<prompt> Human: Im 30F and of course the question of whether or not I want to have kids eventually is looming over me. I got to wondering how much it actually costs to raise a kid to 18 and thought Id share what I found, especially since I see a lot of we just had a baby what should we expect? questions posted here.True cost of raising a child Its based on the 2013 USDA report but takes into account cost of living in various cities. The national average is 245,340. Here in Oakland, CA it comes out closer to 337,477!! And this is only to 18, not including cost of college which we all know is getting more and more expensive.Then this other article goes into more of the details of other costs, saying Ward pegs the all-in cost of raising a child to 18 in the U.S. at around 700,000, or closer to 900,000 to age 22I dont know how you parents do it, this seems like an insane amount to me! ---Edit I also found this USDA Cost of Raising a Child Calculator which lets you get more granular and input the number of children, number of parents, region, and income. Afterwards you can also customize how much you expect to pay for Housing, Food, Transportation, Clothing, Health, Care, Child Care and Education, and other: If your yearly expenses are different than average, you can type in your actual expense for a specific budgetary component by just going to Calculator Results, typing in your actual expenses on the results table, and hitting the Recalculate button.Edit 2: Also note that the estimated expense is based on a child born in 2013. Im sure plenty of people arewere raised on less but I still find it useful to think about.Edit 3: A lot of people are saying the number is BS, but it seems totally plausible to me when I break it down actually.. I know someone who is giving his ex 1,100mo in child support. Kid is currently 2 yrs old. By 18 that comes out to 237,600. Thats pretty close to the estimate. Edit 4: Wow, I really did not expect this to blow up as much as it did. I just thought it was an interesting article. But wanted to add a couple of additional thoughts since I cant reply to everyone...A couple of parents have said something along the lines of If youre pricing it out, you probably shouldnt have a kid anyways because the joy of parenthood is priceless. This seems sort of weird to me, because having kids is obviously a huge commitment. I think its fair to try and understand what you might be getting into and try to evaluate what changes youd need to make in order to raise a child before diving into it. Of course I know plenty of people who werent planning on having kids but accidentally did anyways and make it work despite their circumstances. But if I was going to have a kid Id like to be somewhat prepared financially to provide for them.The estimate is high and I was initially shocked by it, but it hasnt entirely deterred me from possibly having a kid still. Just makes me think hard about what it would take.  <response>: When people ask me if Im ever having children, I tell them I have a very hungry baby named SallieMae who I have to feed several hundred dollars once a month.Though, looking at the numbers, I may squeak out of my student loans costing as much as a baby, which is some weirdly good news. 