Health care – why not just get rid of the insurance companies? Or require them to cover all non-elective or cosmetic procedures? That will do more good then your socialized medicine that will ration out care. Obama only requires coverage – there’s no catch of what that coverage covers or what percentage of your annual salary the medical bills can be. My kid was severely injured in January and in the end of it all I have over 10k in bills that Blue Cross won’t cover.
But Obama says I’m lucky and according to that health care legislation, I have to start paying a $900 a year tax for those who don’t have coverage? At least with no coverage you can apply for hardship and make some pymt arrangements. Many of the specialists won’t take payments if you have insurance – you have to pay it all at once or you go to collections. Yeah, the govt is really gonna fix that by implementing mandatory coverage.

Higher education is not a government responsibility – it is a personal choice.

You want the government to make your decisions for you & your family and you want government to spend significant chunks of your income for you then go to countries that do that.

As far as other commenters go -
One thing that has to get figured in too is general damage – kid’s break stuff. Not just Grandma’s crystal vase up on the shelf but, they drop things into the plumbing (no matter how often you ask/demand them to be careful) and they get hair brained ideas that don’t go well – like trying to jump from their bunk bed to the dresser on a snowy January morning. Kid’s are very expensive, worth it but, expensive.
And I agree housing should be figured in. If I didn’t have my kiddo I’d have a 1 bedroom apartment in a more “unique” part of town. And, OH MY would the grocery, electric, water, insurance, bills be smaller! Oh and it would be clean! No surprise messes – oh, yeah gotta figure cleanings supplies into the numbers too. When my little angel goes on a paternity visit I miss ‘em so much – the house is too quite and lonely. Can’t put a price tag on family – speculating the cost is interesting/good intellectual exercise but at the end of the day kid’s are family and our own little pieces of immortality. I see my Grandparents in facial expressions, personality traits, etc and I know they live on…

Oh for those complaining about the tax credit – you only get it if you make over a certain amount. For my household it’s 35k. Under that, we don’t get it. There are other credits you can get is your low income but none that are for kids – the earned income credit looks at household/dependents but that could be counting a stay at home Mom or disabled parent or dead beat sibling.

#14 Chris – I like your style!

Entertainment costs will be about the same as we only go out once or twice a month. Daycare won’t factor in, because I plan to be a SAHM – based on my net income this will be about $20,000 per year through the first 10 years or so that I plan to homeschool and be home with my kids. Oh my, I’m already well above the “average” aren’t I? And I haven’t even factored in groceries (currently only spend $250 a month for two people), toys, clothing, etc. With a home purchase, housing costs will likely go up another $100-$200 at some point.

Yes, I would have wanted a home at some point anyway, so we could negate that if you wanted to. Regardless, having a child “can” be expensive depending on your personal plan and what you want out of life. This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child myself, and because of my desires and lack of passion for “regular” work, I have a very entry-level, low-paying job despite a college degree and 4 years of work experience. Some things are more important than the financial costs. Also, if you wait until you are ready to have kids, you’ll never be ready. And if cost is your biggest concern, I agree with previous commenters that having kids may not be the thing for you to do.

I think the most expensive thing about childrearing is childcare. And fortunately we don’t have to worry about that b/c we budget our money so one of us can stay at home.

Even if his calcs are different than yours would be, the exercise is instructive.

The additional cost that is most often forgotten is heat & electric. If both worked before and they used their programmable thermostat, the change with someone always home is going to be startling. “Bloody hell” is how my friend put it, actually.

#172lovebeingfree: there’s room for a lot of different views on this subject. What works for you won’t always work for the next guy. The important thing is for each person to realize what works for him/her and go with that.

Also, it’s not the number of humans which contributes to the destruction of the planet. America, which accounts for 4.6% of the world’s population, produces 22% of the world’s carbon emissions. This is NOT representative of an assumption that people = greenhouse gases. India, which accounts for 17.1% of the world’s population, produces 4.9% of the world’s carbon emissions.

These figures alone prove that the number of people in a given country does NOT contribute to its carbon emissions (largely recognised to be the most significant contributor to global warming today).

