How do poor people afford children?

[Litcrit]

Litcrit, Well, I think that being overweight is not a function of how much money you make or, in some cases, how well you shop or cook your food.

Yes, a healthy diet is important. Access to that healthy food is important. Knowing what to do with that healthy food is also an issue. It’s a lot of factors - you can’t just say that “poor” people are overeating and therefore overweight.

I certainly didn’t mean to imply poor people were overeating and therefore overweight - the opposite, really.

My conspiracy theory is that there’s bad stuff - (corn starch, high fructose, additives, GMO, hormones, who knows?) in the highly processed foods that are more available to the poor in the USA. To me, the situation is illogical and unfair. It takes a considerable amount of money just to get basic healthy food, like fresh raw veggies and fruits? Potatoes and beans and cabbage and lettuce and carrots? Stuff I can get kilos of for a couple of bucks? That’s horrifying. I’m “poor” and can easily afford to eat healthy where I live.

Have you ever heard of food deserts? There are literally some poor neighborhoods where liquor and convenience stores are high and access to fresh fruits and veggies is low. Also, fruit and veggies can be expensive but you can get a box of twinkies for a buck. Since poverty goes along with low level of education, these people may not understand that a tub of oats is cheaper/healthier than a box of lucky charms. I don’t know about you, but whole foods and trader joes are not cheap.

Wow, no. I’m not from the US. That sounds just crazy. There’s something wrong in an economy when raw, fresh produce is expensive and heavily processed foods with lots of labor and technology invested in them are cheap.

Where I live, I get fruits and veggies per kilo from the farmers, whole, fresh, cheap. I then have to wash them, chop them, prepare them. Processed foods (frozen or canned veggies) are much more expensive. Eating out is the most expensive option.

I don’t know what a trader joe is.

 

[PaulGH]

Some thoughts:

1. Many people in the United States, including many “poor” people, are in debt and live beyond their means.
2. Children don’t have to cost NEARLY as much as the media would have you believe. Our one huge expense with the kids is Catholic school tuition, however many parents do not have that expense. For example, clothing is very cheap if you shop at consignment sales (which is where we get most of our kids’ clothes), and make good use of hand-me-downs within your own family (including extended family). And food isn’t that much more expensive for a family with kids than for two adults, unless you eat out a lot. (Though that might change with teenagers – we aren’t there yet.)
3. You might want to consider moving to a cheaper area. I used to live in California (the SF Bay Area), and one of the main reasons why I don’t still live there is that I couldn’t see how I could ever afford even a modest house there. For the cost of a small duplex there, I could buy a very nice, large house on several acres of land where I live now. That is really no exaggeration. And property tax rates aren’t bad here either.

 

[Chorister1980]

I echo the sentiment that if you wait till you can afford children you will never have them.

I work part time, my parents and DHs parents are young (mine in their early 50’s his in their early 60’s) so the 3 days I work they look after the children (who are now 8 and 5)

Between us we earn around £60k. Which is about $95k.

Our house cost us £180k, around $290k, and my wage covers the mortgage repayments.

My son has swimming lessons, guitar lessons and karate.

My daughter swimming lessons, dancing and rainbows.

Some months I don’t know how we do it, but we do!

Children are a blessing, look forward to yours, don’t worry about affording them, you just will, and they will bring you so much joy, they are worth every single penny!!

 

[TheRealJuliane]

I certainly didn’t mean to imply poor people were overeating and therefore overweight - the opposite, really.

My conspiracy theory is that there’s bad stuff - (corn starch, high fructose, additives, GMO, hormones, who knows?) in the highly processed foods that are more available to the poor in the USA. To me, the situation is illogical and unfair. It takes a considerable amount of money just to get basic healthy food, like fresh raw veggies and fruits? Potatoes and beans and cabbage and lettuce and carrots? Stuff I can get kilos of for a couple of bucks? That’s horrifying. I’m “poor” and can easily afford to eat healthy where I live.

