Maine Nesties
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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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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Baby related monthly expenses
Since it feels like everyone here has kids, I figured this would be a good place to ask.
How much did your monthly out of pocket expenses increase once you had your first child? DH says that it's basically an extra mortgage payment a month. I doubt that it's quite that much, but I'm curious.
Re: Baby related monthly expenses
I guess it depends on how much your mortgage is! Just his childcare is more than my mortgage...which is dirt cheap.
Abe expenses per month (off the top of my head):
Daycare - $600
Clothes - $20-30 (I expect this to go down at some point...he is growing very quickly)
Oil - an extra $50 or so a month to keep the heat above the normal 55*
Dipes for school - $20-30 (cloth at home)
Other stuff like soap, toys, etc. - $5-100! I give it such range because I just bought him an $80 jumperoo because I am a marshmallow.
I can't think of much else.
Depends on if you're paying for daycare. That alone can be a mortgage payment.
Medical insurance is another big expense for a lot of people. Ours didn't change because we were already paying for family coverage through DH's job (they don't offer a self/spouse option, it's either self or family coverage). If your insurance charges copays for well-baby visits, that can add up quickly in the first few months.
When DD was a newborn, we spent about $200/month on formula and diapers. I'm guessing we averaged another $200 to $250 per month on other stuff over the first year -- clothes, toys, baby gear, photos, baptism and first birthday parties, Christmas and birthday presents. It could be done cheaper; this is just what I personally spent.
Well I think it mostly depends on whether or not you're doing daycare and how much your daycare is. That alone is about half a mortgage payment for us, but Nolan didn't start daycare until 4 months. For the first 3 months, I exclusively breastfed so we really only needed to buy diapers and wipes. We got enough clothes and other things from baby showers and hand-me-downs. I buy a big box of dipes off Amazon about every 1 1/2 - 2 months at about $28 a box.
Then I started supplementing with formula. I had to buy a new can every 2 weeks at first. We used to buy Similac Soy until the recall and now we buy the Target brand per reccommendation of our pedi. Now I buy a new can once a week for $14. At 5 months we started on cereal, 6 months purees. I bought a lot of purees at first, and spent about $5/week on purees that he ate. Then I started making my own - for about $1 a bag of frozen veggies I could make about 2-3 weeks worth of purees. Every few weeks I buy some puffs or other little snacks. We've had the same box of Cheerios for 2 months! Now he eats a lot of what we eat but I don't feel like I'm buying a lot of EXTRA food.
I think the biggest part was the medical bills. My coverage is 80/20 so bills can still be kind of substantial. Especially since we were at the dr's about once a week the first month, and then about every 2 months after that. And unexpected xrays!
So I can't say I've noticed a HUGE pinch on the wallet(besides the daycare), but kids definitely cost money!
Ideally, we wouldn't be doing the childcare thing for the first four months and after that it would go to DC while I'm teaching. Given that we built our house, live in Cumberland county, etc. our mortgage is a good chunk of change compared to a lot of you ladies from the looks of it. I'd also plan to BF and make food when possible.
Obviously I ask since I've started to wage a full fledged war against his "anti-baby" mentality.
I budget $200 a month for baby expenses - things like diapers (we do mostly cloth, so we hardly spend anything on diapers), toys, safety items, clothes, food etc. A huge chunk of this is now going toward Gymboree, which is $72 a month. In the beginning, a huge chunk went towards breastfeeding (we had to hire a lactation consultant and rent a hospital grade pump and a scale).ETA: I also took my fall trip to Maine out of this budget, which cost $300.
It helps that MIL buys almost all of DD's clothes. And we bought a ton of stuff up-front, before quit my job (like cloth diapers, furniture, car seats, etc.)
However, our electric bill went up by about $25-$50 a month due to me being home most of the time now. And DH got life insurance, which is another $80 a month. And health insurance went up by about $100 a month. Plus, I don't bother to separate things I buy her at the grocery store out of the grocer budget - that might be another $25/month.
