Hello ER forum,
1) We will move out of NYC and buy a $200K house in cash. The house will cost $3,600 / year in maintenance and property taxes.
2) A high deductible health insurance plan will cost $300 / month
3) Our kid will cost $400 / month
4) We will buy a car for 10K and it'll cost $250 / month for insurance and gas
5) We will see a 10% cost of living decrease by moving to a lower cost area and retiring.
1 - I don't have a problem with buying a house for $200k since that would be easy to do in Texas where I live. I don't know anything about the housing market where you are looking at. On the other hand, $3600 a year for maintenance and property taxes may or may not be reasonable. You need to check on how much property taxes are in your area. Also, what do you consider maintenance costs? Lots of people don't count thinks like replacing the dishwasher that suddenly dies or replacing the roof and so on. If you've been living in apartments, you may be significantly underestimating the cost of home ownership.
2 - Maybe the plan will cost $300 a month. I don't know. Assume that it does. However, you may well have medical costs in addition to the plan. First you will have a deductible and out of pocket costs. Sometimes people don't really focus on how much those can be. Prescription costs can be very high. My daughter takes a prescription that is over $800 a month (yes, there is one cheaper alternative and she was on it -- but then had a side effect that led to her switching to the other medication). And, our co-payment is less than the full amount, still it is a lot of money.
And, while you might be healthy now and think your medical needs will remain low, things change. Your child might have a chronic health condition. Your or your husband might develop health conditions particularly over the next 30 years. In short, you need to be factoring the possibility of medical costs in addition to the cost of health insurance. (And, also consider things that aren't always covered by insurance such as eyeglasses, vision tests, dental, etc.)
3 - I have 3 kids. The youngest is 18. I shake my head at the very idea of a child costing $400 a month. I saw your post that you can't imagine what you spend the money on. What that tells me is that you haven't really looked at the cost of raising children.
Yes, I understand your husband will be SAHD and eventually you will retire. Even so, the likelihood is you will likely have at least some childcare costs. There are going to be situations where you either don't want to bring your child to an event (anniversary dinner?) or it would inappropriate to have the child present. You will likely have to spend some money on babysitting at some point.
Still, I grant you that you probably won't have a lot of child care expenses.
I think the biggest problem I have with your $400 number is really 3 factors.
First - your child is not here yet. You have no idea what costs will be needed to raise your child. When my son was 5, I thought he would go smoothly go to public school and then would go to college. I guess I was partly right -- he is a senior in college right now. But, the path to getting there was crushingly expensive. For example, he needed to be in an therapeutic school for several years. Ironically, going to college was a step down in cost for us.
Each of our kids had expenses for genuine needs (not wants) that we didn't know about in advance.
Second - There are costs to having a child that aren't direct costs spent on the house. How big a house you buy, wanting to have a yard for the child to play in, choosing a house in a more expensive neighborhood because you want to be in a particular school district, higher utility costs, much higher grocery costs (yes, small children aren't too expensive -- but teenagers can eat just as much as an adult), higher travel costs. You may think for example that kids don't add much to utility costs, but in the last few years 2 of our kids are no longer at home. Our utility usage went down by a lot.
Third - While I think the item above would account for all of your $400 a month there are direct costs. Clothing - yes, kids clothes aren't that expensive. That is in part because they need so much of it. They grow out of it long before it is worn out. Activities - I was never all that big into having my kids do a lot of costly extracurricular activities but, for example, my daughter does karate at $125 a month. Maybe your child will want to take music lessons or be interested in a sport. I am not saying that children have to be scheduled out the wazoo and never have any free time. On the other hand, kids may want to take part in at least some of the activities that they enjoy and that their friends partake in. Even if you limit these (and I think you should), there is a cost.
4 - Do you plan to have only one car? While I can imagine some retired couples managing with one car, I can't quite find it practical for a couple with a child, unless you live in an area with exceptionally good public transportation. There are just too many times that some of you have to be in different places and having one car will make that difficult. I understand that isn't the case in New York City, but most of the US doesn't have the transportation options of New York City.
$10k for a car -- maybe. Most people want to have cars with higher safety ratings and safety options if their child will be riding in the car. You might be able to find something in that range with careful shopping. $250 a month for insurance and gas seems low. Basically it doesn't sound you plan to do much driving. But parents often end up doing a lot of driving. DH has been retired since 2010 and I semi-retired at the same time and work from home. We still do a lot of driving, mostly because our daughter is still at home. Also, your child will likely eventually have a driver's license. Expect your auto insurance to go up significantly (I'm talking thousands of dollars more a year).
5 - I think you will see a lower cost of living with moving to a different area. The problem I think is that you are comparing your budget going forward (with a child) to your budget in the past (without a child). The two are not remotely comparable. Kids are really, really expensive (not sorry to have 3, but really expensive).