Your monthly spending on children

[resident_1]

I would like to know and curious about what families here are spending on children each month.
Particularly when both patents work full time.

For example for us we both work as physicians, have three kids under six years old. With childcare $1700/mo + school $465/mo + various misc expenses ~$400/mo ends up $2565. Will go up by $465 next school yr with second kid in school. No 529 for now as we are paying off our loans and planning to save for retirement agressively prior to doing 529.
I used to have this idea that cost for kids will go down as they get older. But now I'm realizing it's likely only going to be going up. With higher income it seems there are so many opportunities for them and it may be hard to say no. Some of the more expensive ones are summer camps. Then they will want to drive, etc, etc.

[Miss Bonnie MD]

Would list where you live in terms of COL. There is no childcare in NYC that is $1700/month. Most day cares are 2500-3K, a nanny 3K and up. Yeah it sucks. Not excited about getting gouged when that time comes...

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

Those are some big numbers! The most we spent was when both boys were in pre-school and piano. Then, it was maybe $500 a month.

Now, both boys are in school (public), so piano lessons are the biggest expenditure, which averages maybe $150 a month. My wife stayed home to raise them, so there is a substantial opportunity cost there, but we never paid for daycare. There are some other activities, parties, gifts for other kid's parties, swim lessons, etc.. but it's all small stuff compared to paying tuition or childcare.

I've started putting away $20,000 a year into two 529 plans, so if we're counting that, it's by far and away the biggest expense.

 

[EDDOCMOM]

We decided for my husband to stay home because daycare was going to cost us $700+/month per kid - decided when #3 was on the way.  (So that would have been ~$2500/month with my husband making between $60,000-$70,000 per year which didn't seem worth it). We still pay $500/month for preschool 9 months out of the year for the oldest - but her school tuition will be much less.

 

We pay about $15/hour for babysitters 1-2 nights per month.  Sometimes more if we're getting a free dinner out through work.

 

It was easier for us to decide that my husband would stay home because 1)he didn't LOVE his career 2) I could easily make up his income 3)we knew of a few other Stay-At-Home-Dads that he admired and took notes from 4) I'm EM so my schedule can be awkward and the kids needed some stability

[resident_1]

Area is Phoenix. We have an aupair and grandparents help out.

[DarrVao777]

Per month,

Childcare = $0 (mother in law has been helping out and my wife is considering no longer working)

Anticipated private school tuition = $1634 - $2330 (HCOL area with crummy public schools. The price gouging is ridiculous.)

529 = $1000 (we try to frontload $12000 for the year in January)

Only 1 kid for now, on the fence about adding more (non-financial reasons although that private school tuition was a real eye opener)

[PNWskindoc]

Great idea for a thread. Will be following along

[The White Coat Investor]

We spend a ton. But most of it is on the costs associated with a bigger house, bigger cars, saving for college, food, their activities, their travel when we go on vacation together etc. We don't have day care expenses (stay at home parent) nor school expenses (public schools) but I bet we could drop $50K or more a year from our budget if we didn't have four kids. Really hard to add it all up.

Now, could those expenses be dramatically reduced? Absolutely.

[VagabondMD]

In my case, the early years of child care and summer day camps were replaced with lessons, private school, away summer camp, and lots of kid-friendly vacations. My 18 year old son (with private school tuition and car insurance) costs more per year than the OP's three small ones combined. I think that things might get a little less expensive when the kids go off to school (public), but even then, new costs are added-- sports, music lessons, etc.

[gb]

3 kids. I stopped counting after nanny expenses and 529 contributions since it just = a lot. Those run us like $50k + $84k / year for now. Should diminish when public school starts and when 529s are done. With these #'s, the other pre-school/swim lessons/gym time/ dance lessons are noise.

[wideopenspaces]

With kids you spend as much or as little as you want. Unless we are talking about childcare which is just ridiculous. We just went from 1 to 2 kids. The 8 year old is in public school and I only work while he is in school. So no real child care costs there. He plays tennis, soccer, and does skiing and iceskating. But only 1 or 2 sports at a time. And then he has piano or guitar and choir or art. So maybe $150 a month on extracurricular activities. In the summer he goes to camp 2-3 days a week for 8 weeks which costs about $600. And then I spend more than I should on clothes for him. So I'd guess we spend about 4k on him each year.
The baby is cheap- breastfeeding, cloth diapers, hand me downs, and 3 hours of babysitting per week. At some point (keep putting it off) I will work more hours and we'll spend about $800 a month on the nanny. When he's 2 he'll go to montessori school, 1k per month, until he goes to public school. So still not too bad. . . But paying more for montessori school than I did for medical school!

[DMFA]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

We spend a ton. But most of it is on the costs associated with a bigger house, bigger cars, saving for college, food, their activities, their travel when we go on vacation together etc. We don’t have day care expenses (stay at home parent) nor school expenses (public schools) but I bet we could drop $50K or more a year from our budget if we didn’t have four kids. Really hard to add it all up.

Now, could those expenses be dramatically reduced? Absolutely.

Click to expand...

Only $50k for 4 kids?  Let me check my credit card bill, but I might be there with my wife's Amazon, Carter's, and Zulily purchases alone.

I'm out $950/month for daycare, $1000/month for the 529, doesn't cost too much to feed, maybe $50 on diapers, $10 on wipes, and then whatever cute stuff my wife finds at Target or whatever.  Babysitter about twice a month on average, about $50 each time, so $100 there.

Little guy's expensive, but worth every penny.

[Dru]

2 kids, 3 and 1. Moderately hcol inland California suburb. Monthly expenses: student loans = retirement > daycare > rent.

public schools are very good here, but hours are certainly shorter than daycare so not sure about before/after school costs when we get there (still 2.5 years until kg with the oldest). Doesn't seem like they'll get any cheaper as time goes on...

[Anesthesia84]

Ha! We are a 2 physician family as well and I realized early on that the cost will never go down (and will almost certainly go up) for a variety of reasons. The biggest is that we cannot avoid some type of childcare expense until our kids are able to drive. So, with another baby on the way - that's about 18 years from now  :lol:  (we have 3 already, ages 7, 4.5, and 1.5)

Our nanny costs are about $800 per WEEK - it depends on how many hours we end up working with calls, etc (so, $3200/ month). We are switching to an au pair next summer after we move so those costs should go down a bit.

We have a third car for nanny use since car seats don't fit in their cars and one of our nannies was a stickler about any dirt, ding in the door, etc and it wasn't cheap to reimburse for her mileage. Oh, and we got sick of moving car seats around! (Honda Odyssey, bought one a few years old, financed at a low rate since student loans are being aggressively paid off and are a higher interest rate.) So monthly payment ($350) plus insurance, gas, and maintenance (that probably averages to about $100 for that car, maybe less. I don't separate by car in our finances).

Summer camps! Ugh. Signing up for those in the next month.... Our 7 year old will go every week (8 total) this summer, at an average cost of about $200 per week. Our middle will only go for 4 weeks, but it will cost about $300 per week.

529 funding is on hold until my husband finishes training next June. We can't afford it with our 7-10k/ month student loan payments. His salary goes to the nanny, mine to bills and student loans . When we start though, we will plan to put in at least 1k/month per kid - so 4k/ month.

Food, bigger house, sports stuff, ski pass, YMCA membership, museum memberships, etc. It all adds up.