Wow, no. I’m not from the US. That sounds just crazy. There’s something wrong in an economy when raw, fresh produce is expensive and heavily processed foods with lots of labor and technology invested in them are cheap.

Where I live, I get fruits and veggies per kilo from the farmers, whole, fresh, cheap. I then have to wash them, chop them, prepare them. Processed foods (frozen or canned veggies) are much more expensive. Eating out is the most expensive option.

I don’t know what a trader joe is.

Well, take that with a grain of salt. We have tons of grocery stores and even people in poor neighborhoods can take the bus (although most people have a car or even 2) and get their fruit and veg IF THEY WANT TO. “Food deserts” is a made-up term to suggest that people have no choice when it’s not really true.

 

[Cat]

http://photos.mris.com/nfs/photos02/1/0/3/3/4/6/10334646788_1_M.jpg

This is a 200k home in Silver Spring, Maryland. One floor and one basement, just a driveway.

I suppose my question should be, how do people in my area afford children.

This home would cost between $12,000 and $35,000 in our city, depending on which neighborhood. We have the cheapest housing cost in the United States.

There is a house in our neighborhood that is simliar to that house, but it has three bedrooms and a two-car garage, and nice large yard. We live close to the college that is in our city, and the house is occupied by a college student and three of his friends. His father bought him the house when he started college. It cost $54,000 a few years ago. The dad said that it’s cheaper and more practical to buy a house for his son, and let several other college kids live there and help pay the mortgage costs. Then when the son is finished with school, he can sell the house and make some money.

OTOH, our city has an unemployment rate around 16%, and our school dropout rate is 25% (50% among African American males). We also have the highest percentage of violent crime in the state, even more than Chicago. Oh, well.

But if you HAVE a skill that is in demand by employers, you can do really well here.

WE have a huge homeschooling population, thousands of kids. Several large homeschool co-ops.

 

[sdeco]

My husband and I live in the DC area, and I have to take issue with a lot of what’s being said here.

First of all, Cat said “you really need to move,” but it’s not always that simple. The OP didn’t say why they live where they do. Maybe they have no particular attachment to the area and they could easily move somewhere else that’s cheaper. If so, moving might be a good option. But in our case, my husband and I both grew up in the DC area. My parents, his parents, all our siblings, several old friends, and several new friends are all in the area. My family and his family have also become very good friends and get together for every holiday. I would be absolutely heartbroken if we had to move somewhere else.

Also, there’s the fact that areas with more jobs also tend to be more expensive, so it’s kind of a catch-22.

OP, my husband and I got married at around the same age you did, and we made about the same amount of money combined that you do now. The answer to your question is that if you want to have kids now and stay in DC, you will almost certainly need both incomes, at least for awhile. If you want to have your wife stay home or cut back on working, you will probably have to either move somewhere cheaper or postpone pregnancy until you are making more money. It’s up to you.

My husband and I had a surprise pregnancy three months after we got married. I had wanted to stay home with our baby or cut back on my hours, but since we had a baby so young, I had to go back to work full-time. I worked full-time for several years until our second child was born, at which point I cut back to part-time. Working full-time with a baby was extremely difficult and stressful, and I really, really wish we could have had her later when we could afford to have me work part-time. Having your wife work part-time is another good option, if you can do it. One and a half incomes is easier to live on than just one income. Good part-time jobs usually aren’t advertised, though. Usually moms who work part-time have already been working for a company full-time for several years and then ask to go part-time when they have a baby. (And not all companies are willing to do this). Some people also start their own part-time businesses that they can do from home.

We also send our kids to public schools. The school system in Fairfax County, where we live, is one of the best in the country.

You never think you can afford kids. You just have to jump in.

I absolutely, 100% disagree with this, and I hate it when people say it. If this were true, the Church wouldn’t allow NFP. When we first got married, we knew we could “afford” kids in the sense that we could afford to support a child, but only if we were both working full-time. That’s why we were using NFP to avoid, until we could afford to have me stay home or cut back. But then I got pregnant anyway, and had to go back to work full time. Going back to work full-time only confirmed that we absolutely did have serious reasons to avoid. My first day back at work after having my daughter was horrible – I literally had a knot in my stomach all day long because I missed her so much. She also wasn’t sleeping well, and the sleep deprivation made me constantly get sick. I went from getting sick 1-2 times a year to getting sick 10 times a year. I also had mononucleosis and shingles, an extremely painful rash that happens when your immunity is down and normally only occurs in the elderly (I was 25).

