TRUFAX: You can raise a baby on $70 a month!

[ohmeohmy]

http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/calculatorintro.htm

The USDA has a calculator to figure out how much it will cost each year to raise a child. It takes multiple variables into account (region, age of kids, how many parents in the household). It also includes things like housing, which you'd obviously pay for even without any kids.

For my 3 kids it says they cost me 52,000/year.

That is really interesting! For my two, it is supposedly costing me $16,360 annually. Their housing and food estimates were fairly accurate, but everything else was grossly over-estimated. There is no way I spend $600 a year on clothing for my toddler! $50 is about right for both my children for the year. My kids don't go around naked, but we live in a southern, coastal state where we don't have much need for heavy-duty winter clothing. I would think that'd be factored into the calculator, but it doesn't seem to be. Also, there are two awesome consignment sales each fall and spring where I get all their clothes and shoes for the following year for under $3 an item. The childcare and education was a little high, but I stay home with them so there's no daycare fees. My older child does take dance lessons but it's super-reasonable. Transportation doesn't cost that much, since we have no car payments on our two vehicles. And our health insurance is awesome. Fantastic coverage for not so much a month and it doesn't matter if we have two kids or 20, the premiums stay the same. So that was too high for us.

However, I realize these are all very, very specific and individualized exceptions. I think the calculator is a little high in some areas, but right on in others, so it seems to be pretty fair.

Anyway, it's really interesting to look at all the variances.

[little zoo]

It's interesting how people's real numbers compare to the calculator. I found that it was low on healthcare (we pay $4000/yr for the kids' insurance, whether we see a doctor or not. Add to that one child with developmental issues and one being monitored for growth and developmental issues, and our healthcare costs a LOT more). Food was also estimated on the low side. I have one child who can not tolerate soy or fruit, so I end up making almost all of our meals from scratch and buying certain brands of ingredients so she can eat them. My kids aren't in childcare, so that estimate was high. We do some extracurriculars, but the estimate was higher than those cost.

Once I tweaked the numbers, the initial guess was about $5k lower than my new number.

I'd say it's a good general calculator for the cost of children, although it obviously doesn't take into account every situation.

[Feberin]

The calculator was high for me. The clothing estimate was $913 for a one-year-old! Perhaps if I bought everything new at a fancy store. I'm not exactly sure how much I spend for a year but I think $200 would be a very high estimate for clothing costs. It's probably less then that since I buy all his clothes not only on consignment but frequently at a dollar dash where everything is a $1. I also get him a lot of hand me downs from my cousin. Childcare costs are low if I was working by quite a bit since we paid $200 a week and the estimate has it at $63 a week but really high with me at home. We're going to be doing a mother and baby swim class that is $60 and will probably do some other things at the Y but not $3,000+. Housing strikes me as weird to include since we purchased our house before our son and even if we had decided to remain childless would still be living in this house. He increases the utilities but not $4,000+ a year. We don't have car loans but have been having a lot of issues with our vehicles so that might be correct. The other category is high too. His toothbrushes don't cost that much and we get books from the library unless we're doing them as a gift.

[skankbiscuit]

We are fairly crunchy, but we do get the kids "nicer" stuff at Christmas. Santa brought them both Kindle Fires this year. We rarely go out to eat and I cook mostly from scratch so we save a lot of money there. The kids are both taking karate, and that is their only extra curricular (they are 8 and 5). We would like to be able to pay for their future schooling and help them out.

That is the main problem with these fundies, they only focus on the babies and don't give a whole lot of thought to what happens when they grow up

[AnnoDomini]

Depending on what they're doing, you could run up quite a bit monthly if your kids do just one or two activities a year. I hate the idea that if you spend a lot on extracurriculars, you must be overloading your kids with a dozen different acitivites each week. Where I live it's a couple hundred dollars a month for once-a-week lessons if you're doing dance, gymnastics, marital arts, music, etc. It usually costs a bit less if you want to just do something sports-y for a season but, in either case, you still have to add the cost of uniforms, equipment, and transportation into that.

Also, things have changed from when we were kids. You can't really to save money by just expecting your kids to play like you used. If you do, they'll usually be playing alone (because everyone else's kids are out doing extracurricular)

Tee hee! my mind's in the gutter--when I saw 'marital arts' the first thing I thought of was skills for the marriage bed, instead of homemaking stuff.

[clever_name]

Oh, I get her frames there. The $300 is for the visit to get her prescription adjusted. She has to go to a specialist.

Oh, damn. I'm sorry. :( I was really hoping that'd be a resource for you. Sounds like you've got your hands full!