Nothing will change your life quite like a baby. It will literally become the center of your world. You'll probably find yourself smiling a lot more and sleeping a whole lot less. All your priorities are about to change. And so will a lot of your expenses.
A big share of your resources will now be redirected to the newest member of your family. And we'd like to help you prepare. There are tax write-offs you can take advantage of that will give you some significant breaks. There's some work you should do too. You need a will, if you don't already have one, and a budget would be nice too.
You'll Be Needing An Extra $9,500 A YearAccording to a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2002, the cost of raising a typical kid is about $9,500 per year. That's $170,500 to age 18 (only if your kid is typical, and we know your kid is way above average). Shelter accounts for 33 percent of that total and food 15 percent. Those figures represent the projected cost for a two-parent, middle-income family with one child. As you might expect, it costs less per child as you add children to your family--about 23 percent per child, in fact. The good news for parents in the Midwest is that it will only cost $160,700 to bring up baby, whereas parents in the western United States will end up paying about $186,700.