My sources tell me that school is back in session. I still remember having to go school shopping every August when I was a kid, which included stationery, clothes, shoes, and stuff like calculators. Somehow, I’ve never thought about how much this stuff costs!
I don’t have any kids, and my wife and I have decided not to move forward on that until we move into a house. For now, our “kids” are two birds and my fleet of vehicles. Anyway, Matt wrote a Morning Dump about the car parts that’ll get more expensive. He finished by asking you what you read on the Internet and where you shop for cars.
Reader Goof‘s answer was universal:
What do you read on the Internet?
Words.
Where do you shop for cars?
Earth.
Matt Sexton, however, hit hard:
Dude, last week we spent $300 on back-to-school supplies, $400 on back-to-school clothes because my daughter has grown out of all her old fall wardrobe, and the next day my wife spent $250 on a partial grocery trip for just the three of us. What on earth makes you think I’m shopping for a car anytime soon.
Wait, you spent $700 to prep just one kid for school? If you can take one report from LendingTree to be legitimate, it apparently costs something like $297,674 to raise a kid to 18 years of age. I don’t even think the collective value of all of my cars is a third of that! I can see why some folks are skipping the whole kid thing.
Jason wrote a Cold Start asking readers to figure out what the heck this piece is on an antique Aston Martin. It seems we don’t have a definitive answer yet, but the wrong ones are great. Sid Bridge:
It was pretty normal practice to reach outside and crack open a cold one on your roof-mounted bottle-opener back then. A stout lager made you a more careful driver.
Highland Green Miata:
It’s a bracket for an arm that holds out a jar of grey poupon for a car passing the other direction.
Jason also wrote about the most interesting overpriced new car at Monterey. Paul E makes me laugh:
So, they basically are doing what YouTube’s “Superfast Matt” did a few years back, fitting a Tesla drivetrain to a Jaguar Mk. IX, but with a bespoke body designed by ChatGPT.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Topshot: Lion Electric/Autopian
We never had kids as we both felt that we had to be more mature than the kids we were going to have .
We never really ever matured so now I’m 68 still mowing my own lawn and yelling at the clouds .
The clouds don’t care.
Im sure we missed out on a lot of things and still are but the way things are going in this country I feel sorry for the children growing up now in what I consider a dysfunctional country .
For those of you with kids , I honestly feel bad for them for the mess we are leaving them to clean up .
We do donate a couple new laptops and enough money to buy supplies each year now to a teacher friend to discreetly give two children of her choosing in her classroom that really need them with parent(s) that can’t afford them .
Your collection of cars will not be eligible to have durable power of attorney, medical power of attorney or execute your will or trust. They may bring you comfort until you wreck one and the state decides you’re no longer competent to drive.
After my mom stepped on the wrong pedal and totaled her car (but fortunately didn’t hurt anyone), my brother and I are now in the process of moving her from a farm she has lived on for 53 years to assisted living. There’s no way she could have navigated this on her own and I can’t imagine how badly this chapter of her life would have played out without her two kids.
I didn’t track the costs of raising my son as he grew up. He got scholarships and sweetheart financial aid packages through college and law school. I don’t think we spent ~$300K getting him to where he is now, making more money than either of us did in our careers.
We’ve already had the talk about what happens when I pass, what he’ll get and what he will have to do. Getting that discussed and behind us was pretty liberating. When we first started, he was like “what did you get diagnosed with” and I told him, that I am just trying to make cleaning up after the fact as easy as possible and there’s nothing bad imminent. The time to have talks like that are while you’re still coherent.
Sadly, I’m not presently capable of creating a tiny human, so when it comes time, my wife and I will attempt to either have a kid through a surrogate or just adopt. But now is definitely the wrong time, given our microscopic apartment. One day! We’re still pretty young. 🙂
Anyway:
I have this visual of a Smart signing forms, and now I can’t stop laughing.
My younger brother has my durable POA, as well as a medical POA. He’s also a backup trustee for my revokable trust. I don’t necessarily think it’s fair to put the responsibilities on someone just because they’re your child. I discussed it with my brother ahead of time and he consented to the responsibilities.
My brother is computer illiterate (but a great guy!) and my son is a consenting attorney so, it wasn’t a hard decision. I have just done everything I can to make it as simple to deal with as possible, when that time comes.
It sounds like you’ve done it the right way. I was mainly just pointing out that there are alternatives if you don’t have children or if the children you have aren’t able/don’t want to do it.
Good point.
That IS a funny visual and I didn’t mean all that to come off as snarky or uncaring as it may have. Having someone, regardless of relationship, who can take care of all that kind of stuff is important. And having the paperwork done ahead of time is crucial.
Mercedes, when your (parenting) time comes, you will be amazing. Get cracking on that bigger apartment!
“Dude, last week we spent $300 on back-to-school supplies”
Which would 20% of that if schools just bought them direct from a wholesaler by the case instead of having every parent buy them at retail.
A 10 pack of pencils is $3 at my local store and $0.68 in bulk
I make pretty good money but don’t have kids, and I have no idea how anyone affords to have kids.
