I'm curious as to what the yearly cost is for raising a 6 year old boy. Include everything (food, clothes, school supplies, fun stuff etc.) except health insurance and future college expenses. I know the total cost per year of having a kid varies by area of the country, but give me your guesstimates anyway.
I must be missing something because my calculations come out as ridiculously cheaper per year than I would have thought.
Why the hell would you leave out the most important and costly items?
???????? wrote:
Why the hell would you leave out the most important and costly items?
He job pays for health insurance and he already has a viable option for higher education.
A shitload. That's why I waited until I had saved, invested, and stashed away enough money to have latitude before having kids.
If you're starting at 6 years and don't need to worry about college tuition, health insurance or daycare, I'd say the cost would/could be quite low. Kids eat very little, and you don't/shouldn't need to buy them expensive crap food in fancy boxes. The best "fun stuff" you can do with kids is free (hiking, biking, parks, etc.), and school supplies at that age are easy to come by for free if you know where to look.
Are you considering adopting? Raising kids can be costly, but doesn't have to be. People who have more typically spend more on their kids, but kids are just as content with less in a happy home.
Hiking is not fun for kids, only old people
Biking is boring and most kids race their bikes or use them for travel
Parks suck these days.
It cost us $10,000 per kid JUST TO HAVE THEM without maternity insurance. That's for starters.
The first 6-years are pretty cheap except for the health stuff: $1500 per year at least on doctor/shots/emergency room visits since we have a high-deductible HSA plan.
The kids don't eat very much and if you have a pretty good & giving network, like loving family and friends who pass on clothes/toys and Church, there aren't many more expenses.
My wife stayed home so I guess you could say it cost us ~$20,000 per year after taxes and childcare-avoidance, ha! If both you and your spouse work, expect to pay $1000-$3000 per month on care, depending on where you live & quality.
AFTER 6 though, incidental costs rise. Sports can cost a bunch if you pick stuff like Gymnastics, Dance, etc.
My wife and I both work 40 hours per week (can't afford to have either of us not work). For a while, we had someone come to our home to provide care for our first child two days a week, who wanted $12 an hour. We got her to settle for $10/hour, which for a nine-hour day came out to $180/week, or $720/mo. And that's just for two days a week.
When we had our second child, we had to go to five-days-a-week care, so after pricing out several day-care options in the Seattle area, we put both of our kids into a good local daycare -- not the highest-priced or lowest-priced, but closer to the cheapest than the most expensive, though still one we felt was of good quality. For five-day-a-week care, we currently pay $400/week (total for both kids), or $1,600/month, or roughly $19,000/year. This is more than the mortgage on our $233,000 house.
In addition to day care, our grocery bills doubled from about $75/week for just two of us, to roughly $150/week. There's also, as you mentioned, health insurance ($300/month for health and dental for both kids), clothing, living supplies (i.e., beds, dressers, toys, books, etc., etc., etc.), and yes, college savings.
Not that I am trying to convince you one way or another about whether to have kids, I just think you should not go into it expecting it to be "much cheaper than you thought." Having kids is a MAJOR, life-altering financial (not to mention physical and emotional) investment.
For me, it comes out to about $6 a day.
The U.S. government poverty definition allocates $3,740 for each additional person in the family. So in theory that's an estimate of some minimum cost for adding another head to the family.
Likely you don't live in poverty and want your kids to live better than that too. So it'll cost you more.
Questioner x 10 wrote:
Father of 2 wrote:My wife and I both work 40 hours per week (can't afford to have either of us not work).
Father of 2 wrote:
For five-day-a-week care, we currently pay $400/week (total for both kids), or $1,600/month, or roughly $19,000/year. This is more than the mortgage on our $233,000 house.
Maybe if you didn't put your kids in a (expensive) day care, you could afford to have one of you not work?
Only if they currently make less than $19,000. And that assumes that they rather be taking care of two kids than doing whatever it is they do at their job.
Most expensive time will be the first year with diapers, formula and milk. Kids also outgrow clothes like you wouldn't believe.
Dollar amount depends a lot on if you go name brand for diapers, wipes, formula or if you go for generic (which is just as good).
