The Price Of Parenting. TL;DR, It Takes A Helluva Lot of Money

Raising a child is a gift, a headache and everything in between. The Price of Parenting. TL;DR, It Takes A Helluva Lot of Money

(1). What It’s Really Like To Support A Big Family On A Modest Income In America

More Americans are choosing to put off having children—or not having them at all.

The Ivys are an exception. ‘It is hard. But it’s not impossible.’

Brittany Ivy didn’t have much money in the bank. She and her new husband, Michael Ivy, had just paid for their wedding, and they had less than $1,000 in savings left.

But they also hoped for a big family, and wanted to get started. Sure, Brittany was making $10 an hour working a retail job at Home Depot.

But Michael’s union construction job paid more than triple that, and he’d owned his own home, a modest two-bedroom outside Cincinnati, for more than a decade.

So the two took the plunge, and in 2012, they welcomed their first baby. Brittany was 20; her husband, 34. The birth was difficult. Her son’s umbilical cord was wrapped around his head, and he had to be extracted from her birth canal, fracturing her pelvis.

Still, she was smitten. “Your heart grows three sizes,” she recalls. “I couldn’t stop looking at him.”

The Ivys now have five children, ages 3 to 12. They know they aren’t the norm.

More Americans than ever are putting off having children—or not having them at all. The U.S. total fertility rate is around an all-time low, and far below the rate needed to keep the population stable.

The average age of women giving birth in the U.S. has risen to nearly 30 years old, up from 27 years old in 2000, according to government data.

Those trends have become a flashpoint in American life today. Many advocates and politicians—including prominent voices inside the Trump administration—have suggested that the falling birthrate in the U.S. represents a looming crisis for society.

It’s a sharp turnaround from the 1990s, when high teen pregnancy rates pushed the U.S. to launch a national campaign to try to reduce them, one that emphasized the importance of waiting for the right partner and being able to support a family.

“We shamed people for years to not have kids too early,” says Karen Benjamin Guzzo, who directs the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “We told them to wait until you had enough money and a partner and could afford it.”

That standard is increasingly out of reach. Costs for basics such as housing, child care and education have soared. More families are finding that they can’t make life work with just one parent working.

That’s especially the case given how standards of parenting have risen, making many middle-class parents feel obliged to adopt a more enrichment-heavy—and costly—form of child rearing.

Many people are having fewer kids than they’d like to, unsure that they’ll be able to pay for “the things we think of kids needing to get ahead,” Guzzo says.

But Brittany didn’t see it that way. She hadn’t always wanted to have kids so young, but her husband was older, and so she was eager to start their family. That way, she thought, they’d both get to enjoy more years with their kids, and perhaps grandkids.

Growing up as the daughter of a nurse and a stay-at-home dad, she and her two siblings lived near their cousins, and together they made a gang of five, roaming the neighborhood, buying corner-store slushies and biking around.

As adults, they remained close, and she hoped to give the same relationships to her own kids. Michael also came from a large family and loved the idea of creating one of his own.

She knew the cost of kids could be daunting. A 2022 analysis by the Brookings Institution found that it now costs more than $300,000 to raise a child through age 17. That estimate doesn’t count the cost of college.

But Brittany figured her kids didn’t need college to be happy. Michael, after all, had managed to earn enough as a construction worker to buy his first house by age 20. And if they did want to go, they could always take out loans.

Besides, so far, the costs for her first son had felt manageable. “A baby doesn’t need much,” Brittany says. “I always breast-fed, so we weren’t buying formula, it was diapers and clothes and that was pretty much all a baby needs.”

When the two welcomed their second son in 2014, they celebrated. And between help from neighbors and family, plus her husband pitching in when his shifts ended in the afternoon, they were both able to keep working.

By then, Brittany had made strides toward her dream career. She’d gotten an associate degree in interior design, taking out around $40,000 in loans to cover its cost.

She’d earned a promotion at Home Depot and was making $12 an hour selling new kitchens and baths to customers, and won a regional vice presidential award for her sales record. In one year, she says, she hit nearly $750,000 in sales.

Then, when her eldest was 3, he started having asthma attacks that regularly landed him in the hospital. At work, Brittany had to drop down to part-time to manage his care. Still, she assumed that was just a bump in her career path.

Soon, the family notched another milestone: Brittany was pregnant, this time with both a boy and a girl.

The twins came in 2018. They were more than 2½ months early, born via emergency C-section and requiring months in the neonatal intensive-care unit.

After their birth, Brittany ended up getting eight weeks of leave and shuttled to the hospital every day, an hour each way, pumping in the car to try to build up enough milk supply for two.

When that time was up, Brittany says, she asked her boss for a few more weeks of leave, unpaid, so she could spend time at the hospital, but was denied.

A Home Depot spokeswoman says the company’s current policy provides six weeks of paid leave for all eligible parents, and an additional six to eight weeks for birth mothers.

But back when her twins were born, Brittany was left feeling frustrated and angry. She wanted to stay. “I’d been with the company for over six years,” she says. “It’s not like I was a slacker or somebody who didn’t work hard.”

She quit the job and focused on the twins, as well as care for her two other children. She planned to find work once her babies’ health stabilized—something she was eager to do.

“I’m a very social person, and it was really hard for me to adjust to just being around my kids all day,” she says. “Adult conversation is something you miss a lot.”

When her twins were finally discharged, she started perusing job openings, including at a local grocery store, which paid well and offered decent benefits. But when she crunched the numbers, she found that all of her pay would be eaten up by child care. The math was a disappointment.

“I hated that it didn’t make sense,” she says. “I like working.”

Every month, at least 1.2 million workers have to miss work or are working only part-time because of child-care issues, an analysis of government data by KPMG shows.

In most parts of the U.S., including in Ohio, it costs more to send a baby full-time to daycare than it does to pay for in-state tuition at a public college. Compared with many parts of the developed world, the U.S. offers little in the way of help for working parents with young children.

Months passed, then years. Before Brittany knew it, her twins were 3, and she and her husband began contemplating whether to have more children.

Sure, some days she’d felt bored, but most days, she loved being a mother, just as she thought she would: family trips to the local park, movie nights with all the kids piled into her bed, their delight in coloring books from the dollar store.

Time was moving so fast. Their eldest was already in third grade, taking gifted classes at their local public school. Their second-oldest was getting into Minecraft and making music on his computer. Already she missed the softness of a baby’s hair, the way an infant snuggled against her neck.