Yeah, kids are expensive. We’re lucky on the school supplies side since our district switched to the schools buying the supplies and the parents paying a share ($50-$60). Saves a bunch of time not having to deal with shopping.
Childcare is the real killer though (until you get to paying for college). After a few years of dealing with daycare and nannies, we went the au pair route. I estimate it ends up costing $550/week, which is a lot, but if you have multiple kids it ends up being cheaper than paying for daycare. Of course you have to have an extra bedroom, which many don’t have, and be cool with a 18-22 year old living with you, but it’s worked out well for us.
Ha, au pair for $550 a week. Daycare for 1 kid in the Boston area is that much. I am making an assumption because ~8 years ago it was about $425 each per week so I imagine it has gone up a bit.
Summer camps have gone way up too, some around me now up to $600/week. Even the “cheaper” ones around $400-$500 are not great since they might only cover 4 days per week and really only about 6 hours of the actual day.
I have 1 kid in Law School and another in college for Business. I can confirm that sending kids to school is expensive. If it were not for their scholarships it would be around $90,000 a year between them, and that’s before room and board. Luckily, they are good students and got 70% of Law school covered, and a bit over 50% of the business school. It’s still a lot though.
I think the going rate for private college tuition and fees is $90K, each.
One of mine (going into HS now) is thinking about the Naval Academy and the other (same grade) is seriously thinking about the UK. I wouldn’t mind a bit if that pans out.
Oxbridge, UCL, and Imperial can mix it up with the best we have, methinks.
My son and his law school classmate and now wife lucked out. He got the out-of-state part of his tuition wiped out and she got an academic full ride. And the cool thing about going to the University of Wisconsin Law School (and Marquette, as well) is that, upon graduation, you’re automatically a member of the Wisconsin bar and don’t have to take another test to go practice.
His mother and I bought five years of tuition in a 529 plan in Washington. He got his AA while in high school and ended up with his Batchelor’s degree in three years (it would’ve been two, but THE Ohio State University didn’t accept his credits. When he transferred back to the University of Washington, boom! The credits kicked in and he was done in two years. And the leftover 529 money covered almost all of his law school tuition.
That’s awesome.
My son is in an accelerated program, so it was a 3 year undergrad degree with guaranteed acceptance into the Law School if he kept his GPA high enough. He got his Poly Sci degree in 3 years and will graduate Law School in 3 years also (hopefully!). If so, he’ll be out of law school at age 24.
That’s really great to not have to pass the bar though. I’ve not heard of that before. That’s a huge deal!
I believe Wisconsin is the only state that does that. After five years, there are a lot of states that have reciprocity deal’s on bar admission, should you choose or need to practice elsewhere;.
They are happily practicing in Milwaukee and not in a big hurry to figure out what’s next.
Something interesting I learned through this journey is that Louisiana adheres to Napoleonic Code, rather than the Britishy UK Common Law as the other 49 states and territories do. So if you want to practice Law in Louisianan, you should probably to Tulane.
And, given your user name, do you have an MG Midget or a Toyota FJ Crusier?
It’s a 79 MGB. But I’m working to get rid of it. I bought an NC Miata last year and that’s my preference now. The MGB is just too much work to keep running well.
I guess I didn’t realize the Bs had three wipers too. I’m sure the Mazda is a lot less effort. Enjoy!
“Somehow, I’ve never thought about how much this stuff costs!”
You don’t have to.
When you have a youn’un you find yourself floating on the great river of hand me downs. Kids grow fast and so anything other people’s kids grow out of moves onto you. Is it new? No, so what? Kids don’t care. They might even prefer used since you won’t yell at them for wrecking it. Don’t know anyone with kids? No problem, thrift stores are full of kids stuff. Don’t have money? Charities are full of kids stuff. Don’t have room for kids stuff? Kids don’t actually need a lot of stuff. Thanks to the power of imagination they can effortlessly turn a brick or a rock into a racecar, a space ship or a submarine or all the above.
You probably need a new car seat but not much more.
Thanks, Mercedes.
To be clear: Those totals were estimates of what I’d spent, and doesn’t include what it actually cost to enroll my daughter. And yes I’m quite sure there are many here who can quote childcare expenses much higher than I have. So my comment wasn’t to diminish anyone else’s experience.
But raising a child is expensive. My daughter is nearly 12 now and many aspects have gotten simpler, which is nice. Our neighbors have four kids total, and three dogs and quite frankly I have no idea how anyone affords that.
Having said all of this, having my daughter in our lives undoubtedly made us better people and brings rewards I couldn’t possibly put a price on.
My mom hated when school time came around when I was growing up. By the time I was in like 9th grade I was already size 13 for shoes, and that alone was more difficult to find in our small town then most. I was also already wearing 2XL/3XL shirts, 38/40 waist pants….
I was definitely not cheap. My older sister was in comparison, I’d wager.
