding vs bottle feeding debate here as that deserves a whole separate discussion (and is definitely an Alley issue).

 

You can save all kind of money on different things when it comes to a baby.

1-Buy cloth diapers that you wash yourself instead of disposable.

2-Buy second hand clothes since they'll outgrow then faster than you can buy them. Let the relatives buy fancy new clothes for the kid.

3-Breast is best they say, not only because it's free but it's physically healthier and from what I've heard, produces a stronger bond with the parents. And if you bottle feed, don't buy liners, boil bottles to sterilize them. Unless of course you don't have time and prefer the quickness and ease of liners.

4- Move to Canada, free health care. LOL

5- Apart from a crib and car seat which we bought new to make sure it met current safety standards, look for second hand stores for baby bags, strollers, baby backpacks.

6-Have the wife invite tons of people to a baby shower and get a baby shower registry going. See how much you get from them and then buy what you need.

7-Cheap stores (like Giant tiger here) are bountiful with baby deals. 2 packs of sleepers are like 3 dollars cdn. Awesome deal.

8- When the baby is old enough to have jarred veggies and the like, make your own. Why buy carrots in a jar when you can puree your own. Saves lots of money to make home made baby food.

These are just a few things I learned when I was with my ex and helping to raise a baby. This is the easy part, wait till they get older and want all the latest toys and fashions....Good luck Aldeth! Oh and keep everything when they outgrow it in case you want more kids. That'll help too. Babies don't give a squat about if they wear hand me downs or not, but you're pocket book will. And if at all possible look for stores that will do trade in or cash for used baby items which you can then spend on newer ones as the child grows.

Oh yeah, one more thing. If you know other parents who aren't going to have any more kids, hit them up for hand outs. If anyone knows how expensive things can get, it's another parent.

Cheers!

 

There are always plenty of old baby items floating around the extended family. Out cot is one that various cousins have used over the last 10 years or so. We'll end up handing it over to the next baby that arrives in the family.

Online auction site www.Trademe.co.nz (or its US equivalent www.ebay.com) is also a great place to get baby stuff cheap.

Once again, can we leave the judgements on breastfeeding to a separate Alley debate. It is a much more complicated issue than is being made out in these posts.

 

HB, you're right that this is not the place for the breastmilk v. formula discussion. I only raised it to challenge the assumption that formula was a mandatory expense.

We saved all of Arlyn's baby things - toys, clothes, furniture, etc. - until we made a firm decision about baby #2. This time around all we had to buy was a second carseat and a highchair (didn't like the other, very hard to keep clean!). Well, we also have to buy some clothes because the boys are 6 months out of phase so we have lots of wrong season/wrong size stuff, but that's where grandparents come in...

Contrast this with friends of ours who recently had baby #2 after thinking they were done. The had to go out and re-buy EVERYTHING. Major ugh!

There are some biodegradable disposable diapers out there, for anyone interested in such things. The price for home delivery is comparable to buying diapers at the grocery or pharmacy but more expensive than going to a warehouse club like BJ's or Costco. As soon as you start looking at daycare outside of your home, you're going to need disposables of some form or another.

Personally, I'm a big believer in group day care as long as you find the right environment. I honestly don't think Arlyn would be as intellectually, socially, or emotionally mature as he is if I had been a SAHM. This too, like feeding and diapering, is soemthing that each family has to decide for itself. I can only offer my experiences.

 

Hmm, maybe we need to start up a whole parental advice forum with all these experts around SP.

Harbourboy Junior has his first birthday party tomorrow. There's another cost for you to budget for........

 

For Darkwolf: Yes, acetaminophen (brand name Tylenol) is an NSAID (non-steroidal antiinflammatory drug). It is regarded as one of the safest fever/inflammation reducers on the market; thus, it is what is most often recommended to mothers for their children. Yet, to be sure what is right for your child a pediatrician should be asked. By the way, I'm in pharmacy school in case you are wondering, so drugs are kind of my thing (legal ones only though).

Soapbox moment:
However, one common misconception about medicines is that they are safe as in perfectly safe and that nothing ever goes wrong because they have to be extensively tested first. WRONG. All medicines carry risks even the "safe" ones.

Back on topic:
All of the parents on this thread seem well informed, but I would be remiss without throwing a caution out there. Noone under the age of 18 (although the age varies between 15 and 21 depending on who is consulted) should take aspirin, especially for a suspected viral infection. It could result in Reye's syndrome, which really sucks even if it doesn't kill the kid. Thankfully,the incidence has been trending downward due to educational programs. For some info on the subject, see link.

Link:
http://www.reyessyndrome.org/what.htm

Also, a word of thanks to all those who have contributed to this thread. Like Aldeth and his wife, my wife and I are thinking about when we should start trying for our first. Although I'm sure she hears all this from her two married sisters, who have three kids under age 3 between them with one more on the way and another planned for the year after.