How much to budget for 0 to 12 months

[mbjerry]

Wondering how much we should budget each month for baby related cost. Please don't factor in one time purchases. Looking for an on-going operation and maintenance cost! lol. Thanks.

[charis]

This could vary wildly depending on circumstances from very little (cloth diapering, nursing, hand-me downs) to quite a lot (diapers, formula, new clothes, daycare). 

[Rocky Mtn FI]

I have twins, so adjust accordingly, but it looks like we're averaging ~$150/month on formula, diapers, wipes, soaps, lotions, baby detergent, etc., which are the items I think I'd put in the "on-going operation and maintenance cost" basket.

That said, we spend more than that per month on baby-related costs.  I personally don't find it very helpful to strip out the one-time purchases because even if you only buy a certain item once, there will be another "one-time purchase" the next month and the month after that.  For instance, we got a stroller in July because the babies are now big enough to ride in a stroller outside their car seats.  We won't buy that particular thing again, but soon they'll be crawling and we'll have to get baby gates.  We won't buy that particular thing again, but soon after that they'll be walking and we'll have to baby-proof.  We won't buy that particular thing again, but then they'll outgrow their infant car seats and we'll need to get convertible ones.  Technically these are "one-time purchases," but they recur pretty regularly, even if the item you're buying that month is something you've never bought before and will never buy again.

[Millennialworkerbee]

Totally agree with jwharki. There are almost 12 "one-time purchases" in the first year. How much those cost depends on if you are taking the time-efficient, buy new, approach, or you have time to look for better deals.

Formula: $90-100 (once they get to 5-6 months, less expensive in the first few months)
Disposable diapers: $40
Baby food (pre-made):: $75
Butt wipes/tissues/other disposable items: $20
Misc (omg new baby gadget that I'm buying in desperation that she will sleep): $25
Clothing: $15-25
- Assumes hand me downs & consignment whenever possible. Babies go through like 5 sizes and definitely 4 seasons in the first year :)

Obviously, you pick and choose these expenses based on individual experience.

[Sweetpotatofries]

Definitely do it as a monthly budget that includes the one-time purchases like others said. For us we've spent about $200/month all in, for the first 8 months.

Diapers - $40-50/month. The first two months we went through 10 a day, he pooped every time he nursed. Now it's 4-5 in the daytime and an overnight diaper since he sleeps 10-12 hours (but those are pricier!) We use Amazon subscribe and save.

Baby wipes, diaper cream, soap for bath - $20

Clothing - $30. First baby among family or friends so no hand me downs. Grandparents and friends did buy a lot for months 0-6, but not a lot of practical items ie: baby needed a snow suit or stroller suit for long walks in cold weather. We invested in one we plan to reuse from LL Bean but it cost $50 upfront this month.

Amortized cost of big items - $60. Stroller (bought an UppaBaby off Facebook trading for $300). High chair ($30). Baby gates are coming soon. We had a pack n play ($40 from a yard sale), rock n play (new, $60), and bassinet from the Uppa because he refused to sleep in the pack n play and would only sleep in the rock n play for the first three months. You don't know what your baby will do until he/she is here!

We exclusively breastfeed, but that means I definitely eat like a horse (I also started jogging again when baby was 2 months old, I am 5'1" and I am eating about 3,000 calories a day because we do a lot of walks, I jog, and I'm nursing a hungry 20 lb 8 month old boy who barely eats solid food yet). So I'm throwing in an extra $20 for my food.

$20-30 for baby related activities. Our hospital new mom's group was $100 for 6 sessions over 2 months. Then we did the library storytime which is free, but most of the moms from our class signed up for a music class that costs about $30 a pop. You might make parent friends without that stuff, you might want to go.

[mbjerry]

Thank you all for the info. We are lucky and have huge families and lots of friends close that are throwing us 3 showers. I think most of the big one time purchases will be handled. However I will budget for some unknown first time expenses based on your recommendations. Reading your post we have conservatively budgeted $400/month. Hopefully we can cut that as we settle in. Thanks again for your time!


