baby registry: Oh, baby, that's expensive

By SEAN MUSSENDEN

Media General News Service


A buddy of mine just became a dad. Exciting stuff. I found out in an e-mail that came with a link to his Amazon.com baby registry, featuring a crib bedding set for $179.99.

Seriously, almost 200 bucks for six pieces of cloth. The baby-industrial complex knows newborns sleep on mattresses the size of postage stamps, right?

If you’re around 25, you’re at the age when the average mother has her first kid. Maybe you’re thinking about having one. Maybe your parents are pressuring you to give them a grandkid already.

It’s a huge decision. Lots of prospective young parents ask themselves if they’re emotionally ready, but too few figure out if they’re financially ready.

As my friend’s baby registry illustrates, kids are very expensive. It may take nothing but love (or too many bottles of Chianti) to make a kid, but it takes serious coin to raise one.

Jars of mashed peas, Barney videos, vaccinations, babysitter tips, Baby Gap jeans, car seats, diapers -- they add up quick.

How much? The federal government, which seems to keep statistics on everything, surveys thousands of parents every year to estimate how much it costs to raise a child from birth to age 18. Kids mean bigger houses, bigger grocery bills, bigger cars, clothing, health care, child care and toys and books and video games.

Here’s what it costs per year, according to the feds, keeping in mind that richer families, as you’d expect, spend more than poorer families:

Families making less than $42,000 a year spend about $9,050 for one kid or $14,600 for two. Families making more than $70,000 spend $18,835 for one or $30,380 for two. Families in the middle spend $12,670 for one or $20,440 for two. One perk of having multiple babies: Two or more kids is more cost effective than having just one.

Do the math. The total a husband and wife will spend on two kids born today until age 18 will run a family at the top $732,000; a family in the middle $501,000; a family at the bottom, $366,000, according to the feds.

These figures do not include college. At current tuition inflation rates, it will take $240,000 to put a kid born today through a four-year public school, double that for a private school.

Ouch. That’s the bad news.

There’s plenty of good news, which I’ll discuss in future columns. Babies bring tax breaks. Lots of kids get scholarships. Baby registries, like my buddy’s, help pass start-up costs to friends and families.

Most importantly, millions of people successfully rearrange their finances to have cute lil’ bundles of joy. It’s not impossible.

The first step is to take a look at your current budget. Have an extra $10,000 a year to throw around? If so, great. If not, look for ways to make room for a new member of the household.

Then, have an honest discussion with your significant other about whether you can afford a kid now, or you’d be better holding off for a few years.

It’s a conversation worth having. Before you uncork the Chianti.

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NEW BLOG

Do you remember the first time your grandma said bling, and you realized you could never say that word unironically again? And then your grandma and 27 million other people got a blog, and you decided it was time the whole bloggin’ blogosphere died a quiet, mainstream death.

I bring this up because, um, we’re rolling out a First Steps blog this week, on this newspaper’s Web site or at firststeps.mgblogs.com. Before you scoff, we promise this one will be useful.

We’ll stick to personal finance issues, instead of rambling from the NBA Draft to the war in Iraq. We’ll offer tools and resources to go with the columns (this week: a baby cost calculator), all of which will be archived by topic on the site.

Sean Mussenden is a national correspondent in Media General's Washington Bureau. E-mail Mussenden at smussenden@mediageneral.com