One last one, she and her husband thought. They were elated to find out they were pregnant with a fifth child, a girl.

By the time the baby arrived in 2022, the family had been pitched into a crisis: Michael was out of work. Years doing roofing had taken its toll on his back. A flare-up from wear and tear on his spine had left him in so much pain that for months, he was barely able to walk to the car.

Since the twins’ birth, the family had qualified for Medicaid, partly because of their income and because one of the twins had needed a feeding tube. They petitioned Medicaid to pay for an MRI for Michael, but were repeatedly denied, they say.

Desperate, the duo wound up paying cash themselves. They sold his truck to pay for the bill, which cost $750. After Michael’s MRI, they say, Medicaid agreed to pay for the surgery he needed.

That fall, with their baby girl taking her first steps, Michael got a job making about $34,000 doing maintenance and janitorial work for the local school district. It was a lot less money than he’d earned in construction, but it came all year-round, and Brittany preferred it that way.

“Before that we’d save all summer to be able to pay the bills over winter,” she says. “At least here, it’s a steady paycheck.”

These days, the Ivys support themselves on Michael’s salary, along with around $4,200 a year in rental income from the modest two-bedroom home next to theirs. They bought it a decade ago and rent to her sister-in-law.

When something breaks, they do their best to fix it. They buy their clothes at thrift shops: $1 for a shirt, $2-$3 for a pair of pants. The only things Brittany buys new for the kids are items like shoes, underwear and backpacks.

She has no regrets about how it’s all turned out. Spending so much time with her kids has been a gift.

“I get to see every moment of their babydom,” she says. “Being able to comfort my daughter when she scrapes her knee and be there all the time—what else would I rather be doing?”

Brittany says she wishes more people were able to make the choices she has. She feels lucky her husband bought a home so young. Housing prices have surged since then, and the job market is tightening up, and so she understands why some people might feel it’s impossible to have a family—much less one as large as her own.

“I don’t blame anyone for choosing not to have kids,” she says. “Because it is hard. But it’s not impossible.”

They still live in the two-bedroom. The twins share a room, their youngest sleeps with them in the other, and the boys share a set of bunk beds in the living room. Michael has gotten multiple raises and now makes about $41,000, but it’s still less than he earned in construction.

At this point, the oldest four are in school. For a time, with remote work now being so widespread, Brittany thought she might try landing a job like that.

But with all her kids, she’s at the bus stop four times a day, dropping them off or retrieving them, and sometimes spending 30 minutes loitering there if the bus is late. “It just doesn’t seem realistic,” she says.

Her youngest will start kindergarten in two years. But it is only a half-day program.

Still, when first grade begins, Brittany figures she’ll get her chance to go back to work. Something to put her interior design training to use, she hopes, but really, she’s open to anything.

In 2028, she plans to start looking.

Updated: 8-19-2025

(2). They Needed A Surrogate, So They Asked A Sibling To Do It

Having a surrogate give birth to your baby can cost as much as $200,000. Taylor and Ben Shinoskie found a cheaper womb to rent.

Ben’s sister, Emilee Shinoskie, gave birth to their healthy baby in May. Taylor and Ben, both 33 years old, saved money by taking on much of the administrative work themselves, though the birth still drained about $57,000 from their savings.

The three of them, in Columbus, Ohio, navigated legal minefields and family dynamics that no contract could anticipate.

“We flew by the seat of our pants the whole time,” Taylor said.

Surrogacy is often a last-resort option for couples struggling to have a biological child, and a common route for same-sex couples. It is typically the most expensive path to parenthood, and only a precursor to the massive cost of raising children.

It combines the expenses of involving another person for nine months with the costs of in vitro fertilization, through which embryos are conceived in a lab.

Working with a friend or family member can be cheaper than hiring a stranger, but also messier. Taylor and Ben’s lawyer advised them to compensate Emilee, but she refused to be paid. After she wouldn’t deposit a $10,000 check, they bought her maternity clothes, paid for groceries and secretly replaced the tires on her car.

There were nearly 10,000 embryos transferred to surrogates in 2022, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some women receive multiple transfers, and some types of surrogacy aren’t tracked.

Typical compensation for a surrogate is $50,000 in the U.S., according to Jeff Hu, who runs a surrogacy agency in Los Angeles. He said that is up 35% from five years ago. Adding to the overall bill are medications, egg or sperm donations and health-insurance coverage for the surrogate.

Many clients pay for all this out of pocket, though some have employer-provided benefits that help defray costs.

A surrogacy agency might charge an additional fee of $25,000 to $35,000, and for many couples, the comprehensive support and intermediation is worth it.

An agency finds a surrogate, handles legal contracts, provides psychological counseling, ensures the surrogate attends medical appointments and manages communication between parties. The fast-growing surrogacy industry is lightly regulated.

Others choose to cut out the agency and find their own surrogate. Of the 10 such couples who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, no two experiences looked alike.

One couple ended up having to pay for two surrogates at once because of a fertility clinic’s rule change. Financial strain led another to sell their car and move in with parents.

The Shinoskies’s surrogacy plan came together over a weekly Sunday dinner at Ben’s parents’ house in April 2024.

Taylor had previously suffered two late-term pregnancy losses. The couple’s fertility doctor, Akas Jain, brought up surrogacy with them and suggested the possibility of a family member carrying their child.

“It’s such an intimate process that having someone you already know and trust makes it much easier,” Jain said.

The couple had recently come out of IVF with four viable embryos. When they shared that news at dinner and mentioned they would need a surrogate, both of Ben’s sisters volunteered on the spot. Veronica, 25, had just gotten engaged and was planning a wedding, so they agreed Emilee, 26, was a better candidate.

Emilee said she didn’t have any hesitation about the pregnancy. “I saw them go through those two losses, and it was something I could do,” said Emilee, who along with Taylor and Ben works at a natural-gas company.

The Shinoskies’ insurance didn’t cover fertility treatments or surrogacy expenses, though Emilee’s existing health insurance covered her prenatal care.

First up were Emilee’s medical clearance and psychological evaluations, both required by the fertility clinic. A counselor was initially reluctant to sign off because Emilee had never been pregnant, which agencies typically require as evidence that a woman can carry a pregnancy to term.

