Comments on: Are babies expensive?

By: Hannelene

Hannelene — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:58:49 +0000

Definitely daycare! My baby goes to a daycare subsidized by my husband’s office and it is still $1400. Then we also had to use disposable diapers since daycare will not do cloth.

The other expense (obviously not a necessity, but important to us) is traveling to visit family. Driving cross country with an infant means more stops and an overnight stay somewhere, and flying means one extra ticket.

Great advice to save where you can though…

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:41:31 +0000

KC – I agree with you, daycare is probably the biggest baby expense for families who need it. I realized that I’d left it out completely after I finished writing this post. When I got pregnant, we looked into daycare costs and weighed whether it would be worth it for me to work. Unfortunately, at this stage in my career in the industry I was working in, I couldn’t earn enough income to justify high daycare costs, so I made the decision to work from home. But yes, leaving daycare out was an oversight on my part.

By: Kacie

Kacie — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 18:09:16 +0000

I think babies CAN be expensive, like you said. So far, my kids aren’t. We have extremely awesome health insurance, which helps me say that. Breastfeeding and cloth diapering also help my cause.

Second babies can be way cheaper, since if you still have all your baby gear from #1, that’s less stuff you need to get for them.

After we take the tax credits into account, i think we’re a little bit of money ahead. HAH!

Now, whenever we get baby #3, it’s going to be expensive since we’ll need a bigger vehicle. But if we have baby #4, no big deal, since hopefully we’d still have that same van.

College expenses are a whole ‘nother story. :)

By: KC

KC — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:07:14 +0000

I think the most expensive component, which is not discussed here, is daycare. We live in an expensive city and we both have to work full-time. Full-time daycare for an infant ranges from 1400-2100 per month!

By: Marci

Marci — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:07:12 +0000

Another option for baby and all things really, is to investigate if your new community has anykind of a freecycle group. I joined one awhile back here in Houston. It is an email list that you can offer things you don’t want anymore to the list, and you can pick up things free that other people don’t want. The variety and generosity of others is truly amazing! and did I mention-free!

By: Mary @ Tips & Treasures

Mary @ Tips & Treasures — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:46:52 +0000

Totally agree. Babies can either be really expensive or not so much. We did breastfeeding, second-hand items, shopped clearance, used coupons and were lucky to receive lots of gifts when I was pregnant. So our two babies were not expensive at all.

Now that our kiddos are 3 and 4.5, they are just starting to get more expensive. With lessons, and equipment and/or clothing for those lessons, and birthday parties with classmates, more clothing needs, school things, etc. Oh and then there’s the increase in gas when you’re driving them back & forth to school and dance lessons, etc.

It also costs an arm and a leg for the 4 of us to occasionally go out to dinner. Then if we want to go to an aquarium, baseball game, movie theatre, museum, amusement park or whatever, there’s 4 of us to pay for! It gets super expensive and we rarely do those sorts of thing.

So we save by using coupons, shopping sales and clearance, finding free outings, frequenting our library, and cutting out alot of extras. Just like you said, save where you can, so you have money left for the expenses you can’t control.

By: Robyn @ Frugal 'n' Fit!

Robyn @ Frugal 'n' Fit! — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:25:31 +0000

I couldn’t agree more! We’ve been battling diaper rash so have been using disposables, but if it weren’t for that, our costs would be almost nil!