Roughly 30-35% on private school tuition, childcare, college savings, activities, clothes, healthcare, summer camps, travel expenses, gifts, kid-oriented entertainment, etc. More if you account for the fact that they are the reason we have a house the size that we do.
On the upside, we should be able to live well off like 50% of our income in retirement once the kids are raised and educated and the house is paid off.
8% - one child (boy) and I don't spend a lot on clothes/toys. It's mostly food and his after school care. I didn't count the house even though I bought a big house with a big yard for him. If it was just me I'd be in a much smaller house.
Post by imojoebunny on Oct 29, 2014 20:34:20 GMT -5
Including the things you list, maybe 1%. But add in housing, education (we are admittedly anal about this and have one non-standard child), health insurance, and extra help due to lack of time, and in the case of the house keeper, interest.
Before we had kids, our house payment was maybe $1400, including taxes and Insurance in a nicer area of town (we own a large duplex and lived in half of it before kids). We didn't need a yard service or a house keeper. We now pay about 3x as much for a standard single family house, yard service, and a cleaner. Add in DD's private school, extra cost for high deductable insurance, special tutors for DD, and both kids (limited) activities. We could go to Europe once a month.
I would say 8-10% for food, clothes, activities, diapers, and miscellaneous kid stuff. Additionally, there are added heat, car payment, mortgage, water, and other costs. It is really hard to calculate all of this out but I know DH and I wouldn't need a four bedroom house or a minivan if we didn't have four kids. We would still have a house and car but I doubt they would be as expensive. Another expense I just thought of- earlier today we switched to a more expensive dental plan because DS1 needs orthodontics. That is $60 per month we will have to do without.
as some PPs have pointed out, a lot of money gets spent by families that's not "on kids" -- bigger cars, outsourcing more stuff, etc.
Anyway, using the report's figures, it seems that for median families (the median HHI for households with 4 people in them is about $80K) spends about $14K, or roughly 17-18%, but a big chunk of that is in housing.
Preschool, nanny, camp, activities and college savings is roughly 25% of net. I don't have the energy or the stomach to calculate everything else. Man, kids are expensive.
1 kid, daycare + college savings + clothes/toys/activities = 10% of net I didn't include food cause I'm not really sure how much he has increased our grocery bills.
We've also created a hypothetical budget for having a second child and moving to a bigger house. In that case child expenses = 19% of net. If you also include the difference in mortgage for the bigger house, it comes out to 31% of net. To be fair, we would've moved anyway, but kids are driving up the size of the house we're getting. so in reality it's probably somewhere between 19% and 31%.
Post by dancingirl21 on Oct 30, 2014 8:31:36 GMT -5
I calculated about 25% for our 1 kid with the nanny, 529 contributions, activities, additional insurance cost, diapers/clothes, and additional grocery cost. Prior to J, we bought barely any organic; now it's mostly organic and has added on probably $200/month.
I did not include large one-time costs such as his DOC band that insurance would not cover and cost us $3000 out of pocket when he was 4 months old. So those things add up too.
2 kids, Approximately 27%-30% in a HCOL includes daycare, college savings, other random expenses, food, etc. We use cloth diapers which saves us money for the baby.
It's a little depressing considering some of the other responses, but c'est la vie.
Post by iheartbanjos on Oct 30, 2014 10:03:55 GMT -5
Mine aren't too bad. 2 in daycare here only costs $1650/month, activities are less than $100, and you can spend as much or as little on clothes. Sometimes I buy consignment or Target clearance, sometimes I go Crew Cuts. 529 contributions are the same as our old student loans used to be, so we don't miss that money since we've never had it. Insurance for DD2 is not an additional cost from what we paid for health insurance with DD1.