4 ms·

THIS! I have two kids, and it's fairly easy (at least before starting school / sports) 1 - Second hands clothes, toys, etc are super cheap 1.1 - Hand me down

by __abc 11y ago

THIS! I have two kids, and it's fairly easy (at least before starting school / sports) 1 - Second hands clothes, toys, etc are super cheap 1.1 - Hand me down across the extended family and your family (seriously, they grow out of it in minutes, try not to buy it new) 2 - Your kids don't need a lot of toys and crayons and paper are cheap 3 - GO TO THE LIBRARY 4 - Parks are really fun, and really cheap, as in free Where it adds up, at least for me, is I now have a 2 & 4 year old in school and that's $1K a month (drops to zero once they hit public schools), but for a few years that's hefty. However, that's also a choice 1 - I chose private school for preschool, so that's costlier 2 - I moved to a specific area for the 10/10 public schools to save money

ashark 11y ago
Most places, the areas with the "10/10" public schools cost more to live in, between property taxes and higher purchase prices for houses (because the schools are good, so demand is high). They may also be farther from where the jobs are (more often than not, I'd guess), unless you want to pay even more for both prime location and good schools, assuming such a thing even exists where you live. Higher transportation costs, more time commuting. You pay either way. Picking the nicer location is probably cheaper, but I wouldn't bet on that always being the case. It's difficult to quantify the costs of location to compare the two.
- __abc 11y ago
  I am probably an outlier here, but I stalked my neighborhood and pounced on a house that was WAY on the low end for the area thus in my budget and literally has lowest prop taxes. My ONLY point being, my family wanted a house sooner, but we waited, and waited, and waited it out to find one that met our financial needs in the area we wanted. IF you do that (knowing it the stars may not line up) it's incredibly helpful.

by __abc 11y ago

ashark 11y ago

Most places, the areas with the "10/10" public schools cost more to live in, between property taxes and higher purchase prices for houses (because the schools are good, so demand is high). They may also be farther from where the jobs are (more often than not, I'd guess), unless you want to pay even more for both prime location and good schools, assuming such a thing even exists where you live. Higher transportation costs, more time commuting. You pay either way. Picking the nicer location is probably cheaper, but I wouldn't bet on that always being the case. It's difficult to quantify the costs of location to compare the two.

__abc 11y ago
I am probably an outlier here, but I stalked my neighborhood and pounced on a house that was WAY on the low end for the area thus in my budget and literally has lowest prop taxes. My ONLY point being, my family wanted a house sooner, but we waited, and waited, and waited it out to find one that met our financial needs in the area we wanted. IF you do that (knowing it the stars may not line up) it's incredibly helpful.