Talk about stuff you don't need!

Evidently raising a child is now supposed to cost $250,000 plus college. Okay, #1, scaring parents with sticker shock is a pretty mean trick. #2, you don't need all that stuff.

Here's a list of all the things mentioned in the article that we never used:

1. Maternity leave. I wasn't working during any of my births, so we didn't have to worry about it. Hubby had vacation he could take and we streched it by him working half days or from home.
2. Child care. I wasn't working, remember? I did work for a while when Mary was a preschooler and, it is incredibly expensive. I was paying $70/week for part time. The full time babies were like $200/week.
3. $100/month for wet wipes? Who are these people? I think I spent $10/month. $2,000 for diapers? We used cloth for the youngest, but the older ones cost $20/month for 30 months (or s0). That's $600, not 2k. Still a lot more than you really need to spend. I think we spent about $200 total for the youngest, including the cloth diapers and a disposible here and there.
4. Formula, breast pump, pillow? Nope. Got a manual pump from the hospital. That was plenty for us. Did own two nursing bras, about $30.
5. Did buy 4 carseats and 2 cribs between the three (don't make things like they used to). Total: About $400.
6. Clothing: we probably spent about $100 between the three for their first year.
7. Baby food: Didn't buy much. Kids just nursed or ate what we were eating. I would occasionally puree something. $20 total.
8. Attorney fees: Went to the library, got a book with boiler plate wills, combined the language into what we needed. Cost: $0. (If there's a possiblity of the will being contested, or if you have piles of stuff to worry about, a lawyer might be necessary.)

Total cost for all three:

Birth expenses-- $3000 (had good insurance at the time)
Other expenses--$1550
Total-- $4550

A far cry from the $9000-$11000 MSN thinks you need for just one kid. By not working, I saved our family something in the neighborhood of $25, 500. That's a decent year's salary. Considering that we probably spend $1000 per child per year now, and I don't see it going up much when they are older, my not working (combined with homeschooling) will have saved us something like $690,000. Over the 23 years we'll have kids at home, that's $30,000 a year, which is not a bad salary. I'll have to remember that the next time I look at our miniscule bank account.