How Much Does A Quiverfull cost?
Don't ask me why I was curious about it, but I ran across this on the web and had to give it a whirl. It calculates how much money it costs to raise a child, both per year and over a child's pre-adult lifetime. No, I don't have a baby on the way, nor am I even married. But I thought to my capitalist self, "hey, self, you want to have a quiverfull some day, by God's grace. So what's it gonna cost me?"
So I entered in my information, and apparently it is going to cost me $18,455/year, or $332,190 total, to raise one child to adulthood! Yikes! And that is assuming that I DON'T pay for college.
Scared out of my mind I consulted some online friends (most with large families) about this financial figure. It was greeted with alot of cyber laughter. It seems that alot of folks make do with far, far less than those sorts of expenditures on their children. Hmmmm...come to think of it, I don't think my own parents had a spare $55,365 to raise my two siblings and I, and still be able to feed themselves, put us all in private Christian school, pay the mortgage, buy descent cars, and take vacations.
Well, what a relief. I guess us under-six-figures folks can have at least a handful of arrows in the quiver without working 5 jobs or going into bankruptcy, despite what the online calculator says.
Category: Extraneous & Miscellaneous
posted by David Gadbois at
6:02 PM
2 Comments:
I know, theophile. I put "no college" on the calculator just to soften the blow. Nonetheless, those are still the numbers I came up with.
My college education at a California State U. was just $10,000/year with on-campus living costs included. More realistically, this puts it in at a grand total of $40-50,000.
If I had lived at home, tuition alone was only $2,000/year!
Even though those numbers do include things like upgrading the bachelormobile into a soccer mom van and extra square footage tacked onto the mortgage, it still doesn't seem right.
By
David Gadbois, at 3:46 PM
Maybe- MAYBE- if you only raised one and spoiled that one like crazy, that is what it would cost you.
BUT... the fact of the matter is that there are all kinds of hand-me-downs. Clothes, toys, baby spoons, cups, shoes, socks, high chair, and on and on and on. Also- I find now, that adding on another one just costs me the diapers and wipes. When a woman nurses her baby, there's no cost for formula, and even when you start feeding them table food, their portions are so small you hardly notice it initially.
I think long-term food costs would be the biggest additional cost large families face with a new baby. All the rest (even homeschooling curriculums) can be passed down from one child to the next.
Funny- I've always marvelled at those figures too! (I wonder: WHAT exactly are the giving the children in order to spend THAT much money?!?)
I like your site. Blessings-
By
Anonymous, at 1:06 AM
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