Cost of Baby’s First Year

Posted by Mike Smith :: November 7, 2007 @ 7:05 am

There’s no getting around the fact that children can be expensive. As I discussed in a previous post, the true cost of raising a child probably isn’t as high as the government estimates. Now there’s a new tool to help you determine the actual cost of your baby’s first year.

BabyCenter’s has just released a Baby Costs Calculator that helps you to determine what you’ll spend in the first year of your child’s life. Unlike the government estimates for child-rearing costs, which are averages from the general population, this calculator allows you to enter your actual costs. In this way, you’ll be able to get a more accurate picture of the costs that you will incur.

For each item, the calculator already has an estimated price, which you can either leave as is, or change as appropriate. I found this feature to be very useful, since I could leave items that I know we use, with the estimated cost, but for which I wasn’t sure of the actual cost off the top of my head. I could then edit the other items to reflect their actual costs where they were known.

The calculator is divided into categories of ongoing tasks and one-time items. Ongoing categories include: childcare, diapering, feeding, clothing, saving for college, medical/first aid, toiletries, toys/books/media. One-time categories include: gear, activity equipment, nursery, feeding, breastfeeding, bathing/grooming, and other. Each of the categories has multiple items that can be estimated individually. Just as with a budget, by using fine granularity, the estimate will become more accurate.

My estimated first-year costs came out to be $17,231. That number probably seems manageable to some readers and leaves others scrambling to fill out the P2P loan application from Lending Club. The value of the BabyCenter calculator is that you don’t have to use my number – or the government’s estimates -- since you can quickly calculate your own first-year costs. Your number will likely be much different from mine. My greatest expense is saving for college, but that might not be the case for you. Take a few minutes to calculate your own costs. Knowing the number will help you to create a plan to survive that first year.