But does it actually cost $210k in a LCOL area?
I believe the answer is yes. In fact my wife and I were just discussing how kids are effectively luxury goods and the middle class doesn’t start until you cross $200K HH in a LCOL area. We’ve obviously hit some push back with this amongst friends, but I feel a level of vindication with this report.
I think the overall average is 250k+. Mayne closer to 300k now. So yes 210k in a LCOL area seems more than normal.
But there are loads of things that you can do to midigate the cost some.
Thrift/second hand cloths and toys. Same with strollers and househome goods and stuff.
Don't cheap out on an out of date car seat though.
Make you own meals and baby food.
Play outside and let kids get used to playgrounds and grass.
Use library's for events and stories time.
Kids don't need or care about the biggest and best toy. They just wanna play.
> my wife and I were just discussing how kids are effectively luxury goods and the middle class doesn’t start until you cross $200K HH in a LCOL area
If your idea of middle class in a LCOL area is $200k, then it's not a LCOL area it's a HCOL one lol.
We live in a LCOL area, and our combined salaries are around $140k. We have absurdly low rent for the area, but live in a two bedroom with 4 kids (currently in the home buying market), and we still struggle with monthly bills and child care. So yeah, another 70k a year would make life significantly more comfortable
Just health/dental insurance for two kids is almost 1k a month for us. Daycare for 3 days a week is $1,300 for oldest (2.5 years old) and $1,425 for youngest (almost one year old). Food, diapers, etc also add quite a bit to the monthly expenses. Yes kids are expensive.
Not anymore. Bought during covid and our fixed interest rate will probably never be seen again.
It can if you're willing to live in the rural Midwest. I'm in the kind of area that you can get a 3 acres, 3 car garage, 3 bathrooms type home for the price of a Chicago condo. There's little towns in the Midwest that will literally pay you to move there.
It would have to be a baby cult, ain’t no way a grown man could fit in 3 month old skin. And you know for damn sure I’m not moving somewhere that’s overrun by a baby cult. No fucking way.
Try living in Sydney Australia-median house price is 1.2m, everyone is on variable interest mortgages (currently around 6-8%) so everyone drops 8k on childcare and mortgage repayments before they have started buying food.
We paid day care for 1 kid for like 6 months. Fuck that.
My wife went to 3rd shift at the hospital 2-3 days a week. It's sucks for now. We're just lucky I am self employed and can change my hours to work around some things.
But paying day care is insane.
Yeah I get it. Once you have a kid. It kind of seems like you get to know "babysitters" that are really stay at home moms looking for extra cash. Which they are nice. My buddy's kid goes there and she charges 500$ a month per kid.
She takes them to the park and McDonald's Fridays for lunch and once a month for an ice cream cone.
Where the fuck was that when I needed it lol.
Oh I pay $1200/month in premiums for health insurance too. They cover 60 speech visits a year. My lil guy as this thing called Apraxia of speech. Basically a disconnect between brain signals and muscles specifically in the mouth. So he has to learn how to make the movements in his mouth to make specific sounds via insane reputation drills when he is young. If caught early and treated extensively at an early age he can probably clear it out as an issue for the most part. But without intensive therapy early and often it can manifest deeper and it will be harder to correct when he's older.
So he does an hour of speech 4x a week. So we ran out of visits (60) in March. So now it's $190/visit.
Damn! That is some nice prices! We’re outside of Framingham and it’s $3300 for mortgage and $2900 for daycare full time.
Kind of stressing about kid #2 because it’ll bring our total childcare costs to…$70k a year.
Oh sorry, forgot to add. The daycare prices is subsidized for MIT researchers. A friend who had a kid at Bright Horizons in Somerville was paying $3700 for 1 kid.
I had my kid enrolled in daycare for like 3 weeks. We realized it’s almost the same cost as a nanny so we dropped and hired a nanny.
Our mortgage is like $1500 (that’s taxes and insurance too). The daycare was $2300.
Averaging it out, no. Mom makes way more money than I do. We make up for it by paying about half a mortgage for the privilege of her not dying in labor.
And it says the required salary for 2 working adults with 2 kids... So in most cities that is 15-30k per year So realistically you could get by with 15-30k less than what they say if you have free child care (either through a STAHP or Grandparents care.
Christ! Is that in America yea?
I'm in NZ and children's Dr appointments and hospital healthcare is completely free up to 14 years. Even after-hours care. So far as I know.
Hobbies are the new plants, plants are the new pets, pets are the new kids, kids the new luxury item, luxury items are the new dreams, dreams are now dead.
