This post has been inspired by this recent podcast featuring three of the biggest names in the Aussie FIRE blogging community, and the follow on discussions in the Aussie Firebug Facebook group about how much it costs to raise kids in Australia. As all three acknowledge they don’t have kids so it’s not something they really have any experience with.
As someone who has two young kids I thought it would be useful to write about it from my perspective. Obviously my situation isn’t the same as everyone else’s, there are plenty of people who would be horrified with how much we’ve spent, and others who would wonder how we manage to spend so little. Everyone’s situation is different, so what works for my family wouldn’t necessarily work or others.
My oldest child has only just started school this year so I can’t really speak from experience beyond the 0-5yo age range, but I’ll talk through some of the typical costs, what we have and haven’t spent money on so far, and what we’re anticipating in the future.
The costs people actually talk about
The first two things that almost always come up when people start talking about the cost of babies are prams and carseats. Yes, you can spend a lot of money on these things if you want to, prams in particular. From a quick look at Baby Bunting the most expensive pram there is nearly 3 thousand dollars, and I’m betting that with a few accessories you can easily get over that mark.
No, you do not need to spend that much on a pram. Yes you can probably pick one up on the cheap from Kmart or Target etc for well under a hundred bucks, but it’s probably not going to be as sturdy or hold much of the gear you take with you. Happily a pram is also the sort of thing where you can pretty easily and safely pick one up secondhand or get a hand me down from someone else.
We bought a Babyzen Yoyo, which is basically a small sized pram although it still has enough storage room for us. It folds up so that you can take it on a plane as carry on luggage, is quite light, extremely maneuverable and very sturdy. I’ve taken it running plenty of times, it’s even got a Parkrun PB of 22:06!
This thing is absolutely gold. Unfortunately it’s priced as though it’s made of it as well. There wasn’t an option to get one second hand because it had only just been released so we had to pay full whack. I think we spent over a thousand dollars on it including all the accessories and the lie flat and sit up seats etc.
It was worth every cent. It’s been going for 5 years and 2 kids and is still in great shape, we’ve never had a problem with it at all. My wife tells me it is one of the best things I have ever bought her, although we both use it obviously.
And at the end of the day a one off cost of $1,000 for us as a family is going to have basically zero impact on when we hit FIRE. Plugging the numbers into a compound interest calculator and using 7% annual return over 30 years I miss out on $8,000, which is about a month worth of returns on my target portfolio. I can live with delaying retirement one month for about 5 cumulative years of having a really good pram that works great for us.
Similarly you can spend a fair chunk of money on car seats. This is one of those things that I wouldn’t want to get second hand because you can’t see if they’ve been broken or not and safety is a huge priority for us and presumably everyone else.
Happily car seats don’t tend to cost that much, you can pick one up for a couple hundred bucks or less pretty easily. If you do that it tends to be one for a much shorter age range, say 0-2yrs whereas I think you can get ones which will take your kid from 0-8 but they cost a lot more. In any case per kid you’re probably looking at a thousand bucks total, and this could easily be a lot less.
Again it’s not going to make any appreciable different to us reaching FIRE. So as easy as it is to point at this sort of stuff as being ridiculously expensive and over priced etc, it’s really not going to make much of a difference to most people. Sure you don’t want to spend any more money than you have to, but you also want to make sure you’re getting something that works for you.
The other one off costs
There are also a bunch of one off costs for babies and young kids like cots, beds, mattresses, baby carriers etc. From what I’ve been told you want to buy a baby mattress new, but that’s only about a hundred bucks at Target, potentially cheaper elsewhere. We have an Ikea cot which cost about the same, you could easily get one second hand or likely for free just by asking around your friends who will probably be delighted to get it out of their house.
Some people do co-sleeping in which case you don’t need the cot and mattress although you may like to kid yourself that your baby will actually sleep in their own bed, maybe even through the night. It’s nice to pretend sometimes!
As kids get older you’ll need a proper bed for them, again you can probably pick this up second hand pretty cheap and a mattress can be easily had for a couple hundred bucks. So none of these things are really going to have much of an impact so long as you’re a decent saver already.
The big costs you see
When you don’t have kids it can be great to live in a studio flat or one bedroom apartment in the inner city close to all the bars and restaurants and all the rest of it. You can stay in your local area and have plenty to keep you entertained, there is probably a supermarket nearby and plenty of public transport so you may not need a car either.