So the total is around $450/month.
Once Lillian starts nursery school or MDO, the costs will go up even more, but I'm not sure when that will be or how much it will cost.
I'm terrible at calculating actual costs. But I will say this. In the beginning he cost us nothing. I used CD's, EBF, and was home. We were very blessed to get a ridiculous amount of stuff for our shower and as hammy-downs. Most of our most NEEDED things were hammydowns too.
Once he started formula, we did notice that he cost us a bit more. We shopped at BJ's and got the huge containers of formula for $33, but still we went through 1 every two weeks or so (if I remember correctly).
We haven't had to buy clothes at all. Every once in a while I do, just cause I want to pick what my kid wears
hehee. We have bought no toys, because between the holidays, his birthday, baptism, he gets so many toys its crazy. Hammydowns as well.
Now that hes a full fledge human food eater, I feel like our groceries have gone up. Mostly cause I like to always have fresh fruits and veggies in the house to feed him. So once a week I have to go pump up our fruit supply. We still do CD's and I pay about $40 a month on overnight 'sposies.
Daycare, he's in for 2 days a week and we are sooo lucky that its only $5 an hour. And we LOVE her.
But, that said, even if he was in DC full time, the cost of him is nothing even remotely close to our mortgage or even half. I too think my mortgage must be quite heftier than others
I think its all about finding that perfect DC.
COME ONNNNNNN ALAN!!!! I can let him play with Luke when he's in a good mood
He can come over and see my Alan playing and laughing with Caroline and see how much fun it is :P In 5 years, most of us will be done and you can count on hand me downs from us too :P
His cousin's wife is having a kid at the beginning of May, so they are going to work on pushing him as well. We made some deals when we first got married of things that we wanted to accomplish before having a kiddo.
1) Build Garage & Mudroom - Did that in 2010
2) Finish my M.Ed. - Did that in Nov. 2010
3) Pave driveway - Did that in Fall 2010
4) Finish buying grown up furniture - Did that in 2010
5) Adjust work load to accomodate kiddo - Will have all "extras" from school off my shoulders after this year
6) Take a real vacation - We're going to Puerto Rico next month. And I have another trip that I'm paying on in secret to surprise him with for Christmas vacation.
The piece to accomplish is to fit in to my wedding dress again so I can be as healthy as I can be before having a kiddo. I'm going to the gym every day before we go to PR next month and I've been a gym devote since the beginning of January. So..... I'm aiming to be hot for PR and even hotter for this summer so I can convince him to get me KO'ed.
YAY Susie.... I LOVEEEEE that you are posting this question!!
So I feel like he's actually been pretty cheap so far (besides the weekly expense of daycare). Like others we were blessed with friends and family sharing big stuff (boppy/ swing/ bouncers/ clothes, etc), we've just recently bought him our first couple of toys more because we wanted to and had fun at BRU picking them out with him (but was with merch. credit from the shower, so not even a real expense now that I think of it). Like Erin said, we used CDs, EBF (which both have a significant upfront cost, breastmilk is free, but pumps, bottles, storage bags aren't).
Personally I see the expense of kids more when they start doing activities, sports, ballet and need the equipment for that. Oh, and maybe college. That's probably expensive
Ummmm sooooo funny!!
Woohoo! Here's wishing for a successful campaign. ;-) I think it's amazing the influence friends' and family members' pregnancies can have, especially as you come near to meeting pre-pregnancy goals. In the last few months, MH's opinion has been changing rapidly. I think a big part of it is due to the fact that quite a few of our friends have announced they are having kids this spring or summer. MH is getting much more comfortable with the idea of pulling the trigger next fall or winter. I hope the same thing happens in your house!
I'm glad that I can amuse you. ;-)
My insurance is pretty good given that we use my teaching benefits for that. So I know that we'll be better off than some in that regard.
Now my DH is saying that he's not sure our septic would be able to handle doing a load of diapers every day. That's my next post. LOL!