The cost of kids

In planning for our life in Texas, we need to have a budget planned. One of the unknown factors in the equation is child care costs. So, to aid myself in the guessing, I looked up the average costs or raising a kid in the U.S. The USDA (Department of Agriculture) publishes these stats, and the monthly per-child costs for a two parent median income family is as follows:

Housing: $270
Education/Daycare: $110
Miscell: $80
Food: $90
Transportation: $95
Clothing: $35
Health Care: $50

Monthly Total: $730

Can it be? Does it really cost $730 each and every month to raise a kid? Most parents I’ve talked to don’t think that’s so out of line. When you decide to have kids, you need a bigger house, more furnishing, and invitably, replacing furnishing, all of which contributes to that $270/mo for housing. Nothing else looks terribly unreasonable, so we end up spending $8,760 a year, per child.

If our family follows the trends of average Americana, we’ll have $158,000 invested in Junior before we can kick our pride an joy out of the house. The average American family (household) has $8,000 in consumer (credit card) debt and 2.3 kids. To just pay their taxes, child care, and debt payments amounts to the first $34,000 of their paychecks. That sum would raise several families with children in most parts of the world.