I had (still have!) the opposite problem with shoes…my feet have always been extremely narrow. As a small child, even laced-up sneakers weren’t tight enough to stay on my feet. Hand-me-downs or consignments didn’t work; my parents ended up taking me to a specialty store for shoes that fit great, but were heckin’ expensive. By the time I hit high school I was able to find some department store brands that fit, which was a relief because teenage-me was super embarrassed to go shoe shopping at Stride Rite.
The good news is that heel and toeing is probably much easier for you than those of us with clown shoes sized feet.
I drive a $3000 BMW. If I’d stayed single, there would be a brand new ZR1 in my garage.
Based on my friend’s experience, ex-wives are more expensive than children.
I have both.
Multiples of each? My best friend has two ex’s but only one kid at least.
About to marry #3 – third time is the charm?
Seriously. When I meet someone with three ex-wives, I want to ask, “Didn’t you figure out the first time that you’re not very good at this?”
I learned my lesson the first time. Getting out cost me everything I had and everything I’m ever going to get, and it was worth it.
Now we know where your username came from. /s
He’s my best friend and I love him like a brother, but when it comes to love he’s a serial dumbass going right back to our college years. I have hopes for #3 though.
Favorite quote from A Bridge Too Far:
Scene: in Eindhoven, when the soldiers were being greeted by the locals during liberation
Lt. Col. Vandeleur: “Have you ever been liberated before?”
Col. Stout: “I got divorced twice. Does that count?”
Uhhh, I spend more than that each week in daycare. $420/week for for the younger kid and $320/week for the older kid. I can’t wait for school to start fast enough (only 2 more weeks to go) so I can at least stop pushing my foot so dang hard on the the money-into-black-hole accelerator.
the only saving grace for that expense was come tax season it was a write off. Less so these days I hear.
Childcare is crazy. I have a friend who has one kid (said kid now in college), but when kid was daycare/preschool age, his wife’s ENTIRE salary went to daycare – and she was not in retail – good paying white collar corporate job. Literally every penny. But she had no interest in staying home with the kid and foregoing her career, so that was that. Mind boggling to me – and I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better 18 years on.
When I was a kid there was always a neighbor who made a few bucks “watching kids” (Mrs. Abernathy for me, I can still picture her face and hear her southern drawl 50 years later) – but I guess that gets you arrested for running an “unlicensed daycare” these days.
I really want to know where all that money is going. Somehow it costs an entire adults salary to have one child in day care, but anyone that works there is underpaid despite caring for multiple kids.
I can see it being an expensive proposition to provide daycare. Rent a building, multiple employees (even if the pay isn’t great, salary is only part of the cost of employees), licensing costs, and the insurance costs alone have to be ruinous. Imagine the liability if one of the little dumplings gets a scratch on them with the rampant Mommy Karen’s of today?
But as with all businesses, presumably somebody is making a profit – otherwise, why bother doing it?
One of the big expenses for daycare centers is being open for hours longer than what is acceptable for a shift for a full time employee. Parents need daycare for their work day + commute time typically. These lead to hours somewhere around 7am to 6pm for a lot of these places.
A lot of the costs are unfortunately a result of inflexible employers, and commuter culture. My wife’s now former employer is demanding everyone return to an office, even those who were remote before the pandemic. Well, a lot of these people have children and are over an hour away from an office, resulting in a serious childcare panic for a lot of these people. In those situations, it’s long hours at the expensive childcare center or bust.
No doubt. You need a LOT of staff to look after a bunch of kids. Especially the really young ones.
I feel like one of the biggest things we could do to help society would be to incentivize working from home. I really don’t see the point of making thousands of people go to some central location to just stare at a screen all day – and let’s face it, that is the vast majority of white collar jobs today. “Collaboration” is largely BS, especially in big companies where the people you are collaborating with can likely be in another state. Or another country.
My wife luckily managed to find a new job that’s hybrid with flexibility for dropping the kids off and picking them up from school. We have some support from grandparents that are about to retire, but outside of that, her being available is the only way to make that work. We don’t have bussing (small city) and after school programs are super expensive. Unfortunately letting your kids walk to and from school (like our city was designed to allow) is basically not allowed anymore.
The irony is that conservatives seem to HATE the premise of people working from home as if it’s the sort of thing that allows people to be lazy, despite the reality that it brings tons of employment opportunities to the rural areas that they tend to represent. Remote work democratizes the white collar job landscape and can revitalize downtrodden markets. We need more remote work, not less.
Also think there should be more opportunities for people to work part-time in professional fields. Our society, its full time or nothing for most better paying jobs. We were fortunate in that my wife was able to work part-time in the evenings after our 2nd was born so we could avoid full time daycare until they were old enough for school. She was going to quit, but she had a lot of ‘tribal’ knowledge for important operations at her company, so they worked a deal. Same pay but no more benefits/PTO.
25yrs later, she is still one of the few part-timers at her now large employer. She needs the flexibility now to deal with aging parents/uncle that wouldn’t be possible if she went back full time. She now is also WFH 3 of her 4 work days.