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[starbuck]

I just checked Mint, and for the first 2 years of our kid's life, we averaged $50/month for his stuff (which excludes groceries.) I breastfed and we cloth diapered for the majority of his first year. The most we spent was $243 (during month 2 of his life for a really nice jogging stroller that worked with his car seat.) Least we spent was $0.00.

My new approach for baby shower gifts is to go to Costco and get the biggest box of wipes, the twin pack of Honest baby bath soap, and the twin pack of infant Tylenol. It's not very cute, but it's hella practical.

[mbjerry]

I just checked Mint, and for the first 2 years of our kid's life, we averaged $50/month for his stuff (which excludes groceries.) I breastfed and we cloth diapered for the majority of his first year. The most we spent was $243 (during month 2 of his life for a really nice jogging stroller that worked with his car seat.) Least we spent was $0.00.

My new approach for baby shower gifts is to go to Costco and get the biggest box of wipes, the twin pack of Honest baby bath soap, and the twin pack of infant Tylenol. It's not very cute, but it's hella practical.

Wow! We haven’t decided on the cloth diapers yet. Would you do it again?


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[SimpleCycle]

I just checked Mint, and for the first 2 years of our kid's life, we averaged $50/month for his stuff (which excludes groceries.) I breastfed and we cloth diapered for the majority of his first year. The most we spent was $243 (during month 2 of his life for a really nice jogging stroller that worked with his car seat.) Least we spent was $0.00.

My new approach for baby shower gifts is to go to Costco and get the biggest box of wipes, the twin pack of Honest baby bath soap, and the twin pack of infant Tylenol. It's not very cute, but it's hella practical.

Wow! We haven’t decided on the cloth diapers yet. Would you do it again?


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We cloth diapered two, including 6 months where they were both in diapers, and we would do it again.  The biggest money savings definitely came from kid #2, since we didn’t need to buy anything.

The cost savings depends a lot on what “system” you use.  Some are pricier than others.  We used prefolds and covers, and spent $444 on four different sizes of diapers and two different sizes of covers.  In retrospect I’d skip the newborn sized prefolds and save $50.  Detergent and water are additional costs to factor in.

[starbuck]

I just checked Mint, and for the first 2 years of our kid's life, we averaged $50/month for his stuff (which excludes groceries.) I breastfed and we cloth diapered for the majority of his first year. The most we spent was $243 (during month 2 of his life for a really nice jogging stroller that worked with his car seat.) Least we spent was $0.00.

My new approach for baby shower gifts is to go to Costco and get the biggest box of wipes, the twin pack of Honest baby bath soap, and the twin pack of infant Tylenol. It's not very cute, but it's hella practical.

Wow! We haven’t decided on the cloth diapers yet. Would you do it again?

Oh totally. We did covers and prefolds. I'll probably use wool covers next time (and will probably make those myself versus buying them as they are VERY pricey.) And I think we'll get a couple more 'all in one' diapers as they are very useful when diapering on the go. The few that we do have are the first ones I reach for now that I'm cloth diapering a toddler as they actually fit under real clothing.

We just loaned out the baby sized prefolds to our friends that want to cloth diaper too. It saves sooo much money especially if you can share supplies, although our main reason for doing it was environmental. My best advice is to not be so militant about it and use disposables when it makes sense, and use cloth the rest of the time. It's very doable.

[mbjerry]

I just checked Mint, and for the first 2 years of our kid's life, we averaged $50/month for his stuff (which excludes groceries.) I breastfed and we cloth diapered for the majority of his first year. The most we spent was $243 (during month 2 of his life for a really nice jogging stroller that worked with his car seat.) Least we spent was $0.00.

My new approach for baby shower gifts is to go to Costco and get the biggest box of wipes, the twin pack of Honest baby bath soap, and the twin pack of infant Tylenol. It's not very cute, but it's hella practical.

