Cost per child

How much does it cost per child?...This is one of the question my friends(not mothers yet) used to pose to me.

Actually it very much depends on:

1) Where you are staying

2) Who you will be placing your child at , i.e. whether you taking care yourself, getting your parents to take care for you, sending to child-care or babysitter

3) The type of things you planning to get for your child, be it insurance plan, education savings fund, babies stuff, toys, learning programme etc

I have never thought of this question until when my sister-in-law mentioned it once...and I do think that it's very important question to think about for those who planning to have child/children. More so if you plan to have more than one child.

For us,

1) Staying in KL city

2) Both of us(me and DH) working, thus sending to babysitter(we chose babysitter instead of child care centre for convenience and avoid spreading of germs which is common and unavoidable) 

3) We invest in medical, life-insurance and education savings, buy moderately good quality stuff for our child(depends what items) 

And being a shopaholic mom I am, I must admit, I am the biggest culprit for over-spending I guess... :P

So how much on average for a young baby cost(I have not reach the stage of pre-schooler or schooling kids expenses yet but I guess it would roughly be almost the same, perhaps some of the mommies out there can share about this stage) is MYR1000.

Yup..and these expenses is the basic items which included:

1) Babysitter monthly fees - depending on areas and Chinese babysitter can easily cost you RM650-750 per child in KL and most Selangor area.

But somehow, I was told that many Indians and Malays charge only RM120-300 for same service...hmm..so why do Chinese babysitter market seems better? This, I am not sure...

2) Diapers(unless you cloth-diaper your baby)

3) Milk powder(unless you fully-breastfeed your child)

4) Monthly insurance and savings fund

Excluded are:

1) Immunisation/Injections (unless you opt out the optional injection or get it FOC at govt. clinic) else per jab cost you easily MYR100 plus or minus depending what jab you are taking at the private clinics/hospital

2) Baby equipments, attires, toys, etc etc..(this list can never ends..haha..especially for shopaholic mom like me :P )

For a more thorough advice, do check out the article in Parenthots: Starting a family – how much RM do you need?

Cheers to all! Happy Parenthood!