You are basically saying I should have just “jumped in” and purposely gotten pregnant and just dealt with the constant sickness and the mono and the shingles and the horrible feelings I had about being away from my daughter all day. B.S.

But let’s be real this area is very transient and full of ambitious ladder-climbers and there are far fewer families here than many places, and there are a lot of the families who never see their kids and have them in 38 activities a week. And go to elite private schools that cost an arm and a leg and no longer have any values (I know from experience)

I take issue with this too. Yes, there are a lot of people like this in the DC area, but there are many, many like my husband and me who aren’t. We are both “work to live” types, not “live to work” types. We enjoy our jobs, but we are not excessively career-oriented. My husband works 40 hours a week for the federal government – no crazy hours. I work 20 hours a week. My MIL watches the kids on days we both work. I think it’s nuts when parents go crazy with activities for their kids, and we limit the activities. We have always been frugal and have no debt aside from our mortgage. In fact, we have mostly kept the same spending habits we had when my husband’s salary was half what it is now. We don’t live in this area because we are “ambitious ladder climbers.” We live here because we grew up here and all of our friends and family are here. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have grown up in a major metropolitan area with lots of jobs, so that I could live near all the people I love as an adult. If I had grown up in a small town or a failing city, I would probably have had to move.

Also, the local diocese, and Diocese of Arlington, is very orthodox. There’s also lots of diversity in this area, lots of culture, lots of ethnic restaurants – it’s just a great place to be.

 

[PaulinVA]

You are basically saying I should have just “jumped in” and purposely gotten pregnant and just dealt with the constant sickness and the mono and the shingles and the horrible feelings I had about being away from my daughter all day. B.S.

No, I actually wasn’t talking to you at all. I was responding to the original poster, EphelDuath. However, it is very common advice that if you wait until you think you can afford children, it will be too late.

 

[SuperLuigi]

I’m about to get married soon. My fiancee and I together make about $55k a year. But I’m looking at some of the projected expenses for having children (education, food, clothing, medicine, et al.) and I’m kind of baffled.

Granted, we live in an expensive area (Washington D.C.). Granted, we’re both pretty young (22 and 23) and we’ll probably make more money in the future. But we both live frugally. We rarely go out to dinner, neither of us own or even desire a television, only one car between us, no unusual medical or therapeutic bills. We don’t want a huge home, nothing more expensive than $200k.

But just the costs of paying the bills and raising one (1) child, it seems we’re making barely enough. How do you do it if you’re poorer than we are? Welfare? Lots of help from the parish and family?

Garage sales, don’t buy them whatever they want (designer clothes, a new CD everytime it comes out.

Also, not every kid needs their fully-funded private college education or their own laptop or car.

 

[KendraDZ1902]

I find it INSANE that so many are saying basically, “well, you need to move.” Not everyone has the luxury of just up and moving. I absolutely HATE the city I live in. I have had more allergies/skin problems living here. I just found out that we will have at least another 4 years here. IF I want to live with my husband, you have to be around them to have babies, I have to live here. If the only advice you have is to say, “move,” then that really isn’t advice.
My mother raised 2 children on minimum wage. I’m sure it wasn’t her choice, our lives were quite wonderful before my biological father became an addict. I never knew we were broke. It wasn’t until I was older that my mother let me know how tough things were for a few years. She gives all the glory to God. She said that is definitely the only way we were able to eat, have a roof over our heads, and be involved in school activities.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

Just stop looking at the “What Does a Child Cost” reports! They are BOGUS! They frighten people away from having children! Children are a GIFT and a BLESSING! They are not a cost! You make a family and God blesses you! Have faith and stop reading those stories right now!

x 1000

The last one I read, the cost for one kid was more than we’ve spent on our five since they’ve been born. We breastfeed, cloth diaper, shop at thrift stores and rely on hand-me-downs. We don’t have cable, don’t buy baby food and keep our cars at least 10 years. We garden, buy in bulk and work up the week’s menu before we go shopping so we buy only what we need. I could go on and on, but the point is that we’re able to afford five at far less than the cost of one based on those reports. None of my friends who waited until they had enough money to have kids were ever able to save the amount they thought they’d need, and once they finally bit the bullet, they wished they’d have done it years earlier.