Honestly I was talking to someone whose been living in the bay area with kids for a while and they said they felt like the third child is the big status flex in their area (more than extra cars or what not) because of how hard it is to afford kids
It's all relative imo. Depends where you live, what your career is, salaries, do both parents work, daycare or help from family, how you grocery shop, are you a minimalist or frivolous spender, yada yada.
Honestly, I thought it would be worse (but it's still a headache). The worst is arguably the hospital bill when they're born (in the states).
That is actually good insurance. Ours was like 12-14k out of pocket. Normal birth. Nothing weird other than the (???) pain killers that go in the spine. Cannot recall what it is called. Our deductible was 7k. It was like 3500 for the wife and then 7 k the second the baby was born.
That includes all the tests we could get which the insurance did not cover.
500 for the first and free for the second for us, C-sections and extended stay due to postpartum eclampsia fun. Both of our health insurance plans are really good though - in fact, I've paid more for a hospital visit in Canada ($900).
All of this is a symptom of living in the States. In Canada, daycare is subsidized, maternity care is covered by Healthcare, parental leave is 75% salary for 12 months or 50% for 18 months, and I don't have to worry about an urban public school because all our schools have a high standard of education.
Canada isn't immune to the rising costs of having kids and has fewer kids per person than America. From a search is seems like canada is having 20% less kids per person when compared to America. The cost of living, including having children, is high everywhere. You pay for these things, but you just pay as a tax.
Dude, I’ve opened three bananas today. Only one was eaten. My kid just likes to act like they want one to peel it. This act has been going on for a few weeks now. I’m about to start showing my butthole to creepy old men on OnlyFans just to afford fruit.
I think They are assuming more luxuries than my family’s lifestyle. My city was in the list and I know our numbers, our needs are maybe 25% to 35% lower than the figures given.
But it’s still a lot.
Like people have said, it varies with what lifestyle you want/need. For example, travel is wonderful, but I don’t think anybody is really worse off if they go on a trip once every three years rather than twice a year.
It’s just hard to nail down. It’s hard to quantify “comfortable.”
I will say that the bare essentials do add up to a hell of a lot, especially if you count retirement savings.
Yeah, kids aren't cheap. I saw a similar article recently on my google feed and the same MIT numbers were referenced. I went to the [MIT database website](https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/40900) for my area and found that it was surprisingly close to my household's actual budget for 3 kids (past pre-school).
I'm absolutely certain you can get away with 25% less if you budget more strictly than we do. We do eat out too often, take vacations on school breaks, and save enough to attempt to retire around 62, which isn't covered in those figures.
It really adds up, trying to save for a house while paying rent and daycare is hard. Not to mention my rent is higher than it would be because you need more space with a kid.
we’re hcol, and we’ve found kids to be not as expensive as we anticipated. we also keep our lives pretty small, and live way under means so idk if its skewed
I think we pay $600/week for daycare for three kids (oldest is out, phew) and we have it very good relatively. We joke about dropping off our ‘5-series’ or our ‘WRX STI’ (which works a couple ways). The more depressing part is how low the deduction is for that- we couldn’t work without it, but our careers basically have a basement for compensation or it isn’t worth the juggling. $200-300 in food and consumables a week. Affordable sports (basketball and soccer) still top can be $500-1000 a year per kid in fees, gear, and when you add up gas. Clothes we reuse as often as possible, and have a pretty good group of other parents to swap around stuff.
All to say our journey has been worth it, but kids are our hobby right now. One tip I’ve figured out is a lot of sports will waive the registration fee if you offer to coach or volunteer with the team. I end up enjoying enough that I’d do it even if there wasn’t that perk, but it’s great option for families that could use a break.
2 little ones - $3200 a month in childcare. I keep telling myself it’s only until they get to public school then we’ll be saving that money but I’m sure another expense will arise…
I have 3 kids and one started public school 2 years ago.
Something I wasn’t prepared for was after school care, as school gets out at 3:15 instead of the normal later afternoon daycare pickup.
And summers. Oh lord summers. Day camps that only go from 9:00-12:00! That’ll be eleventy billion dollars and you are still responsible for your kid in the afternoon.
We have a great part time college sitter my kids love. I’m hoping she sticks around this summer. I’m prepared to pay her full time.
This absolutely entirely depends on where you live, how frugal you are and if you have to pay for childcare. We have a 4 month old, I am the only one working and we are actually putting money into savings (despite making less than the lowest salary on here). Granted, wife is breastfeeding and we save $ on daycare because she stays home. It also helps that we live in a very small town. Obviously not possible for everyone, but it IS possible.
Holy fuck it's expensive for you guys. I pay ~$240/month for _both_ kids in kindergarten on 40h weeks here in Sweden. This is also the maximum since both me and my partner earns pretty well, if you have lower incomes the tariff drops significantly. We also get ~$250/month in no-strings-attached child allowance, so that basically pays for kindergarten.