I very much agree. My company is very flexible with that, though you need to work 30hrs/wk to get company health insurance, which is the big killer. But assuming I am still there at Medicare age (sure hoping, and the time is getting scarily close), I can see “semi-retiring” and working for them part-time for a few years longer.
My wife is to not work more than 30hr/wk because they do not want to do benefits unless she went to full 40 8-5 M-F and no going back to part time. She asks every few yrs about this, since it would be nice to have employer insurance, which I don’t have at my current job. Balancing act of trying not to rock the boat too much. She is one of only maybe half a dozen part timers out of the hundreds they employ. She is a bit of a legacy employee from when the company was much smaller and family owned. Her hourly wage is much higher than any other part time job she could get.
This. 1000 times this. I’m a database guy. I work on systems running in colos in Ashburn VA, Phoenix AZ, Frankfurt, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Mumbai, &c. I have teammates in MA, MD, somewhere in Canada, Budapest, Australia, India… and before we were acquired by a larger company that had a little bit of sense, it was in the office every day.
OK boss you want me in the office? Well you get my kids too!
Oh you want to fire me for having kids? Well I have a shark of a lawyer for that.
So why don’t we talk about that WFH…
In my state, infants up to two (I think) require one caregiver per 4 infants, plus the day is typicallly 10 hours. Take the OP 420 a week x 4 / 50 hours and you get $33 an hour (assuming zero overhead). Figure 50% goes to overhead and yeah, the caregivers are getting minimum wage despite the ridiculous cost.
Yep, this is it.
There’s no practical or safe way to reduce the dependence on human labor for childcare. Therefore costs will rise over time relative to industries where productivity per labor hour can rise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect
Exactly. No one is really getting rich in the child care business (unless they are doing shady shit). It’s an expensive and difficult business to run. I cry at the price, but the cost for me is high because the cost for the business is high. Low child/teacher ratios mean high labor cost and a general scaling problem even if the teacher is getting paid poorly. Throw in food, insurance, and other overhead like having to have a commercial space typically in better neighborhoods that are pretty convenient and I bet rent is pretty high too.
Obviously, you can save money at a at home daycare, but best case is you probably get that number down to the mid-to-high 200s and then lose the flexibility a larger daycare center brings.
Ultimately, I think I would personally struggle to watch someone elses kid and feed them breakfast and lunch for only $420/week. My kids love it there and they take good care of my kids, they can have my money.
Just like assisted living.
Not talked about enough tbh
My mother is nowhere near that point yet, but with her at 77 I feel like I have a teenager a lot of the time. Just one with her own income. Mostly.
Yeah. You’re not wrong. My brother and I have been swapping weeks taking care of my mom and trying to get her moved and settled into assisted living. $7500/month! But it’s her money, not ours. She’d rather stay out on the farm she’s lived on for 53 years, but it’s just not safe for her to do so alone and she wrecked her car back in May.
I want to go like Elijah when I go.
The cost of liability insurance for a daycare must be astounding. I had the same thought when my kid was in daycare… it literally cost more than in-state tuition at the nearby state university (which is quite good), but daycare facilities don’t have highly-paid professors, laboratories, auditoriums, infrastructure, etc. etc.
My wife ran an unlicensed daycare for 10+ years, hanging it up just before the pandemic. It was sad how much of people’s income went towards this and she cut some of the parents excellent deals to try and help out.
We recently attended a high school graduation several states away of one of her kids and routinely see several others, so we got a decent return on our investment.
I love that you described ROI that way. That will make me smile all day. Absolutely the right way to live. (But still sad how much of people’s income goes to childcare. And people like your wife should be making much more, financially).
Thanks. She truly enjoyed it most days and while we would have liked to make more money, we just couldn’t reconcile that with the impact it would have had on some of the families. She was a bit choosy when it came to taking on new families, was brutally honest with them before they ever started and it worked out pretty well over the years. Only had to fire one family and it was one of the ones that absolutely shouldn’t have had problems paying us. She agonized even over that one because the kid was great.
That is wonderful! Both that she was willing to help, and that you got to see the results.
Appreciate that. The oldest ones are now starting families of their own and it’s kinda cool seeing it but also makes me feel REALLY old.
“When I was a kid there was always a neighbor who made a few bucks “watching kids” (Mrs. Abernathy for me, I can still picture her face and hear her southern drawl 50 years later) – but I guess that gets you arrested for running an “unlicensed daycare” these days.”
I used to work with a Vietnamese guy who told me that in his very tight knit community there were a pair of ladies that ran an under-the-table daycare. What the parents didn’t know is that as soon as the last kid was dropped off in the morning the two gambling addicts would turn on the TV and take off to the local gambling den, leaving the kids to fend for themselves until it was pickup time. This happened every day.
When the parents finally caught on they refused to go to the police because of cultural reasons (This was LONG before our current regime). I dunno if the daycare shut down or not.
I am sure that happens on occasion. 99.9% of the time, it’s going to be a sweet lady like Mrs. Abenathy who looks after the kids just fine. But that doesn’t make the news.
