A woman has shocked TikTok by sharing the costs associated with raising her three kids. Dana, who is a mother of three, goes by @livijayfam on TikTok. Her video has gone viral with over 1 million views and nearly 80,000 likes.
In her video, Dana said she wanted to be transparent about the topic of money, which is often considered taboo. Many users on TikTok shared how much they spend on raising kids, with some saying it takes more or less than the figures shared in Dana’s video.
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She's sharing this info for a good reason.
Dana starts the video by saying, “The number is going to shock you because it shocked me. If you’re my husband please stop watching now. Everyone else, I am going to transparently tell how much money we spend on our three kids.”
Dana continued saying that she's sharing this info because finances are a major part of family planning. She says money is a big factor in why people do or do not have kids and when they have kids or how many kids they have. “Money is very taboo and a lot of people don’t talk about it," Dana said in her video.
This is what the extracurricular cost is for her three kids annually:
Dana gives a PSA before sharing the numbers saying, “I definitely go overboard in some areas and I’m seeing that right now on paper. This is not the minimum amount you need to have happy healthy children — just keep that in mind.”
Dana shares that her children are ages 9, 6, and 3. “Extracurriculars, I spend $18,000 on a year. That’s gonna be the one that gets people heated,” she says in her video.
She goes on to break this number down by saying both of her girls are on a competitive dance team and the figure includes dance for her girls and tumbling and soccer for her son.
The numbers also included school costs.
“My 2 older girls go to public school but my son goes to pre-school," Dana said. “That is $600 a month. Which is about 10 months so $6,000 part-time," she continued. She proceeded to make pretend vomiting sounds after sharing this number.
An analysis from Child Care Aware of America found that in 2021 the average cost of care for an infant in the US was $13,000 and for all children under 6 years of age the annual cost of care was around $10,600.
A budget for holiday expenses and clothing allowances were included in her estimate.
Next up in Dana’s video were holiday-related expenses — Christmas and children's birthdays. “This number is probably low ball because I didn’t include all the other little holidays that I get them little gifts for,” Dana said. “I spent about $1,500 a year on Christmas gifts and for their birthdays $500 per kid," Dana shared.
Then she broke down the costs of clothes, uniforms, and shoes. In her video, she says, “I don’t know I’m guesstimating, but I’m gonna say at least $3,000 per year. I would assume at least $1,000 on each kid.”
She also spends quite a bit on food for her three kids.
The last category of spending Dana shares is food. She said, “This one’s hard because I’ve been shopping for all of us for so long that I don't even know. Inflation has really driven prices up. Guessing that 3 kids cost an extra $1,200 per month on food. That brings us to $14,400 per year.”
She shares that she added $3,000 per year for “extra that I'm forgetting about." “Extra expenses like, obviously we need a bigger car for the children and obviously we spent extra on vacation," Dana said. “Ready?” she said, revealing that the final number and total costs is $47,475 a year for her 3 kids.
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TikTok users argued about costs in the comments section.
Many TikTok users shared their own related expenses in the comments section of the video, some arguing about the costs Dana shared in her video.
One user wrote: “That’s a bit absurd. You’re setting an expectation that all people spend this much on children. This is upper middle class spending. It’s not realistic.”
Though Dana’s video took into account many different expenses associated with raising children, some argued there are actually more. One user commented, “That number also doesn’t include higher medical premiums for family + bills!” Valid point.
Bottom line: raising kids is actually absurdly expensive for most families.