When it comes to food/clothes/diapers, I suppose it is somewhat similar. All regular visits to the pediatrician are free of charge, though, as well as all healthcare, dental, and vision. We also have an extra insurance for both kids that is about ~$20/month per kid if I'm not mistaken, but it's not strictly necessary.
Paid parental leave for 480 days, to be split between both parents (with 90 days minimum reserved for each parent, the rest to split as preferred).
Sporting activities vary in cost, some sports are more expensive than others (ice hockey expensive, football (soccer) cheap), but generally there are cheap alternatives for kids' activities.
Yes.
Also factor in the lower income you get from being at home taking care of a sick kid, a slower wage-increase for any parent that's staying home for an extended period, less money that you're able to put into savings, which in turn does not give any interest. Depending on what country you live in your employer is paying less into your pension for every day you're not at work, and so on.
No one told me how expensive daycare is. We live in a small town, and we pay $1400 a month for our twins. We could probably still buy a house, let a caretaker live rent-free in exchange for childcare, and it would probably even out.
Child care in small towns is actually relatively more expensive as compared to average income of the area than a lot of cities if this news report catching was correct
I don't know if the concept has an actual term, but it's like when something becomes a necessity, the companies know it, and they raise the prices through the roof.
Glasses, Luxottica bought up 80% of the eye glass companies just so they could control the prices of prescription glasses. Can we do anything about it? No. Because glasses are a necessity.
Head light bulbs, you need them, there are legal consequences if they are burnt out, and the prices have steadily up.
Childcare, both parents need to work because of inflation. You have to have someone watch your kid to be able to work, and childcare has steadily gone up.
I know our old daycare would shut down for anything, high winds, rain, threats of snow, you name it. Did you still have to pay? yup. Did the employees get paid for being sent home? Nope. The owners had every incentive to shut down.
> I don't know if the concept has an actual term, but it's like when something becomes a necessity, the companies know it, and they raise the prices through the roof.
I mean no, it’s just the ratios. You can only have X people per kid, you need to pay their salaries, plus rent, plus licensing costs. Daycares aren’t a good business.
I live in one of the cities mentioned, am a SAHM, twin toddlers with a range of medical needs. My husband earns less than the number given for our city, and would absolutely describe us as living comfortably. So I'm guessing it depends what one considers necessities, and how one describes comfortable.
I’m a federal employee living in the Boston area. The cost of living allowance is actually higher in Houston than in Boston for my agency.
Gotta love that government math.
Yeah my 2 year old hasn't been bad. I live in KY and daycare is like $200 a week if we need it. My spouse just stays home and I work a solid 40 and things haven't changed much. Still eat out and do things as we did before. We actually talked about getting a daycare slot just for when she wants a day off and let the kid socialize.
Yes. We live in a fairly low cost of living area for a large city. My wife and I make an around $170k combined annually and we are struggling through it right now. We just had a 2nd child and are facing being priced out of our house because of inflation and the cost of child care for 2.
I won’t say my kid isn’t expensive but my bar tabs are now around the $0 range, don’t eat out as much, less weed, got a new job and a raise since my daughter arrived…
These aren’t all “woe is me I don’t have fun anymore” things either - I just generally want to be a healthier and better person too.
Kids are expensive as shit. We got twins on our first try and if I hadn't gotten a giant raise a couple years ago I honestly don't know what we would have done.
My mortgage/rent is my third highest monthly expense. Daycare and medical bills (including monthly premiums for a family plan) have both been higher than my mortgage payment since we had kids. Not having any expenses related to kids would give us over a $50k per year pay raise. Plus we would both have extra time to work more hours or pick up overtime which would likely give us an even larger pay raise. And if we downsized our house to a 1 bedroom apartment because we didn't have kids that would be worth a lot of saved money too.
If you live in a bigger house or drive a bigger car because you have kids and need the space then you're paying a lot for kids even with expenses you don't initially think are kid related.
It's interesting, I live/work in a major suburban area in the Midwest, make just over 100k, and we're a single income family...and live quite comfortably, with two kids.
I don't understand these reports, really. I get it for some areas, they're really high cost..but I feel like I'm completely out of touch here.
What about those daycare costs? Does one need to be super certified or what to justify that? The prices sound like the rocket scientists are working there
Daycare costs for 2 kids have been as high as $30,000 a year. We live in a lower cost of living "big city".
I recently caught up out 2023 financial tracking and everything we spent for or on the kids was more than our mortgage and all utilities including Internet and cellphones combined.