And in a group session with Taylor, Ben and Emilee, the therapist brought up the subject of dietary requirements for the surrogate.

“I’m not gonna eat, like, crap, but if you want me to eat a certain way, you gotta cook for me every day,” Emilee remembers saying. Taylor and Ben ended up buying her snacks and cooking her an occasional meal.

Unlike traditional pregnancies, surrogacy requires contracts to establish parental rights, financial responsibilities and which party makes medical decisions. Surrogacy laws vary by state. Louisiana allows only uncompensated surrogacy. Arizona won’t enforce surrogacy contracts.

The Shinoskies paid Thomas Taneff, an Ohio attorney specializing in fertility, about $3,500 for assistance with contracts.

He advised the couple to compensate Emilee because if two parties exchange something of value, that can serve as evidence, if needed, that a surrogate was aware the baby wouldn’t belong to her.

“Is it probable that a family member is going to contest the surrogacy? No. Is it possible? Lightning can strike,” Taneff said.

Taylor, Ben and Emilee bonded over the humor in these technicalities.

“We’re only giving you this because the lawyer is making us,” Taylor told Emilee when handing her the $10,000 check she never cashed.

Same-sex male couples can face additional costs, often paying for both an egg donor and a surrogate, who generally are two different people.

For Joseph Ryan Hughes, 37, and his husband, Nathan Wayne Hughes, 45, surrogacy was a decade in the making.

Joseph had gently brought up the subject with his sister for years, knowing that as a gay man, having a surrogate would be his only path to biological fatherhood. He and Nathan assembled what they call their “core four” arrangement.

Besides the two of them, the group included Joseph’s sister as the surrogate and the manager of the hair salon they co-own in Dallas as the egg donor.

They paid for two embryos to be transferred, hoping for twins. They got them. The couple paid Joseph’s sister roughly $65,000 for the surrogacy and covered her salary when pregnancy complications kept her from work.

They also covered medical, legal and other expenses. Joseph calls the twins his “million-dollar babies.”

“We put every single effort, every single dollar, every single bit of energy that we had into creating our family,” Joseph said.

Having a relative carry a baby often disrupts existing family dynamics, too.

For the 26 years Ben had been Emilee’s big brother, he had treated her as older brothers often do, teasing Emilee and giving her playful shoves. Now that she was carrying his baby, he had to find new ways to interact.

“You could see it hurt him physically to stop himself from making jokes,” Emilee said.

Taylor found herself newly hesitant, too. When she would get the urge to touch her sister-in-law’s baby bump, she would keep it to herself.

“It’s your kid, but it’s not in your belly,” Taylor said.

One of the biggest challenges arrived at the same time as the baby.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Emilee found out she had preeclampsia, and required an emergency induction two weeks before her due date. The birth went smoothly, but Taylor and Ben’s prebirth order—the legal document that would establish them as the parents—hadn’t yet been signed by a judge.

Scarred by Taylor’s lost pregnancies, they were slow to finalize the paperwork to avoid paying more legal fees if something went wrong again.

As a result, the baby was legally Emilee’s.

It took Taylor and Ben four days and another $6,500 in attorney fees to redo the legal documents after birth.

In total, the Shinoskies spent about $36,000 on legal and medical expenses, including IVF. They saved money compared with paying an agency, but not as much as they had hoped.

Today, Emilee has transitioned to being just an aunt. She babysits regularly. Since the birth, she learned that although she can still have her own biological children, she can’t serve as a surrogate again, due to preeclampsia. She has no regrets.

“It was 100% worth it,” she said. “If I could go back, I would do it all over again.”

The old sibling dynamics are returning bit by bit.

“I was walking by her and flicked her the other day,” Ben said.

He and Taylor have three more frozen embryos and hope to have a second child.

They said they would consider a family member over a stranger—a preference conveyed by the name they gave their daughter. Her middle name is Lee, after Emilee.

Updated: 8-20-2025

(3). From $24,000 To $147,000: How Much Daycare Costs Across America

For working parents, the first five years of a child’s life are often the most financially draining. Explore this interactive map to see how costs vary around the U.S.

Every working parent knows that it is staggeringly expensive to put a child through daycare—but it depends a lot on where you live.

The median cost of sending one child to daycare for five years is about $44,000 across the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Labor Department data. In 26 counties, the median cost for five years of daycare is more than $100,000.

The child-care industry is a crucial piece of what makes the U.S. run. The economy needs workers in order to function. The government needs taxpaying citizens to fill its coffers.

But in the U.S., the cost of caring for and educating young children tends to fall solely on parents. And many of those families can’t make the math work.

For each county, the Journal used the Labor Department data to calculate the daycare-center cost of one year of infant care, two years of toddler care and two years of preschool—the years leading up to kindergarten.

The total median cost for the most expensive area, Arlington County, Va., was nearly $147,000. Wayne County, Ky., was the least expensive, at roughly $24,000.

Researchers say that the differences in cost are likely due, in large part, to huge variations across the U.S. in real-estate costs and workers’ pay.

The Labor Department also tracks the price of in-home daycares, but the Journal focused only on daycare centers.

(4). Child Care In America Is Broken. Here Are Five Ideas For How To Fix It

Parents are paying more than they can afford, but daycares and preschools can barely make ends meet. It is a market failure—but it doesn’t have to be.

Child care in America is broken.

Working parents with young children are stretched thin; a year of daycare can easily cost more than a year of tuition at an in-state college.

At the same time, child-care workers are severely underpaid, often earning barely enough to get by and with no real path to ever make much more.

It is a problem with broad repercussions for the entire economy. Parents who can’t afford quality care, or can’t find it, can’t work.

Young adults who are scared off by the cost of care might be less likely to have that second child, or even to have children in the first place.

So, is there even a solution? We asked leading thinkers to weigh in.

First, Understand The Underlying Economic Problem

Child care is expensive mainly because people are expensive. States enforce strict staffing ratios to ensure safety and quality. For example, in many states, an infant classroom can’t have more than four babies per teacher.

Trimming these costs is all but impossible. Daycares can’t deploy AI to change a diaper, or hire a remote worker to give a kid a hug. A typical daycare might spend between 60% and 80% of its budget on wages, researchers say.

All that makes it hard for daycares to offer good pay. Child-care employees are some of the nation’s lowest-paid workers, earning a median $15.41 an hour.

