The Cost of Raising Kids

So I found a calculator that estimates how much it will cost one to raise their child. It asks questions like what year the child was born, do you live in the suburbs, will the child attend college and if so, will it be public or private... It breaks the annual costs down in categories like housing, health care, clothing, transportation etc. etc. So here's what it's going to cost Patrick and I to raise our four children from conception through college

Raya: $355,906
Malia: $355,906
Ethan: $355.906
Carly: $355,906

That is a total of: $1,423,624

I can already see why it costs this much. A few weeks ago...Raya got these:



and then shortly after that, we were off to the orthodontist where I got an estimate for "Phase 1" which consists of 18 months worth of work which will cost us $3,000...and that's just phase 1!! She's going to need 2 sets of braces people and that's not the worse part...The orthodontist checked out Malia and told me she would need the same thing done...Dang! My genes SUCK!

I was vacuuming the floor on Saturday when Ethan came in and tried to tell Patrick and I something. He can speak very well but sometimes he mumbles and we don't understand. He ran off and after asking Patrick what he had said and neither of us knowing, I turned the vacuum back on only to hear Malia running in telling us that there was water all over the bathroom floor. Patrick immediately took off running and I followed. Let's just say that there wasn't a dry towel in the house shortly after. The girls were being so kind as to "clean" the bathroom and Raya dropped the lid of the toilet tank into the tank busting about 4 inches out of the bottom of it which resulted in a flooded bathroom...Sooooo Patrick took off to Lowe's and bought a $150 toilet...I NEVER did anything like that when I was a kid :-) Ok, so I actually broke a few windows :-) but anyway...With the help of our very awesome, cool, dare I say handsome, talented handyman neighbor Steve (am I forgiven now Steve?) we have a new, extra long, toilet in our bathroom and the best part about it, was Patrick actually washed and dried ALL the wet towels himself WITHOUT BEING ASKED. After 11 years of blissful (gag) marriage, he's finally learned!

So back to why I was originally posting this post...I wonder if the calculations the calculator used to calculate (let's say calculate one more time)...how much it would cost to raise my four children, took toilet breaking into consideration or if it's going to cost me $150 more (and counting) than $1.4 million dollars? I wonder if people actually take into consideration how much it will cost to raise a child when figuring out how many of them to have? I didn't!