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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

It costs $310k to pay for a kid from 0-18 per Brookings. The math is straightforward to work backwards to the income you need to afford that along with your basic needs and retirement savings, and most people don’t have the means. Median US lifetime earnings are $1.7 million.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3608647-new-estimate-proj...

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The article states two (2) children costs $310,000. Comes out to be $8,611/year or $718/month per child. A tiny sample size, but I have several children and none of them cost me $23.58/day for 18 years.

Do you have a link to the actual study or the breakdown what went into this?

No, it states the per child cost for a family with 2 children:

> A recent estimate conducted by the Brookings Institution projected the cost of raising a child for a middle-income, two-parent married family with two kids to be north of $310,000.

>The estimate assumes the youngest child would be born in 2015 and covers raising the child through the age of 17. It does not include the cost of sending the child to college.

This seems to be the source:

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Brookin...

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/08/30/its-getti...

Edit: not only does the study exclude college costs, but it excludes daycare costs, which are relevant to pretty much all dual income couples.

This seems implausibly high excluding college and daycare costs, and maybe implausibly low including them.

Not to mention that this represents a very median case, whereas a lot of parents want to pay for higher status schools and real estate to get access to higher status education, it's a never-ending keeping-up-with-the-joneses pi*-ing contest. To raise kids around my peers, a child could easily cost $500k+.

Pregnancy and birth ($3k to $10k) + daycare ($18k to $30k per year) + sickness needing doctor ($300 per visit). I probably got to $130k+ per kid before hitting kindergarten, for 2 kids with no chronic healthcare needs.

And I needed a flexible job that allows you to work from home or be off as necessary to take care of sick kids.

This looks right for what it lists but it misses many costs. You also need a bigger house to support the kids, and a bigger car to carry them around, plus car seats, food, clothes, toys, and furniture. They will destroy parts of your house and some of your stuff and you'll need replacements. You'll be spending much more time and money cleaning.

They will make every vacation more expensive in terms of lodging, travel, food, and activities.

You'll be paying not just for gifts for them, but for their friends' birthdays, and holiday gifts for their teachers. You'll pay for admission to parks, memberships, and other activities you take them to to keep them busy and help them develop.

Even if they go to public school, you'll be paying for before and after care, extra classes, activities, equipment, lessons, tutoring, and so on. Their various support systems will ask for donations. You'll have to pay for babysitters until they reach the age where they can be unattended.

The total cost is tremendous and hard to estimate.

(I say this all as someone who thinks it is worth it and who 100% supports having children for people who are in stable relationships and who can afford it!)

The counter to that is that there's a lot of room _under_ that median case, too. Not everyone needs to be at or above the average. Not everyone _can_ be at or above the average.

4 kids, no major health issues, public school in a well regarded district, a few activities, company insurance, work from home spouse

My marginal housing, food, etc. costs is for them (guesstimating what I'd spend without them at 60% of my current expenditures), that's $700/month per kid * ~200 month = 140k per kid.

Maybe another $20k each in one off expenses like furniture, medical, birthdays?

A car for the last two years might run another $20k?

Day care definitely drives up the price.

But I guess being able to amortize over 4 kids makes it seem less daunting.

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