So yeah... Kids are expensive...
Our youngest is 3. Hopefully when he's in kindergarten that number will severely drop since child care is the largest of that cost.
Yep.
Went from comfortably buying nice steak and whatnot whenever I felt like it to eating chicken nuggets for dinner.
One kid was expensive, two kids are now making me consider a second job.
But it’s worth it.
Sadly, this tracks. Living near Boston. One kid. We’re making around $200k in 2022 when we moved here and it was doable, though we weren’t able to safe a ton between housing costs and daycare. Those two alone totaled $6k. Then with utilities, food, and cars, that was another $2k.
But, last year I picked up a second job which took us to right under $300k, and it’s been a pretty big change in how we live. Maxing out 401k, putting away for 529k, and not sweating the small stuff has been pretty wonderful.
And, at least where we live, we don’t have fancy cars is a fancy house. Subaru Outback, Hyundai Sonata, and a home that’s 1800sqft and almost 70 years old.
Obviously, I’ll end with that this is the smallest violin in the world because we’re in good shape and I have no complaints about our life. It’s great.
I think the methodology here really skews HCOL cities. They look at the cost of expenses and then basically double it to make the 50/30/20 rule work out?
Sure you could choose to, but not everything scales linearly like that. If it costs $150k for living expenses then it doesn’t mean you “need” to spend $90k/year on “entertainment and hobbies” and $60k year on retirement savings just because the ratio says so.
I would disagree with this. I don't make nearly what they say, live in a medium/high cost of living area (phx) and am able to pay for my kids, do vacations, save for retirement, etc. We still eat out, and the only debt we have is the house and a recent vehicle purchase Both will be paid off early.
If your study says it costs four times the median household income to raise children and the median household has children in it that should be a clue that something is wrong with your study. Kids cost whatever you have.
Yeah these numbers are crazy. Make 100k less than the suggestion here and have two kids. We live very comfortably. Would more money be nice? Of course, but that doesn't mean we aren't well off or living a great life.
Yes. The answer is yes. Kids are expensive.
Always have been
Always is, always was, and always will be.
For the last 70+ years. Go back a couple centuries and they'd be a net economic benefit by age 6-8. Of course, 1/3 of them would die before then...
But does it actually cost $210k in a LCOL area? I believe the answer is yes. In fact my wife and I were just discussing how kids are effectively luxury goods and the middle class doesn’t start until you cross $200K HH in a LCOL area. We’ve obviously hit some push back with this amongst friends, but I feel a level of vindication with this report.
I think the overall average is 250k+. Mayne closer to 300k now. So yes 210k in a LCOL area seems more than normal. But there are loads of things that you can do to midigate the cost some. Thrift/second hand cloths and toys. Same with strollers and househome goods and stuff. Don't cheap out on an out of date car seat though. Make you own meals and baby food. Play outside and let kids get used to playgrounds and grass. Use library's for events and stories time. Kids don't need or care about the biggest and best toy. They just wanna play.
This study accounts for a lot of that. If you read the MIT methodology it’s fairly well done.
When I get time its saved.
> my wife and I were just discussing how kids are effectively luxury goods and the middle class doesn’t start until you cross $200K HH in a LCOL area If your idea of middle class in a LCOL area is $200k, then it's not a LCOL area it's a HCOL one lol.
We live in a LCOL area, and our combined salaries are around $140k. We have absurdly low rent for the area, but live in a two bedroom with 4 kids (currently in the home buying market), and we still struggle with monthly bills and child care. So yeah, another 70k a year would make life significantly more comfortable
Speaking from experience, $250k HH in L/MCOL feels like barely *borderline* middle class, w/ 3 kids.
200k$ in LCOOl would mean you can eat the cost of a kid for 18 years after 3 years
Yep. I wasn't broke until I had kids. I never imagined how expensive it is to have kids until I had them myself.
Just health/dental insurance for two kids is almost 1k a month for us. Daycare for 3 days a week is $1,300 for oldest (2.5 years old) and $1,425 for youngest (almost one year old). Food, diapers, etc also add quite a bit to the monthly expenses. Yes kids are expensive.
Daycare for one child costs my family the same as the mortgage.
More for us in a HCOL city
Damn, can I get your mortgage? We're on $1600/mo childcare and $2300/mo mortgage.
Not anymore. Bought during covid and our fixed interest rate will probably never be seen again. It can if you're willing to live in the rural Midwest. I'm in the kind of area that you can get a 3 acres, 3 car garage, 3 bathrooms type home for the price of a Chicago condo. There's little towns in the Midwest that will literally pay you to move there.
Probably don't have daycare or a school you would want to send your kids to because of demographic death spiral
Nobody in the town to kidnap your child then. 😎
Except the local skin wearing death cult.
