Today my wife made the comment that it is actually easier on the parents to send the kids to extracurricular classes than having them stay home, despite the extra financial cost. So I was curious enough to do the following back of the envelope calculation. Assuming that we send one kid out every working hour during the week, that is 40 hours a week, so for 18 years, assuming $50 an hour, this amounts to:
echo “40 * 52 * 18 * 50” | bc
1872000
that is a whopping 1.8 million dollars, something only the top 5% of this country can afford. And this is just one kid, and non-weekend working hours. With weekend nannies, diapers, and other material cost, even if we lower the hourly rate to $25, I think the figure is still easily exceeding $1 million. So how on earth can people in this country afford to have a kid, let alone multiple ones?
Why are you doing that calculation? If the caregiver charges less per hour than the parent, then the family is better off financially by working rather than staying home and not working. (This is, of course, not the sole consideration.)
Budgeting is useful in general, especially regarding the bulk of my future cash flow. One other consideration is parents’ career development.
Yes, of course. But doing it as an 18-year budget calculation just makes it hard to understand. Better to use much smaller time intervals.