My partner and I are generally very frugal (ie: we thrift shop, only buy flyer deals, discounted food/produce, we don’t splurge much on anything other than necessities, we have an impressive savings rate of 50% of both our incomes.)

We are expecting in the New Year and keep hearing about how expensive children are – obviously we both have no idea as we’ve never had any, but to us, since we’re already very frugal, and plan to remain that way, we don’t know where the major expense comes from.

Likely won’t do daycare, I will be self-employed (e-commerce and relatively hands off) in an effort to save on daycare costs, will thrift clothes, we home cook nearly all meals and know how to stretch food, and our extra curricular activities are usually low cost or free.

I’d like to hear from other people like us: is it reasonable to assume that children don’t HAVE to be a huge expense if you don’t let them become that?

*Edit: Remove daycare costs, what’s second to that?