 

[Cat]

My husband and I live in the DC area, and I have to take issue with a lot of what’s being said here.

First of all, Cat said “you really need to move,” but it’s not always that simple.

I realize that. (I did put a smiley face after my comment about moving to show that I was speaking lightly.)

But there are times when people CAN move. Often, they just haven’t thought about it. They live in a town all their lives and assume that they just have to stick it there. But when they sit down and actually talk about it logically, and review the facts, and make some phone calls and send some mail and emails–they discover that yes, they really CAN move.

That’s why I wrote my suggestion. I wanted this family to sit down and THINK ABOUT IT, and if possible, do it.

That’s kind of what happened to me and my husband. We were living in Raleigh with our 2 daughters, who were just getting to school age. We missed our family terribly, and wanted so badly for the girls to grow up around their grandparents and great-grandparents. A transfer possibility for my husband came up, and we weren’t even thinking about it because at that time, Raleigh was the Number One City in the United States for families to live in. (according to the annual Money Magazine survey), and we had a happy life there.

But one evening, we sat down and hashed it all out, worked out the details, discovered that it would be very possible, and decided to move. The scariest thing was selling the house–our house was kind of a dump, and we were afraid that it would be on the market for months, maybe years. But God provided an older lady in our church who had always loved our house, loved the proximity to the church (down the street), and had plenty of money to spend remodeling the house. We didn’t even have to list the house–she bought it outright from us. And we were on our way, and do NOT regret the move. It has been a joy for the girls to actually KNOW their great-grandparents and grandparents, as well as other extended family members. Also, living up in Northern Illinois gave our girls the opportunity to skate with an elite, world-ranked synchronized skating team–these memories are precious, and both girls STILL skate (my younger daughter coaches, and has helped her teams get to a point where they are consistently earning berths at Nationals now).

Now that being said, we DO wish that we had moved to a different city other than our hometown. We should have done more research and not made the assumption that “you can go home again.” At that time, our public schools were going through a deseg lawsuit; it wrecked our public schools. A terrible brain drain happened and the private school enrollments soared as kids by the thousands left the public schools. (Also the homeschooling population swelled.) We paid no attention. After a few years of awfulness in the public schools, we ended up pulling our girls and sending them to a private school, which cost a fortune–basically our retirement funds.

Also, we paid no attention to the skating rink situation, and had no idea of the rink politics in this city’s skating clubs at that time. IF we had moved to a Chicago suburb, our cost-of-living would have been higher, but we actually would have been better off financially, because we would have been able to send our kids to the public schools for free (other than taxes), and we would have been able to keep them involved with recreational skating and precision skating (which eventually became synchronized skating) with a lot less grief and money.

Even better, we could have moved to a state like Wisconsin or Iowa, where the finances are in a lot better shape than Illinois. Back then, we knew that the politics in Illinois were corrupt to the core (at least two governors were in prison back then, and two more would follow in the future). But we blithely ignored this, assuming like fools that this didn’t affect our lives and family. Sigh.

But we didn’t know any of this. I would strongly suggest that anyone who moves do a lot of “surveying” of the local scene. Go sit in the local coffee shops (not the Starbucks!), restaurants, and donut shoppes, and TALK to the people about what’s going on where they live. Get the facts from the people who actually live there, not from the local Visitors’ Bureau, which is supposed to paint a rosy picture.