Once you have kids, it’s likely going to be a different story as your priorities change. It may be that you’re happy renting with kids, but lots of people tend to prioritise stability and security when they have kids and that means owning your own home in most cases. I’m not saying everyone will want this, but a lot of people will.
So now that you have kids you almost certainly want a second bedroom and if you’re planning on having more kids maybe a third or fourth etc. Obviously kids can share bedrooms for a while at least but sooner or later they will probably want their own space, as will you.
You’ll also be wanting parks with playgrounds nearby and somewhere you can easily take your kids for a walk or kick a football around, ideally in a good school district which can add a couple hundred thousand dollars to the cost all by itself if you’re in Sydney or Melbourne. And if you want to live somewhere cheaper but send the kids to a good private school, well that can cost anywhere from the low thousands to multiple tens of thousands per year.
Similarly if you didn’t have a car before, you will very likely want one now. I’ve mentioned before that we drive a base model Corolla which works just fine for us so far, but you’re still probably looking at $20k plus if you buy one new, mid teens if you want one used. If you want an SUV or a luxury model car, be prepared to fork out a lot more.
In the same vein if you were previously going on lots of holidays and plan to keep doing so, well you now have at least one more plane ticket to buy, might need a bigger hotel room etc. As I talked about in this post about big ticket items, that all comes at a real cost. We bought land and built a house, so I can say that we spent roughly $100,000 more on that than we would have otherwise.
The ongoing costs
There are also a bunch of ongoing costs for kids as well. They need to be fed, they need clothes and shoes, they need medicine, and a bunch of other stuff that costs money. I wrote here about a bunch of things that we do to keep costs down, but the reality is that you still have to fork over a decent chunk of change.
On top of all that contrary to what you might have been told public school is not free, there are a bunch of things that you have to chip in for here as well. We’re not at the stage that we’re forking out a fortune in extra utility bills etc but we certainly use the washing machine a lot more than we would if we didn’t have kids, there are extra lights and tvs etc on so there are extra costs there as well.
There are also a bunch of extra items that you don’t really need to spend, but probably will. For us this includes stuff like swimming lessons, some sports like AusKick (AFL) and Junior Blasters (cricket), occasionally taking them to a theme park or zoo etc. They also get birthday and Christmas presents, and if they get invited to other kids parties they take a store bought gift with them.
The above is about what I think our 5yo costs us at the moment based on our spending, our 2yo is probably about two thirds of that due mostly to her not eating as much and not getting swimming lessons yet, as well as not being in school or doing sports.
I’ve left the holiday line blank because this is hugely variable. Last year we did a trip to the UK and it probably cost us about $3,000 extra between the two of them, next time it will be another couple thousand dollars more because the youngest one will need her own seat rather being on someone’s lap for the flights.
So our spending for our eldest is about two thirds of the costs quoted in this article for a 6yo girl, I would assume that apart from a boy maybe eating a bit more the costs should be fairly similar. The main difference compared to our costs seem to be education and transport.
Also, it was somewhat shocking to me just how expensive swimming lessons are! This is actually at our local council aquatic centre and is the cheapest in town. We do get to use the pool whenever we want, but that only tends to be once or twice a week at most. At least the lessons will hopefully only be for a few years for each child, although after that we may be forking out for something else instead.
The hidden cost of kids
The biggest cost is often actually one that doesn’t show up as an expense, the opportunity cost of one parent giving up paid employment entirely for a while or doing part time hours (I’ve used the phrase giving up paid employment here because looking after kids and a house is definitely work!).
If we say that you’re giving up a full time paid job that’s at minimum wage of roughly $20 an hour for 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, then that’s $38,400 a year ($33,605 after tax and medicare levy) that the family is giving up for however long this goes on for. If you’d otherwise be earning more than that, then the opportunity cost each year is even higher. On top of that there is the hit to your career and future earnings, because those are definitely going to be impacted as well.
If you’ve got two kids that are separated by two or three years and you as a family want a parent at home until they go to school, well that’s 7 or 8 years of missing out on that money which works out as around $250k based on a full time minimum wage job. I’m pretty hopeful that my wife would be earning more than minimum wage as well so for us it’s even more than that. On the plus side, she gets to spend more time with the kids although that probably feels like a mixed blessing some of the time!