And paying the big bucks is no guarantee of quality either – at that very high priced daycare my buddy’s kid was in, said kid managed to open a door and lead an escape of 5-6 kids out into the parking lot for 15 minutes before anybody noticed they were gone. People got fired over that.
“But that doesn’t make the news.”
This didn’t make the news either, far from it. I asked why and I was told that going to the media would have obligated the police to become involved which was something these old school immigrants did not want. It would have also brought shame to the community, a big cultural no no. They kept their mouths shut but for the rumors which I assume were intended as hushed warnings.
Had I not known that one person I likely never would have never heard of it at all.
But I agree this is an exception, not the rule.
My youngest just ended daycare and will now be in UPre-K (a lot of NY schools now have free preschool for 4 year old through the elementary schools) and I am just ecstatic. I get that there are a lot of other expenses coming as my kids get older, but a lot of those are optional (other than clothes and food lol). The year both my kids were in daycare at the same time damn near killed us.
Yep, super excited for when my daughter starts 4yr old pre-k. Prior to child care we had a decent amount of disposable income, now not so much. Can’t wait until I have money to buy dumb stuff again.
*Faints*
There was a time when my ’11 BMW was two years old, and I also bought a brand-new Fiat 500 Abarth to go with it. One of my coworkers marveled at how I could afford two new cars at the same time. I gently reminded him (he having THREE daughters approaching college age) that my BMW cost ONE year of tuition at a private college, and my Fiat ONE year at public one. The look on his face was a bit priceless.
Kids are *expensive*.
One way to lower costs quite a bit is to spend the first two years at a junior college with a guaranteed transfer agreement to one’s university of choice.
Also go to a school outside the US. For example the university of Edinburgh is a very good school for engineering and is much cheaper than a comparable US school.
The problem with offshore schools is that with rare exceptions HR is never going to have heard of it, and if you can’t get past the gatekeepers, you aren’t even going to get interviewed. I have a friend who went to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and his very pretty diploma (it’s poster-sized) and five bucks has about bought him a cup of coffee. And don’t underestimate the cost of going to school “over there”, the total cost is a LOT more expensive than you may be lead to believe.
“I have a friend who went to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and his very pretty diploma (it’s poster-sized) and five bucks has about bought him a cup of coffee”
Join the club 🙁 Two decades ago it took me over a year to even land an interview with multiple sheepskins from universities in the same state! And that was for a STEM field! And I wasn’t the only one.
The problem of “HR never hearing of it” isn’t limited to offshore schools. Unless you went to an ivy League or whatever school someone in the hiring chain also went to you’re no better off than someone from abroad. Like it or not having the *right* nationality helps a lot too. That kind of gate keeping is all the proof anyone should need that any cry of “labor shortage” in that field is bullshit.
As for costs I have extended family who went to Edinburgh and I was told it was a LOT cheaper than paying out of state tuition at an equivalent US university. Cost of living was also WAY cheaper. And those tuition costs drop after a while as residency becomes established. I can’t speak for the job prospects yet though.
Meh – I have a law degree, graduated into the ’90s recession and couldn’t buy a legal job in Maine. Which is how I fell into IT. Thank God. Though it would have been much easier had I stayed in Chicagoland, but I hated it out there. Went to school there because they gave me lots of money as a minority student. DEI for the win!
Getting that first job usually sucks – and is one of the reasons an Ivy League education can actually be worth the money if you can get in. Not for the education, but for the “good ol’ boys” network that comes with it.
It cost my friend every bit as much to go to St. A. back then as an equivalent private school in the US, and far more than in-state tuition at U. Maine. It’s probably relatively cheaper now – but it won’t be cheap. I don’t disagree with going to community college first – but in my state the only real savings there is living at home while you do it – and you can do that and go to university too (I did one year that way, and it sucked commuting). Tuition is the same either way. YMMV in different states, of course.
Absolutely YMMV. Edinburgh is cheap by coastal CA standards, maybe not so cheap by Maine standards.
Maine isn’t cheap by Maine standards. 🙂 SW FL is cheap.
“$297,674 to raise a kid to 18” and then there’s college. Our last of 3 graduated uni in May and is “off the family payroll” with a real job. It’s like getting a huge raise.
When we were done with college and move out of our hometown, my parents since then have been living the “rich” life, traveling everywhere, renovating the kitchen and bathrooms, new furniture, new car.
That’s why all them old guys suddenly find they can afford a Corvette.
Mine are 10 and 12, so I’m deep in the thick of it myself.
And it doesn’t end after the kid graduates from college. Those student loans? Some of then intrude into the credit scores of the parents and seem to last forever.
We’ve been remarkably fortunate, although in sure it will get worse as they get older. For our elementary age kid it’s probably less than $100 for school supplies per year so far. As for clothes, we generally adhere to “buy them a little big.” So we have shirts that are initially a bit like a tent, and pants that need a belt and the ankles may need rolled up initially but it means we buy stuff about once or twice a year rather than every couple months. It also helps a favorite shirt last longer rather than dealing with the complaints.
