Money Matters
lifeonthehill
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Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Parents! Is this accurate for you?
The baby center calculator lists these as the average prices for baby
The only numbers that are not from the site is the $372 for the Family Ins. which is what we will be paying when we have kids and the $560 which is the price of part time daycare on campus. Are these higher or lower than what you spend on your babies?
| Diapers | $72.00 |
| Wipes | $20.00 |
| Clothes | $50.00 |
| Toilitries | $44.00 |
| Doctors | $40.00 |
| RX | $40.00 |
| Formula | $105.00 |
| Food | $57.00 |
| Toys/Books | $36.00 |
Daycare |
$560.00 |
| Family Ins. | $372.00 |
The only numbers that are not from the site is the $372 for the Family Ins. which is what we will be paying when we have kids and the $560 which is the price of part time daycare on campus. Are these higher or lower than what you spend on your babies?
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
Re: Parents! Is this accurate for you?
Are these numbers based on per month? If so I would say they are high compared to what we spend monthly. I don't buy diapers every month because I stock up when they are on a really good sale and I have coupons, the same goes for the wipes. Also I breast feed and any food LO eats is the same as what we are having we make our own baby food by using a food processor. Toiletries seems high to me that is maybe what I spend in a year on my LO and the clothes seems high if this is a monthly average but I buy from consignment stores mostly since they grow out of clothes ridiculously fast.
Our 'baby' budget each month is around $250. Generally we don't spend that unless I am doing some serious stock up on something. A normal month is formula plus whatever else at around 150-200.
Sorry for the funky format- that's how it copied and pasted for some reason.
One blog I follow to find these good deals for kids is southernsavers.com. She has a section of her website for Diapers and Wipes. But if you don't want to do that, just watch the CVS ad. When they have their sale where you spend $30 and get $10 rewards that is the best time to buy diapers. Search coupons.com for diapers coupons and you can gets bags of diapers for $3-4 which is about 10 cents a diapers. I use huggies most of the time because they are cheaper after coupons than anything else, including store brand!
Diapers - $72 seems high to me (maybe close to that for the first 2 months, but diaper consumption slows down pretty quickly). Now, I probably spend about $40 on diapers a month, and I do get pampers swaddlers, so i'm not getting the cheaper or generic brands. I shop diapers.com, target, and CVS just depending on which one has the best price at the time, and if I get a really good price I stock up. (And my kid is a peeing machine so I change very often)
Wipes - $20 seems a little high. I shop Costco for wipes and the $20 box lasts about 2 months.
Clothes - $50, I probably spend this, or probably a lot more, but not out of necessity.
Toiletries - $44, seems very high. My baby is 7 months old and still on his first big bottle of baby shampoo. Diaper rash cream is also something that lasts super long (unless I guess if you had a baby that gets it a lot, mine doesn't, so i've been lucky here). I'd say sunscreen is a big part of this budget at the moment, but even then, it still all wouldn't add up to $44 a month.
Doctors - $40, we have only spent money on one sick visit, because of how our insurance works, it was around $130. But all well visits are free, so it is obviously good to have a little budget for sick visits, but that would depend on your insurance coverage as to how much makes sense.
RX - $40, we have never spent this much on RX items up to this point. Our pedi gave us iron supplements when I was breast feeding, but we moved onto formula before he even took any and formula has iron, so that is not needed if you plan to formula feed. Recently the pedi wrote an rx for flouride since our water doesn't have any, but we have some more research to do before giving him that as well. So, unless there were other unforseen issues, these two might be the rx's you could need, and it would depend on insurance as to how much it would cost you per month (probably closer to $10-$20 a month?).
Formula - $105, this really depends on your baby. I use Amazon subscribe & save as it is the cheapest for the organic formula we use...we go through 8+ cans a month, so this costs us closer to $200/month. My little guy eats a lot though.
Food - $57, this is not necessary the first 4-6 months until you start purees (or BLW). At that time, you can usually get 2-4 servings for about $1 (Target), or with BLW you would be offering things like bananas or slices/chunks of other foods, which I don't think would add up to this. So I would think this is high up until the baby is getting an actual full meal, separate from yours, which is not for a while.
Toys/Books - $36, we don't spend much at all on this right now. He got a ton of books from family/friends when he was born, we haven't even gotten through them all yet. We have bought a bouncer and plan on getting a walker soon, so those toys can add up, but can also be on a registry. Not bad to have this as a budget item so it is put aside each month for something bigger as the baby progresses and needs more stimulating and/or physical toys.
I think overall this budget is high, but that is not a bad thing because you never know if your baby will be a big eater, go through diaper rash cream like a boss, need a particular kind of diaper, have acid reflux or something else that would require an rx, etc. What I have learned is that a lot of this parenting thing is totally fly by the seat of your pants!