Many don’t get healthcare benefits. That all makes it hard for daycares to find and retain good teachers—and that in turn makes it even harder for parents to find a daycare slot.

“In child care, you’re often making less money than Walmart greeters,” says Heidi Hagel-Braid, chief executive of the nonprofit First Children’s Finance. “The math doesn’t math.”

Daycares that want to raise their teachers’ wages have to hike their tuition fees, and many parents can’t afford that. Families in the U.S. paying for child care spent an average of 22% of their household income on such services, according to Care.com survey data.

Figure Out The Best Ways To Train And Equip Teachers

The rules for who can teach at a daycare or preschool vary significantly, which can create problems.

Some districts require at least some preschool teachers to have a college degree. But teachers who take on student debt might soon have to decamp for the higher wages at elementary schools.

Other states don’t even require daycare workers to have a high-school diploma. But teachers without much training can quickly feel overwhelmed and quit.

Linda Smith, policy director at the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute, recommends ensuring each classroom has a teacher with something called a Child Development Associate credential.

In her experience, Smith says, doing so significantly helps drive down turnover and improve quality.

CDA classes can be completed within a matter of months, often at local community colleges, and involve training in classroom management and childhood development.

Give Tax Breaks And Business Training

Daycares are businesses just like laundromats and health clinics, but they often aren’t run by businesspeople.

Connecting daycares with business mentors could help—especially for parents starting daycares out of their homes.

“You don’t go into child care because you want to make money,” says Michele Kennedy, 55 years old, who started a daycare at her house in Omaha, Neb., 23 years ago.

In her case, Kennedy wanted a business that would allow her to stay home with her own children, and anyway, she loves kids. Today, she works about 65 hours a week and makes just $35,000 a year.

Kennedy has received coaching through the Nebraska Early Childhood Collaborative, a nonprofit that trains child-care providers on everything from tax preparation to how to write a contract.

Such training, she says, has saved her thousands on taxes and helped her tighten up some of her business practices, like spelling out more clearly to parents what time she closes each day.

Separately, researchers say, the government could offer breaks to help daycares stay in business. Ideas include eliminating property taxes on in-home daycare owners and helping cap increases in liability insurance.

The government could also assist with startup costs, such as installing playground equipment or retrofitting a building.

Get Buy-In From Companies

Parents are usually the ones footing the bill for child care in the U.S. But companies benefit when parents are freed up to work—and the government, for its part, benefits from getting taxpaying citizens.

Industries that have their own high turnover rates—restaurants, warehouse operators, manufacturers—have in recent years become more likely to offer help for employees, such as paying for backup care or sometimes even opening subsidized daycare centers on site.

Employers say it can save money in the long run because the cost of finding, hiring and retraining new employees is steep.

Several states are also experimenting with models where employers contribute to child-care payments for families, helped by state matching funds.

In Michigan, for example, under an initiative launched in 2021, if businesses pay one-third of an employee’s child-care costs, the state will contribute another third, with the employee paying the rest.

The program is open to any household making between 200% and 400% of the federal poverty level, and so far 260 employers are participating.

The program is voluntary, but Emily Laidlaw, deputy director at the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, says businesses in her state were some of the program’s most vocal advocates.

“They understand how it helps them,” she says.

Change The Way America Thinks About Child Care

In the U.S., daycares and preschools have typically been viewed as a babysitting service. The K-12 system, on the other hand, is seen as a public good.

But many cities, counties and states are exploring new ways to boost child-care providers. The economic benefits are part of the equation. But these programs have also been spurred by a growing belief that good daycares and preschools are also good for children, whose brains are shaped powerfully and in lasting ways when they are very young.

Florida recently started offering tax breaks to businesses that provide child care for employees. In Louisiana, taxes on sports betting, cannabis-derived products and casinos raise money for early-childhood education.

Misty Heggeness, an economist at the University of Kansas, says there are precedents for the government getting more involved in child care. For decades, Head Start, a federally funded program, has worked to promote school readiness through programs for kids through age 5.

During World War II, the government subsidized child care in an effort to get more women into the workforce. The Defense Department also currently provides subsidized child care to children of members of the military community.

“I don’t think this is rocket science,” Heggeness says. “There’s already a road map for it with public schools—we just need to extend the age down.”

Updated: 8-21-2025

(5). These New Parents Give Us An Unvarnished Look At How They Spend Their Money

People think they are prepared for the costs of parenthood. Then they end up ordering stuff on Amazon at 3 a.m. to get the baby to sleep. It all adds up.

What happens to your spending when you have a child? We recently spoke with new parents from across the country to hear how it went for them.

Spoiler: None of them said having a baby was cheaper than they expected.

Americans would have to spend $20,745 to buy a basket of goods and services commonly used in a baby’s first year, versus $15,775 for a similar basket in 2022, according to BabyCenter, a parenting website.

Three families gave us a peek at their credit-card charges, Amazon orders and overall monthly spending.

Take A Look:

Haley And Jordan Loew

Meridian, Idaho; 1 Child, 8 Months Old

Haley, 26, Data Analyst; Jordan, 27, Mechanical Engineer

The Loews initially got walloped by the costs of having a baby.

Haley said that after a flurry of middle-of-the-night purchases in the early months, they got a better sense of what is actually necessary.

“Realistically, the kid is just going to sleep when he’s ready,” she said. “And I just spent $75 on a swaddle system that will get used three times.”

Amit Schwalb And Samantha Shain

Philadelphia; 1 Child, ~1.5 Years Old

Amit, 30, High-School Teacher; Samantha, 33, Database Administrator

“There’s sort of a catastrophism that people have sometimes” when warning about the cost of kids, said Amit. “Doubling your budget was more the way that people talked about it, versus increasing it by 50%.” He does call child care “catastrophically expensive,” though.

Amit and Samantha have been trying to keep costs down and minimize their environmental impact. They buy secondhand when they can and recently made a beach toy out of a used yogurt container.

Sarah And Dimitric Viverette

Cincinnati; 1 Child, 7 Months Old

Sarah, 28, Physician; Dimitric, 26, Stay-At-Home Dad

Sarah and Dimitric Viverette’s monthly spending stayed about the same after having a baby girl, but only because Dimitric quit his job to watch her full-time.

They made the decision six weeks in, when the prospect of paying $1,000 a month for daycare was becoming more real.