Alternatively if both parents want to keep working then there will likely be childcare costs for the first 4 or 5 years and then before and after school care, as well as missing out on spending time with their kids. Because we haven’t gone down this route I don’t know exactly how much it costs, I do hear plenty of stories about it being $100 a day minimum around where I live and it’s a lot more in capital cities. There are subsidies available for this, but you can pretty easily be spending tens of thousands each year on childcare while they’re young and then once they’re old enough before and after school care.
You may be lucky enough to have grandparents or other family nearby that are happy to help out with this if they live nearby, but that won’t apply to everyone and it’s unlikely to reduce the cost entirely.
The costs that are yet to come
At the moment our kids are still young and fairly inexpensive. Between the two of them they tend to eat roughly what a grown adult eats, but from what I’ve been told that will change fairly dramatically as they get older. They’ll need new clothes more frequently, more shoes, potentially play more sports, go on more school excursions, you get the idea.
Education could be another factor. There is a public high school that will be built in the next few years quite close by, and assuming that it’s decent our kids will likely be going there. But if it’s not, then we’ll have to look into private schools which can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands.
There will be extra curricular stuff as well. Given my wife and I are both horrible at music it seems unlikely that our kids will be doing extra lessons there, but there are plenty of other areas like sport or extra educational activities that we’d be considering. I know a few parents who have kids who are in elite sports programs (as in regional or state teams) and the costs here can very quickly add up, likewise if extra education is needed or wanted then that’ll be an extra expense.
Government and other assistance
I know that depending on your circumstances that there can be government assistance in the form of Family Tax Benefit, childcare subsidy and possibly other programs as well. We don’t get any of these which is fine, we don’t need them and they are presumably meant to be for those who do. If you’re not sure if you should be getting any of these then Centrelink does have this payment finder.
We did get the one day a week Kinder program for 3yos and 3 days a week Kinder program for 4yos, although these both also came with costs of roughly $1,500 a year so it actually cost us money, again this is fine, just a reminder that it isn’t actually free.
Depending on your employer you may also be able to get parental leave for a while, and there is a minimum payment which they have to make so long as you’ve met some requirements. Some employers may also have some continuing support with subsidised childcare and the like. None of this was applicable to our situation but at least some of it will likely be available for others.
So what’s the bottom line?
For us the biggest actual one off cost so far has been the bigger house and land that we purchased because we wanted our kids to be able to have plenty of space inside and outside the house. That cost about a hundred thousand dollars more than we would have paid if it were just the two of us. All the other stuff like a pram, car seats, cots/beds, mattresses and all the rest of it have been maybe $5,000 total, which is tiny by comparison.
The opportunity cost has been bigger than this though. When we had our first child when we were in Hong Kong my wife wasn’t working much anyway as there just weren’t that many jobs she could do and my wage easily supported both of us so she was doing some very casual part time work and so not doing that work afterwards didn’t impact us much.
In Australia though she probably would have been earning at least $40,000 a year after tax, so we’ve foregone almost $200,000 on an after tax basis there. Which as I’m sure you can imagine has a pretty big impact on when we will hit FIRE, particularly given we’ve got another few years or her not being in paid employment at all and then likely only working part time after that. So I would guess we’ll be looking at forgone earnings of at least $500,000 by the time all is said and done, and it could quite easily be a lot more.
The actual ongoing costs of the kids so far haven’t been too bad. Between the two of them it’s about $8,000 a year at the moment, although we would anticipate that this will go up a fair bit over time as they start eating more and getting into more extra curricular activities. I get that this is spending that isn’t a necessity, but do I really want my kids to miss out on a bunch of fun stuff so that I can retire a year or two earlier? No, no I do not.
So far the total costs look something like this. You can see that by far the biggest cost has been the earnings that we’ve missed out on because my wife has been at home looking after the kids and doing the household stuff (yes I do some of it because I think it’s important that we share the jobs and to role model stuff for the kids, but the reality is that she is at home a lot more than I am and does more of it). Buying a bigger house and land is next, and the actual costs of feeding and clothing and all the other one off stuff for the kids is a tiny proportion of the actual cost.
All up I’m hopeful that we can keep the ongoing costs to somewhere between $125k and $150k per child from birth through to age 18, although if private school is necessary then that will push up the costs a fair bit. This is less than half of what this article suggests, so although it sounds like a lot of money it’s actually fairly frugal by comparison.
To put it in perspective, it’s basically spending about 7 or 8 grand a year on each child. There are plenty of people out there who spend more than that on food alone, let alone the rest of their living expenses.