Yeah, that back-to-school supply cost in the article seems high. For my 2nd grade daughter, completing her classroom supply list probably cost less than $50. For my 10th grade son, we probably spent less than $10. I think it was mostly some new folders and dividers. It helps that my wife and I are frugal shoppers.
There is now a service where you can pay a lump sum for a company to ship you a box with the supplies, where you pay 3x-4x the price for the convenience. We live in an upper-middle class area, so I saw a lot of those boxes being carried in to the school during orientation.
I’m 61 years old and I never had kids because I didn’t think I could afford them. Posts like these make me believe I made the right decision.
No kids will allow my wife and I to retire at 45 or earlier. Plus I don’t have to deal with noise, mess, and poop.
Shit you still got time if you’re not 45 yet lol.
Honest question: Any regrets about not having a next generation to look fondly on as you age? Plenty of good reasons for that not to be one, just curious of yours
Personally, I have one actual nephew and some best friend’s kids that I am “honorary uncle” to. It’s waaaay better to be the fun uncle than to actually have kids. Wind them up and give them back to their parents to deal with, and much, much, much cheaper, even if you spoil them rotten.
So Hell NO do I have any interest in having sprogs of my own. A cat and a slightly insane aging mother are enough responsibility for other lives in my life.
Very much the same, except I have two nieces and one nephew in addition to friends’ offspring. That’s all the kids I’ve ever wanted or needed.
I’ll probably get to retire at a reasonable age, and get to spend a lot more time and money on hobbies. 🙂
No way I would have summer and winter homes and five cars with a couple of kids on one salary and some rental income for sure.
Good ones. I’m a fan of familial, civic or other non-paid roles that raising kids won’t afford folks to do. I see this is as a calling opportunity to grow communities instead of burying deeper into professional or tv/internet/gaming time.
Totally agree. Since I don’t have kids, I was much more able than my sisters to be available to help out my parents as my dad was declining, and will be able to do the same for my mom at some point (hopefully not for a while).
Same here. I have two nieces and nephews and they’re great, but you couldn’t pay me to have kids of my own, and not just for my plethora of own reasons—I am not a “dad” type and could never even imagine being such a thing. Though I might be able to do better than a disturbing number of parents out there, that’s not a high bar, and any kid deserves better than that.
That’s the scary part isn’t it? I have experience of terrible parenting thanks to my #1 stepfather, and my brother, his kid, was actually WORSE as a parent. Definition of deadbeat dad most of the kid’s life until he got his act somewhat together – at least HIS father met every one of his court-ordered obligations after he and our mother split (but not one single bit more). I KNOW I could be a good dad, but I don’t want to.
My father is somewhere on the psychopath-narcissist spectrum (trump very much reminds me of him, though my father could actually be pretty funny on a level above dumb 3rd grade bully and could somewhat take a joke) and his father was a lot worse (and I mean a lot, like doing stuff I don’t want to type here . . . one of his more mild things was throwing a kitten out a 7th floor window for kicks or because it looked at him wrong or WTF knows, he was a POS). I like to think I’m a further step forward and I surprisingly score a good deal lower than average on the narcissism scale, but even after processing PTSD, I don’t think I could leap as far as I’d need to. Either way, fatherhood is just not my thing—I could sooner imagine myself fighting aliens in space because that’s how completely unrealistic it seems.
That sucks. My stepfather was just mentally abusive, but not physically abusive, and a high-functioning drunk. But I was able to get out and go live with my grandparents for much of my childhood. I really feel for kids who are just trapped with nowhere to go.
I am right there with you about fatherhood. I have never had any interest at all in having kids. And one silver lining of being queer as a rainbow striped three dollar bill is that past college experimentation, zero chance of any accidents.
My fear was always for other people and I always worried about what might happen when I wasn’t in the house. Luckily, the cops got to him before I did, but I’ll say a couple things for him: I think he tried to do his best considering the very limited humanity he had to work with and he wasn’t homophobic or racist. (I haven’t talked to him in something like 15+ years, so that could have changed.)
Mine was *definitely* racist – but towards “whitey”, being a black guy from Indianapolis. He only laid a hand on my mother once – he slapped her. She went to the kitchen, picked up a cast iron frying pan, and laid his ass out on the floor. Never raised a hand to her again. He was an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid. Sadly, she was ready to leave him when she got pregnant with my brother, and stuck with him another dozen years for the kid. I’ll credit him with not being homophobic, he never knew about me, but his brother was gay and he never said a bad word about him.
He’s dead now about a decade, and I think the one thing that would reconcile things (at least for a little while) between my brother and I would be finding out where he’s buried – we long made a compact to piss on his grave. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since shortly after he and my mother split up when he was picking up my brother for his court-ordered father time and I happened to be visiting – I was in college when they split. My brother hadn’t seen him since he turned 18 and the court order no longer applied. He reached out to my brother from his deathbed (cancer, and I hope it hurt) wanting to see him, brother told him to f’ off and die – and he did. Honestly, I am MORE pissed off at the man because of how he treated my brother – I wasn’t his kid (just stuck with his last name), but Kenneth was. But he had abandoned two previous families (he was 15 years older then my mother). Women and thinking they can change a man…
I had a similar reaction to my father’s father (my maternal grandfather, OTOH, was an amazing person) when he was dying of pancreatic cancer, though it was relayed through intermediaries because I had written him off and that’s permanent for me.
