> The cost is not 40k per year per child. Re-run the numbers using public schools and having a stay at home parent with no more than a few hours a week of child

> The cost is not 40k per year per child. Re-run the numbers using public schools and having a stay at home parent with no more than a few hours a week of childcare. Why stay at home parent, that is absurd now days. > and neither wants to be a stay at home parent even part time. People want a retirement plan, and that means working and contributing to a 401k. If my wife stopped working, well for one the childcare savings wouldn't be enough to make up for lost income, and two, our retirement plans would be shot to pieces. Fwiw I'm in Seattle, if you want to go to good public schools, houses cost a lot more. House price here is highly correlated with the quality of the local schools. Want to go to the best schools in the area? Looking at moving outside Seattle to Bellevue, and an old house in the area with the best public schools will reach almost 2 million. House prices around there have nearly doubled in the past 3 year. I'm only in an area with slightly above average schools, so a 4 bedroom house here is 1.2-1.5 million. Although since Seattle schools just cancelled their gifted program, parents with smart kids now have to pay for private schools, so shove those costs on top of whatever is saved by moving to Seattle proper instead of one of the more expensive suburbs. There are not fancy new houses, these are "whatever house is for sale that has the right number of bedrooms" and are often quite old.