“We knew how expensive it was going to be, but it hits different when it’s actually your money,” said Sarah.

(6).Your Kids Are Your Pride And Joy. They Are Also a Tax Break.

Private school. Summer camp. Braces. Parents can find discounts everywhere once they think like tax pros.

There’s parenting. And then there’s parenting like a tax pro.

Nina Sodhi, a chief financial officer and entrepreneur, opened a college savings account years before her son was born, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in tax-free savings.

Now he is entering fifth grade, and she’s planning to put him on the payroll of her small business, meaning she could get a tax deduction.

“I started to think of him as helpful, and then I started thinking about him as a potential tax break,” she said.

Once you filter parenting decisions through the lens of taxes, you will find plenty of discounts on the enormous cost of parenting. Sure, there are the basics to think about, such as the child tax credit that every parent should take, if eligible.

That just went up, by the way, to $2,200 per child. But there’s more. Daycare. Summer camp. Private school. College. Braces. Therapy. Sneakers.

Many parents don’t take up the challenge. To maximize your tax benefits, you have to study, and you have to do it before tax season in most cases. That is especially important now because of changes that help parents in the big new tax law.

Are You Ready?

Private School, College And Beyond

As a young investment banker, Sodhi opened a tax-advantaged 529 college savings account in her name and seeded it with $5,000, intended for the child she would have someday.

She got a deduction off her state income taxes each year she contributed. Seven years later, when her son was born, she named him the beneficiary. He got a really early start on tax-free compounding.

The new tax law expands what expenses qualify for tax-free 529 plan withdrawals beyond typical college costs. Standardized test fees, tutoring and certificate-program costs now count too.

For parents interested in private school, the new law doubles the amount of 529 plan withdrawals that qualify for tax-free distribution to $20,000 a year for K-12 expenses.

Education Credits

If you don’t use 529 money to pay for college, you can claim one of two tax credits for your expenses: the American Opportunity Tax Credit or the Lifetime Learning Credit.

You cannot claim either credit if your modified adjusted gross income is more than $90,000, or $180,000 for a married couple filing jointly.

The credit is generally used by the parents. But the children can claim the credit instead once they are considered independent. Amorette Mason, an enrolled agent in Yeadon, Pa., claimed an education tax credit when her stepdaughter was in college.

Later, her stepdaughter moved out on her own and took the credit on her return as she juggled contract nursing work and college.

Billions of dollars go unclaimed by families eligible for these tax credits, according to an Internal Revenue Service report, which cited the rules’ complexity. A lot of parents aren’t thinking about taxes proactively, said Mason.

“They don’t know what they don’t know,” she said.

Saving Money

Shraysi Tandon, founder and chief executive officer of Kidsy, a discount shopping site for children’s stuff, and her husband, an interventional radiologist, go beyond 529 accounts. They also contribute to custodial brokerage accounts for their two daughters each year.

The transfers help build savings for the girls to use when they are independent, and likely paying a lower tax rate than their parents.

The tax law introduced another savings account for kids that will launch next year. Parents of children born between 2025 and 2028 will get $1,000 deposited into a so-called Trump account that grows tax-deferred and can be tapped at age 18 for any purpose.

Sodhi said that once her son starts working part time for her book-registry business, Bookshelf Builder, she will draw on yet another tax-pro move. She will suggest that he keep 10% of his earnings as pocket money and put the rest in a Roth IRA.

Children can put money in as soon as they have a job, then pull out the contributions as needed with no tax or penalties. Otherwise, all the money can be stowed for retirement.

Daycare And Summer Camp

The tax code has two main ways to help parents with child care: a dependent care spending account that you sign up for at work if your employer offers it, and a dependent care tax credit.

It is complicated even for Inés Sosa, an employee-benefits lawyer at Faegre Drinker in San Francisco. She and her husband are expecting their first child in October and they want to max out the benefits.

“We’re trying to make sense of it in the middle of everything,” she said.

Both of their employers offer workplace dependent care accounts. Working parents can use them each year to set aside pretax income to pay for child-care expenses, until the child turns 13. Summer day camp, but not sleep-away camp, expenses count.

There is an enhanced $7,500 annual contribution limit per family under the new tax law, up from $5,000 this year.

If, like Sosa and her husband, you are considered a highly compensated employee under IRS rules, your contributions might be limited.

To avoid that, one option is for the couple to split the contributions between their two workplace accounts.

The new tax law also changes the way the child and dependent care tax credit works, making it more valuable for middle-income taxpayers, starting in 2026.

You get a percentage of your claimed expenses—up to $3,000 for one child and up to $6,000 for two or more—back as a tax credit.

One caveat: You can’t double dip, claiming the same expenses for both the dependent care account and the tax credit.

Braces And Seeing The Therapist

The two tax-advantaged savings accounts for healthcare take on new importance when paying for kids’ visits to a doctor. Workplace healthcare flexible-spending accounts generally let you set aside pretax income to pay for deductibles, copays, coinsurance and out-of-pocket expenses.

This is effectively a discount that grows with your tax rate. You can use it for broken bones, braces or even therapy.

If you choose a high-deductible health insurance plan, you can save in a health savings account for more flexibility. The contribution limits are higher and there is no risk of forfeiting the money at year-end if you don’t spend it, as there is with FSAs.

If you contribute to an HSA, your FSA would be more limited.

Back To School

Parents can time their purchases of backpacks, sneakers and laptops to avoid sales taxes in more than a dozen states that have sales-tax holidays.

Florida just made its sales tax holiday for back-to-school purchases permanent every August.

Updated: 8-22-2025

(7). 12 Money-Saving Hacks For Raising Kids, From Clever Parents Who Did It

Babysitting can be free, and shutting down snack requests at the grocery store can be fun.

Parenting demands a heaping dose of creativity—to entertain your children, to foster their learning, to get them to eat vegetables.

Applying a bit of that creativity to saving money can chip away at the massive expense of raising kids. And it might actually be fun. We asked parents with children of all ages for their best money-saving hacks.

Rebecca Palmer, McLean, Va. | Children’s ages: 5 and 8

Babysitters in our area cost $25 per hour, so date night can easily hit $100 before you even leave the house. Instead, we set up a babysitting swap with another couple. One couple puts their kids to bed and once the children are asleep, one parent from the other couple comes over to babysit while the parents head out for a date night. The visiting parent can relax, watch a show and is simply there in case the kids wake or there is an emergency. Meanwhile, their partner stays home with their own kids. On another night, they swap roles so the second couple gets their turn out. This kind of arrangement was incredibly common among our parent friends during grad school and many of us still do it today.