But like I said, we do NOT regret moving. And I think that all families who are in a hard place financially should at least consider it. Think of all the men who are now living in North Dakota and working at the oil fields and making enough money to support their family. I read an article where one of those men said, “It feels so GOOD to finally be able to support my family and pay my bills.”

And like I said in my previous post, our city does have that incredibly cheap housing, and if your job prospects are rosy (I’m in health care and my husband in information systems), you can do well here. A lot of people move to our city from Chicago and commute into the city for their jobs (or work from home if they can). In Chicago, $200,000 will buy them a dumpy flat with no garage and only one parking space and extremely high taxes. In our city, $200,000 will buy them a mansion in a good neighborhood. The property taxes are pretty high (5th highest in the country), but it’s still cheaper than Chicago.

 

[Cat]

Oh–one more thing for anyone who is reading my posts and doing some thinking about moving–we have had the Traditional Latin Mass in our city for many years, and there is now a fairly-inexpensive traditional Catholic school (K-12th grade) that is growing. (Still pretty small, but growing.)



And our skating rink situation has improved wonderfully, thanks, in no small way, to people like me and my husband who stuck it out and worked hard to improve the club.

 

[Cat]

I find it INSANE that so many are saying basically, “well, you need to move.” Not everyone has the luxury of just up and moving. I absolutely HATE the city I live in. I have had more allergies/skin problems living here. I just found out that we will have at least another 4 years here. IF I want to live with my husband, you have to be around them to have babies, I have to live here. If the only advice you have is to say, “move,” then that really isn’t advice.
My mother raised 2 children on minimum wage. I’m sure it wasn’t her choice, our lives were quite wonderful before my biological father became an addict. I never knew we were broke. It wasn’t until I was older that my mother let me know how tough things were for a few years. She gives all the glory to God. She said that is definitely the only way we were able to eat, have a roof over our heads, and be involved in school activities.

Like I said above, yes, I know that not everyone has the luxury of up and moving. I see that your family is Navy, so of course you can’t just move when you please.

But many DO have the freedom to move, and many people should at least think about it.

The United States has plenty of great states, cities, and towns, where people can make a good life for themselves and their families. Nowadays it’s so much easier to do research using the computer.

If you can’t move, then yes, you will have to make the best of your life. But don’t assume that you can’t move until you’ve taken the time to least think about it and try to work out some logistics.

 

[Elisabeth51]

I’m about to get married soon. My fiancee and I together make about $55k a year. But I’m looking at some of the projected expenses for having children (education, food, clothing, medicine, et al.) and I’m kind of baffled.

Granted, we live in an expensive area (Washington D.C.). Granted, we’re both pretty young (22 and 23) and we’ll probably make more money in the future. But we both live frugally. We rarely go out to dinner, neither of us own or even desire a television, only one car between us, no unusual medical or therapeutic bills. We don’t want a huge home, nothing more expensive than $200k.

But just the costs of paying the bills and raising one (1) child, it seems we’re making barely enough. How do you do it if you’re poorer than we are? Welfare? Lots of help from the parish and family?

Help from God and it depends on where you are living! I now live in California, I make more per hour than I ever have in my life, but work on PT, no way could I afford rent around here or anything else (I live with family)…back in TN I made $10 an hour, had an apartment in the historic district that was bigger and less expensive than the house I live in here in California in a crummy neighbourhood, I had a new car (a Chevy SUV) and afforded all of my bills on my own! I did actually do some social things periodically too.

Yes, you make more in California, but the cost of living is ridiculous. Budgeting is important, living within your means, what do you really need…but I do believe the biggest thing is where you’re living…out here my priest makes more annually than I ever have in my life and he doesn’t pay rent, utilities, food and I do find it problematic, he’s thought to be “underpaid” while to me he’s RICH. It’s relative.

 

[EphelDuath]

Sadly moving isn’t an option for me. I graduated with a B.A. in Theology and by the grace of God I was given a really good job in D.C., which means my living options are limited to the metropolitan area (D.C. proper, northern Virginia, southern Maryland). The field is… well, not very good.

If I moved, I would have no family, no friends, probably a minimum wage job.