As I said earlier travel costs are on top of this, and this can increase the costs quite a lot! Travel is a huge part of the reason we’re pursuing HIFIRE, and we want to be taking the kids on plenty of holidays while they’re growing up.
That’s obviously discretionary spending to a large extent, but we do have close family living overseas who we want to see every couple of years or so, and it’s not fair to expect them to always be the ones travelling. I would guess that we’ll be looking at about $50k per kid in travel costs by the time they turn 18. That’s about 3 grand a year, which doesn’t sound wrong based on the cost of international travel. It may be less than that which would be great, but could also be a fair bit more.
So all up for the two kids we’re looking at about a million dollars from birth to age 18. About half of that is the foregone wages from not working, which is by far the biggest impact. The actual cost of the kids is about another 30%, then travel is 10%, another 10% for the bigger house and land. And then right at the end is less than 1% for the one off stuff like prams and baby seats and cots etc.
How could we spend less?
Obviously there are other things we could be doing instead to keep the cost down. The biggest expense is the wages that aren’t being earned because my wife is looking after the kids and the household stuff. We could have chosen to have her work and instead pay for childcare and after school care etc.
If we did though then she wouldn’t get to spend as much time with the kids (which she tells me would be welcome some of the time!) and there would be a lot more house work and shopping that would need to be done after work or on weekends for both of us, we’d potentially eat out more often as it’d be more of a hassle cooking meals each night, as well as a bunch of other tradeoffs.
So having her stay at home was our preferred method, and thankfully we’re in the financial position where we can afford to do it that way. Other people make different choices, or they’re unfortunately not in a position to make a choice, they need both partners working or if they’re a single parent have to do it this way.
We could have also gone with a smaller house and less of a backyard. I shared a bedroom with my brother for part of our childhood and we both managed fine. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly doable, and we could have saved a lot of money by having a smaller house. Again we chose not to because we wanted a bigger house and a decent sized backyard for them to be able to run around in and we can afford it.
We don’t have to travel, although it’d be a bit rough expecting family to travel overseas to see us every year or two and then not reciprocating. Still, that would save a fair amount of money.
It’s pretty hard to say how things will work out with the actual costs of raising the kids. I know roughly what we’ve spent so far, but it’s pretty difficult to know what we’ll be spending in future as they get older. They’re likely to be eating a fair bit more food, as they grow they’ll need new clothes and shoes, they’ll presumably be playing sport and doing other extra curricular stuff which will all cost money.
$150k per kid from 0 to 18 seems like it’s a lot less than what it costs most people, but then we already live a fair bit more cheaply than most others so maybe it’s about right.
At the end of the day we’re happy with the choices that we’ve made so far, but there has certainly been some room to have spent less money than what we have, or to have had more money coming in through both of us being in paid employment. Obviously it has an impact on when we will hit our FIRE number, but I’d rather take a little bit longer to get there than to make different tradeoffs along the way.
Have you got kids or are thinking about having them? How do you think it will impact on your FIRE journey?
Really interesting post. Costs do inevitably go up considerably (eg a bigger car / car boot to fit a pram), but you are managing costs very well (and better than I admit we did).
A couple of hopefully helpful general suggestions:
Re holidays, we found our kids (now 16 and 18) loved camping: a great family holiday at reduced cost.
Re schooling: as immigrants to AUS from the UK (where only 7% of children attend private schools), we are staggered at the number of “normal” parents that send their kids to private schools. I can’t help but think that AUS private schools are another consumerist trap (with all sorts of ways at working on parental guilt and /or aspiration). AUS public schools are generally fantastic. They really are (I am surprised at the number of parents that struggle with this idea!). And if kids need to get a bus or train to high school – or ride a bike to a bus stop if it’s not near by, or to the school itself – to go to a better one, so be it.
Best of luck!
Thanks for the suggestions! We’ll have to see how we go with camping, and I will likely need to convince my wife of it as well! We did do some camping when it was just the two of us, it’s fair to say that when there was a choice between a tent and a room with a bed the latter won out pretty convincingly!
We’ll see how it goes with the schools. We’re certainly hopeful that the local public school is decent, and if that is the case then we’ll very likely be doing that. But if for whatever reason we need to go private then that is something else we’ll be forking out for.
Totally agree with the reply from Ian W around Australian Public Schools.
I’m from Ireland and have also lived in France where the vast majority of the population attends or has attended public schools. Australian public schools are excellent. We pay for them
Via our taxes; the least we can do is support them. Both my kids are in
Public schools now. My daughter attended both Independent /Catholic
Schools and public schools. She’s in Yr 11 now and very happy at the local high school.