Kelly Palmer, Chicago | Child’s Age: 2

I opened a 529 college savings account when my son was born and shared the contribution link with friends and family. (The plan will typically generate a direct link to your child’s gifting page so others can contribute but won’t give them the ability to access your account details such as the account balance). It took the pressure off us having to save during our child’s first year and shielded our house from an onslaught of toys and clothes our baby would grow out of quickly. We continue to share the link before our son’s birthday each year. For his coming birthday, he would be thrilled to open yet another firetruck toy, but someday he will realize a contribution to his 529 was a more valuable gift.

Grant Gallagher, Mount Olive, N.J. | Children’s Ages: Twin 5-Year-Olds

Images of cartoon characters on juice boxes or snacks at the grocery store always give our kids cases of the “gimmies.” We ward off impulse buys by keeping a stash of character stickers from a dollar store at home. When our kids spot character-themed items, we just say, “We have an even better one at home!” Then, we apply the stickers to what we already own. My kids are just happy to get something similar to what they wanted.

Linda Rogers, San Diego | Children’s Ages: 7, 9, 12, 14

My four girls have very specific opinions about water bottles (it has to be certain brands—all cost about $30 to $50 each). I noticed a bunch of barely used, high-end bottles in the school’s lost and found. I asked and if the items don’t get claimed, they are sent to the local thrift store every few months. So we went to that thrift store and sure enough—all the brands they wanted were there for a fraction of the price. We just head there any time they need a water bottle. We opt for stainless steel, sanitize them and always replace any straws.

Michael Tannenbaum, Greenwich, Conn. | Children’s Ages: 3 And 5

Since airlines usually check car seats free, I pack jackets and other clothing into the car-seat bag. No airline has objected so far. This simple hack saves me from paying for pricey checked baggage. Plus, it means I don’t have to rent car seats when we get to our destination.

Maggie Klokkenga, Morton, Ill. | Children’s Ages: 10, 11, 12

School supplies add up (especially those dry-erase markers). At the end of the school year, once my boys have dumped all of their school supplies on my kitchen counter, I go through them and then compare them to next year’s school-supply list, provided by our elementary school. This does three things: I’m clearing off all of the school supplies from my kitchen counter for the summer; I identify the school supplies that they already have for the next school year, so I save money by not buying those supplies; I now know what I need to get during those back-to-school sales a couple of weeks before school starts.

Cherie Stueve, Bay Area, Calif. | Children’s Ages: 34 And 35

Starting in high school, we automatically transferred the money our kids needed for both necessities like school supplies and fun items like meals with friends into their own checking accounts with us as account co-owners. We estimated our teens’ annual expenses like clothing, supplies, activities and gifts, divided that by two, and set up transfers on the first and 15th to mimic the timing and consistency of a paycheck. They were responsible for spending decisions and it taught them to budget over time for bigger expenses like prom. It saved me money by avoiding last-minute purchases.

Matthew Ferrell, Land O’ Lakes, Fla. | Children’s Ages: 9 And 13

Some dental insurance plans offer orthodontic coverage, but often only after a six- to 12-month waiting period and with a lifetime maximum benefit (typically $1,000 to $2,000 per child). To bridge the gap, we’re considering a dental discount plan for our oldest—a membership-based program primarily run by third-party organizations—that provides an immediate savings of 20% to 30% on orthodontic services with participating providers. This will help us as we look to reduce our out-of-pocket costs while waiting for insurance to kick in.

Adam Yosim, Boca Raton, Fla. | Children’s Ages: 2 And 6

If you’re taking a family trip to a theme park, buy souvenirs ahead of time. Before my oldest daughter’s first Disney World visit, my wife and I ordered Disney-themed toys, like Minnie Mouse and Buzz Lightyear, on Amazon and gave her one each morning before heading to the park. She never noticed the difference. It saved us from paying a premium and waiting in long gift-shop lines. For her sixth birthday, we did the same with a Jasmine dress—half the price, same magic.

Bernard Del Rey, Christchurch, New Zealand | Children’s Ages: 9, 14, 14, 17, 17, 19

Buying in bulk helps me save. Our boys are obsessed with ciabatta buns, so I searched for ways to buy them at a reduced price in bulk and then freeze the excess. I have a blended family of six boys who are big fans of these buns, consuming over 4,000 buns a year. To cut down on costs, I found a local bakery that deeply discounts them just before closing. I put the buns the boys are likely to eat that week on our kitchen counter. The rest freeze very well.

Ryan Bayonnet, Akron, Ohio | Child’s Age: 9 Months

We created a “chain” of parents with similarly aged children to pass down clothes, toys and books. The chain includes families whose kids are several months older and younger than our own. Families whose kids have outgrown the items pass them down to those of us just behind them in age. The oldest members of the chain eliminate clutter from their home and the families with the younger children save lots of money.

Chris Mamula, Ogden, Utah | Child’s Age: 12

It was expensive to buy new equipment every time our daughter wanted to join a new team or try a new sport, so we started to get as much sports gear as we could from local “buy nothing” groups, consignment stores and gear swaps. We’ve found everything from skis to soccer shoes to a gently used bike that originally retailed for $700. I’m sure that developing her own style will eventually make getting many things used an issue, but we’ve managed fine through elementary school.

(8).Too Rich For College Aid, Can’t Afford Full Price: How One Family Made It Work

Being in the ‘forgotten middle’ forces many families to make difficult decisions about which schools are worth it.

Ana Sofia Gómez Garza was ready to coast after she got into some of the nation’s top colleges, until she and her parents started considering the costs.

Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Notre Dame and the University of California, Berkeley, were among the schools that wanted her. Few offered her need-based financial aid.

Her parents had been saving, but not enough to cover full tuition for both her and, eventually, her little sister, nevermind the law school Ana Sofia also wants to attend. The cost of one year of undergrad these days can approach $100,000.

“It’s like you’re paying the salary of a recent graduate just to start going to college,” said Gabriel Gómez, Ana Sofia’s father.

Parents spend 18 years trying to decide what’s worth it for their children in a world of rising costs. For those who send their kids to college, the decision over where to go is in its own category.