Also re: kids specifically; depending on where you live and how much you’d be earning in your given career, mothers who stay at home rather than work can actually get MORE money in government allowances than they’d earn in their job (once childcare fees are taken into account). I know of stay at home mothers here in Australia (who would normally be teachers) who receive more from the government for NOT working, and staying home with their children, than they would take home at the end of the day if they were working and had their kids in childcare.

Also, the figures in the article are further subsidised by government family allowances, youth allowances etc. This greatly differs depending on where you live. For example, Australia has next to no maternity leave/allowances compared to a lot of other countries, but we have far better family allowances than many other countries.

Regarding what Kathleen said about kids’ wants: Just say no. Seriously. Me and my siblings were never bought those types of gadgets growing up. (And I’m only 21, with my youngest sibling being 15). Sure we get birthday and Christmas presents, but never anything as expensive as an iPod with any decent capacity.

Also, why do parents have to pay for college? My parents paid for as much of mine as they could, with the factor that I’d pay them back afterwards. And that’s in Australia, at a cheaper uni, where my entire degree cost less than 20k. (Tertiary education in Australia is FAR cheaper than in the US). Most people I know don’t have their parents paying for the tertiary education. That said, Australia has a far easier method of handling tertiary finances than the US does.

Other commenters have mentioned parents paying for kids’ cars and car insurance… hello? Make the kids pay for that themselves! By the time they’re old enough to drive, they’re old enough to have a job and pay for that stuff themselves! It’s not like they’ve got a million other important expenses (like you do). Their biggest financial concern is whether to buy the $30 or $50 jeans or whether to pay the extra $60 to get a mobile phone with a camera and bluetooth.

Nero (comment 148)- Trent’s figures aren’t wrong, your manipulation of them is. The figures he spends on children would be much more than doubled to get the family cost, because the family cost is not just what kids cost + the equivalent for their parents. You also have the cost of maintaining and running 1 or 2 cars, mortgage repayments or rent, older people (ie. parents) generally incur more medical bills than kids, (I say this from the experience in my family and friends’ families), maintaining the house, holidays, etc etc. These do not come under the cost of an individual child, or an individual parent. They are added on top of those individual-person costs.

The point is having kids doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be spending $250,000 on them from birth until they are 17.

But none of that scares ME. It’s the medical expenses that does. My brother’s been in the ER more often that years he’s been alive. He’s walking the puppy, he prefers having the leash around his waist instead of holding it… he trips, cuts his head and it’s off to the doctors for stitches. He’s riding his bike, loses control for a second, smashes into a car and the handlebars twist and hit his collar bone – and breaks it. He’s a teenage boy, he’s playing with his rocket launcher stuff, lights the rocket fuel without the rocket and seriously burns his hands. He’s an adult, he’s cutting some drywall on the job and his hand slips and slices his wrist. Thankfully my parents have great medical coverage and haven’t had to spend too much out of pocket.

But not everybody’s that lucky, including me. My husband and I are in no position to add me on his insurance, much less any kids.

I had been reading The Simple Dollar regularly, but when the adoption referral finally arrived (4 years after we started the process) and we traveled abroad, I had to stop because to complete the adoption, our savings drained out like there was a fire hose attached to the account, and I couldn’t stand to even think about saving money when it was just impossible to staunch the flow.

Our new son will now cost us far less now that he’s arrived than he has previously been costing us when he wasn’t even here!

God bless the NHS. How much do Brits love the NHS? Whatever Republicans may tell you, the answer is ‘A whole big lot’.

Does that apply to everyone? Or is ‘Think twice before having sprogs’ good advice for people without that much self-control?

What would costs amount to for folk who couldn’t constrain themselves that way?

College alone can easily cost $200k now. You also need to consider the positive, pre-college investments in your kids: science camps, cello lessons, ballet lessons, etc.

And wait until your kids are older and start wanting more STUFF – the iPod, the cell phone, the money for the movies and mall, etc. Not that that all those wants should be indulged, but you’ll end up spending a whole lot more on your kids as they get older.