How much does it cost to have a child?

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. At exactly the halfway point tomorrow, our first year experience is similar: our housing and furnishing costs have been low, feeding her has been nominally free so far (though you are right there is an increased grocery bill for the nursing mother!), and between hand me downs and gifts, we have only bought about 4 items of clothing! Travelling costs have been low - £90 for an ergobaby carrier was well spent as we haven't needed a pram. We were handed down a car seat but got rid of our car as it wasn't needed.

I'm not sure disposable nappies have been very costly: we spend about £15 a month by only buying when they are on special (which is about a third of the time). The laundry costs and initial outlay would have to be quite low to better this.

A few country specific differences arise for us. There are no insurance premiums or costs associated with her birth. I get free prescriptions and dental care during pregnancy and the first year of her life. In the UK we get £80 pcm in child benefit (this disappears if one of us earns over £50k). My paid maternity leave means the lost wages so far total £2400 post tax, this will increase to roughly £9k for the next six months. (Paid childcare would be cheaper if I returned to work now, but I've decided that since my return to work will be full time, it's better to have another 6 months at home. ). This is a combination of employer maternity pay and a universal (statutory) one.

An aside: while those lost wages are in one sense a baby cost, I'm reluctant to tally them up that way mentally. Staying home with her has often been a joy for me, and has mentally rebooted me in unexpected ways. It's kind of analogous to taking a sabbatical to mentally recuperate. I suspect this is the sort of thing that varies with the parent and also how easy going the child is, but it hadn't struck me that way beforehand.

Thank you, my experience has been similar (in the comparable aspects) to Julia's and Bernadette's. My daughter is 4,5 years old by now, so I don't really remember how much exactly I spent during the first year, but I can give general information: Food, diapers and clothing can be acquired pretty cheaply if done right and doesn't pose the main cost. Health insurance outside of the US is not much of a problem. I spent a lot less on gear/nursery. (I didn't feel like I really needed anything besides a baby wrap.)

Housing costs might increase in the first years already if you lived in a not-so-nice area before and want to move or if your previous housing situation was already very crowded. I personally don't consider it necessary for children to have their own room or something like that before they hit schooling age.

The cost is more to be found in daycare/private schooling and opportunity costs career-wise. One part of the latter is lost wages directly due to working fewer hours, others are less obvious. (Foregoing promotions, less time for additional qualifications, etc.)

What you should take into account is that children get a lot more expensive as they age. A baby is pretty cheap. After a while, it's not that easy anymore to find second-hand-clothing, they eat a lot more, you might want to spend a lot on educational expenses (mainly that).

Since I don't earn a wage (and get scholarships for my degree which are a lot higher because I have a child), I didn't lose any money there. Or any money at all, for that matter, since I wouldn't have had the additional money if it hadn't been for my child.

For me, the costs of a child have mainly been opportunity costs. I can't easily put a number on those, though. This stems mostly from the unusual situation that I had my child very young (<20 years).

The $16k in lost wages is pre-tax while the other expenses are post-tax, which means the $16k cost is effectively more like a $12k cost.

EDIT: I'm wrong, the $16k Julia gave is a post-tax number.

$20k for the first year, overwhelmingly coming from lost wages. Not bad, and it's pretty useful to know that it can be done so cheaply.

According to a study cited by Julia in another blog post, the costs of raising a child are roughly constant over his or her childhood and adolescence (see image below). This would suggest that the total parenting costs for Julia and Jeff will be around $360,000, or $245,000 in present value (at a 5% real discount rate). For comparison, Brian's estimated present-value cost of parenthood is $300,000, while Bernadette's is $184,000 (thought the latter is expressed differently and doesn't take into account opportunity costs; see here for discussion).

I recently realized that the opportunity cost of taking off work is not just the lost wages in the present year, but reduced future wages. This is because salaries are generally based on experience. This applies if you plan to work up to a certain age. If you take a year off, you will have one year less experience for each of the futures years you work. From a couple sources, I have found this experience premium to be about 2% per experience year. Therefore, taking off early in a career results in lost future salaries roughly equal to the lost salary in the present year. This doubles the opportunity cost. Does anyone know if someone has posted on this topic more rigorously?

My child has been more expensive so far, but this is partly because the love of my life is not on a thrift drive and values convenience, and because I and other family haven't been around as much to help out because of work. I think these estimates rely on both parents having a commitment to reducing spend well below the rest of society. Otherwise I think double the gear, food etc. and its still very easy, but factor in a large loss in expected wages for the primary carer over the long term.