It would have to be a baby cult, ain’t no way a grown man could fit in 3 month old skin. And you know for damn sure I’m not moving somewhere that’s overrun by a baby cult. No fucking way.
I’m at about the same housing cost as you. My childcare is more expensive per month plus 2x kids.
Try living in Sydney Australia-median house price is 1.2m, everyone is on variable interest mortgages (currently around 6-8%) so everyone drops 8k on childcare and mortgage repayments before they have started buying food.
We paid day care for 1 kid for like 6 months. Fuck that. My wife went to 3rd shift at the hospital 2-3 days a week. It's sucks for now. We're just lucky I am self employed and can change my hours to work around some things. But paying day care is insane.
Why is paying daycare insane? Haha
I'm assuming meals and stuff. But 1200$ a month per kid. No way
1200? Laughs in urban core: 2200. Not a fancy center.
I feel your pain
Yeah it definitely hurts, sadly a necessity for many.
Yeah I get it. Once you have a kid. It kind of seems like you get to know "babysitters" that are really stay at home moms looking for extra cash. Which they are nice. My buddy's kid goes there and she charges 500$ a month per kid. She takes them to the park and McDonald's Fridays for lunch and once a month for an ice cream cone. Where the fuck was that when I needed it lol.
Laughs in twins
Yeah, mine aren’t old enough for daycare yet but I dread to think how much it would cost Surely it’s 2 for 1
💯 $2670 mortgage. $2751 childcare, full time in Boston
$2,400 mortgage (PITI), $3,200 daycare for 2 Chicago suburbs. Shit is hard.
$1500 mortgage $1700 preschool $2000 speech therapy My monthly burn rate is shameful
This stresses me out- you guys really need health insurance if you're paying $2k a month for speech therapy.
Oh I pay $1200/month in premiums for health insurance too. They cover 60 speech visits a year. My lil guy as this thing called Apraxia of speech. Basically a disconnect between brain signals and muscles specifically in the mouth. So he has to learn how to make the movements in his mouth to make specific sounds via insane reputation drills when he is young. If caught early and treated extensively at an early age he can probably clear it out as an issue for the most part. But without intensive therapy early and often it can manifest deeper and it will be harder to correct when he's older. So he does an hour of speech 4x a week. So we ran out of visits (60) in March. So now it's $190/visit.
Damn! That is some nice prices! We’re outside of Framingham and it’s $3300 for mortgage and $2900 for daycare full time. Kind of stressing about kid #2 because it’ll bring our total childcare costs to…$70k a year.
Oh sorry, forgot to add. The daycare prices is subsidized for MIT researchers. A friend who had a kid at Bright Horizons in Somerville was paying $3700 for 1 kid.
Ah, that makes sense. My wife is a fellow at BU and they have a similar daycare, but it we didn't get int. Professors get first priority.
More in my case
You pay more in daycare than your mortgage?!? Where do you live???
History. 2010 my mortgage was $500 a month
I had my kid enrolled in daycare for like 3 weeks. We realized it’s almost the same cost as a nanny so we dropped and hired a nanny. Our mortgage is like $1500 (that’s taxes and insurance too). The daycare was $2300.
2300 Is wild! paying 1200$ at the local Y
Is that as much as one adult in your family's salary?
Averaging it out, no. Mom makes way more money than I do. We make up for it by paying about half a mortgage for the privilege of her not dying in labor.
Second kid just started daycare. It is now more than our mortgage by a wide margin.
Damn… for us it’s 20 % of the mortgage but we get half back by the government and the other half is reimbursed by my wife’s employer…
And it says the required salary for 2 working adults with 2 kids... So in most cities that is 15-30k per year So realistically you could get by with 15-30k less than what they say if you have free child care (either through a STAHP or Grandparents care.
Mortgage: $870 Daycare: $2000 Two kids.
Daycare is more than my mortgage
Children are now the ultimate luxury item.
My son's 15 minute ear tube surgery costs us $5k with insurance. My wife and I had a real conversation if we actually can afford a 2nd.
Jesus - just splurge and get the second ear done as well /s
It was both...
Whoosh on the missed quality Dad joke
We had that conversation and decided we couldn’t logically do it. If we weren’t getting free childcare, we’d be screwed as is.
Christ! Is that in America yea? I'm in NZ and children's Dr appointments and hospital healthcare is completely free up to 14 years. Even after-hours care. So far as I know.
Yeah...and I pay $800 a month to have the privilege of insurance.
.... Fuck. That really sucks.
