📊 What is the true opportunity cost of raising a child?

This calculator helps you look at the real economic math of starting a family by comparing your direct out-of-pocket expenses to the hidden opportunity cost of your foregone time. Rather than relying on generic media figures, it uses your specific earning potential to reveal your true sacrifice.

As Joshua Sheets notes, the true cost of having children has to do with the opportunity cost. An opportunity cost is the fundamental economic concept. Discover whether cash or time is your biggest hurdle.

Government agencies love to publish exact figures for raising a child, like $233,000 or $303,000. However, children will basically cost you about as much money as you have. If you have plenty of cash, you will spend more. If you do not, you will spend less.

As Radical Personal Finance explains, a new estimate from LendingTree puts the price tag at $303,418 for 2026 or an average of $16,857 per year. He notes that if you have a lot a lot of money, you're going to spend 800,000 from birth to 18. If you have no money, you're going to spend 23,000 from birth to 18.

The true financial cost of children is what you give up when you make the choice to parent instead of produce. Whether skipping a business trip or spending hours on family logistics, this foregone income is entirely real.

As Joshua Sheets illustrates, if his hourly rate is $500 an hour, the cost of the 10 hours was not the money spent in the store. It was the $5,000 of foregone income. If your earning potential is high, your lost time will completely dwarf your direct cash expenses.

Every dollar spent on direct costs and foregone income is money that couldn't be invested in the market. This section projects what all that cash and time would have become if invested over your children's dependent years.

While the financial math looks staggering, consider the other side. As Joshua Sheets warns, staying childless means you trade out total time flexibility and total time freedom for a much diminished experience of social life when you are older.

Based on content by Joshua Sheets on Radical Personal Finance (YouTube).

Original: 1146-The True Cost of Children Is the Opportunity Cost, Not the Direct Cost