The True Costs of Raising a Child (4½ Year Update)

 

Playing on a red slide

It didn't occur to me that Loonie Girl (LG) was past 4 and a half years old until a co-worker asked me how old my daughter was. Yikes. Time goes by quickly especially at such a young age. 

As per past posts, a summary from the costs last time.

• $1,386.36 for diapers (cloth and disposables), inserts, and wipes
• $96.76 for food
• $251.55 for kitchenware
• $1,285.69 for clothing (Canada)
• $2,498.44 for bed and bedding (Canada)
• $283.72 for clothing and bedding (from China)
• $1,430.99 for gear (strollers, car seats, playpen, etc.)
• $681.62 for health and safety
• $1,761.07 for toys and books
• $877.43 for experiences

So what happened the last 6 months (at least from November 2020 to April 2021)?

Looking back at the expenses, it appears only three categories were increased. Clothing, Health and Safety, and Toys and Books.

For clothing, it seems we purchased a Merino base layer pants for LG. The ones we purchased for the 2019-2020 winter were starting to tear in the back. As a result, we purchased new base layers. This time I purchased 2 of them. The problem was that they don't have 100% merino wool for her size, so I purchased two that were 70% merino wool. Better than nothing. I purchased the two from the same company, but one was on Amazon ($5 cheaper) and the other was on their own website (same price as on Amazon). Other things we purchased were non slip socks for winter, flip flops for summer and a swimsuit for when we go to the beach. Overall, we spent $150.64 more in this category.

Health and safety appears to be brush heads for LG's electric toothbrush, liquid Tylenol in case LG gets sick and some umbrella we found in the clearance section at Shoppers Drug Mart. For the brush heads, we only had one more on hand and we change her brush head every 3 months so I kept an eye out for sales and picked this up at Shoppers when they had them in stock and were on sale (a difficult combination to find). Also purchased these during one of their spend $X and get 20x point events to maximize our dollars (extremely difficult to get all three of inventory, sales, and points event at the same time). Same for the liquid Tylenol. We also appear to be running out of kids bandages, so I'll be keeping an eye out for sales. This category increased by $51.95.

Lastly, we have the Toys and Books categories. I was hoping we'd cut down expenses in this category but that was just a lot of wishful thinking on my part. The main problem, well not really a problem, was Christmas. We did our best to buy things during the year, but with the pandemic raging LG didn't get a lot of gifts from family. So we did what we could to make it seem like she had a lot of presents. That meant some interesting spending choices. In addition to Christmas (and to a certain extent Lunar New Year), we spent a lot of money buying books and toys from Dollarama. I swear that place will never go bankrupt as long as we shop there. Additionally, $560 of the amount spent over the last 6 months were because of Lego. Yes, LG has finally discovered Lego. We purchased a few sets of stuff. Got some "freebies" from lego.com as well. We haven't given everything to her yet. We're saving some of these for her birthday and for Christmas this year. Plus, she brings out the sets from time to time and that's a good use of a few hours. Especially during the summertime now that school is out for the year. Anyway, spending in this category increased by $882.06. Sigh.

New summary of spending now:

• $1,386.36 for diapers (cloth and disposables), inserts, and wipes
• $96.76 for food
• $251.55 for kitchenware
• $1,436.33 for clothing (Canada)
• $2,498.44 for bed and bedding (Canada)
• $283.72 for clothing and bedding (from China)
• $1,430.99 for gear (strollers, car seats, playpen, etc.)
• $733.57 for health and safety
• $2,643.13 for toys and books
• $877.43 for experiences

Grand total: $11,638.28

The past six months, we spent $1,084.65

I feel like there shouldn't be much big spending coming up. There may likely be another birthday cake. Her birthday present is already ready (just need to wrap it up). Maybe some clothing as she's starting to out grow the second hand things we received and we don't know anyone giving out free clothing. There's also the issue of a new bicycle for LG. She's outgrowing the old one and I cannot seem to figure out where I put the extension bar to raise the seat on her current balance bike higher. More on that for the next update.

Again, this doesn't count things like laundry detergent. We bought special detergent to wash her diapers many moons ago, but we like it for our clothing as well. As previously mentioned, LG's RESP contributions for 2021 are not counted. That was also maxed out for 2021 in January. So far LG's RESP account is sitting at over $25,000.