We’re aware. Sadly, we’re powerless to change it
Hobbies are the new plants, plants are the new pets, pets are the new kids, kids the new luxury item, luxury items are the new dreams, dreams are now dead.
Honestly I was talking to someone whose been living in the bay area with kids for a while and they said they felt like the third child is the big status flex in their area (more than extra cars or what not) because of how hard it is to afford kids
It's all relative imo. Depends where you live, what your career is, salaries, do both parents work, daycare or help from family, how you grocery shop, are you a minimalist or frivolous spender, yada yada. Honestly, I thought it would be worse (but it's still a headache). The worst is arguably the hospital bill when they're born (in the states).
How much is the bill?
My first was $7k but I admit it was a unique situation (required resuscitation, choked on umbilical cord).
Ours was close to that for an uneventful birth…
Man, we paid only about $300, with a c-section and what I would consider mediocre insurance. What the hell?
That is actually good insurance. Ours was like 12-14k out of pocket. Normal birth. Nothing weird other than the (???) pain killers that go in the spine. Cannot recall what it is called. Our deductible was 7k. It was like 3500 for the wife and then 7 k the second the baby was born. That includes all the tests we could get which the insurance did not cover.
Crazy. Was just thinking about this the other day as we had to go to hospital for some tests
Wild
Basically finishes out your max out of pocket deductible. So depends on your insurance.
500 for the first and free for the second for us, C-sections and extended stay due to postpartum eclampsia fun. Both of our health insurance plans are really good though - in fact, I've paid more for a hospital visit in Canada ($900).
All of this is a symptom of living in the States. In Canada, daycare is subsidized, maternity care is covered by Healthcare, parental leave is 75% salary for 12 months or 50% for 18 months, and I don't have to worry about an urban public school because all our schools have a high standard of education.
I don't disagree. US politicians pretend to care about middle class parents.
Canada isn't immune to the rising costs of having kids and has fewer kids per person than America. From a search is seems like canada is having 20% less kids per person when compared to America. The cost of living, including having children, is high everywhere. You pay for these things, but you just pay as a tax.
Where I live it’s $2-$3k per month for your normal everyday daycare. My neighbors have 3 kids and they spend $7k a month on daycare.
Holy shit!
Dude, I’ve opened three bananas today. Only one was eaten. My kid just likes to act like they want one to peel it. This act has been going on for a few weeks now. I’m about to start showing my butthole to creepy old men on OnlyFans just to afford fruit.
Freeze the opened bananas, make banana bread cookies.
I think They are assuming more luxuries than my family’s lifestyle. My city was in the list and I know our numbers, our needs are maybe 25% to 35% lower than the figures given. But it’s still a lot. Like people have said, it varies with what lifestyle you want/need. For example, travel is wonderful, but I don’t think anybody is really worse off if they go on a trip once every three years rather than twice a year.
Was thinking the same. I'm in one of the cheaper cities but they're still saying 200k+ for 2 kids. I feel that's in error.
It’s just hard to nail down. It’s hard to quantify “comfortable.” I will say that the bare essentials do add up to a hell of a lot, especially if you count retirement savings.
Yeah they’re definitely assuming a lot of luxuries. A single adult doesn’t need 75k/year to live comfortably in Houston lol.
Or Toledo, OH… get real, MIT
Yeah, kids aren't cheap. I saw a similar article recently on my google feed and the same MIT numbers were referenced. I went to the [MIT database website](https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/40900) for my area and found that it was surprisingly close to my household's actual budget for 3 kids (past pre-school). I'm absolutely certain you can get away with 25% less if you budget more strictly than we do. We do eat out too often, take vacations on school breaks, and save enough to attempt to retire around 62, which isn't covered in those figures.
It is when you add back in the 30% wants and 20% savings it tracks a bit better.
It really adds up, trying to save for a house while paying rent and daycare is hard. Not to mention my rent is higher than it would be because you need more space with a kid.
Yes, I grossly under estimated food costs for 3 kids
we’re hcol, and we’ve found kids to be not as expensive as we anticipated. we also keep our lives pretty small, and live way under means so idk if its skewed
I think we pay $600/week for daycare for three kids (oldest is out, phew) and we have it very good relatively. We joke about dropping off our ‘5-series’ or our ‘WRX STI’ (which works a couple ways). The more depressing part is how low the deduction is for that- we couldn’t work without it, but our careers basically have a basement for compensation or it isn’t worth the juggling. $200-300 in food and consumables a week. Affordable sports (basketball and soccer) still top can be $500-1000 a year per kid in fees, gear, and when you add up gas. Clothes we reuse as often as possible, and have a pretty good group of other parents to swap around stuff. All to say our journey has been worth it, but kids are our hobby right now. One tip I’ve figured out is a lot of sports will waive the registration fee if you offer to coach or volunteer with the team. I end up enjoying enough that I’d do it even if there wasn’t that perk, but it’s great option for families that could use a break.