My mother ended up with my father because what is called stalking today seemed to be considered courting more or less back then. She met him when she was 14 and he was 16. When she tried to leave him, he’d follow her and harass her and beat up any guy she saw next, but the final time before they got married, he drove his Opel GT into the forest off the Kancamagus highway at speed to off himself. Forward motion was arrested after several hundred yards by a tree, which split the poor car in half to the firewall. Not wearing his seatbelt, he ended up in the passenger footwell and the engine took the driver’s seat, so he’s one of those rare instances where not wearing a seatbelt saved him. To our misfortune and the Opel’s. I swear, it’s almost a Rodney Dangerfield joke, “I tell ya, I tried to kill myself and… Then my surgeon, Vinnie Boombatz…” A bear hunter found him and, though I hear Dr. Boombatz did a good job, his face remained a little uneven afterwards. My mother felt bad for him and took him back. Decades later, after finally leaving him, she finished out her time here with a guy who lied about having a dead kid to get her to finally date him after turning him down multiple times. He was also an alcoholic (and gambler, coke head, kleptomaniac, pathological liar, he cheated on her, and who knows what else. It’s like someone was giving out compulsions and asking what everyone wanted and he just said, “yes”). At least he wasn’t abusive and had money. She certainly had the option to do well, but kept choosing to go another way.
Damn – my mother had no luck with men either. My father died, she then married two assholes (second one for a very short time, thankfully), then she met the second love of her life, who was wonderful to her, but he had a stroke and she ended up taking care of him for many years until he finally died. At least now she is living her Golden Girls best life here in Florida. She is *definitely* a Blanche.
Though I keep telling her I want a rich stepfather. She doesn’t seem to want to do it again.
Sounds like a rough go, but I’m legit glad to hear your mother’s doing well now.
Thankfully, she’s a basically wonderful person, and it all rolls off her.
I hope yours has gotten there too.
In a way, she died from lung disease 10 years ago.
Nah, I have zero desire to parent, don’t care about my legacy, and want to enjoy life exploring this world with my wife that I love.
I love being an uncle but love even more that they’re not mine to deal with every day.
Couldn’t say it better myself. (I’m 47 / married 25 years / no kids)
I’m pushing that age. I just flat out never wanted them.
68 here. And we had the same take on this as you.
Grew up in family of 5 kids, and several step siblings, depending on my Dad’s marital status.
Yay! Another COTD! It’s been a long time.
I’m actually LOLing at the costs in Matt Sexton’s post. With one middle schooler and one high schooler, the supplies themselves were not that bad (maybe $100-$150 each), but at the rate they’re outgrowing clothes, we’re running about $400/month all year round just for them, and that’s shopping almost entirely at sales, or at discounters like Marshalls.
Family grocery bill — using coupons and buying 90% of our items on well-timed BOGO sales — is about $1,200/month. My daughter’s show choir overhead/costumes? $600. That’s a new one for us. Oh, and apparently she’s play rec soccer this fall (which pales in comparison with my “travel baseball” friends who average $5k/year on gas, hotels, and entry fees).
Sorry to overshare, but I’m always finding it adorable when people are like “I got this baby and wow diapers are expensive!”
It’s like watching someone buy their first car and complaining about $500 tires.
I am not ready for this in 10 years with mine. May have to continue using the Buy Nothing groups on FB for clothes outside of a couple special outfits 🙁
Friends who have kids in competitive dance/cheerleading is insane.
The time and expense on that shit blows my mind. And then the kids get hurt!
My kids are active but in zero sports and that’s perfect,
My daughter has just started sixth grade and yes I know it will be getting more expensive. I’m into this 12 years now so am well past “wow diapers are expensive.”
What annoys me is the list of stuff we have to supply the school with. You know what? I’d rather they just upped the cost of entry by $200 and did it themselves. And all year long there will be fundraisers of various sorts. I do want my kid to have a good school but when 75% of my property taxes are going to the school already it just feels unnecessarily endless.
Totally get it, and wasn’t trying to denigrate your situation personally, more of a general take on all the stuff people warned me about when I was complaining about diapers myself 🙂
I generally don’t do fundraisers for the PTO/PTA or for anything outside of the specific activities my kids do. But the teachers definitely make it hard with their requests for supplies that they’re otherwise buying out of their own pockets. So my estimate could easily be double if I paid more attention to all of those things…
I’m a weirdo, but I’d gladly take a 10-20% increase in property taxes if it meant teachers could stop begging, or if our supplies could be paid for.
No worries here.
If I’m being truthful, I would also gladly accept a tax bump as well, just to avoid the nickel-and-diming.
Have you experienced the end-of-year buy-your-teacher-a-gift requests? The ones that don’t sound so much like a request but a requirement? We get those for Christmas also. If I had had any sense many years ago when planning my life, I would have become a teacher.
