From what I've read, a decent portion of the cost is in additional housing expenses. If a couple is planning on having children, those housing costs will most likely come at prior to actually having kids, moving into a larger space in preparation. As a result, the cost difference at the time of having kids isn't as much of a jump.

(At least, that's my interpretation of the available data as I put together estimated budgets for the next 5/10/20 years.)

Child care is crazy expensive if you have two working parents with full time jobs. Most schools or day cares let out around three. If you normally get home between six and seven like most people do then you still need to figure out a few hours of care which means hiring someone. But finding a good person who only wants those hours is hard. And even if your daycare has late hours many people don’t want their kid in daycare for that long, since they don’t get individual attention and if you can afford it you probably don’t want your child in daycare from 8-6 every day. So unless you have family nearby who help you raise kids, it can cost a fortune.

> Child care is crazy expensive if you have two working parents with full time jobs.

Childcare is expensive, but it's still a fraction of the after-tax compensation of most professional jobs. Recent tax changes have made it even more affordable.

> Most schools or day cares let out around three. If you normally get home between six and seven like most people do then you still need to figure out a few hours of care which means hiring someone.

Every daycare we toured was open until 5-6PM. I don't know anyone who hires additional help for a couple hours in the afternoon. If you're in tech, it's not hard to find a job that allows both parents to stagger their working hours so that one can pick them up.

Around here, it's very common for parents of young children to come into the office early and leave early to pick up kids. It's a common practice and plenty of companies support it.

> So unless you have family nearby who help you raise kids, it can cost a fortune.

Again, this hasn't been my experience nor that of any of my parent friends. Also keep in mind that kids grow up fast and daycare isn't something you need to do forever.

Frankly, most non-parents I know have vastly overestimated how expensive and painful it is to raise kids. This is especially true of those who grew up reading Reddit, where angry /r/childfree posts used to hit the front page with regularity.

As a dad, I Aagree 100%. To be honest I don't know how people actually manage to spend those reported fortunes on their kids. For example, kids often show more interest in pine cones than expensive toys. Or play ancient worthless but still good musical instruments. etc etc. I think a lot of people think they need a gigantic car when they have kids. Just tell 'em when you go away on holiday you can only take a few toys. Seems to work, everything will still be there when you come back. ;)

Well said. There is too much being made about how difficult and expensive it is to bring up kids... and sometimes by people who spend thousands on their pets!

Right but if you’re in a typical high-paying tech career (and you don’t want to send your children to private schools) then spending a more typical amount on your children means spending proportionally much less of your income than the average American (remember, this thread was about why more Americans born in the 60’s aren’t millionaires). It will be especially affordable if you get e.g. some level of childcare as a work benefit as this is often one of the biggest expenses to ordinary middle class Americans (either directly or in opportunity cost to parents who have to take more time off work)

We lived happily in an 800 square foot apartment, paid nothing for child care, both held well-paid full-time professional jobs, and saved nothing towards college funds.

All of those changed in some way or other once we started planning to have kids.

It’s also been totally worth it, but that’s beside the financial impact.

Even if the best case scenario is cheaper than you thought it's still a huge gamble. What if your kid is born with a condition that requires lifelong expensive treatment? What if your kid turns out to be a clumsy driver, or never moves out of your home?

Bay Area child care: $1,800-$2,000/child. Then factor additional rooms with housing at $1,000-$1,200/sqft. A couple of children easily add expenses of $8-$10k/month is pre tax income.

Raising multiple young children with their own individual bedrooms in one of the most expensive cities in the country is an edge case.

That said, it's entirely doable, especially in an age where FAANG companies are paying huge compensation in that area anyway.

Obviously, it doesn't make sense for someone with a median non-tech salary to try to raise multiple kids in one of the most expensive areas in the country. For tech people working tech jobs, it still works out fine though.

> The internet narrative that kids will destroy your finances has been greatly exaggerated for those of us in tech careers.

That's a pretty dangerous suggestion to anyone contemplating this.

Kids are brutally expensive (in the US at least). Love my kid more than anything in the universe but let's not pretend it's cheap. Current spend is about $30K-$40K per year. Post-tax money of course, so that's ~$80K off the top from gross salary.

And then there's future university costs, which are trending to be more than my entire gross salary per year so not sure how that'll work out.

What goes into that number? My brother has three kids and is making $50K as a medical resident, what am I missing?

The thing about raising children is that the sky is the limit when it comes to spending money, time, and resources on them. It's not hard to find stories about people who spend their entire incomes on child raising. The catch is that these stories can be seen at every level of income, from $30K to $300K or more. Expenses can and will balloon to exorbitant amounts if you're not careful.

It helps to know parents with more traditional income levels to see how they function. If you're only surrounded by people spending $80K/year on their kids, it starts to feel like spending that much is the only option. It's not.

School alone is ~$20K. Babysitter costs vary based on hours, but it's never less than $1K/month. So those two make up ~35K/year. Add food, toys, camps, etc and it gets to 40K.

I’m assuming this means private school? Considering only 10% of K-12 students attend private school, it already skews the numbers.

If you talk about how expensive it is to own a 6k sq.ft. home, that can be true as well but both seem to speak towards lifestyle inflation rather than the norm.

Yes, private school. Because public schools around here aren't so great. That's the cheapest private school in the area, everything else is way more expensive.

The irony is that if I could afford a 3Ksqft home (forget 6Ksqft, I can't imagine anyone other than a few CEOs could afford that) I could live in an upscale area where the public schools are great.