You know what’s expensive? Baby activities. If you want to sign a baby up for activities – gym, Kindermusik, etc – that’s not cheap at all. Especially if you factor in the cost of the parent’s time in attending the activity (little babies don’t do activities alone). Of course, this kind of thing is completely optional but still. There are free activities for babies at public libraries, which will continue to exist for the next two seconds.
This is all less important if you have several children of different ages but a single child or a child with a great age difference from the sibling(s) needs activities.
We have a great Children’s Museum in town. There are rooms decorated like a dentist’s office, a credit union, a police station, a science lab, a crime lab, a supermarket, etc, and kids can go from one room to another to play. It’s a great place and children adore it. But it’s $105 per year for a family membership or $7 admission for each person. Not everybody can easily afford that.
In the view of the preceding post this will sound dumb but I would love to see a Children’s Museum founded and sponsored not by Boeing but by the state. I feel old, frumpy and outdated when I write this.
Clarissa's Blog 
When I was pregnant with my first child, I thought that once we got past the infant phase that the expenses of having a child would ease. ha. hahahaha. Yeah, right. Daycare (no matter where you live) is outrageously expensive. Once we were past that stage, we were sending the kids to private school — for the cost of more than our mortgage. Then, we went to public schools and started saving money, but there’s also their karate classes, which costs 425 a month (for the two kids and hubby — they all go together). Then, they grow out of clothes so quickly, and even buying most things from Goodwill adds up. I’ve pretty much had to face it — until they are financially independent, they will be expensive people to have around. It’s kind of worth it, though. They’re pretty entertaining.
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Oh yeah. This is why it’s so frustrating that more expenses related to kids are not tax deductible. It takes a ton of money to raise a future worker and tax payer, especially one who will be a high earner. The state should have some skin in the game. The deductions we have are laughable.
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Good point. 😃 They are great if expensive entertainment. 😃
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