Child Care can cost $100-200/week EASY for one child. That's why my wife is at home with the kid and we opted for no child care for the first year or so...
Alan
If you are that worried about it, move back in with your parents or move to France or some other European country.
o.O wrote:
Hiking is not fun for kids, only old people
Biking is boring and most kids race their bikes or use them for travel
Parks suck these days.
I'm not sure where you live, but where we are the parks are great, and the kids I know love playing and hiking around in them. We've spent many afternoons building beach forts, playing soccer in the city park, biking the forest trails through state parks, swimming in lakes and the ocean, and going sledding in the local national parks in the winter (all for free). Hope to God you don't have kids if you can't figure out how to have fun with a kid in a park.
Looking at about 6 diapers a day. You're looking at about $50 a month for diapers...I think another $50 for formula early on...we're doing all milk now that daughter is over a year old. There's always 2-3 gallons of milk in the house, I'd say we go through a gallon and a half a week...plus 2-3 containers of baby food a day (depending on the amount of "real" food she eats). Our kiddo loves strips of grilled chicken, grilled cheese, bread, etc.
On food, diapers, wipes, etc...you could easily spend $1000-2000 a year no problem. Then if you are sending her off to day care, that's a cool $5-10,000 a year at $100-200 a week. So if you're a two earner household you have to figure if having both parents work is affordable or is having one parent would two jobs better. Then there's the whole problem of not actually being able to raise your own kid if both are working. In our case me working two jobs, one being personal training, was best. Personal Training is basically a part-time job making $20-35 an hour. Plus momma gets to stay home and raise the baby instead of day care.
Daughter is 13 months old and only recently came down with a cold, other than that she has NEVER been sick and is fairly calm and quiet most of the time. I think this is because momma gets to stay home with her.
Alan
I agree that clothes and food are relatively inexpensive -- with respect to the latter, you start eating in a lot more often, which reduces costs.
But preschool/daycare is still massively expensive. The $1000 a month I pay is more than my law school tuition (at least once scholarships and grants are taken into account) at a very good private school about a decade ago.
Travel by air becomes very expensive. First, add an extra ticket per kid, which can get steep -- probably at least $1000 per year on average. Second, you often can't fly the really early or late flights that save money, PLUS forget about connecting with a small child.
When you do go to a restaurant, add $10 per kid to the bill.
As for health costs, better hope you have good insurance. If you have a high deductible policy like me, every time your kid grabs a hot stove (hopefully just once or you've got the village idiot on your hands) or falls off his bike is $2,000 out of your pocket. I can't remember the last time we didn't max out our deductible.
Trust me, $400 a week ($200 per kid) is not expensive -- as I said, it's actually on the low end of secular day cares (church ones cost less -- at least, in terms of money ;)).
Even just to have someone come into your home is a minimum of $10 an hour, which for 5 days a week is $450.
And $400 a week (again, a low-end rate) is $19,000 a year. So as a previous poster mentioned, it doesn't make sense for either of us to quit our jobs, since we both make more than that. We could, in theory, have one of us quit our jobs and get a job doing in-home day care for another family (for, say, $10 an hour), but the tradeoff would be giving up one of our careers and a better chance at future earnings which will pay for things like college, retirement, etc.
If only it were so easy to just not have an "expensive" day care or just quit our jobs, we'd have done that long ago.
History of my Health Insurance...
Single: $30 per pay period. NO Deductable. 90/10. Was awesome.
Married: $152 per pay period. Same coverage/deductable as above.
Married/Child: $274 per pay period. Same coverage/deductable as above.
The dream doesn't last long....nightmare begins with new insurance because old carrier wanted to raise premiums...
New Insurance: $299 per pay period. $500 ind/$1000 fam deductable. 80/20.
Alan
Runningart2004 wrote:
Daughter is 13 months old and only recently came down with a cold, other than that she has NEVER been sick and is fairly calm and quiet most of the time. I think this is because momma gets to stay home with her.
Alan
Ha, ha. Don't get cocky, my friend. Not getting sick and minimizing exposure doesn't do much for the little one's immune system. Wait until school starts... Guess wait junior is immune to? Not a lot. ;)
runningart, sounds like you haven't priced out preschool yet...