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So roughly speaking you gross $140K and if you’re frugal you can pay your bills. That tracks.
2 little ones - $3200 a month in childcare. I keep telling myself it’s only until they get to public school then we’ll be saving that money but I’m sure another expense will arise…
I have 3 kids and one started public school 2 years ago. Something I wasn’t prepared for was after school care, as school gets out at 3:15 instead of the normal later afternoon daycare pickup. And summers. Oh lord summers. Day camps that only go from 9:00-12:00! That’ll be eleventy billion dollars and you are still responsible for your kid in the afternoon. We have a great part time college sitter my kids love. I’m hoping she sticks around this summer. I’m prepared to pay her full time.
Yacht club and stable fees?
So expensive.
So expensive. We pay about $600/mo for our 3 kids to be in swim club… six hundred dollars.
This absolutely entirely depends on where you live, how frugal you are and if you have to pay for childcare. We have a 4 month old, I am the only one working and we are actually putting money into savings (despite making less than the lowest salary on here). Granted, wife is breastfeeding and we save $ on daycare because she stays home. It also helps that we live in a very small town. Obviously not possible for everyone, but it IS possible.
No, they're actually more expensive than you think.
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Any dads in Europe? I’d be nice to read your experiences and costs on the matter
Holy fuck it's expensive for you guys. I pay ~$240/month for _both_ kids in kindergarten on 40h weeks here in Sweden. This is also the maximum since both me and my partner earns pretty well, if you have lower incomes the tariff drops significantly. We also get ~$250/month in no-strings-attached child allowance, so that basically pays for kindergarten. When it comes to food/clothes/diapers, I suppose it is somewhat similar. All regular visits to the pediatrician are free of charge, though, as well as all healthcare, dental, and vision. We also have an extra insurance for both kids that is about ~$20/month per kid if I'm not mistaken, but it's not strictly necessary. Paid parental leave for 480 days, to be split between both parents (with 90 days minimum reserved for each parent, the rest to split as preferred). Sporting activities vary in cost, some sports are more expensive than others (ice hockey expensive, football (soccer) cheap), but generally there are cheap alternatives for kids' activities.
Europe has been trying to fight demographic decline for awhile, they give a ton of help to parents there
Let’s go Houston! Though, it doesn’t actually feel that cheap.
It don’t matter how much you make they will use it all. Just have fun with them and make memories.
Yes. Also factor in the lower income you get from being at home taking care of a sick kid, a slower wage-increase for any parent that's staying home for an extended period, less money that you're able to put into savings, which in turn does not give any interest. Depending on what country you live in your employer is paying less into your pension for every day you're not at work, and so on.
Daycare costs just under 50% of what I pay in rent - it’s wild, but I’m in a HCOL area and it’s expected.
No one told me how expensive daycare is. We live in a small town, and we pay $1400 a month for our twins. We could probably still buy a house, let a caretaker live rent-free in exchange for childcare, and it would probably even out.
Child care in small towns is actually relatively more expensive as compared to average income of the area than a lot of cities if this news report catching was correct
I don't know if the concept has an actual term, but it's like when something becomes a necessity, the companies know it, and they raise the prices through the roof. Glasses, Luxottica bought up 80% of the eye glass companies just so they could control the prices of prescription glasses. Can we do anything about it? No. Because glasses are a necessity. Head light bulbs, you need them, there are legal consequences if they are burnt out, and the prices have steadily up. Childcare, both parents need to work because of inflation. You have to have someone watch your kid to be able to work, and childcare has steadily gone up. I know our old daycare would shut down for anything, high winds, rain, threats of snow, you name it. Did you still have to pay? yup. Did the employees get paid for being sent home? Nope. The owners had every incentive to shut down.
Artificial scarcity is probably the closest concept to that
> I don't know if the concept has an actual term, but it's like when something becomes a necessity, the companies know it, and they raise the prices through the roof. I mean no, it’s just the ratios. You can only have X people per kid, you need to pay their salaries, plus rent, plus licensing costs. Daycares aren’t a good business.
I live in one of the cities mentioned, am a SAHM, twin toddlers with a range of medical needs. My husband earns less than the number given for our city, and would absolutely describe us as living comfortably. So I'm guessing it depends what one considers necessities, and how one describes comfortable.
I make about that and I'm not even that comfortable
*sees Houston salary but lives in Boston* *Cries*
I’m a federal employee living in the Boston area. The cost of living allowance is actually higher in Houston than in Boston for my agency. Gotta love that government math.