Daycare$560.00 - Ours is $450/month for one, $850/month for two.
Not sure where you live, but wanted to point out that this will greatly impact your child care costs. I live in HCOL area, and pay more then double that for one child in daycare (and that was one of the least expensive centers in my area). Ask some of your friends what they pay to make sure your estimate above is inline.
Daycare$560.00 - For full time, it averages $1,650/month for 2 kids. $560 for one is a steal!
Daycare
$560.00
I have put in red what I can remember for when my LO was younger. Prescriptions and Dr Visits all are based on what health insurance you have. We don't pay anything for well visits. We usually got one large box of diapers a month and that worked for us. MIL who does the babysitting would get a box also so that would be roughly $50 total between the two families. We bought soap and shampoo at BJ's and we do it once or twice a year.
Wipes $25 every 2 months (we use huggies and buy a huge box of 1000)
Toiletries...We bought a huge bottle of shampoo/body wash that has lasted6 months so far and were not even half done. We bathe DD 5 times/week. It was $20.
Formula $75/month. We use a can/week and we use the store brand.
The rest seemed pretty accurate to me.
We are just trying to look into the budgeting some more so we can plan what 1yr of baby expenses will run us to add to our E-Fund pre TTC.
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
Wipes $15/ every three months through Amazon Subscribe & Save (our daycare supplies wipes - we only have to take diapers)
Clothes - you actually can make that cheap or expensive buy buying used or buying expensive brands, new. My kids were only a couple months old when Christmas came so family can help in that area.
Toiletries - $6.99 for BabyGanics baby wash, $4 for diaper cream, $9.99 for BabyGanics eczema lotion - but it would be rare that we would need to purchase these every month.
Medical - varies based on insurance
Rx - varies based on insurance
OTC - $5 for a bottle of acetaminophen and/or ibuprofen (not recommended under the age of 6 months), occasional saline nose dropes (one bottle lasted us the first year)
Formula - varies based on brand
** I breastfed and pumped however even with new health care laws, my insurance would only cover a manual pump which would not work for me as after I returned to work I exclusively pumped. I paid about $250 but I used it for both kids. Pumping supplies and accessories vary.
Food - varies. We did a combo of organic baby food (Earth's Best, Plum Organics) and making our own. I used a food processor, nothing fancy.
Toys/books - that varies depending on your preferences
Daycare - varies depending on center vs in-home and COL
Wipes I pay around $15 for a huge box that lasts us months. This will last longer as your baby gets older too.
Clothes can vary.. it depends on what you want to spend really. Again if you are having a shower you will get a ton to probably last through the NB size. People love buying clothes. They grow so fast in the first year, especially first few months I always tell people to keep tags on some things until they are ready to wear it. My son never fit into NB and I had already took tags off and washed everything and couldn't use any of it. This number changes as they get older and change sizes. My daughter has been in 2T since she was 11 months and she is now 18 months, so I haven't had to buy much in the past 6 months and she probably won't be in 3T for at least 6 more months.
Toiletries seems stupid. I have probably spent around $50 for a year of baby wash, lotion, diaper cream, tylenol, gripe water..
Formula is expensive. I used Kirkland from Costco and it was almost half the price of Similac, but we still spent quite a bit. I can't remember now.
Food. Doesn't have to be that expensive if you make your own. We didn't start our daughter on solids until 7 months and probably only spent $15 more than our normal grocery bill with the added produce. Puree your own or do baby led weaning. If you are buying jars of food then it's probably a lot more.
Doctors. Well checks are all completely covered for us. I guess it depends on any emergencies. and I think I've only had to get 1 prescription for either kid in the last year.. so that number is way high.
Toys/Books. That also depends on what you want to spend. We don't really buy any toys outside of birthdays and Christmas.. maybe Easter. I have probably spent $100 total on books over 4 years. Babies really don't need much.
We don't pay for daycare, but your # seems low-average and our insurance I think is a similar cost, but it was switched to family when we were married so it hasn't changed since having kids.
Babies can be expensive, but it's also just easy to spend way more than you need to. It's good to have all of these things budgeted out and it will probably take you a couple months to find your own numbers.
If you rarely buy new clothing and toys you will save a lot there. Go to garage sales and/or consignment stores like Once Upon a Child for GREAT kids items. Aside from gifts they get, all our 3 kids clothes come from Once Upon a Child. Last trip there, I spent $200 and got over 40 items...including a Columbia coat. They also have a program that for every $10 you spend you get a stamp and when you collect 20 stamps you get 15% off your purchase. They also run sales and have a grandparents day when grandparents who shop get a discount.
They also sell toys, books, DVDs, strollers, bouncers, saucers, potty seats, and basically other hard items that are non fabric.
When our DS was less than 1, I bought him a $150 Fisher Price bouncer for $50.