How expensive are kids really? My wife and I both work and just don’t have kids right now. A married couple we’re friends with is always going on about how expensive it is to raise their two kids, but I really don’t get it, I feel like they’re just shit with their money and are using their kids as a scapegoat.
What exactly is so expensive? Even if my wife or I decided to stop working, the other one of us makes more than enough money to have us live comfortably. Kids need food, clothes and diapers, what else? I once read that the average cost of raising a kid is $200000 and it just screams bullshit to me.
If you both work it is fucking crazy expensive because daycare is like a thousand bucks a month on average in most places. You eat out more because nobody is home to cook, kids have to go to the doctor and dentist almost constantly and when they go to school schools here comes the clothes. Diapers are expensive too. And formula is pricey as well.
To be honest, unless you are both bringing home over 30k a year after taxes it is cheaper for one of you to be a stay at home spouse, cook all the meals, gethe cloth diapers and wash them, etc.
Both parents working makes having kids prohibitively expensive unless you both make solid cash.
Jack Clark
And that little bastard will outgrow clothes almost immediately after buying them so you will throw money at that too. Go to yard sales and good will stores to save money there. But they want to be entertained so time to buy shitty toys too.
They drain funds.
Angel Price
Daycare alone can run a few hundred dollars a week. Then you need to realize you're actively saving for their future education. These two are the bulk of your expenses. Anyway, look up the cost of tuition while taking into account inflation then average out your monthly savings to hit that goal in 18 years... don't forget small expenses like extra food, clothes, doctors visits, etc. It really does add up.
You lack foresight, that's all.
Brody Garcia
Tuition?
The one good thing about Georgia is not having to worry about that.
Ryan Clark
Tuition is a meme. Those who graduate with 60k+ debt either went to a private school, did shit in class and lost scholarships/grants (of which there are literally thousands) or just went to class and constantly changed majors.
Literally anyone who thinks “saving for tuition” is a real necessity is the one who lacks foresight.
t. Worked as a Financial Aid specialist for 2 years while in college
Easton Clark
Well, be honest if they are a straight white Christian male with solid grades and a middle class family the pool of scholarships and grants shrinks dramatically.
Austin Mitchell
Food, clothes, diapers alone costs a fuckton lot. Education, needs-primary, secondary, tertiary. Clothings and shit. It costs a lot. Hell even just giving birth-also the stay in-the medical bills and shit?
Nathan Rodriguez
And the price of community college for useless gen-Eds remains the same. Improper planning of classes and just going to college for the sake of it is the biggest expense students end up making in my experiences. They take unnecessary credits, often tend to fail more due to lack of motivation meaning even more credits, and don’t do their research on professors before choosing them so they end up getting some proprietary textbooks for $700 instead of a professor that can teach without it. Granted, certain classes do need the book to actually learn, but English 101 n shit can all be avoided completely or pirated 99% of the time. Also my wife is unironically half Native American so I’m sure there’s some shit we can figure out regarding scholarships.
Ryan Murphy
>worked as an assistant for 2 years >is automatically an expert
Christian Flores
>What exactly is so expensive? Seriously, how can you not figure this out by yourself? Most kids stay home until they go to college so you can assume that you pay for 18 years of food, clothing, health care, toys, books, school, school utils, shoes (a fucking lot of shoes), games, gadgets, candy, hobby training (sports, martial arts, music, etc), pocket money. Girls are even more expensive because all the women hygiene products are super expensive and of course make up.
Chase Nguyen
I wasn’t an assistant. When you go to the college to talk about your financial aid and review your information, they direct you to speak with one of the general knowledge admissions people. When there was something they didn’t know or weren’t trained in, the student was directed me or one of my coworkers. The whole job was literally knowing the ins and outs of financial aid. Even an assistant would still figure out that tuition is largely a meme very quickly.
Aiden Mitchell
>muh anecdotal experiences You're wrong. It's okay to be wrong sometimes bro.