Private schools have a place no doubt, but don’t be suckered into thinking private is better than
Public. It’s not the case at all. No need to keep up with the Jones’s…
My wife and I both went to public schools so we don’t have any particular issue with them. But there is definitely a place for private schools as well, and if that’s what’s going to make sense for the kids then that’s what we’ll be doing.
Great post thanks, it’s really good to hear from a FIRE community member with children. As a mum of a 12-yo I’ve also found there are many unexpected costs that pop up frequently – school excursions, extra activities and photos, informal hobbies, fund-raising events, unanticipated dental work, etc. By far though the lost earnings have been the big one for me. Good for would-be parents to go into this with these in mind..!
Glad you enjoyed it Kylie! If you want to read a female blogger with kids https://www.afamilyonfire.com/ is a great one to follow, I really enjoy her posts. We’ll have to see how we go with all the unexpected costs, it’s hard to know what we’ll have to fork out for in future!
Great post thank you for this interesting information.
I’d love to know more about the costs associated with public vs private hospital for birth etc if you could shed some light on that it would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Kate, good to hear it was useful!
I can’t help on the public vs private issue sorry. I was happy for us to go private but my wife wanted to go public for both kids so that’s our only experience. I would say that from my perspective at least public was fine, but don’t expect any extra stuff. We got everything we needed and they were friendly and professional, but you’re a patient not a guest if that makes sense?
As always, a great post AussieHiFire
Thanks Baz!
I had to laugh.
Speaking as a parent who has raised 4 boys by myself for over 20 years…. teenagers are FAR more expensive than preschoolers!
I second the public vs private school opinions above. I work at a highly-regarded public school and my boys all had a comparable education at a tiny cost compared to their privately-educated friends.
I had a rule – each child had swimming lessons when they were little and then could have only ONE extra-curricula activity at a time. It made them weigh what they really wanted to do.
It worked well. 🙂
It’d definitely hard to know just how much more it’s going to cost as the kids get older! I seem to recall a few articles from yourself about just how much teenage boys eat so that’s definitely going to be a factor!
We’re really just going to have to see how it goes with the public/private schooling issue. The secondary school that we’ll potentially be sending the kids to hasn’t even been built yet so it’s impossible to know what it’ll be like by the time they get there. If it’s the right way to go then we’ll do that, if it’s not then we’ll make other arrangements.
And yep, we’ll have to see how we go with the extra curricular stuff too!
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Wow not sure how I missed this – I actually went in depth on this stuff in my blog too, and I agree the biggest opportunity cost is the foregone earnings… which could really be limitless depending on the income of the parents (more so the mother historically speaking). Thanks for your insights as a parent!
Haha, we should have done a collaboration post!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Just found your site after listening to you on The Aussie Firebug podcast this week.
Finally a blogger who understands being a late starter FI’er (40+) and having kids which does make it a lot harder and slower to accomplish. Most other blogs are young single/couples on high incomes.
Thanks Paul! The demographic of FIRE bloggers definitely seems to skew younger and to be people on higher incomes, which makes sense as they’re the ones most likely to be in a position to have that extra money to save! As I wrote in this article, I think it’s great if you can find a blogger whose story you can identify with. https://aussiehifire.com/2019/05/20/folks-need-heroes/
I just heard your pod interview with Aussie firebug, I got a mention as it was me who commented on his fb page about how little they seemed to know about the cost of raising kids lol. Your article is much more realistic. I have three kids aged 12,10,6 and starting secondary school this year has been surprisingly expensive. I bought about 2/3 of the uniform second hand and most of the books second hand yet still spent $4000 on year 7 (public school). Other years will be cheaper as she’ll keep the same laptop and won’t need a whole new uniform every year. Add to that $400/yr for netball with a $65 uniform, $800 for music lessons, etc etc and it’s just an example of why I roll my eyes at these people who think they can retire on $40k/yr and raise kids.
Hi Bridey!
Thanks for being part of the inspiration for the article then! Thankfully our costs are a lot lower so far but we certainly anticipate that they will go up fairly dramatically as they start doing more extra curricular activities. And despite having “free” public schools in Australia there are still a lot of expenses that need to be paid for schooling. Presumably your living costs will come down quite a bit once the kids have finished school and are hopefully self supporting, but that might be a while yet and will definitely be quite some time for us!