 

[MommaElspeth]

I have myself and 3 young children, and our yearly income/budget is $20,000 a year. We’ve done fairly well, but we make a variety of difficult choices, and some not too difficult but unusual choices as well. I don’t buy my children clothes, books, or toys. I belong to a group that has a “clothing and household goods swap” every 6 months. We take what’s been outgrown, and bring home what we need. We get hand me downs, and the kids request things for birthdays/Christmas. This year my oldest DD asked for funds to participate in track, my second got a bicycle from several grand and great-grand parents combined.

We live in a cheap rental. We are very frugal with our electricity, heat set to 50, a/c to 85, and not even on most of the time, water heater set low, line dry clothes. We have no cable. I home school, and get all of our materials cheap or free.

I focus on need, not want, and as I’ve gone on a lot of things have moved from need to want. I do tell myself, and my children, no more than I would like. But the life we have is a good one, and it’s the one we have chosen even with the difficulties.

 

[Sarcelle]

I keep thinking about Cat’s point about people wishing they were rich enough to buy vegetables and lean meat instead of pasta. It’s fascinating to me how so many poor people in the US are also overweight. There’s something strange and kind of suspicious there. It doesn’t happen when people eat cheap real food made from scratch in modest amounts, which is what the really poor do here. Any kind of real, unprocessed food, including pasta and potatoes.

Where I live, it’s cheap to eat healthy. Fresh vegetables are very cheap. Beans, cabbage, and potatoes are staples for the very poor here.

It’s not expensive to add a few eggs or some dairy or a bit of lean meat and add it, chopped, into any veggie mix. Healthy, cheap, and delicious.

Instead of expensive and unhealthy sugar-coated cereals, for breakfast I have a mix of whole grain flakes I get by the kilo in a brown paper bag at my local health food store (these have cheap items here, like corn kernels for popping and peanuts and almonds sold by the kilo - also cheap sources of protein and good fats).

I spend about a dollar a month on my breakfast.

I often wonder how people can afford children in high cost of living ares such as Hawaii where the cost of living is high and with few job opportunities.

 

[TheRealJuliane]

This is fascinating.

I don’t live in the USA.

I earn the equivalent of 8600 US dollars a year and this is what my family lives on. We have two children, ages 6 and 3.

We don’t have debt (I inherited a smallish apartment, and all our kids will share one bedroom and know they’re lucky to have a “children’s room” in the home. Many young couples here live with their parents, even their grandparents).

University education is free for good students here, so no college debt for me. I didn’t have to pay for my postgraduate studies either. Healthcare is also free, as well as schools.

We have a car (bought a used, but solid one, cash. We’d saved).

We only buy clothes if it’s really necessary. We used mostly hand-me-downs when our kids were younger and sometimes get clothes as gifts for them for their birthdays.

We don’t buy products supposedly needed for children, like bouncy seats and baby swings and high chairs. Bought a crib (barely ever used, we co-slept), bought a very cheap umbrella stroller (used a few times), got a sling as a gift and wore my babies in it (much more practical, especially for city life), got a hand-me-down but barely used car seat, gave kids real food like mashed banana or veggies from my plate. I breastfed.

Farmer’s market is cheap here if you want fresh veggies and fruit and eggs and cheese, which you can live on and be healthy. We also buy milk and a bit of bread and some meat and fish. I’ll often steam a mix of veggies, add a couple of eggs, stir, maybe put a bit of cream in as well. Cheap and healthy.

We never eat out.

We go on a seaside holiday every summer.

And it all somehow works out. I suppose it almost always does. Not ALWAYS, though, or no child anywhere would ever starve, and they do.

Well, to be accurate, your education and health care is paid for through your extremely high taxes. Nothing is free on this wonderful planet of ours, everything has to be paid for by someone, at some time.

But in some parts of the US, we are paying a LOT in taxes and not getting as much in return. So…

 

[RedSoxWife]

In our case it feels like we get by because we don’t have any other choice.