Wow! We haven’t decided on the cloth diapers yet. Would you do it again?

Oh totally. We did covers and prefolds. I'll probably use wool covers next time (and will probably make those myself versus buying them as they are VERY pricey.) And I think we'll get a couple more 'all in one' diapers as they are very useful when diapering on the go. The few that we do have are the first ones I reach for now that I'm cloth diapering a toddler as they actually fit under real clothing.

We just loaned out the baby sized prefolds to our friends that want to cloth diaper too. It saves sooo much money especially if you can share supplies, although our main reason for doing it was environmental. My best advice is to not be so militant about it and use disposables when it makes sense, and use cloth the rest of the time. It's very doable.

Thanks!


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[afox]

Well, surprised noone has mentioned it but if you need daycare it is going to be by FAR your biggest expense.  In my area infant daycare is about $18,900 per year.  But that's the good news, the bad news is that they have years long waiting lists and you can't "get in" no matter how much you're willing to pay.  Once child is 2 YO daycare is about $16,000 per year.  Interestingly these rates match up well with current college tuition which for an in-state university in our area is aobut $18,000 per year (including dorm, mealplan, etc). 

Also, health care costs are exorbitant.  We have decent insurance and for the birth year will pay our $5000 max out of pocket deductible, plus our premiums.  For year 1 we will have much higher premiums and lower out of pocket but overall out of pocket increases will be about $3000 per year.

So, diapers and the other junk is chump change, and with minimal effort you can get any physical child related item for free or cheap.

So, in my case the daycare and healthcare costs mean I can kiss my FI plans goodbye. 

[kimmarg]

According to mint we spent
$1184 on stuff categorized as 'baby supplies" from -3 weeks to 13months of age.
Off hand I'd say that's a bit low and some of it got absorbed into "household supplies" and "groceries". we cloth diapered about 75% of the time, and breastfed to 9 months so minimal formula cost.

[kimmarg]

I just checked Mint, and for the first 2 years of our kid's life, we averaged $50/month for his stuff (which excludes groceries.) I breastfed and we cloth diapered for the majority of his first year. The most we spent was $243 (during month 2 of his life for a really nice jogging stroller that worked with his car seat.) Least we spent was $0.00.

My new approach for baby shower gifts is to go to Costco and get the biggest box of wipes, the twin pack of Honest baby bath soap, and the twin pack of infant Tylenol. It's not very cute, but it's hella practical.

Wow! We haven’t decided on the cloth diapers yet. Would you do it again?


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Yes, I'd cloth diaper again. We're about to turn 2 and starting to potty training and the laundry is getting old but I'd imagine the diapers would be too. We use disposable at night and whenever we are traveling away from home for the whole day or someone else is watching her (daycare takes cloth but if a friend will baby sit I'm more than happy to provide their perferred diaper!) I found the cloth didn't fit well until about 6 weeks but then they were great.

[ysette9]

I agree with afox that daycare is by far the biggest expense. If you have a stay-at-home parent then that obviously won't be an issue, but otherwise it does dwarf any other expense. For us, daycare is the most expensive line item followed by 529 contributions. Everything else is practically in the noise. Then again, we are a high-income, HCOL professional family, so definition of costs that are in the noise is going to be different from others.

We tried cloth diapers in the beginning with our first due to our concerns of environmental impacts of disposables. We even did it with the diaper service, so we weren't dunking poopy diapers in the toilet at 3 in the morning like my parents did a generation ago. Would I do cloth again? Hell no. It takes twice as long to put on a new diaper as with a disposable and we had easily 3x the number of blowouts. After using cloth I can appreciate the fine engineering that goes into a Pampers. :) Yes, the environmental impact still sucks; there is no way around that. Parenting a baby is about sacrifices with the end goal of preserving some sanity, sleep, and your marriage. Disposables helped us on all three fronts.

