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Comment by ourmandave | Hacker News Reader

Weighing on every new dad I ever met (at least in the background) is, "How the hell am I gonna pay for all this?"

The amount of money that you can spend on a child is virtually unlimited. But almost all of it absolutely optional.

Sure, you’ll need diapers and a car seat, but beyond that there’s not a lot that’s absolutely necessary.

There’s so much stuff that people think they need to buy, ranging from special vitamins during pregnancy to hypoallergenic formula and baby swimming lessons and educational toys for every age bracket...

And then you realise that people who make half the money you do get along just fine and their kids are doing fine and somehow they only need half as much money.

Sure, we do spend a lot of money on semi-useful kids stuff (like those skiing lessons that our older son didn’t want to continue after the second day...), but it’s all optional, and if we didn’t have kids I’d probably have a nicer car, but who cares.

This was a very important lesson my wife and I received from one of her (married with four children) sisters. Before we decided to have a child, the money aspect was indeed stressing us both out - you can find all kinds of wild estimations on the Internet and in books for the "cost of a child" - and understanding this was eye opening.

The folic acid supplements should be considered absolutely necessary. Fortunately they're very cheap.

https://www.marchofdimes.org/pregnancy/folic-acid.aspx

You mean, during pregnancy? Those are really dirt cheap. We opted for a more expensive multivitamin that also had a bit of fish oil in it, but that’s optional. It cost €20 per month.

My understanding that vitamin deficiency can be bad, like for example follic acid - spina bifida, vit D - autism. Most people don't have the deficiency of course, yet how to prevent it when they do, and how to detect it?

The easy solution is for pregnant mothers to take folic acid supplements. As you noted, it can prevent spina bifida, and is extremely cheap relative to what it prevents.

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/folicacid/recommendations.html

In high-cost-of-living areas, there are two other major costs worth considering. First is the cost of daycare (or equivalently the opportunity cost of having a stay-at-home parent). My wife watches our son, and we're glad that she can afford to do that, but that's $100k of forgone take-home pay we're leaving on the table.

Second is the increased rent/mortgage of a house with an extra bedroom. I pay ~$600/mo more for an extra bedroom and have a substantially longer commute than most of my coworkers to live in a place that can accommodate our family.

Both of those costs far exceed anything else we've spent on our son, which mostly falls into the "optional" category you mentioned.

Both of these factors are much more important in high-cost-of-living areas, which may explain in part why there aren't many kids in San Francisco.

The extra bedroom is also optional.

The cost of college is another one that every parent should consider as early as possible.

It's certainly optional (you may be comfortable letting your kids go it alone for college tuition), but definitely worth making an intentional decision on and planning for as soon as you're able.

Also, I'd strongly recommend you use several of the many "future cost of college" calculators available out there. For example, a college that costs $35,000/yr today is estimated to cost $56,000/yr in 10 years per Vanguard's calculator's defaults[1]. The "Worlds Simplest College Cost Calculator"[2] also provides a reasonably good and easy to understand picture of how much you'll have to contribute monthly to reach your goals by the time your child starts college and brings in some reasonable numbers for grants and scholarships based on your income.

You could certainly "oversave" if the insanely high cost of higher education manages to correct itself, but pretty much any tax-advantaged educational savings account can be easily converted to retirement savings.

In my case, it's also provided a bit of extra motivation to support my children in developing good study habits early on in their education. Once you understand the likely cost of college in 10, 12 or 18 years, the prospect of academic scholarships becomes really, really appealing.

[1]https://vanguard.wealthmsi.com/collcost.php

[2]https://www.savingforcollege.com/calculators/worlds-simplest...

> The cost of college is another one that every parent should consider as early as possible. It's certainly optional (you may be comfortable letting your kids go it alone for college tuition), but definitely worth making an intentional decision on and planning for as soon as you're able.

Any parent planning on saving for college needs to have their retirement savings locked in and fully funded first. You can borrow money to go to school, but you can't borrow money to retire.

You should also just consider immigrating to Europe,Australia,Japan...really anywhere else in the developed world.

Like I'm only being partially facetious here, but my suspicion is even accounting for currency differences you could come out on top.

Absolutely our experience as well. I believe we are almost net positive as we are going out less. Also, we do a lot more cooking from simple local ingredients that are cheaper than the exotic stuff we bought previously. There is so little that really needs buying - especially toys, we realized, are almost always a complete waste of money.

You don't need conventional disposable nappies/diapers. You can get washable ones. Will save you a shitload (heh heh) of money and trash.

Diapers for infants cost ~$1/day. Day care costs literally 100× more.

https://www.amazon.com/HUGGIES-Little-Snugglers-Diapers-Pack...

This largely depends where you are - day-care for our child costs us €200/month, in Finland.

Though we use washable diapers I suspect the cost-savings aren't as large as predicted as washing-machines are pretty hungry when it comes to electricity, and we run ours at least once a day.

The main problem is these are more likely to "leak".

My experience with cloth diapering was that it was much less likely to blowout. But it's easy to put on wrong (mostly loose or too far forward, which will leak), and cloth diapers are bulky which is less convenient for traveling light.

Please don't say vitamin supplements are optional. Folic acid for expectant mothers and vitamin D supplements for infants are absolutely recommended by pediatricians.

https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages...

https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-ini...

Folic acid is added to bread and cereal these days in pretty big amounts (most cereal bowls will have 100% of the daily dose 400mcg and fortified foods like bread or pasta also would have 100% or close to it per serving) and any baby formula has more than enough vitamin d and other vitamins in it.

