By now the outrage has gone viral. Suze Orman told a young couple that they couldn’t possibly afford for the wife to stay home when they have another baby because, among other things, when they have a new baby, their expenses “will go up $700-$1000 a month” due to having to pay for “diapers” and “this and that.” I don’t want to go into the whole financial situation of this particular couple (like the fact that they are already spending more than the two of them make together and, therefore, probably need way more help than this post is going to provide), and I don’t really want to criticize Suze Orman. Maybe she just pulled that number out of her hat, but also maybe it reflects the misguided norm of our Western consumer culture as applied to babies. And that’s what I really want to talk about. That $700-$1000 a month somehow sounded reasonable enough to throw out there on national television, and the young couple (who already had one baby) meekly nodded their heads. Plenty of seasoned thrifty family types are arguing that it’s ridiculously high. But I, being a details person, wanted to explore how high it really is and how much better a creative family could do.
Let’s look at minimal-stuff parenting and do the math.
If this is your first baby (which it wasn’t for the couple on Suze Orman, but I want to start here to be thorough and to lay a little ground work for discussing the costs of subsequent babies), you will have a few start-up costs. You have to have a car seat. You can spend over $200 easily, but if you go with a basic model, like this convertible car seat (saves money because you won’t need a bigger one for an older child), you can pay just about $55.
Car Seat Total: $55
Your baby also needs a place to sleep. The absolute cheapest option is co-sleeping (provided you and your husband can sleep that way and you research safety issues). If you decide to go the crib route, this is going to be your big ticket item, but not necessarily awful if you can find one second hand (be sure to check for safety recalls) or from a basic bargain store like Walmart–for example this crib for just $89, paired with an inexpensive mattress for around $40. You will also need bedding for a crib. They sell all kinds of fabulous, impressive sets for well over $100, but you could also just buy some sheets like these for $5. Whether you co-sleep or use a crib, you’ll probably want a waterproof mattress pad to go under baby, like this ultra basic model for $7.
Sleeping Total for Co-Sleeping: $7
Sleeping Total for Crib: $141
Now, just three things remain as genuine must-haves: clothes, blankets, and diapers. Clothes for babies can be ridiculously expensive, but that is why there are thrift stores and garage sales. Your baby doesn’t really need more than about 6 little gowns or sleepers and maybe 6 or so onesies for layering. Add in a couple of baby hats for the early days or cold weather, and you’re good to go. At the Salvation Army or a similar boutique, this should all run around $30. In the winter, you will need a snowsuit type thing, so you can add in another $10 for posh second-hand snuggliness. Blankets, I haven’t seen second-hand much. Garage sales would be a great option, or worst-case scenario, you could get one little multi-pak of receiving blankets like this package of four for $6.
Clothing and Blanket Total for Summer: $36
Clothing and Blanket Total for Winter: $46
Diapers are a big deal. Even Suze Orman came up with them, while the rest of baby care was relegated to “this and that.” Diapers are where the major ongoing monthly expense comes from (unless you’re formula-feeding, which also comes with a hefty price tag). This makes cloth diapering the ultimate in both green and money-saving parenting. It also shifts diapers from a mainly monthly cost to a mainly start-up cost. There is a dizzying array of high-tech, fancy-pants diapers out there, but good old-fashioned Chinese prefolds work just fine. I find I can do nicely with three dozen. I found these for just $18/dozen, roughly the price of one jumbo box of generic brand disposable diapers (good for about four weeks of continuous use). You’ll need something to cover them with. I love my Thirsties, but you can go super-frugal with plain plastic pants like these at three for $4. You’ll probably need to buy a couple packs. And since these won’t hold your diapers together for you, you’ll also need pins like these at 10 for $1.50.
Cloth Diapering Total: $63.50
Personally, I would have a really hard time without a nursing cover and a soft baby carrier. But technically, a receiving blanket will work as a cover (or you can make one for around $5 by sewing velcro onto the top two corners of a 42 inch finished square of fabric), and you can make your own no-sew baby carrier following the directions here. You’ll need five yards of fabric, which you ought to be able to get for under $15 with a coupon. The fabric gets split down the middle three ways, so you’ll end up with three carriers, which mean you could share the cost with a couple of frugal friends ($5 for each of you) if you wanted to.
Super Useful Extras Total: $10
You don’t need a changing table (just lay a diaper on the floor for a changing pad) or burp rags (cloth diapers double for these). Diaper bags are adorable, but any backpack or tote bag you already have will work just as well. Diaper pails are nice and convenient, but a tall kitchen trash bag with a drawstring will also do the job. For wipes you can cut up an old cotton t-shirt or two into conveniently sized squares, wet them with warm water, wipe off your baby’s bottom, and wash the cloths with your diapers. Old hand towels make great bibs when held on with clothes pins. Swings can be a life saver if your baby likes them, but they certainly aren’t worth keeping an outside-the-home job for. Ditto for strollers, especially if you have a soft baby carrier. And you can wash your baby in the sink and dry him with a towel you already have and skip the baby bath and cute hooded towel. (Thanks to my blog readers for pointing this out to me in the comments here.) Books can come free from the library, and kitchen utensils make wonderful toys (as long as you use common sense– I’m talking about spatulas and plastic spoons, not forks, knives, and vegetable peelers).
Let’s recap:
Start-up Cost:
Co-Sleeping Baby Born in Summer: $171.50
Co-Sleeping Baby Born in Winter: $181.50
Crib-Sleeping Baby Born in Summer:$305.50
Crib-Sleeping Baby Born in Winter:$315.50
This is a lot of money, especially for a struggling family, BUT first-time parents are usually given baby showers, or at least baby gifts, and if you can register for things like a car seat and cloth diapers, your cost will go way, way down. AND if you can register for gift cards to the local children’s resale shop, you can help alleviate some of the upcoming first-year costs as well.
OK, so now that you are all set for baby’s arrival, the monthly cost begins.
First of all, a baby has to eat. Breastfeeding is obviously the cheapest and best food for your baby. The only cost is going to be the cost of getting the extra 300-500 calories/day your body needs to produce milk (an additional 200 calories/day comes from your fat stores–BONUS!). This is going to vary wildly depending on what you eat, but let’s say you get your extra calories from a glass of whole milk (2 cups gives you 292 calories) and a medium banana (105 calories), which gets you to 397 calories, right in the middle of the range. Over the course of a month, that’s 30 bananas and 60 cups of milk, or just under four gallons. At $3/gal, that brings a monthly milk total to $12. Thirty bananas at 7 oz/banana is 210 oz, or just over 13 pounds. At 59 cents/pound, the monthly banana total comes to just under $8.
Monthly Extra Food for Mom Total: $20
The next monthly cost is the extra laundry a baby brings. I figure this is at least two loads/week of diapers, and maybe another load per week of clothes for both you and baby. (Your clothes will get spit up and diaper blowouts on them occasionally.) According to the kind soul here who factored in electricity, detergent, fabric softener (which you should not use on diapers, but it was only 10 cents anyway), water, and appliance depreciation, washing came out to 65 cents per load, and drying came out to 45 cents per load. Together, that’s $1.10, and for three loads, that’s $3.30. At four and a half weeks per month, the total cost of extra laundry is just under $15.
Monthly Extra Laundry: $15
You’ll probably also need to buy some pharmacy items now and then: fever reducer, baby shampoo, diaper rash ointment. You could ask for this for your shower if this is your first baby, but you’ll be on your own for subsequent babies. If you buy your local grocery store brand of one thing per month, you’ll probably never go over $5/month.
Monthly Pharmacy Purchases: $5
If this is your first baby, at some point during the first year, you’ll probably need to go up a size in diapers. That will come to $62 (assuming your ten pack of diaper pins is still useable). If you spread this cost out over twelve months, you get about $5/month.
Next Size Diaper Investment: $5
And if this is your first baby, or your first one of a given gender, you’ll have to head back to the thrift store roughly three more times in the first year to get bigger baby clothes. One of those visits will probably include a winter coat, so let’s say you have two $30 visits, and one $40 visit. That comes to a total of $100, or just over $8/month.
Monthly Clothing Investment: $8
And now to recap the monthly cost:
Monthly Cost for a Baby with Same-Sex Older Sibling: $40
Monthly Cost for a Baby with Opposite Sex Older Sibling: $48
Monthly Cost for a First Baby: $53
The wild card here is going to be medical costs, which vary so greatly that it’s impossible to estimate them for everyone. It all depends on your insurance whether everything will be covered or whether you’ll have co-pays or some percentage that you’ll have to contribute. But when it comes to “diapers” and “this and that,” if you parent with minimal stuff, even for a first baby, an entire year’s worth of parenting costs ($636), PLUS start-up costs, including a crib ($315), for a grand total of $951 squeaks in just under Suze Orman’s estimate of the MONTHLY cost of a SECOND baby. And a second baby of the same sex as the first would only cost $480 for a whole year, roughly half of Suze Orman’s monthly estimate. Granted, this is a severely austere plan, but if it’s a question of doing without material extras like bouncy seats and exersaucers and doing without Mommy, I think the casualty should be the exersaucers. Maybe the viral outrage really ought to be directed at our silly consumerism that keeps mommies at work when they really want to be home.
Awesome. I was hoping you’d seen the posts/outrage about her comments. I saw the clip online, and truth be told, was far more upset about the sadness I saw in the mother’s face than with Ms Orman’s comments.
Wow. This is amazing. My husband and I went to Babies R Us and priced the list of “must haves” and gave up when the total exceeded the two thousand dollars. Even factoring in generous showers from our families, it was way out of reach. It’s amazing how the American persona as consumer is developed and upheld by society. Being (only comparatively, I guess) less consumer minded, I was shocked when my sister-in-law spending almost 500 on her four year old’s birthday party and 350 on one gift. I was told: “You’ll understand when you have kids.”
$1000 for “this and that”? My eight kids are owed a lot of “this and that” because they still don’t cost me an extra $1000 a month even with (almost) four of them in their teens.
We track our spending pretty closely, so I know that we’ve averaged a little over $120 a month on baby and toddler stuff so far, and that is definitely not for an austere package! I buy almost everything used at yard sales, mom2mom sales, on craigslist, etc., but that $120/month has bought top of the line cloth pocket diapers, woven wrap carriers, GAP clothes, Keen shoes, and pretty much every piece of “baby gear” I thought even MIGHT be useful (some of which was promptly re-sold on CL once I realized it’s not…). I can’t even imagine what I would spend $700/month on.
Haha! I do not even think we came CLOSE TO $700.00 with Naomi..
Pssshh…
But we have lots of generous friends who helped out alot!
Wow. That interview/segment was ridiculous! We don’t co-sleep, but we spend right around $700/YEAR on baby–and we just added a second one this year–and we don’t co-sleep. And we do the fancier diapers and even use disposables on occasion.
The key in their situation is that the husband said he didn’t think she could come home and have a baby AND KEEP UP WITH THE LIFESTYLE THEY’RE CURRENTLY LIVING. Orman said it wasn’t lavish, but there’s probably a lot they COULD change…
This post was just awesome.
Thanks for the breakdown.
*fancier CLOTH diapers. And I wasn’t including hospital/birth bills…
OK, so we spent 1400 in the first year with our first child. But about 700/year since. And we are far from being the most frugal people out there. Sorry for the need to correct…
You know, most churches are happy to raise money to send to missionaries or to help unwed mothers. Maybe its time we say, as the body of Christ, if you are willing to trust God and His provision, we’re willing to help you. As a mother of only teenagers now, I would love to know of a family that I could shop for when I’m out anyway.
I am assuming the $700.00/ month was a figure of someone she knew that was putting their children in a very pricey day care or something? Life is so much cheaper when you raise your kids by yourself than farm it out. I remember thinking that having kids was very economical compared to not having children. The folks who delayed having children usually made poor decisions with the money they did have. It’s all perspective, I suppose. When you “think” something is going to be expensive, it usually is.
What about the monthly cost of the bigger house, minivan, and college fund?
Yeah, I never believe the hype on those things. My estimate is that the truth, as you suggested, lies somewhere between the two. Babies don’t come with any guarantees about health (Carl’s best friend just found out their second child will have Down’s Syndrome and need heart surgery at 3 months), so that’s always a wildcard. And it would be sad to never give your child a toy, book, or gift. But while I think there is an inevitable “this and that” category, I agree with you that people tend to be pretty poor budgeters in general. I mean, you just have to look at statistics on credit card debt to know that’s true…
Excellent analysis, Mrs. P. Another thing that nobody ever considers in these discussions is God’s Providence. We have had babies under some pretty crazy conditions. At one point we got a positive pregnancy test when we had no health insurance, no car that would fit all the car seats, no house (we were living with my mother and totally out of room). *Then* I found out I have a serious blood disorder that makes pregnancy dangerous, and was put on a life-saving medicine that costs us $2,000/MONTH out of pocket. And you know what? God provided. We didn’t win the lottery and we’re not rich, but our needs were taken care of. We’ve gone on to welcome more children after that one, none of which came under ideal circumstances, and God provided every. single. time.
