the cost of raising a child

i've been wanting to write a post about the financial cost of raising a child ever since i read this article last year.  i'd highly recommend reading it as it is a pertinent and interesting subject for new parents.  one of the first questions james and i asked ourselves in the shock of finding out we were pregnant was, "how much is a baby going to cost?" our answer: we have absolutely no idea.  the money watch article claims that middle class families will spend $286,000 over the first 18 years of a child's life (not including the cost of college or loss of income from a stay at home spouse).  upper income families (income > $98,000) are likely to spend $475,000 in 18 years per kid.

these numbers sound absolutely outrageous and make kids seem very unaffordable.  however, i would argue the cost of raising a child can be much lower than these averages with a few easy steps and our cost of parker's first year was much lower than our expectations.  the article mentions that middle income families will spend $11-13,000 a year and upper income families $19-23,000.  i am happy to report that in parker's first year of life, we spent less than half of any of those numbers.  and without sharing too many personal details about our finances, it is helpful to breakdown where we spent our money:

1. childcare (about 50%).  thankfully we didn't have parker in full-time day care all year and our work situation is very conducive to reducing expenditures in this category since james watches parker most week days.  full-time childcare in arkansas is about $8-10,000/year and while i hear sooo many people complain about the crazy costs of childcare, it actually works out to less than $3/hr so hating the system seems unjustified.  plus many of my friends are either SAHM's or have relatives watch their children so that helps significantly in this category.

2. health costs.  for my personal calculation, i added the incremental cost of adding parker to health insurance + hospital/doctor's bills.  i am very thankful for parker's good health and that we did not have to have extra for staying in the nicu or going to the emergency room during the year.  did we still pay a few thousand dollars for premiums, prenatal/delivery costs, etc?  maybe.  but i don't think a few thousand dollars for these things is anything to complain about either--we get excellent care in america and should help pay for quality doctors.

3. baby supplies.  this is the area where i was pleasantly surprised to see low numbers in our budget.  diapers are not really that expensive!  for parker's first year of life we spent less than $100 a month on all feeding and diapering supplies (granted i breastfed over half of it, but still...the generic formulas that most babies can eat are not awfully priced either).  we got most of our clothes, furniture, etc. at baby showers and garage sales, so there was not much we really had to buy brand new in terms of supplies.

4. tax break.  i originally didn't have this in my expense list, but i think it makes sense to add back in the money saved in taxes into the cost equation.  child tax credit of $1,000 per child (if income is <$110k married filing joint) + dependent exemption ($3,650*whatever tax bracket you are in) = more than the cost of diapers and other baby supplies most of the time.

5. income loss--i didn't factor this into the equation even though i took extra unpaid time after parker's birth, but i think that is more a personal choice to stay at home longer (or forever) and while it directly affects available funds and is linked to the cost of raising a child, it is not a direct cost (plus the numbers for this are all over the board making it hard to have a true average).

anyway, i write this post not to brag about how we were super frugal with parker, but to encourage others that raising a child can be very affordable.  with a little planning, shopping around, etc. most stay at home moms can easily raise a child for less than $5,000 / year.  just to throw a number out there (which may be arguable with many, many contributing factors), i think any family with a member earning $40-50k or above can have the other parent stay at home with one child and make it work.  the more kids added to the family the harder this becomes, but finances should be considered before having more children if at all possible.  also i think it is helpful to breakdown baby expenses month by month and see how much you are really spending on your children.  i plan to continue tracking all of our kids' expenses every year and see where we end up.

did anyone else watch the oprah special this week with suze ortman and nadya suleman?  i loved it.  and i love suze ortman--sometimes i think we could be best friends if we were in the same friend group. 

until next time, hope everyone is having a wonderful sunday.  i had to add a picture of how parker and i spent our saturday since daddy was at work.  go packers!!!!!!!!!! (and jayhawks!)  love yall.