There is the wide-eyed optimism of launching a child into the world. There is also the potential to drain savings and rack up student loan debt. Many parents are reluctant to weigh in too much on the choice of schools, wanting to avoid tipping the scales.

Gabriel, a director at a manufacturing company, tried not to put too much pressure on Ana Sofia to pick a college based on price. What if she chose a cheaper school and ended up unhappy?

But the Irvine, Calif., resident couldn’t stop himself from comparing the costs to the much lower ones in Mexico, where he and his wife, Marcela Garza, grew up and went to school.

At private nonprofit four-year U.S. institutions, the total sticker price for tuition, fees, housing and food has increased by nearly 40% over the last decade, according to the College Board.

Paying four years of the annual average sticker price will run you nearly a quarter-million dollars.

Colleges have been giving more grants and discounts in recent years, meaning the net cost of college has actually been declining on average. But those funds typically go to families who demonstrate financial need.

A swath of the middle class doesn’t qualify for financial aid, but hasn’t saved enough to cover the total cost out of pocket. For them, prices are still going up.

Take Linda and Roger Liu. They consider themselves upper middle class, and they have been able to save about $160,000 in a 529 college savings account for their 16-year-old daughter, Caitlyn.

“If we’re looking at tuition that’s $90,000 per year, there’s no way that’s going to cover it,” said Linda, who lives in North Caldwell, N.J.

Before running a career coaching firm for young adults, Linda was an executive at the College Board, where the “forgotten middle” would often come up. She has recently been finding that describes her finances, too.

“I never thought we’d be in the situation where we’d be stressing about finances for college,” she said. “And yet here we are.”

Caitlyn, a rising junior in high school, has a spreadsheet with colleges that she is interested in. One of the columns lists cost, ranging from $33,000 to more than $90,000 a year.

That will be a factor as they whittle down the number of schools heading into application season next year.

They haven’t gotten to the point of trimming the list, but nearly 80% of families report eliminating at least one school based on cost, according to Sallie Mae.

Ana Sofia, in California, applied to 20 schools, but at the time didn’t seriously think about cost. She was more focused on her high school’s theater program, college essays and her duties as student body president.

By April, 13 acceptances had rolled in. She received $11,000 in external scholarships to put toward the college of her choice.

Like many parents, hers hadn’t put their money in a 529. They would have to pay taxes on the gains in college savings they pulled from their brokerage account. That money would also have to support her 16-year-old sister, Rebeca, who wants to be a dentist.

Money was now a consideration, alongside campus culture and the quality of the international relations program she intended to enroll in.

Greg Kaplan, Ana Sofia’s college adviser and founder of Kaplan Educational Group, said more students this year have been passing up acceptances to elite institutions because of the price tag.

Off the bat, she eliminated Cornell (too cold) and Berkeley (too close), and planned to visit the rest.

Her parents were rooting for Notre Dame, and not just because the school offered a $51,000 discount. They also appreciated the school’s Catholic affiliation. Gabriel could imagine himself in the bleachers at football games. Ana Sofia was hesitant.

They bought plane tickets to Chicago to visit Northwestern, and planned to take the train from there to Notre Dame. But two days beforehand, Ana Sofia told her parents she wanted to cut the Notre Dame leg.

Her Reasoning: “My parents might get more of an urge for me to go and it would’ve been harder to say no.”

It is still a sore spot for them. “To me that was the best one,” Gabriel said. But he said he didn’t want to interfere with her decision-making.

Neither of the two remaining schools, Brown and Northwestern, had offered her discounts. But during her campus visit at Brown, a current student told her what many families learn too late: that financial aid is oftentimes negotiable. It starts with appealing the financial aid decision.

A few days later, she did that for both schools. In the formal applications for more aid, she said that other colleges had given her scholarships and financial assistance.

Northwestern refused to give her more money. Brown asked her to provide more documentation about her family’s finances. Then, the school updated her aid, giving her a $9,000 scholarship, waiving a $5,000 health insurance fee and telling her that she would be eligible for a $3,000 work-study.

Ana Sofia accepted her offer from Brown on April 28. A month later, Brown announced that it was creating a new school focused on international relations.

Ana Sofia took that as a sign she had made the right decision.

Her estimated cost of freshman year, including her scholarships and aid, will be about $65,000. She plans to work part-time jobs and paid internships in future summers to help with the cost.

Brown wasn’t originally on Gabriel’s radar. He hadn’t heard of it when he was growing up, but saw it as a good option after Ana Sofia got excited about it.

Now, he is thinking ahead to paying for law school.

Updated: 8-24-2025

(9). Summer Is Endless, And Expensive, When You’re A Working Parent

Stress, guilt and money converge when school gets out. Let our illustrator draw it out for you.

Summer! The years go by and I’ve come to accept that it is just like any other time of year, except hotter and with more excuses to eat ice cream.

Or at least that was the case, until I became a parent.

Thrust back into the unforgiving rigmarole of school schedules for the first time since college, I found myself asking questions as we hurled toward Memorial Day.

Why isn’t school in session 12 months of the year? Are we sure my 5-year-old is too young for a summer job? Perhaps an internship at a newspaper?

As a full-time working parent, summer yawns out like a looming black hole of unknowns and, perhaps, some vague twinkle of possibility, budget depending.

Still, no matter the budget, it hardly ever feels like enough.

Now, people who have been talking about summering like it is the 1990s will call this an invented problem. Just let them run around the park! Stop over-programming the children! Let them live!

And spiritually, I fully agree. Except I’d prefer to avoid a visit from Child Protective Services for letting my soon-to-be kindergartner roam the New York City streets unattended.

But this is hardly a metropolitan issue.

My suburban counterparts might imagine allowing their children to spend their summer on a scavenger hunt for a mysterious dead body while learning important life lessons along the way (cost effective!).

But I’m sorry to report that anywhere with Wi-Fi would render this fantasy moot. That other black hole of unknowns beckons: the phone.

Having come of age alongside the internet myself, I’m fairly averse to pearl clutching over the screens and what’s inside them.

Then again, my frontal lobe is developed enough to understand that fully supplanting the instinct to touch grass with the insatiable urge to scroll isn’t exactly a mental-health boon.

This is where all arguments about parenting start getting lost in the weeds. I am not sure any parent has figured out the answer to that eternal question:

What IS Best?