Caleb Hill
Half of the shit you listed is nowhere near a necessity and just lends credence to my thought that our married couple friends are just shit with their money. Food and healthcare, possibly daycare if both spouses have to work, are the only things that seem like they’d get relatively expensive, and once they’re of school age the daycare aspect is moot. Clothes are extremely cheap and even nice ones can be purchased for incredible bargains if you’re smart about your shopping. School supplies are like fucking pet food tier you barely need to count them. Entertainment and activities are up to the discretion of the parent, and spending thousands on extravagant toys and whatnot just for the kid to go outside and play with a stick in the dirt instead of their cool new toy is just retarded. There’s plenty of ways to fund fun without being stupid with your money.
Camden Bell
>muh no argument
Kill yourself. My title was literally “Financial Aid Specialist”. What am I wrong about? Is there a particular reason students CANT go to a junior college to complete gen Ed’s for cheap as shit then transfer to a 4 year institution for their bachelors if their broke ass is complaining about tuition so much? Is there a reason people CANT search for academic merit scholarships? Do students HAVE to go out of state to stay in some shitty dorms for several tens of thousands a year extra? No. If the kids wants to so much they can go fucking do it but I won’t be funding their financial irresponsibility and they can go fuck themself when they start bitching about debt.
Brody Bailey
It's an OP wants to hear people back up his opinion so he feels like he's right and no arguement is going to sway him episode.
Go have kids and find out for yourself you shithead.
John Sanchez
>Half of the shit you listed is nowhere near a necessity Some of these things sure are not necessary, but do you want your kid to be bullied and tortured throughout their entire young age? If not you better buy them a dumb gadget or whatever.
Taking care of a kid is not about doing what's just necessary for it to survive, think outside of the box. If you are from some remote village then it might be different, if you grow up in the city, unnecessary shit makes you part of society. I agree with you but you can't have kids these days and try to raise them with the concept of the 1920's, it will harm the kid psychologically in the long run
Kayden Adams
>triggered You have 2 years of experience in a job that required no educational background or prior experience credentials and you claim to be a reputable source on a subject that varies greatly from state to state and situation to situation. You don't know shit buddy.
Christian Howard
>I still have no argument
Completed my finance A.S. prior to applying and got the job because I worked as an assistant to the financial aid office beforehand. Worked as a specialist while completing my bachelors. I know the ins and outs of my state as well as a majority of federal regulations and I don’t give a shit about other states since I’m not moving anywhere. What point are you trying to make here? You’ve yet to list one fucking thing to counter me besides just making up nonsense now.
Being frugal doesn’t equate to being bullied or tortured. You wanna spoil your kids with unnecessary shit go right ahead, but don’t try to use your being shit with finances as a baseline for the argument that kids are expensive.
Adam Johnson
God bless you if you can pay off $30k in any reasonable amount of time.
Also fuck you for thinking it’s easy.
Oliver Martin
Oh but it does, a lot actually.
>You wanna spoil your kids with unnecessary shit go right ahead There is a difference between spoiling and giving into social pressure so your kid fits in and is not excluded from society because you are being ignorant.
You probably never grew up in a city, raised by poor or so called "frugal" parents. If you would have you'd understand what social pressure is and how important it is for kids to fit in and not be excluded because "that's the strange kid that doesn't watch tv, play video games, has a phone, etc". If you don't take my word, which is fine, then read a book written by a psychologist, there are quite a few that talk about these subjects. And even if you don't do it, once your kid has issues and starts resenting you for it being not accepted into a social community, you will understand.
Good luck anyways, kids are shit
Christian Rogers
>being wrong >still going on and on You're still wrong lol. Your incredibly isolated experiences don't make up the literally millions of other experiences.
Asher Scott
Addition: If you are unsure about a kid, try a dog or a cat first. That should give you an idea about expenses and additional responsibilities to your everyday lives
Gavin Scott
>I once read that the average cost of raising a kid is $200000 and it just screams bullshit to me. It is, they are just trying to scare you into not having kids. Poor people have kids so it doesn't really cost that much, a extra person living at your house.
