USDA Reports it Costs $233,610 to Raise a Child

[GoingConcern]

http://www.popsugar.com/moms/How-Much-Does-Cost-Raise-Child-42978699

So I played with the numbers https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/tools/CRC_Calculator/default.aspx and put in the following options:

-1 Child
-West Coast
-Income over $1,000
-Child age 1

The Results were:

Housing:$8,128 - Seems on the higher end and it assumes you would buy a bigger home in a neighborhood with better schools.  This figure appears on the higher end.

Food: $2,819 - Seems reasonable.

Transportation: $3,277 - On the higher end.  I guess an additional child would mean you drive more, buy a bigger car, pay additional for vacations?

Clothing: $1,638 - $136 a month on clothes ? I know kids grow out of clothes but this seems excessive

Healthcare: $1,880 - On the higher end but reasonable.

Child Care and Education: $4,166 - If both parents are working and day care is a necessity then it does seem reasonable.

Other - $2,146 - Completely subjective but let's assume this is reasonable.

Total: $24,054

Anyways this doesn't take into college tuition but I don't think the costs take into account tax breaks and so forth either.  In general, I think the figures are too high especially for mustachian standards.

I don't have any kids but was wondering if any mustachians can chime in on their costs.

[MommyCake]

Thanks for the link!

I calculated the cost of raising a child in my area and it came to $25,248 a year.  This is about accurate for our almost-10-month old daughter.  Our daycare expense is out of control at almost 18,000 annually, but the other expenses are very minimal.  I think we probably come in around 24,000 after factoring in clothes, food, diapers, etc.  I wonder what other people are spending? 

[SuperMex]

I now realize why it always seemed absurd when people talked about kids being expensive. I was sheltered from almost all of these costs by my military job.

Housing: 0  I lived in overseas housing for about half of his life and the other half I was using my housing allowance to buy or rent a home and pocketing the difference

Food: Was high when he was 15-18 likely 300-400 a month.

Transportation: 0 or very close, I drove the same car as before and since he went to a department of defense school he rode the bus and they had a second bus for sports as well.

Clothing: 100 a month roughly  My son refused to dress well to my great dissatisfaction. He was perfectly happy with jeans and a tee shirt I finally gave up on buying him nice cloths he left in the closet with the tags still on. 

Healthcare: 0 tricare is free for Soldiers and their dependents.

Child Care and Education: 0 my wife was a stay at home mom, no private school although I did pay $5000 one year for a private math tutor.

Other - $200-300 a month max, Music equipment, martial arts, etc

[teen persuasion]

Total, absolute garbage!

How can you separate out all those costs for each kid?  Once we had one kid, our health insurance was family, didn't add an extra multiplier for each one.  Didn't go out and buy another car with each new baby; took whole family on necessary trips, not individual trips.  They wore hand me downs, we had tons of lightly worn baby/kid clothes.  No childcare - I was SAHM.  Didn't upgrade to a bigger house (ok, started out in a big farmhouse) with each kid.

Honestly, our spending was roughly $25k/yr for all 5 kids, plus DH and me!  It's still pretty similar now with only DS5 left at home - property and school taxes are the same regardless, utilities similar, auto expenses similar, etc.  Food is probably the biggest change, but still not that huge.  There's economies of scale with a bunch of kids.