[mbjerry]

I agree with afox that daycare is by far the biggest expense. If you have a stay-at-home parent then that obviously won't be an issue, but otherwise it does dwarf any other expense. For us, daycare is the most expensive line item followed by 529 contributions. Everything else is practically in the noise. Then again, we are a high-income, HCOL professional family, so definition of costs that are in the noise is going to be different from others.

We tried cloth diapers in the beginning with our first due to our concerns of environmental impacts of disposables. We even did it with the diaper service, so we weren't dunking poopy diapers in the toilet at 3 in the morning like my parents did a generation ago. Would I do cloth again? Hell no. It takes twice as long to put on a new diaper as with a disposable and we had easily 3x the number of blowouts. After using cloth I can appreciate the fine engineering that goes into a Pampers. :) Yes, the environmental impact still sucks; there is no way around that. Parenting a baby is about sacrifices with the end goal of preserving some sanity, sleep, and your marriage. Disposables helped us on all three fronts.

Thanks for the reply. Maintaining the sanity, sleep, and our marriage is most important.

Did others here have the increased blowouts with the cloth diapers?


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[chaskavitch]

I agree with afox that daycare is by far the biggest expense. If you have a stay-at-home parent then that obviously won't be an issue, but otherwise it does dwarf any other expense. For us, daycare is the most expensive line item followed by 529 contributions. Everything else is practically in the noise. Then again, we are a high-income, HCOL professional family, so definition of costs that are in the noise is going to be different from others.

We tried cloth diapers in the beginning with our first due to our concerns of environmental impacts of disposables. We even did it with the diaper service, so we weren't dunking poopy diapers in the toilet at 3 in the morning like my parents did a generation ago. Would I do cloth again? Hell no. It takes twice as long to put on a new diaper as with a disposable and we had easily 3x the number of blowouts. After using cloth I can appreciate the fine engineering that goes into a Pampers. :) Yes, the environmental impact still sucks; there is no way around that. Parenting a baby is about sacrifices with the end goal of preserving some sanity, sleep, and your marriage. Disposables helped us on all three fronts.

Thanks for the reply. Maintaining the sanity, sleep, and our marriage is most important.

Did others here have the increased blowouts with the cloth diapers?


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I think we've actually had fewer.  Disposable diapers don't have elastic around the waist like cloth do.  We've definitely had a few times when I've gone to change our kid, and it's just been EVERYWHERE inside the diaper, but it didn't leak out at all.  There is more likelihood of peeing through, though, now that I think about it.  That's way less of an issue in my opinion than poop all over the place.

I'd also third the vote for cloth diapering.  If you buy secondhand on Craigslist or FB groups, it isn't too expensive.  Prefolds are cheaper than all in ones, and are great for newborns, because you're changing them so often it is nice to be able to reuse the waterproof covers.  I use all in ones now that he is older, because we only go through 5 or 6 diapers a day, and laundry is manageable with that every 2 or 3 days (if you can stand the thought of letting it sit that long :)  They're infinitely easier to change than prefolds, too.  We use disposables at night and on long trips, because they do last longer between changes, and you have less peeing through onto mom at 3 am.

[mbjerry]

I agree with afox that daycare is by far the biggest expense. If you have a stay-at-home parent then that obviously won't be an issue, but otherwise it does dwarf any other expense. For us, daycare is the most expensive line item followed by 529 contributions. Everything else is practically in the noise. Then again, we are a high-income, HCOL professional family, so definition of costs that are in the noise is going to be different from others.

We tried cloth diapers in the beginning with our first due to our concerns of environmental impacts of disposables. We even did it with the diaper service, so we weren't dunking poopy diapers in the toilet at 3 in the morning like my parents did a generation ago. Would I do cloth again? Hell no. It takes twice as long to put on a new diaper as with a disposable and we had easily 3x the number of blowouts. After using cloth I can appreciate the fine engineering that goes into a Pampers. :) Yes, the environmental impact still sucks; there is no way around that. Parenting a baby is about sacrifices with the end goal of preserving some sanity, sleep, and your marriage. Disposables helped us on all three fronts.