Excellent post, thanks for taking the time to set it all out. I too heard your Aussie Firebug interview and then found your blog. I found the post on Estate Planning very useful too – something my wife and I have been putting off and need to address now that we have 2 kids 4 and 2. We have found that kids under 5 aren’t too expensive but I have no doubt this will change as they get older and have more interests etc. I think you make an excellent point about the tradeoffs – having a goal to FIRE or HIFIRE makes sense, but everyone needs to determine what standard of living works for them along the way – that is why your “Folks Need Heroes – but you shouldn’t follow them” blog post resonated with me too. In my view while it is great to have a plan, you need to be able to pivot when you have to and also make plans based on your own unique circumstances, not what others are doing.
Hi Richard!
Sounds like you’ve read through most of the back catalogue there, I’m glad you found it useful! As you say there’s no one size fits all approach, you need to figure out what works for you and if your situation changes be willing make course corrections.
Great article! My wife and I are planning on having one child during FIRE and this article has helped us put all the costs into perspective.
One question I have is how you go about planning for this cost. In other words, if you think the “costs” of each child will be $10,000 per annum for 18 years, how do you know when your FIRE number covers it? We’ll (hopefully) be retiring in our early thirties, so, unlike most other “fixed” costs that we can plan for, child costs will only really be around for 18-25 years whilst our child lives at home and relies on us completely financially – assuming we remain healthy, we’ll have another 30-40 odd years before we kick the bucket!
Any help you could provide would be appreciated!
Cheers
One thing I’ve learnt is you can’t plan for the cost of kids. You can make assumptions assuming your kid is neuro typical but think for a moment, what if your kid has additional needs? What if one parent can’t work because they have so many medical appointments? What if you plan to go back to work at 6mths but you fall in love with being at home and want to extend maternity leave? What if you enjoy having kids so much you decide to have another one (disclaimer I’m an only child and hated it). Just good for thought
Hi Bridget! I agree you can’t plan exactly for the cost of kids, but you should hopefully be able to come up with a minimum amount you’re likely to need to spend and budget for that at least.
But yes, there are a huge number of variables and you can very easily blow through that minimum amount for a wide range of reasons.
Hi AussieDon!
Good to hear the article has helped! Given the fairly wide time frame you’ve given there it’s difficult to give a precise answer, and it’s really going to depend on a lot of different variables like expected returns and the actual number of years.
I’d suggest playing around with the present value formula in excel, here’s an example. =PV(5%,18,-10000,0). In this case the 5% is the assumed expected real return (so taking inflation into account), 18 years of payments of $10,000 each year, ending up with 0. This should give you an answer of $116,895.87. If you change it to 25 years and keep everything else the same you need $156,220.80 extra.
Also bear in mind this assumes smooth returns which is not how markets work, and a constant rate of spending, which is not how kids work!
Hope that helps!
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Thanks for the article Aussie HIFIRE. This was my biggest takeaway “At the end of the day we’re happy with the choices that we’ve made so far”
That ‘sleep at night’ factor is key. Getting stuck in regrets and things we can’t change (i.e. the past) only causes pain (our own). Trust me, I’m sadly an expert at this!
I second your thoughts about doing what’s right for your own family and situation. That’s what gives me a ‘sleep at night’ factor that helps me look past only the financial/future lifestyle impact.
Not that money buys happiness, but some things are worth spending on to create memories e.g. family holidays (doesn’t have to be expensive), taking your kid out for a one-on-one date for icecream. Basically, thinking ‘will this benefit/strengthen my connection with my kid long-term?’ is helpful for me. In other words, it’s not so much about buying the ice-cream, but the time we spend together.
These are the things my daughter talks about regularly, ‘remember the time when we?’ She also often recalls fond memories that are (basically) free e.g. going to the beach.
Btw, I’m enjoying your other posts as well. Thanks for writing.
(commenting as the parent of one 5yo girl, btw)
Glad you enjoyed the article Nick! It’s about being comfortable with the decisions you make, even if they’re not the absolutely optimal one financially. You’ve got to be able to look at the tradeoffs that you’re making and find what works for yourself and your set of circumstances.
And like yourself I find that a lot of the stuff that I do with my kids is cheap or free. A day at the beach or at the park, an occasional trip to the cricket or footy, and just spending time with them in general is what hopefully brings us together as a family rather than buying them the latest and greatest toy/clothes/shoes etc.
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