Mom2KG is our monthly columnist on TMW. Starting in 2008, her family has resolved to get a control of their financial house and every month she updates us on their progress. February’s report can be found here.  Today, Mom2KG muses about the cost of taking care of two young children. Take it away Mom2KG.

I’m astonished by how quickly I have gone from being wilfully blind to my family’s finances to being addicted to anything having to do with money management. And it took relatively little in the way of general reading to start to understand financial language.

The RRSP deadline has gone by. I put my money into a cash-holding RRSP from which I can make trades into something more exciting than mutual funds. I am putting about 40% into 5-year compounding GIC’s. It was going to be more but with the markets going down I’m looking for good stock buys (see-addicted!). I bought TD shares as well as Fortis, a great Canadian company regularly recommended and have enrolled in their DRIP programs (rumors persist Fortis will replace BCE on the TSX 60 when (if?) BCE goes private- TMW).

We’re following through on our savings commitments, so our bank accounts are getting nice and fat. We’re renovating the kitchen in the summer (and starting our budgeting and planning now), and once that’s done we’ll make a big mortgage prepayment. We intend to pay off the mortgage at the end of the term we just renewed, which makes things a bit tight. But we’re so excited the investment opportunities we’ll have when that income is freed up!

Just saw the news about the $5000 deduction for RESP contributions – we’re all for it! I hope that bill goes through.

I thought I’d write a little on the cost of babies and toddlers – also a good exercise for me to determine how much the little ones are draining from our coffers. We have two toddlers.

Maxing out RESP contributions: $208/month/kid=$416/month

Diapers: 4 diapers/day for toddlers (8-10/day for young babies). A giant pack of 144 Huggies is about $40. So we spend about $60-70/month.

Formula: Buy the no-name brands – great value. A President’s Choice ($12.00) tin will last a fully-formula fed baby 2 weeks, much longer than Nestle ($19.00). (Our kids just drink milk now, but formula was a huge expense during their first year.)

Milk: 4 litres (non-organic) is about $5.50. That lasts the family about five days.

Food: Hard to say. We are spending a little more, but buying much more, and less of the really expensive stuff you feel entitled to when you’re single (premium ice cream, exotic cheese). Groceries for us (family of 2 adults, two toddlers and one live-in nanny) is about $1000/month. This includes the milk, baby-centric toiletries and Disney-branded band-aids.

Live-in Nanny: $1700/month, plus a bonus last year of $600, plus occasional perks like buying her dinner if she babysits during the week – let’s say $200

Nursery school (one kid): Half day, three times a week – $290/month (and you pay even if you take your kid out for vacation)

Babysitting: We pay about $8/hour and feel cheap. A night of babysitting is about $50-65, about once a month.

Clothes: People will give toddlers boatloads of clothes for birthdays and holidays. Plus ours are the first grandkids in each side, so we’re spoiled. On the other hand, we’re the first in our group of friends to have kids, and our siblings have not procreated, so we’re the hander-outers of barely-worn clothes, and not the recipients. I shop cheap, at Joe Fresh and second hand stores, and I would say I keep the clothing expenditures to less than $500/year.

Toys: Ditto on the gifts from other people. We have spent about $700 for birthdays and holidays. Also figure in toys and clothes we give to other peoples’ kids, which I intuit we would not be doing if we didn’t have kids ourselves.

Cribs: We bought the first one brand new, nice and shiny and sterile for our little treasure, plus a change table and dresser – $1000. We bought the second one off Craigslist, no extra furniture, for $20 (the younger child gets screwed again- TWW). Crib mattresses were a total of $200. Plus bedding (for two cribs), and I went a little nuts at Pottery Barn late in my first pregnancy – $500. (I should add we had our kids really close together, necessitating two cribs – better planners would space out the kids more.) We were given a used toddler bed and mattress by a friend.

Gear: Premium stroller (not the Bugaboo Frog I coveted for $1000) plus carseat and base, on sale, $600. Two convertible carseats, $415 in total.

Entertainment: Family memberships to the Toronto Zoo and the Ontario Science Centre, $200 (well worth it). Birthday parties: about $500/year for our own kids.

Some of these expenses are ongoing, others are one-time only or annual. Most will only increase, such as the nanny and nursery school costs, and clothing costs. Eventually, we’ll have no more need for diapers, but I can’t see much to delete from the list. Notably, some things are impossible to quantify, such as how much extra we’re paying in water, electricity and gas because of the kids and the live-in nanny, and I have not even included an estimate. I was also exceptionally lucky to have had a total of four huge baby showers and received over $1200 worth of clothes, blankets, gear, books, and necessities for the babies.

It’s a lot, and makes cost control a challenge. I know TMW is not a political column, but thank god for socialized healthcare and workplace drug plans. My little dude has an ear infection, and it will cost me $3.15 in drugs, after the underwriting by the drug plan and whatever subsidy the government provides.