Edit: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Folate-HealthProfessional/...

In the US and the rest of the developed world pretty much most grain products are fortified with Folic Acid (as well as other vitamins) these days and have been for about 20 years.

While this is true, infants do not eat grains and many are breastfed almost exclusively especially if money is an issue. A $5 bottle of D3 vitamin drops to supplement breastmilk for months is much cheaper than buying formula.

Infants get it through formula and breast milk, the mother gets the folic acid via grains.

Outside of some edge cases vitamin supplements aren't really needed just talk to your doctor.

Human breast milk is a poor source of vitamin D, that's why it is recommended as a supplement.

The folic acid in fortified food is simply not sufficient to reduce the risk low enough of these serious neurological birth defects.

https://www.webmd.com/baby/folic-acid-and-pregnancy#1

We have been fortifying food as a response to the fact that pregnant women aren't uniformly getting enough folic acid. Downplaying prenatal folic acid supplements is like saying we don't need to worry about driving safely because people have added seat belts to cars. (One could imagine safety equipment that is so good we don't need to worry about how well we drive, but we're not there yet.)

I guess I interpreted that remark differently. Prenatal vitamins are great, but is amazing how easy it is for them to sell some amazingly expensive prescription vitamins when really cheap (and good) options are available.

> special vitamins during pregnancy to hypoallergenic formula

This is dangerous misinformation. Nutrition during pregnancy is quite important and worth getting right.

Health, education and development are absolutely necessary. And these three are very expensive. Also a parent should have a decent amount of savings because you never know if your child is going to have health or mental problems. If he turns out ill and there are no savings, just saying oh sorry I can't afford stopping your suffering is not an option.

> But almost all of it absolutely optional.

The cost of someone looking after your children while you go to work is not optional.

Brott writes about this a bit in his books - mostly about the societal expectation of father as "bread winner" who should be concerned about the fiscal side of child-rearing because that is his (some might say sole) responsibility vs. mother as care-giver and nurturer.

You can count me as at least one new dad you've, well, not necessarily met, whose primary concern is more along the lines of, "How the hell am I gonna be involved with my son's life?" (:

>>"How the hell am I gonna be involved with my son's life?"

I’m actually in the process of changing careers due to the realization that remaining on my current track would put me at work before they get out of bed and home from work after they’re in bed for the next 15-ish years. I refuse to miss my kids growing up during this one shot at life I have.

I hear ya. I am also in the process of a career shift brought about by our change in priorities after our son was born. The unfortunate thing is that I am losing some of my schedule flexibility (at least in the near term), but the reason for our (coast to coast) move is to be closer to immediate family so that they can also be a more involved part of our son's life.

It's really amazing to me how this child has changed us and our lives. Not to say that my wife and I expected the kid to pop out and life to return to business as usual, just that I didn't truly comprehend how profoundly this experience would change me. It's intense.

to be closer to immediate family so that they can also be a more involved part of our son's life.

This is so huge, not only so your kids know their extended family, but also to have some basic help. We've found that even my sister who lives 45 minutes away is just a bit too far to see them as frequently as we'd like, with her busy family and all. My advice is to move closer than you think you ought to!

Now wait what a second kid can do to your schedule flexibility :) It‘s not twice the change, but times 4, at least in the first two years.

One suggestion - are you able to shift your hours to see your kids either before or after?

I’ve been able to arrange things and arrive at work a bit later, so I see my kids each morning and take them to school. Then I stay a bit later at work. It also means I don’t see them most weeknights, but I see them every morning (barring the rare unmovable meeting).

Some of my colleagues do opposite. But there are also parents that just don’t see their kids at all until the weekend.

Unfortunately no. I am military right now so my hours are what my boss and meeting schedule says they are.

Been there done that, its tough but it gets a lot better when you get out of the military.

I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I make a lot less than I once did, but not being a road warrior, being able to walk my kids to school each morning, being able to take them to their activities -- I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff. Good on you for being cognizant of the challenge of family vs. work and making some hard choices.

Have a wife who earns more than you? Then you have the option of the fun of being a stay at home dad. Job done.

> stay at home dad

Most (not all) of the time I've observed this, "stay at home dad" is a euphemism for "lazy bum".

I think this is excellent idea for a book :)

That isn't limited to dads. Nor is it not recognized by single people. There is an XKCD that jokes about being able to have a treasure chest where some cars have families posted.

Upvoted... it's completely true. Additionally, I cannot imagine why you need to read a book about something like this. Questions? Talk to your parents or pediatrician.

Your parents likely aren't experts and your you want to make efficient use of your time consulting withstand pediatrician on details, so getting good, expert-written books to cover as much of the general space as possible is a perfectly reasonable strategy.

The problem, of course, is finding those books.

You illustrate my point exactly, it's not that complicated. I have two young men that my wife and I raised without (GASP) the need of a book. Crazy, I know.. go ahead and mod this comment down also.

Just because you were able to do so doesn't mean that everyone else will be able to do so. Many people don't have good parenting role models in their lives. If the ability to parent well were somehow built-in to us, there would be a lot fewer single-parent homes out there. For some (many) people the wisdom found in well written and researched books will be invaluable. I'm not sure why you seem to come across so strongly against the idea.

Did you lay the baby on its front or back when you put it to bed?

You must not be aware of how many millions of men and women have parents that are at best divorced, at worst completely absent or even unknown. And no, pediatricians can't fill that gap.

Pediatricians sometimes write those books.

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