Reply to Why do children get MORE expensive as they get older?

Forum Index » Money and Finances

Reply to "Why do children get MORE expensive as they get older?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow.  That escalated quickly.

I guess it's either: 1. don't care about your kids at all and do nothing for them, versus 2. Spoil your kids rotten complete with silver spoons. :roll:

Would it be fair to say that, on average, most people spend about 50-75% as much once they're out of daycare?  So no, it's not a huge windfall, but it would be atypical to spend more?
  I'm not saying that anyone is "lying" but the fact of the matter is that the expenses for older kids involve a lot more transactions.  Instead of writing one check for $3-4k per month for daycare, you're paying a bunch of different bills, extra food, more expensive clothes, etc.  So I think it just feels like a lot more money because you're constantly spending it, but it doesn't total the amount that people pay for daycare and other baby/toddler items.

[/quote]

We experienced about a 1/3 savings once our kid enrolled in school. But we had cut back on retirement savings during the daycare years and hadn't started saving for college at all, so the real effect was much less. I had the opposite feeling; it feels like less money is going out the door because it's in small-ish quantities, but it's like the boiling frog when you realize how much everything is costing.

Like anything with parenting, you just can't really imagine what the next stage is like until you get there, and for every joy that comes with a new age there are new and different challenges and choices.[/quote]

The boiling frog is the perfect analogy. I saved money for a few years, and then the kid started eating everything in sight (he's not even 10 yet! I thought that happened when he became a teen!) and other stuff also costs more - clothing gets more expensive as they get bigger, and so do shoes and activities. It's just expensive to have kids. [/quote]

I commented about the 50-75% above, and I guess you would fall in that range?  That's interesting what both of you say about the boiling frog analogy.  I guess for me, multiple costs per month for multiple kids just "feels" like tons of money, whereas the daycare fees were almost like an expense that was taken directly out of my paycheck every month so I couldn't even notice it.

For what it's worth, I do have friends who have kids in equestrian, multiple travel sports, expensive tutors/lessons, etc. so I can definitely see how costs would rise dramatically.  And I know that that's hardly unusual in some areas.  But I'm just comparing the average daycare costs versus the average expenses for kids out of daycare.  In other words, more along the lines of one sport per season like basketball or soccer versus ice hockey or equestrian, a few weeks of day camps over the summer and then spending the rest of the summer just hanging out, some nice clothes but lots of clothes from nike, old navy, etc., maybe a "big vacation" every 2-3 years, but spending the week at the beach and going skiing locally a few times for the most part.  This also costs tons of money, but again, I think it works out to about 50-75% of the costs of kids in daycare.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics