How many children?

We were late to the game. DW was 38 when we had our first. Boy, girl, girl, boy. Oldest was 5 when the youngest was born. Didn't really keep track of how much it cost to get them to college age but it was a fair bit. And well worth it I would say.
 
It definitely didn’t cost us the amount being mentioned. The kids did get more expensive when they were teens. They lived at home and attended the local university. We give them a small amount towards wedding. My Dad used to say “Do you want kids or do you want money.” He was kidding of course because he loved having us kids and spent a lot of time with us.
 
Six. Sons. They definitely impacted every aspects of our lives. I would say financially, we would have made a lot more money, spent a lot less, had more vacations, and would have been free to retire earlier had we remained childless.

We got married young and my husband dropped out of school to drive a truck when I got pregnant. I missed a number of years out of the work force. I went back to school, started law school (at night) with a five year old, a two year old, and a four week old. Paid cash with the money we had saved for a down payment on a house. Had two more during law school. I did well, but upon graduation, had a hard time getting any job due to (at that point) having five small children. (Yes, prospective employers would ask, and would look at me like I had the plague when I responded that I had five children.) I was able to get a job as a clerk, paid hourly, as an independent contractor, by someone who didn't ask if I had kids. Eventually, I was able to get a "real job," but having the children factored into future decisions as far as employment opportunities. (For example, I could have made more money working in NYC, but that meant I would leave in the morning before they were up, and come home after they were sleeping and no money was worth that.) We lived near my parents who helped with childcare so moving into the City was not an option.

Spent money on diapers, nursery schools, tuition for private schools, tutors, sports, food, clothes, cars, car insurance, etc. (At one point I felt as if I owned a fleet of cars.) None of my kids have college debt. (One covered his own, via the USNA.)

Oh, and money plastering holes in walls. Mysteriously, we seemed to get a lot of holes in the walls of our house.

As far as taxes, we would have gotten deductions in the early years. Later we were hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax.

I wouldn't have changed a thing (as far as the kiddos go). I love them.
 
3 kids. Twin daughters who are 29. 23 year old son. Can’t imagine life without them. That’s not to claim all is perfect or without worry of course. That wouldn’t be real life. But we love them, including all that sometimes comes with.
As far as cost? I’ve no idea and don’t really care. Can’t think of a better way to ‘blow that dough’ and don’t consider it to be blown anyway.
 
We have 2 kids now in their twenties. No planning, but no big deal. Kids appeared in our very late 30s after we had well-established retirement accounts. We spent a fraction on them compared to numbers I read in the media and on this forum. Our kids were about 1 year behind the ages of cousins and the children of our friends, so hand-me-downs were free. Even our neighbors would donate clothes to us, so we didn't buy many clothes. When they became drivers, they didn't get cars to drive if we needed the cars for our own purposes. College was cheap for one, but not the other. But the stock market did very well when the expensive one was in school.

All in, I think the kids costs us practically nothing ... especially when our son learned to eat at his friends' homes.

I know when I was in high school, I worked full-time in a restaurant and got free meals, so I must've saved my parents a bundle.
 
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My guess is that being married or not has a bigger impact on the personal finances of having kids than the number does.
 
Marie, we had 3 boys. When we moved we took down my son’s posters and they were covering up all the holes he had punched in the walls. This was the oldest. We made him pay for the cost of repairs as a lesson to his 2 younger brothers.
 
Moemg said:
For some of us the question "How many kids do you have " is painful and hard to answer . I had two children but my son died at 32 so when people ask me that I always say two but only one still living .
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Thanks for bringing that up, as I go through the same emotion when asked. We lost our oldest daughter at 22 years old. Sometimes I say two and nothing else. If Asked how they are, then I try to explain. It's always uncomfortable.
 
Two of my friends lost a child young and go through the same thing when asked. It just keeps reopening the wound.
 
We have 3 kids. Two girls, then a "surprise" boy at 40. I remember thinking to myself how we'd been saving for retirement and now I'll be close to 60 by the time he's off to college. Well, fast forward 20 years and he's a junior in college and yes, I'm 60. I wouldn't trade those 20 years for all of the money in the world.

Now, I get to play with my 3 YO GS and my brand new week-old GS. Life is good.

I imagine, if I counted college in the cost, we'd be talking probably $500K - $700K easy. Maybe more. They were expensive, for sure. But, I still retired early. We would probably have a slightly bigger nest egg if we didn't have kids, but it was worth it.
 
Patrick, my brother’s oops is just starting high school and he’s already 60. But she’s the apple of his eye. One reason he is not retired yet.
 
We thought we wanted 3 or 4 kids, until we had 2. Then we realized that we didn’t want to be outnumbered. So we stopped after we had our two girls. Expense wasn’t the deciding factor, having enough energy to parent was our concern. As it was, as teens the youngest got away with a lot more than the oldest. I tell them it’s a good thing we didn’t have a third child, we probably would have just turned him/her loose with instructions to call if they needed bail money.
 
Teacher Terry said:
Marie, we had 3 boys. When we moved we took down my son’s posters and they were covering up all the holes he had punched in the walls. This was the oldest. We made him pay for the cost of repairs as a lesson to his 2 younger brothers.
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When the kids were small my DH became very proficient in retrieving toys from the toilet pipes; and when they were older in repairing the walls. The holes in doors were slightly more problematic. One time, I went across the street to my parents house and saw a big hole in their wall. I panicked that it had been done by one of The Hoard, but it turned out that my father had dropped a frozen turkey out of a grocery bag, it barreled down the stairs and into the wall.

Yes, I was a bit of a mean, unreasonable mom, I did make them "work off" the damage, with a list of extra chores.
 
Marie, I really wanted a girl but after 3 boys knew I couldn’t handle more boys. My hat is off to you. My husband was also good at fixing stuff by necessity.
 
Also like you I got married young and got my 3 degrees while raising them. I went a decade with no time to watch TV.
 
Teacher Terry said:
Marie, I really wanted a girl but after 3 boys knew I couldn’t handle more boys. My hat is off to you. My husband was also good at fixing stuff by necessity.
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Yes, I would have loved a little girl as well, but we just had our first grandchild, and she is a little girl!
 
Fedup said:
Patrick, my brother’s oops is just starting high school and he’s already 60. But she’s the apple of his eye. One reason he is not retired yet.
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As Chris Rock said "I don't agree, but I understand!" with respect to referring to a child as "oops".

In my case my 29 y/o, 13 y/o and 3 y/o were all planned! The first and second were both born on Father's Day (unplanned but appreciated)! My third child was born when I was 62, I was already retired for many years, so no effect there.
 
Three kids here. We had two boys, but my wife really wanted a girl, so we did the most reasonable thing and adopted a 3-year old girl (in 2000). DW was a SAHM for ten of the first 14 years of our marriage (though that also included getting her masters). Although she could RE, DW likes continuing her career while I stay home because she loved those ten years at home so much and figures it's her turn to be the principal breadwinner.
 
Jerry1 said:
Two daughters. Now in their early thirties. One has three kids and the other has no plan on having kids.

As for $200K per kid, give me a break. It can’t be that much, especially if that doesn’t include college. I have no formal study to point to, but I don’t believe a middle class family of four, two kids, is spending a half million on their kids when that would represent a substantial percentage of their income.
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IIRC there are some really weird housing assumptions made...like a couple buys a one-bedroom home, but upsizes it at a rate of an add'l bedroom for each add'l child.

Of course, plenty of GIs returning from WWII somehow managed to raise a family of 6 in a 2 bedroom/1 bath Levittown home (IIRC, well under 1000 sqft)
 
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2 kids. DS is 19 and DD 17. We had them in our mid-20s. We were young and it worked out ok.

Expensive?

More than it had to be, but that was our choice. No regrets!
 
Married at 19 after meeting my DH and marrying him 2 weeks later. Married 3 months and decided we wanted a "baby." Fast forward DS is turning 38 in Oct. and I had him at 20 years of age. Waited for 8 years to have DD and she turns 30 in December. Wouldn't change having the kids for anything. Although both of them say they aren't having any children. They just don't know what they will be missing, but it is there life and none of my business. We retired early and with enough money so it doesn't matter. There is no more important job than being a parent.
 
NC: raised 3 kids with 5 people total in 1600 sq ft and 1 bathroom. My in laws were 8 people in smaller house and 1 bathroom. Yes we are spoiled.2 of my 3 boys always shared a bedroom.
 
Two kids. One boy, one girl. We got married at 22. Kids came at 28 and 31. I retired at 52 when the youngest had one year of college left. They are now 29 and 26, one engineer, one teacher. We have one grandchild and one on the way.

Kids are the ultimate roller coaster ride. The lows can be beyond gut-wrenching, but the highs... well, it defies words in a way that all parents understand.

I have no idea how much we spent raising our kids. Wouldn't even know how to define it. However, I'm quite confident that we would not have been able to retire at 52 unless we both worked. That was really the key for us. It definitely made for an "interesting" 20 years. No doubt about that. But we made it work. And the work ethic seems to have rubbed off on both kids.
 
Have three kids currently ages 3, 5, and 7. A couple weeks ago I added up what all the childcare costs are going to be to get them all just to school age. For us that was about $50k per child or $150,000 for all three. That is by far the most expensive thing I have spent on them so far. Other than that, costs have been pretty reasonable. I have bought few clothes for them (for my five year old daughter I honestly haven't spent more then $300 on clothing her whole life due to hand me downs from friends with kids.). At this age they don't eat much and they probably have helped me eat out a lot less. Although they can sit down in restaurants fine, it isn't exactly a relaxing experience.

That being said I haven't experienced the cost of teenagers and perhaps I am naive, but I'm really not foreseeing it to be a serious drag on my savings (until college of course).

I honestly couldn't imagine my life without them, they have brought so much joy. There are few things better than showing them experiences and the joys in life for the first time.
Having kids is a great motivator to go out and do something.

They have also been an amazing social conduit for me that I really didn't foresee before having them. I am a fairly introverted person, but I have developed so many close adult relationships with other parents that for me would have been very difficult to start if kids hadn't have "broken the ice."

They definitely cause you to reorganize your priorities, but this time in my life now is by far the happiest I have ever been. I owe that to them.
 
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