I always tell my friends with lukewarm faith: If you ever want to see God move in your life in a big way, just be open to children! You’ll rarely see Providence work in your life so clearly.
Babies don’t cost a lot. It’s the big children that cut into the budget. But I really believe that God will provide. Watch and see what God will do for you!
I don’t understand the American Health system, but I think that all children should have free medical care. In Germany we have it a lot easier in this respect. A lot of our money was spent on music lessons, school activities, clothes when they got older, bicycles and accomodation, busfares and food for them while at universities. Again we have it easier than you in that the university fees are next to nothing compared to the USA, but we often said that compared to other people, our luxury was our children. (No posh car etc.) They all worked during the holidays for the special things that we couldn’t buy them and this was good experience for them too. Three are off our hands now, but we still are supporting one on my husband’s pension and will be doing do so for the next three years. Perhaps it is better to have your children when you are young. Nevertheless, I really do believe, that the Lord provides.
I’ve just listened to the Sue Orman interview and want to know if people in the USA can live on 2000 Dollars a month with two children? How much would you have left after paying rent/morage, telephone, car and gas, electricity, water etc. to spend on food and clothes?
Sarah,
Actually, I think it would be really hard. There would be a drastic reduction in “standard of living” from what the couple is currently spending. But I think it might be possible if the couple adjusted their priorities.
I love this post. This is a topic that definately chaps my rear. We live in the US and my husband earns about $2400 a month. We’re pregnant with our 4th and we’re doing great! We are debt free, careful with our money, shop CL and second-hand, I make most everything from scratch, do things ourselves instead of outsourcing, garden what I can when I can. We qualify for some of the state’s welfare services but do not use them. We are poor by our society’s standards, but feel rich! The children are given more clothes than we can wear and older homeschool moms pass along curriculum. We eat a mostly whole-foods diet. We are so rich in material goods I am constantly getting rid of things to keep the clutter from engulfing us. What else can I say? The Lord, He is good! He holds the riches of the entire universe in His hands. He can certainly provide for His own. Most people are in financial crises because their priorities are skewed. If you call yourself by His name, make sure your priorities are in line with His word, and then you won’t have to worry!
I like that list.
The only thing I disagree with is the destruction of the exersaucer. lol! That was a lifesaver for us when it came to my little brothers. They could bouncy-bouncy-bouncy for hours, staying in one spot, while Mom homeschooled and did housework. They loved that thing!
At thrift stores you can get them for about 10 bucks.
How in the world do people spend a thousand dollars per month on one child? That’s insane!
Just found this and I’m still exploring, but I wanted to make one comment.
I agree with most of what was said, but something to consider when choosing cloth or disposable diapers is access to laundry facilities. When I was young, married and pregnant, I was all gungho about cloth diapers, to the point of paying a $60.00 baggage fee to get them on a plane. (I was joining my Navy husband overseas). Once I got there and realized that I would be walking the equivelent of 6 or 7 blocks to the laundromat, disposables suddenly seemed pretty good. I t was the same with my kids when they had their kids. Highly nonconvenient laundry facilities. And I was glad I had those cloth diapers when my son was born 2 years latter. That child had a bladder the size of an elephant. Cloth diaper covered by a disposable covered by plastic pants, and it still wasn’t enough at night.
They are fine young people now, and doing well with their own.
“What about the monthly cost of the bigger house, minivan, and college fund?”
I wanted to address this, b/c I think it’s important to consider the fact that your baby will grow into an adult someday! And there are costs associated with that fact.
1) A bigger house isn’t always necessary. Be creative with the space you have! Maybe if you downsize your clothes you can turn your closet into a baby room? Also, consider the idea that most of the kids in the world share bedrooms with siblings or even the entire family. Sharing a room is NOT a hardship!
2) Getting a bigger car is not always the best option; maybe getting two smaller cars would work better?
3) A college degree is not the gateway to a good job these days. Many, many graduates are living at home, unemployed and saddled with mountains of debt. Thinking outside the box when it comes to education is pretty much a must these days.
———
I can count on one hand the items we’ve had to buy brand new in order to accommodate a new baby. We have been very blessed to receive hand-me-downs and come across amazing deals at nearly new sales and the like. I know how to sew, and have made several baby slings. We co-sleep and don’t even use the crib that was given to us!
Living simply is a blessing.