Since my husband and I married six and a half years ago, we’ve lived in a variety of situations and had various incomes. In the beginning we had a 10 x 10 foot cabin without indoor plumbing. At that point my husband actually had what we considered to be an okay job and we were able to save (at 26k a year). Then the recession hit and we had a newborn and he was suddenly jobless. 40 job applications later he found part time work (and we were thankful for the penny pinching I’d done when he had been making more). I clipped coupons and made a small investment in cloth diapers. We moved into a small apartment when we found out we were having our second. At that point we were making less than half than we had been originally, and I’d opened my online shop, staying up late making rosaries and jewelry. DH was in in a graduate theology program at that point, so he was working at a pharmacy/store and studying at night.

In the past three years we’ve lived in California, Florida and now Michigan. DH is now a full time law student and I take care of the babies during the day and stay up late sewing and selling the things I make (I should be sewing right now… but CAF tempted me into coming over and reading posts). Things are tough. I can never figure out how we’re going to make ends meet, but they always do. There have been months when we’ve eaten rice and beans for pretty much every meal (DD2 was one at that point and thinks that beans and chickpeas are the greatest thing on earth as a result). And I’ve learned to get creative with rice and beans. Beans ground up and seasoned to look like taco meat. Black beans disguised as a hamburger patty. Being poor (by our countries standards at least) has made me way more resourceful than I would have been if we’d never experienced this… and has made me a better cook!

Moving to Michigan has helped. The house across the street, which is beautiful, just sold for 17k. There are five foreclosures on our street. If DH gets a job here after graduation, we’re hoping to buy the rental we live in now, although that’s still a ways off.

We had a nicer car at one point, but we sold it to pay for the move and bought an old 1999 mini van that has carried us back and forth across the country when we moved for DH’s internship this summer.

And we’re happy and honestly I imagine that someday, when things are easier, we’ll look back on this time when things were hard but also sweetly simple, fondly. And hopefully I’ll be able to put those penny pinching skills to good use.

If we’d waited for the perfect time to have kids… well… they’d still be way off. But we manage… and honestly, while I know we’re technically “poor” I feel incredibly fortunate for all that we have.

 

[HouseArrest]

I think those are good ways to save a little money here and there, but the massive expense comes with private school and the activities the kids end up taking an interest in. It is VERY important to us that our kids learn to play a musical instrument well. Those lessons from highly skilled teachers (not the piano lady down the road) are crazy expensive. We pay over $400 a month for lessons for our older two and we’ve got three coming up. Some people would call that a luxury, and you know, compared to food and health insurance it is, but it’s also something we feel will make our children more well-rounded, interesting and skilled people. We know the time to capitalize on those talents is now.

I’m not one to have kids dabble in YMCA activities and sports - if you’re going to do something, you do it well and go all-in. My oldest is very serious about ballet and that means four times a week lessons at the studio, costumes and proper equipment. Again, this is important to us that our kids learn to take on a task and give it everything they have. We feel our job is to help our kids have success in the areas in which they excel. For us that means each kid studies music and each kid is involved with an athletic pursuit.
Keeps them out of trouble long term, gives them confidence and a sense of accomplishment and an appreciation for hard work and discipline.
And those things, while not absolutely necessary, are a very important part of our family life and cost a lot of money. For parents like us, you have to take that into consideration.

I am guessing you probably give up a lot of other options to be able to do the music lessons and ballet, right? I mean you chose the one thing that is important to you and you’re going for it. I think that’s great. A lot of other people might spend just as much letting their kids dabble in this and that. That might be just what their kids need - but it’s not necessarily less expensive.

I am also guessing you also would find another way to obtain these lessons if you couldn’t afford them. I am not sure about your specific lessons, but I know many organizations have ways to reduce tuition through volunteering, fundraising, scrip programs, and more.

At about age 15, I would expect a kid could get a part time job and pay for a lot of their own lessons as well. My 4 oldest, aged 17, 16, 13,11, all have jobs, even if, at times, they are just a few hours a week. In addition to paying for the lessons I think it helps them appreciate what they are receiving.