Thanks for the reply. Maintaining the sanity, sleep, and our marriage is most important.

Did others here have the increased blowouts with the cloth diapers?


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I think we've actually had fewer.  Disposable diapers don't have elastic around the waist like cloth do.  We've definitely had a few times when I've gone to change our kid, and it's just been EVERYWHERE inside the diaper, but it didn't leak out at all.  There is more likelihood of peeing through, though, now that I think about it.  That's way less of an issue in my opinion than poop all over the place.

I'd also third the vote for cloth diapering.  If you buy secondhand on Craigslist or FB groups, it isn't too expensive.  Prefolds are cheaper than all in ones, and are great for newborns, because you're changing them so often it is nice to be able to reuse the waterproof covers.  I use all in ones now that he is older, because we only go through 5 or 6 diapers a day, and laundry is manageable with that every 2 or 3 days (if you can stand the thought of letting it sit that long :)  They're infinitely easier to change than prefolds, too.  We use disposables at night and on long trips, because they do last longer between changes, and you have less peeing through onto mom at 3 am.

Thanks! Sharing all these insights with my wife.


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[starbuck]

Did others here have the increased blowouts with the cloth diapers?

Not usually with prefolds+waterproof covers, only with disposables. Blowouts are usually because of a bad fit, whatever the kind of diaper. I do find some of the all-in-ones aren't as tight around the legs and lower back and blowouts can happen with those. With a prefold, I can't really peek into the back of my kid's diaper to see if he pooped like I can with a disposable. Lucky me I can usually just smell it though!

[chouchouu]

Our budget went down dramatically when we had our kids for that first year. No more evenings out, just alfresco cafes. Entertained at home. It was basically just formula, breast pump hire and pediatrician visits. Breast pump was around 2 euros a day, hired it for seven months. Formula was a lot but our twins had reflux so vomited 80% of it plus they were on hypoallergenic formula. So I don't think I'd take that into account. Clothing is a bit fuzzy, we received lots of clothes as gifts, I guess I spent a couple of hundred euros for the twins. I bought some silicon baby food trays that cost around 50 euros (I wanted made in France because I was concerned about standards) and then made food which cost a few euros per week. Our pediatrician gave us recipes. Basically 1 part potato to one part veg steamed and mashed and then add a spoon of rapeseed oil. Second recipe was 1 part banana to 1 part fruit mashed up. Put the extra in the fridge or freezer. I bought fancy high chairs that cost 150 euros each.

I spent around 300 euros on fancy cloth diapers but in the end preferred the cheap flats because they wash up well and the build up in the Grovia was giving my kids rashes. We also used disposables. Honestly can't remember how much that cost us, you basically use one each feed.

[MBot]

Did others here have the increased blowouts with the cloth diapers?


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Two blowouts in two years with cloth diapers. Very very few!
We've had more blowouts with disposables the handful of times we used them.

I find it's more an absorbency issue at night, but often people who cloth diaper do disposables at night. . We have all in ones and use them at night but quickly had to add a hemp  booster so they would absorb enough overnight. . Daytime is still fine 2 years in. If I did it again I would probably buy covers and then all super-absorbent inserts

[kanga1622]

Another vote for cloth diapers. We used Fuzzi Bunz one size diapers that had elastic but the option to change absorbency for nighttime. These fit from delivery to potty training for us. We used them on both our kids so we easily had one in diapers for well over 4 years. These were a more expensive way to do cloth but were easy for our daycare so it was a win in our book.

We did homemade baby food, breastfed exclusively, and did cloth diapers. Clothes were mostly picked up at garage sales and we always bought several sizes ahead. Other than Daycare, we didn’t have ongoing expenses. It is really the one time purchases that are hard: $75 wrap, $30 stroller, $250 car seat (we spent more on features that made it easier to use for parents and easier to install), $20 on breastmilk bags maybe 3 times the first year as we ran low, etc.