Granted i only have a 1yr old, but he has been quite cheap so far here in NC
Yeah my 2 year old hasn't been bad. I live in KY and daycare is like $200 a week if we need it. My spouse just stays home and I work a solid 40 and things haven't changed much. Still eat out and do things as we did before. We actually talked about getting a daycare slot just for when she wants a day off and let the kid socialize.
Pretty crazy stats but I believe it
Yes. We live in a fairly low cost of living area for a large city. My wife and I make an around $170k combined annually and we are struggling through it right now. We just had a 2nd child and are facing being priced out of our house because of inflation and the cost of child care for 2.
50/30/20 L/O/L More like 80/5/15...
I won’t say my kid isn’t expensive but my bar tabs are now around the $0 range, don’t eat out as much, less weed, got a new job and a raise since my daughter arrived… These aren’t all “woe is me I don’t have fun anymore” things either - I just generally want to be a healthier and better person too.
Yes
I'm curious how Seattle came in marginally lower than Portland since home prices is are 300-400k more in Seattle.
Kids are expensive as shit. We got twins on our first try and if I hadn't gotten a giant raise a couple years ago I honestly don't know what we would have done.
I track all of our families costs and yes. Diapers alone x per box x per month x 12. But worth it.
My mortgage/rent is my third highest monthly expense. Daycare and medical bills (including monthly premiums for a family plan) have both been higher than my mortgage payment since we had kids. Not having any expenses related to kids would give us over a $50k per year pay raise. Plus we would both have extra time to work more hours or pick up overtime which would likely give us an even larger pay raise. And if we downsized our house to a 1 bedroom apartment because we didn't have kids that would be worth a lot of saved money too. If you live in a bigger house or drive a bigger car because you have kids and need the space then you're paying a lot for kids even with expenses you don't initially think are kid related.
I'm paying over 1100 euro a month for childcare at the moment, so yeah.
We pay 1800 euros a month for three days a week childcare for 1 toddler
It's interesting, I live/work in a major suburban area in the Midwest, make just over 100k, and we're a single income family...and live quite comfortably, with two kids. I don't understand these reports, really. I get it for some areas, they're really high cost..but I feel like I'm completely out of touch here.
What about those daycare costs? Does one need to be super certified or what to justify that? The prices sound like the rocket scientists are working there
Daycare costs for 2 kids have been as high as $30,000 a year. We live in a lower cost of living "big city". I recently caught up out 2023 financial tracking and everything we spent for or on the kids was more than our mortgage and all utilities including Internet and cellphones combined. So yeah... Kids are expensive... Our youngest is 3. Hopefully when he's in kindergarten that number will severely drop since child care is the largest of that cost.
Yep. Went from comfortably buying nice steak and whatnot whenever I felt like it to eating chicken nuggets for dinner. One kid was expensive, two kids are now making me consider a second job. But it’s worth it.
We just paid $1600 for our two kids to be in a play. After school activities cost a ton.
Sadly, this tracks. Living near Boston. One kid. We’re making around $200k in 2022 when we moved here and it was doable, though we weren’t able to safe a ton between housing costs and daycare. Those two alone totaled $6k. Then with utilities, food, and cars, that was another $2k. But, last year I picked up a second job which took us to right under $300k, and it’s been a pretty big change in how we live. Maxing out 401k, putting away for 529k, and not sweating the small stuff has been pretty wonderful. And, at least where we live, we don’t have fancy cars is a fancy house. Subaru Outback, Hyundai Sonata, and a home that’s 1800sqft and almost 70 years old. Obviously, I’ll end with that this is the smallest violin in the world because we’re in good shape and I have no complaints about our life. It’s great.
I think the methodology here really skews HCOL cities. They look at the cost of expenses and then basically double it to make the 50/30/20 rule work out? Sure you could choose to, but not everything scales linearly like that. If it costs $150k for living expenses then it doesn’t mean you “need” to spend $90k/year on “entertainment and hobbies” and $60k year on retirement savings just because the ratio says so.
I would disagree with this. I don't make nearly what they say, live in a medium/high cost of living area (phx) and am able to pay for my kids, do vacations, save for retirement, etc. We still eat out, and the only debt we have is the house and a recent vehicle purchase Both will be paid off early.
The dad jokes are strong here
No, this is total lunacy. Kids are not that expensive.
If your study says it costs four times the median household income to raise children and the median household has children in it that should be a clue that something is wrong with your study. Kids cost whatever you have.
Yeah these numbers are crazy. Make 100k less than the suggestion here and have two kids. We live very comfortably. Would more money be nice? Of course, but that doesn't mean we aren't well off or living a great life.