Comments on: Here’s How Much Our Daughter’s 4th Year Cost Us

By: FIRE Community Guest Interview #25 - Late To The FIRE Party - Part 2 - Modern FImily

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 07:00:15 +0000

[…] your amazing tracking, Court, this is an area where we didn’t specifically separate out what we’d spent on the […]

By: Court and Nic

Court and Nic — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 04:42:58 +0000

In reply to Paddy. Thanks Paddy! Fingers crossed we can somehow skip the braces train. Neither Nic or I needed them, and same goes for all our siblings. Thankfully glasses and eye care are covered for kids in Alberta! Sounds like dental may be covered in the near future too - we shall see!

By: Court and Nic

Court and Nic — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 04:41:26 +0000

In reply to Rachel. Thank you! Ah, I can totally see how weekly swimming lessons would add up! What age do kids learn how to swim by you? Wowow childcare is just nuts!

By: Court and Nic

Court and Nic — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 04:38:29 +0000

In reply to C. Hopwood. Thank you for sharing all of this! I've never heard of Just Between Friends events but I sure do like the sounds of it!

By: Court and Nic

Court and Nic — Sat, 17 Sep 2022 03:44:28 +0000

In reply to Nick. Hey Nick thanks for the comment. We do include RESP and food as well. We break everything else down to the penny, then add in RESP and food estimates at the end of each yearly post. If you read the whole post you’ll see it. Overall with RESP and food included we’ve spent in the ~$3,800-4,700 range. We also recognize our privilege to be able to discretionally contribute $2,500/year into our kiddos RESPs.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 13:41:08 +0000

Great post! Nice to see an itemized breakdown. But why didn’t you include the RESP contributions to your total? I also didn’t see a line item for food. I’d say realistically you’re probably in the neighborhood of $5,000 in costs for the year.

By: Paddy

Paddy — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 00:31:43 +0000

Great and very detailed post.
Wait ’til braces time come around! 🙂 Geez those are expensives (8,000$ treatment in this case)! Add glasses to that and you’ve got an expensive teenager.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 21:33:33 +0000

Great read guys! If we added it up our costs for Mr 4 would be much more than this - mainly due to weekly swim lessons (a must in Aus!) and of course childcare… $10k this FY and we have 2 there next year We’ve done a great job of cutting back this year but always room for improvement

By: C. Hopwood

C. Hopwood — Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:23:41 +0000

Thanks for this! I will confess that I do NOT track our spending down to this level of detail, so I can’t say exactly how our spending broke down for our daughter at age 4. That year, she was in preschool which (in Florida) was partially covered by the government. The school was great (on campus, affiliated with the university we were working at) and I believe it cost ~$650 per month, so that was undoubtedly our biggest expense.

Outside of that, though, we haven’t found having a kid to be particularly expensive. There were GREAT secondhand clothing options available — we went to Just Between Friends events twice a year and bought (and sold) pretty much all of her clothes and many of her toys there.

Now we’re in semi-rural Nova Scotia, and our daughter is 7, and we’re still finding plenty of secondhand clothes and toys available. Shoes have gotten to be more expensive (she has my same ultra-wide feet) but it’s not too bad. And flights are more expensive (since we need 3 tickets) but we travel hack. I’d be very surprised if we spent more than $2000 on her in any given year, but I can’t be sure. Maybe $3K, but nowhere near the average you quoted of $8-12K.