I'm 50 this year. I've been an avid reader all my life, and back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I'd read the newspapers my grandfather would bring home. I would've still been in highschool (at the latest), so call this 1990 +/- 1 year. Even then I remember the classic newspaper article, claiming how much it'd cost to raise a child to age 18. I think back then they were calling that number $250,000. Now days, I think they set it at $1 million even.
For the longest time, they'd reprint that article every 2-4 years, just changing up one or another factoid. The logic was always specious. Every single thing anyone ever believed anyone needed for a baby/toddler/kid was always priced brand new and name brand. From dressers and chest of drawers, to baby strollers (this was even past the point where most people would ever use the damned thing).
They told the lie so often and from so many direction, ever since you were a child yourself, that you can't help but believe it. You're even telling it for whoever it is that wants that lie told.
I have three kids. I reckon the first cost more than $200,000 by age 5. No major medical problems (kids are also a reverse lottery ticket, in that regard—sometimes they just take all your money indefinitely because they’ve got a serious chronic illness). And we were far from extravagant in our spending. The bulk of it was in the three categories I listed.
[edit] I agree with you, actually, that there are a lot of dumb ways to spend extra money on kids. Dressers? Used. Clothes? Cheap, garage sales and thrift stores. Toys? Ditto. Half the “new parent” shit is useless. Changing table? ROFLMAO you have a floor, unless you’re infirm in some way that makes it hard to get down there, just throw a little blanket down and use that—they can’t roll off the floor!
You can drop costs by having a parent stay home in the early years (math only works out if that parent earned very low wages and you have at least two kids in quick succession—then, yes, it saves money).
More efficient may be living near non-working family and having them take care of the kids, but that can mean compromising on school quality (unless you move again) and probably salary. Plus it requires a kind of capital that not everyone has.
You can drop costs by skipping medical check-ups and care. Not uncommon.
It can be done cheaper if the circumstances are right and you’re ok with some compromises that most people can’t stomach unless they absolutely cannot afford it.
One parent staying home for about two years, who had a low salary, factoring in lost retirement contributions, is about half of that, we could have cut that part to $30,000 or so if not for that, true. That’d drop my (conservative!) napkin math to more like $130,000.
About $15,000 for the pregnancy and birth (we split it over two deductible years—whoops, didn’t make that mistake again). Daycare costs for the rest of that time, tens of thousands more. Probably $3,000ish a year (maybe a bit more) in extra medical spending on average (copays on check-up visits, added insurance costs, medicine occasionally, a couple visits that involved stitches or an x-ray over that time span)
That’s before food, clothing, furniture (you do kinda need a bed at some point—we go pretty cheap on furniture and clothes, but it’s still probably $3-4k over that five years, mostly clothes). Diapers (or a lot of extra power use, though sure, cloth diapers would have been net-cheaper anyway). Adds up.
So yeah, it was certainly over $200k for us (conservative estimate). Could have gotten it down to merely over-$130k by putting a weeks-old to 2-year-old kid in daycare, but we didn’t, maybe we should have.
[edit] I should add that it does get better after the first one; there are efficiencies and shared costs (daycare may give you a discount, even!). Getting all three to age 5 wasn’t $600k, probably closer to $400k. You also can do it cheaper, yes, but our choices were ones that nearly anyone who can at-all afford it is gonna make, like having one parent stay home the first year or two, going to all the medical check-ups, moving to an area with good schools (if you don’t already live in one), et c.
No that would have been raw spending. The difference was about $70k in imputed wages because of what we chose to do (which, again, I think almost anyone who can remotely afford not to send a kid to daycare in that first year or two, will have trouble not making that choice).
Because these costs are so front-loaded, so tend to hit earlier in one’s life, you really don’t want to start doing a more-expansive opportunity cost accounting, unless you want to get depressed (I have. Trust me, don’t—sigh, so long very-comfortable-retirement-at-55!).
And that's the most expensive place in the country, no? Most people don't live in the Bay area and if you need daycare, it's presumably because you have a well paying job and it's a tax deduction.
I'm 50 this year. I've been an avid reader all my life, and back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I'd read the newspapers my grandfather would bring home. I would've still been in highschool (at the latest), so call this 1990 +/- 1 year. Even then I remember the classic newspaper article, claiming how much it'd cost to raise a child to age 18. I think back then they were calling that number $250,000. Now days, I think they set it at $1 million even.
For the longest time, they'd reprint that article every 2-4 years, just changing up one or another factoid. The logic was always specious. Every single thing anyone ever believed anyone needed for a baby/toddler/kid was always priced brand new and name brand. From dressers and chest of drawers, to baby strollers (this was even past the point where most people would ever use the damned thing).
They told the lie so often and from so many direction, ever since you were a child yourself, that you can't help but believe it. You're even telling it for whoever it is that wants that lie told.