how much do you spend on your school age kids in total per year?

[Anonymous]

We recently bought a house and I was trying to estimate our expenses as our kids grew older to decide how much mortgage we could afford. I hope I did a generous job but curious to see what you all think.

I thought with 2 kids we would max out at spending $8k/month for all child related expenses, including school/day care, clothes, activities, toys, etc. I guess you could include extra food and vacations to that total, although we don't spend that much on vacations. I did not include medical insurance, but I guess it wouldn't have been the worst idea to do so.

Our HHI is around $375k and the private school we would you right now charges around $22k for tuition for middle and upper school. (We are not in DC in case you are curious) although I'd guess costs here are comparable to DC, perhaps a tiny bit cheaper.

Our kids are still small so I have no idea if I budgeted right and I thought I'd ask people who actually have school age kids.

So, if you have school age kids, what do you spend total on them per year, and what is your HHI?

[Anonymous]

Our private school is 37,000. Camp in the summer is 600. Per week for sleepover and about 350 for day camp. Lessons and activities range a lot. Tennis is $27. Per week. Christmas is maybe 500 per kid. Clothes for teenagers really add up. It's expensive...

[Anonymous]

$15K a year between tutoring, camp, after school activities, cell phone, trips to the mall.

We have 2 kids, both in public, one in HS one in MS.

[Anonymous]

$4k max-clothes,activities,aftercare.Another $4k into 529plan.I do the tutoring,he doesn't have a cell phone and doesn't like sopping.
My boy is very low maintenance.
HHI $130k.

[Anonymous]

I think we easily spend $10-15k a year per kid, and we have three (one in college, two in high school). This doesn't include the cost of college tuition. That's probably another $30k/yr.

HHI is about $140k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we easily spend $10-15k a year per kid, and we have three (one in college, two in high school). This doesn't include the cost of college tuition. That's probably another $30k/yr.

HHI is about $140k.

I mean to add that we probably spend on the lower end (around $10k) for the college kid, because he works part-time.

[Anonymous]

I can't bring myself to add it up, but the teen DD spends way more money on "necessaries" than the teen DSs. And I guess it's been that way most of their lives. And it looks like it will continue through college as the boys go to a public college and DD will surely choose the private one.

[Anonymous]

I have no idea how much I spend. Obviously it would depend on what I included in the total (e.g. the expenses of a larger home vs. a 1 br apartment? health insurance? the fact that I hired a cleaning service in large part due to kid allergies? caring for the dog kids begged for?)

I can, however, confidently say that I spend far less than $8K a month, just based on the fact that I earn less than $8K before taxes and don't go into debt for my kids.

[Anonymous]

I don't think there is anyway someone can give you an accurate idea. Will your child take up an expensive sport, need tutoring, or really just enjoy being on inexpensive rec teams. Will there be a health issue? Will they really care about the brand of their clothes as teens or just wear whatever is found on top. Luckily you have a say in many of these decisions so if something doesn't work with your budget, you say no. We just did that for the first time with horseback riding lessons.

[Anonymous]

3k a year for aftercare
4k a year for summer camps
10K a year in sports/music/tutoring
plus food, clothes, bdays, trips, insurance, etc. - hard to estimate
Over 20K a year, for sure.

[Anonymous]

My advice would be to start on the public school track. We started down the private school road, and now spend more than $130 K/year on expenditures for the children (almost all private school tuition).

[Anonymous]

Hmm, let's see. $5000 for summer nanny. $1000 on shoes alone. Clothes not that expensive. $500 each on sports registrations. Spend at least $100 a week on food to feed them (two teenage boys). Medical copays. Hmmmm.

[Anonymous]

We have an au pair, so that's $24K, plus camps during the summer at about $5K, music lessons 2400/yr, tae kwon do at 2400/year, other sports at about 2K, clothes (I have no idea).

2 kids.

[Anonymous]

$8000/month sounds high. I have one in public HS and one in college. Setting aside the $60k college tuition of course, I would estimate that each kid is about $1,000-1,500/month for sports, tutoring, clothes, allowance, etc. That doesn't count SAT prep, college applications or visits (will be at least $10k), travel, etc. Both my kids seem to end up with frequent dr visits as well which adds up. Plus car and insurance expenses for both kids.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks all. When I said "budgeted" I didn't mean that we were actually planning on that, but when we bought the house I overestimated our expenses since I wanted to be totally sure we could afford the house since it's a rather fixed expense.

I hope we don't spent more than $8k/month but with all the cost of even 1 before he can even ask for toys at store, I just didn't know what to expect.