“Have you experienced the end-of-year buy-your-teacher-a-gift requests? The ones that don’t sound so much like a request but a requirement? We get those for Christmas also.”
That’s what happens with an out-of-control tipping culture like we have in the US.
Our schools tend to limit the supplies needed. It does seem far more efficient to have the schools buy supplies in bulk as needed. We’re in NY and while the school taxes are very high, it seems you get what you pay for.
Ah, the Show Choir Industrial Complex… It’s certainly become a weaponized sort of thing to suck more time/money from parents, for sure. I sat through many a performance by the stepkids and was very happy to have the last one graduate from high school.
I have a friend whose dream was to be a mom, yet when she finally had kids, she was shocked by the expense and stress and told me that I had been right when I had talked about it before. I’m like, WTF, this was your dream and you were this clueless? I never wanted them, but I learn through observation. I guess some people just have to touch the stove themselves. I have a pair of nieces and nephews and the amount of money on just basic stuff (never mind the private schools) that my sister and BiL spend has the eyes bug out of my head like someone overacting in a comical old horror movie.
Nobody can really prepare you for the total package, I think. You just end up being the frog in the boiling water after a while. My cynical side is a little irritated at the entitlement of some of the kids, as well as the exclusionary nature of some of these costs. Let’s just say it’s almost entirely upper-middle class kids in these activities. And it really pays to have a stay-at-home-parent or at least parents with very flexible schedules. C’est la vie…
On the flipside, the money savings habits I’ve learned over the years will definitely help once they’re off the payroll. Slightly early retirement…maybe.
I agree nobody’s going to be 100% prepared, but my friend was especially clueless.
My nieces (my nephews, who are older, not as much) are growing up upper middle class and with what I wonder is dangerous quarantining. They only see other uppity kids and people and have absolutely no concept of the evils of humanity or even just being poor. I get it—my sister doesn’t want them exposed to it like we were, but it’s also good to be prepared for the inevitable eventuality of encountering what’s out there. They get shocked by the things I tell them from history. One was amazed—at 6—that “villains” are real and that people die (OK, they learned that one in one of the shittiest ways when one of their friends died rather suddenly of leukemia) and that people are even killed by other people sometimes. When I was 2 or so, my grandmother let me watch Orca, an obviously Jaws-inspired movie that had some of its own merit where an orca goes on a targeted revenge spree on a whaler after his mate and unborn child are killed. My mother was not happy she let me watch that, but I completely understood the orca and that it was the hero of the story (or at least I maintain that he was). Although I didn’t realize
Here’s the best part, you don’t even have their “Supply Lists” from the teachers yet; and all those clothes? You’ll likely be replacing them in two or three months, because it’s now time for winter clothes and last year’s wont fit either. It’s an every couple month thing for like 18 years.
Speaking of, I need to get my 15 year old some new pants….
Don’t have the supply lists yet? Son, we’ve been back in school for a week now!
We don’t start until next week, supply lists come from teachers tomorrow if you go to the open house.
Wow!
Being from Maine, where school NEVER started until after Labor Day, normally the first full week after, it is still super weird to me that here in Florida school starts in mid-August. But they get out earlier here too, so about the same number of school days I guess. We didn’t get out until the first week of June – later if there had been snow days. Here it’s mid-May. I wonder if they make up hurricane days?
Yeah, that’s the thing. Summer is the same length, it’s just offset by a couple/three weeks.
Something that helps A LOT, in Michigan they get free lunches and breakfast at school. My groceries runs change a lot when they are in school since I have to worry more about snacks and dinner for them. In this economy, every little thing that can help.
This makes me sad.
As the reason it’s done is due to abject poverty and children genuinely not getting adequate nutrition.
It isn’t sad – it is normal in plenty of countries. Finland has been providing universal free meals for students since the 40’s.
What is sad is that in the USA we expect parents to buy so much at retail that could easily be provided by the school buying for so much less at wholesale.
Why do we have every parent by their kid buy a pack of pencils instead of having the school buy them a pallet at a time?
We’re in a pretty stable suburb in AL, but over the summer the library becomes the distribution point for free lunches (which is amazing). My son just started at a STEM-focused charter school in a low-income area and all their meals are free…we stopped short of saying “Wow that’s amazing” because we later realized that since so many students qualify for free lunches, they just give it to everyone. Every little bit helps. As much as our state has a reputation for poverty and “anti-poor politics,” the boots on the ground are definitely helping where they can.
My oldest is now in college, so another set of expenses. But, my youngest is starting high school in another district. Our district has had free lunches and breakfast for pretty much the whole time we have been here. Now, lunch is going to be $4 a day. An expense I was not expecting. That’s $640 a year! Awesome.
Can your kid not bring their own lunch? I’m sure you can make something for a lot less than $4.
Yes, and we do, but they don’t always want what’s in the house. I have no clue what the ratio is between bring and buy. But, my point was that now it’s gonna cost, when it’s been free for so long. Not the end of the world.