Quarter-Million Dollar Babies

My accountant father always complains that I’m an expensive kid. Well lookie here, Pops: the USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion just released a study that says a middle-income family will spend about $221,000 raising a child through age 17. See Dad… I’m not the only one! But since they stopped the survey at age 17, it’s scary to think that in reality, the quarter of a million dollars is only a fraction of the nearly half a million dollars parents will end up dishing out for their kid’s college tuition. Second to the pain involved in the birthing process, I think this is one of the top reasons not to have rugrats.

But my silly parents did it anyway. And according to the survey, the bulk of my their moolah has been spent on housing, food, childcare and education. And to rub it in, they had to dig deeper into their pockets because they chose to raise me in the urban northeast, where costs are the highest in the country, as opposed to the urban south or rural areas. So I guess this is my way of saying, thanks mom and dad! I think that quarter of million dollars plus the price tag of my college education was totally worth it! Don’t you? [Yahoo News]