Overall Cost- Financially Planning For Your Baby

Learn about the overall cost of having a baby with this instructional video.

Melanie Raposo: Hi everybody! I'm Melanie Raposo and welcome to The Pregnancy Show. The cost of having a baby these days is very expensive. So one of the first thing you need to think about before having a baby is, are you financially ready? Well, today we're breaking down the cost for you and a financial expert gives us great advice on how to budget before the baby comes. Laurie Campbell: Well, one thing there have been many, many studies and none of us will agree, I guess it depends on the life style that each parent provides for their children. There have been many, many studies that the cost of raising a child is well over $100,000. So there is a big bulk number. At first those costs are not going to be that great. You are going to be on maternity leave, there may not be the cost of daycare. Once you throw on it cost of daycare, you'll be looking at $10,000 to $15000 a year. With daycare cost, all the cost of actually caring for that child, feeding that child or roof over their head, and all the responsibilities and activities that go along with that. But certainly if you can take that number and you explode it over a period of time, well over $100,000 if you put a post secondary education in there, could even be higher. So it's very important that people consider that as they move forward in their financial futures and I can't stress enough that you don't want to rely on credit. To help you start out with your new baby because it will just get explosive. The amount of credit you're going to need in future years is going to be far too much to handle.