What is summer, really? And what is summer to a kid?

Freedom, I think. Socializing, I hope. Any number of camps and programs, if I can afford it.

The real purpose of a child’s summer, I’d argue, is self-actualization, the chance to grow up a little bit more in fits and starts of a different flavor than the confines of school.

My love for my daughter is, of course, boundless. But, constrained by time and money, there are boundaries of what we can reasonably do.

The difference between the two is the emotional tax I pay as a working parent. And the chasm between what we would do versus what we can do is that much wider in the summer.

In the end, my family’s best bet was the vaguely-STEM-oriented camp on a local college campus a 20-minute walk from our apartment.

It all came down to the few programs that had aftercare with a 6 p.m. pickup time, to align with my and my husband’s work hours.

And the price? More expensive than our weekly berry haul, less expensive than a beachside summer rental.

Still, we did elect to take some time off and redirect a week of the camp budget for a few days together at the beach. It was relaxing, save for a hiccup here and there.

Averting that crisis cost us nearly $1,000. Then we made our way to a clam shack where another 5-year-old girl asked my daughter if she wanted to play hopscotch.

Summer means different things to different people. And, for working parents, also a lot of the same.

Updated: 8-25-2025

(10).She’s 7 Years Old. Her Parents Are Saving To Support Her When She’s 30.

A new camp of financial advice suggests it is OK to help your adult children financially, and you might as well start saving early.

Leza and Anthony Dieli are saving about $1,000 a month for their 7-year-old daughter, Zoey. This money isn’t for college tuition or summer camp or medical expenses. It is to support her once she is an otherwise independent adult.

There is a novel strain of financial advice that suggests supporting grown children isn’t a reason to be ashamed. It is probably necessary, and sometimes even desirable. The Dielis decided to start saving early.

Leza graduated college during the 2007-09 recession, worked a string of unhappy jobs and racked up credit-card debt. She doesn’t want that for Zoey.

“I want her to feel like she has options,” Leza said.

Whether they plan for it or not, plenty of parents are likely to find themselves in the same boat. About 60% of parents with children ages 18 to 34 said they had helped their kids financially in the previous year, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey.

Parents are finding that the rising expenses that trail them from their child’s birth through college are now extending well into adulthood.

They commonly chipped in for housing, debt payments and everyday expenses such as groceries, according to a Bankrate survey last year.

A third of younger millennial home buyers got help with the down payment from friends or family, according to an April report from the National Association of Realtors.

For some, it extends even further. Daycare bills for the grandchildren. Roof replacements. Vacations. One financial adviser described a 40-year-old woman still on her parents’ phone plan.

Funneling extra cash to the children is a luxury that many Americans can’t afford. Even for those who can, it isn’t always a good idea. It can stir arguments or awkwardness. It can stunt the development of fledgling adults or derail carefully laid retirement plans.

Even those who currently pay for their grown children say there should be limits to the assistance, lest it last forever or keep growing.

But among parents who have already covered more pressing financial needs, and who have the means to help, there is a resignation of sorts. Rising rents, ballooning college costs and a recent dearth of entry-level jobs have made it particularly challenging for younger generations to find a financial footing.

“Parents are more permissive now and more likely to provide, but I also think the need is greater,” said Patrick Huey, who owns Victory Independent Planning in Naples, Fla.“ I think parents see that and say ‘I have the ability to help out.’ ”

In inflation-adjusted terms, Americans are earning 18% more than they did in 1980, when the last of the baby boomers were entering adulthood. The costs of housing have soared more than 400% since then, medical care has climbed nearly 700% and tuition and child care costs have increased more than 10-fold.

Robert Persichitte, a financial adviser based in Denver, considers it his mission to shake the stigma of helping children overcome these obstacles.

He lived rent-free with his grandmother until he was 26. He paid down student debt, saved up $30,000 and bought a home before his 30th birthday, something few of his friends have been able to accomplish even today, he said.

Now 38, he tells clients to prepare ahead of time to help their children do the same.

“I think you either need to be comfortable with your kids struggling or you need to set aside some money now,” he said.

When Persichitte helped Leza Dieli calculate the monthly savings she and her husband would need for her daughter’s lifelong “allowance,” it was “shockingly lower than we expected,” said Leza, 38.

Stowing away roughly $2,000 a month now would grow into a pot that could pay out about $3,000 a month for the rest of Zoey’s life, starting after she graduates college, they calculate.

The Dielis, who live near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., started at a couple hundred dollars a month, when Zoey was 5 years old. They plan to increase their current savings of roughly $1,000 a month as their income grows.

Leza added that they have separate savings for college and keep their living costs low to save aggressively.

When considering the plan, Leza said she polled several of her own family members. If given the choice, she asked them, would they rather have gone to private school, an expense the couple was also considering, or receive a monthly check indefinitely? Everyone picked the money.

Some families think of parental support as flipping the concept of a traditional inheritance. Tens of trillions of dollars of wealth will get passed down from aging baby boomers as they die. But why wait until death to part with the money?

Kyla Holcombe said she and her husband aren’t especially concerned about how much they leave behind. But they have set aside a few thousand dollars in brokerage accounts for each of their three children.

They also plan to pull from some other investment accounts to help them with weddings, buying a house or other milestones. The Denver-area couple also have savings in a 529 plan that should cover the cost of four years at an in-state college.

Holcombe’s Thinking: “How can I help them when I’m still around, when it’s earlier in their life and they need it more?”

Other parents find themselves wishing they had planned for the extra support they would still be lending their children. The years when a child is just setting off on their own are typically when parents are refocusing on their own priorities, such as making catch-up 401(k) contributions to save for retirement.

Melinda Cales, a high-school teacher near Cleveland, covers housing, car payments and tuition costs for her 24-year-old daughter, Peytin. Though she wants to support Peytin as she finishes her degree at a nearby community college, Melinda says the added costs have put a strain on her own budget.

She has put off vacations and recently cut her monthly contributions to her own retirement savings in half.

Peytin said she had a bumpier transition to adulthood than expected after graduating high school at the height of the pandemic. Her mother said she has watched many other graduates of the school where she works struggle to afford college or land jobs.

Melinda has come around to the idea that parents should have an extra savings account to help young adults, if they can. Saving for the first 18 years of life, but cutting off support after that, she said, is “like saving for vacation and saying you’re only going to save for the hotel.”

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