Not thinking of our 6yo lad, our spending on our (almost) 2yo is,
- $11 every two weeks for day nappies; $22pcm
- $30 for night nappies every two months; $15pcm
- $3 of wet wipes each month
- Once she came along, food spending went from $120 to $140pw, some of that's been rises in price for meat and dairy, plus we are home more often with two kids than one, but let's be pessimistic and assume it's all just extra food she's eating; that's $20pw or $80pcm. We did give her formula for a bit, and once she got sick so we had to give her lactose-free formula, but we never even used the whole tin.
- Clothing... um... we bought a few bodysuits when she was a newborn, but apart from that literally everything she wears is a hand-me-down form someone else's kid
- Laundry... an extra load a week for her clothes and sheets and towels, especially since they occasionally have poo or pee on them. No idea what each load of laundry costs, but it can't be over $5. So $20pcm.
- $140pcm in all right now.
That keeps her alive and clean. We haven't noticed any increased in utilities bills since she was born; logically with more lights and heating and so on there should be a difference, but the variation we get from the weather (eg particularly hot summer vs an ordinary one) is much greater than any difference she makes.
She does childcare one day a week, it costs $114 but government subsidies take it down to $60, which will drop further from July, but at the moment it's $240pcm. But this is not necessary to keep her alive, it's just convenient allowing me a day off and my wife the chance to work from home once a week, and we can have lunch without kids around.
I've seen people spend a fortune on clothing, but honestly you just get a few basic things and people will enthusiastically give you a lot more. Once you're a parent, between mother's group and childcare and kinder and school and your normal social circle, you find everyone and their dog wants to give you their old kids' clothes. Now if you simply must have
that dress or whatever, then yeah it'll be big spending. But if you just want them in clean and intact clothing right for the weather, it's no problem.
Toys, honestly you should never get them anything -
everyone else is going to go
all-out on every birthday, Christmas or Hannukah, and give the kid so many toys that by the time they're four whenever you write birthday party invites you're adding, "no toys as presents, please." Plus however much junk they have, all they ever play with for more than ten minutes is,
- their fluffy toy (teddy bear or whatever)
- wooden blocks
- lego/duplo
- any toy with wheels
- a ball
- a cardboard box
- a stick
seriously, that's it. They could probably get by just with the last 3 of these. Obviously there is no upper limit on how much you can spend on these things, but you can get all of these things from a cheapie shop for not more than $100 in all - and the biggest expense would be official lego/duplo (there are cheap Chinese copies of lower quality) - and that's basically the kid set until they're five years old or so. You might be tempted to get them things with buttons that go click and ding, but they tend not to be played with for long. And no, they don't need anything with a screen until they're in high school.
I consider books a necessity for children, the ones for young kids are mostly pretty cheap, but anyway you can join your local library and have them for free. And most people offering toys can be persuaded to do books instead.
Once they go to school the flood of second-hand clothes and unwanted toys slows down, and even state schools will have some expenses, but these are usually not great, on the order of a few hundred dollars for school uniform, some token fees and donations to support the library, that sort of thing.
There are other things like blankets and prams and cots and child seats for cars... but those are one-off expenses and hugely vary in cost (I wouldn't go cheap on car seats, but the other stuff? why not).
Babies are the same as anything else, you can always spend more if you want to... but really it's because you decided to, not to keep them alive, and I would add, healthy and happy.