As the father of 2 kids (a 5 y/o and 2 y/o) in Palo Alto, I can confirm that childcare is a lot. $2k per kid per month at our subsidized academic-affiliation rate. At $48k, it’s almost the entirety of my wife’s PhD salary. Fortunately, I have a well-paying job and we are not strapped for money.
We also got along with just an e-bike for 6 years, saving something like $15k per year in car insurance and gas (save for 9 months when we had the luxury of borrowing a car from family) [Incorrect, see below]. We got a car recently due to a longer commute, but even then, I still use the e-bike almost everyday because the car is not much faster and overlapping with exercise time is valuable (plus the 5 y/o told me he likes fresh air),
For clothes/toys/etc., we’ve used Facebook market place, “Buy Nothing” groups, and our neighbors to source pretty much everything. The best toys have just been cardboard, masking tape, and scissors, which are very cheap.
[Edit: As comments below point out, the figure for no-car savings was incorrect. It’s closer to $8k, taking into account gas, insurance, maintenance, and repairs. Apologies for the embellishment—I think it was from a combination of factors including (i) being proud of previously not owning a car, (ii) making enough not to track it closely, and (iii) deferring to my spouse for most of our household payments/financial management (which is not great on my part—she is busy and household management is a real burden).
To shore up my credibility on child care, I pulled our receipts, and we’re currently at $2,478 per month for the toddler, and $1,400 per month for the kindergartener’s after-school program (though cheaper options were available for the after-school program).]
It can vary enormously based on risk factors, choice of car, and quantity of coverage, but that does still sound extremely high to me. I think even if you’re a 25-yo male with pretty generous coverage above minimum liability, you probably won’t be paying more than ~$300/mo unless you have recent accidents on your record. Gas costs obviously scale ~linearly with miles driven, but even if your daily commute is a 40 mile round-trip, that’s still only like $200/mo. (There are people with longer commutes than that, but not ones that you can easily substitute for with an e-bike; even 20 miles each way seems like a stretch.)
Thank you both for calling this out, because I was clearly incorrect. I was trying to recall my wife’s initial calculation, which I believe included maintenance, insurance, gas, and repairs.
I think this is one of those things where I was so proud of not owning a car that the amount saved morphed from $8k to $10k to $15k in the retelling. I need to stop doing that.
Also, I’m feeling some whiplash reading my reply because I totally sound like an LLM when called out for a mistake. Maybe similar neural pathways for embellishment were firing, haha.
As the father of 2 kids (a 5 y/o and 2 y/o) in Palo Alto, I can confirm that childcare is a lot. $2k per kid per month at our subsidized academic-affiliation rate. At $48k, it’s almost the entirety of my wife’s PhD salary. Fortunately, I have a well-paying job and we are not strapped for money.
We also got along with just an e-bike for 6 years, saving something like $15k per year in car insurance and gas (save for 9 months when we had the luxury of borrowing a car from family) [Incorrect, see below]. We got a car recently due to a longer commute, but even then, I still use the e-bike almost everyday because the car is not much faster and overlapping with exercise time is valuable (plus the 5 y/o told me he likes fresh air),
For clothes/toys/etc., we’ve used Facebook market place, “Buy Nothing” groups, and our neighbors to source pretty much everything. The best toys have just been cardboard, masking tape, and scissors, which are very cheap.
[Edit: As comments below point out, the figure for no-car savings was incorrect. It’s closer to $8k, taking into account gas, insurance, maintenance, and repairs. Apologies for the embellishment—I think it was from a combination of factors including (i) being proud of previously not owning a car, (ii) making enough not to track it closely, and (iii) deferring to my spouse for most of our household payments/financial management (which is not great on my part—she is busy and household management is a real burden).
To shore up my credibility on child care, I pulled our receipts, and we’re currently at $2,478 per month for the toddler, and $1,400 per month for the kindergartener’s after-school program (though cheaper options were available for the after-school program).]
Is $15k a year typical for car insurance? In the UK it’s a few hundred dollars a year at most unless you’re a very young or very risky driver.
It can vary enormously based on risk factors, choice of car, and quantity of coverage, but that does still sound extremely high to me. I think even if you’re a 25-yo male with pretty generous coverage above minimum liability, you probably won’t be paying more than ~$300/mo unless you have recent accidents on your record. Gas costs obviously scale ~linearly with miles driven, but even if your daily commute is a 40 mile round-trip, that’s still only like $200/mo. (There are people with longer commutes than that, but not ones that you can easily substitute for with an e-bike; even 20 miles each way seems like a stretch.)
Thank you both for calling this out, because I was clearly incorrect. I was trying to recall my wife’s initial calculation, which I believe included maintenance, insurance, gas, and repairs.
I think this is one of those things where I was so proud of not owning a car that the amount saved morphed from $8k to $10k to $15k in the retelling. I need to stop doing that.
Also, I’m feeling some whiplash reading my reply because I totally sound like an LLM when called out for a mistake. Maybe similar neural pathways for embellishment were firing, haha.