There's no end to the cost of kids - loving parents spend all they can!

The survey from Laya on the finances of

bringing up a child is a useful reminder of how the cost of raising our kids keeps going up and up.

The survey covered a certain range of costs for raising children that totted up to €169k over 21 years.

That sounds pricey – if not almost impossible – for parents to pay, even if spread over more than two decades at an average rate of over €15k a year.

But, incredibly,  this is just the tip of the iceberg, especially for parents who are not in the social welfare net.

Here’s why:

• The estimate of €169k only includes the cost of raising children up to age of 21. Many ‘children’ will attend college not only to get degrees, but also Masters and even PhDs well into their 30s. Almost a third of adults in the survey believe their children will be aged 25 or over before they expect them to be fully able to support themselves, Laya says.

• Most parents (55% in the survey) expect to part-fund their children’s house purchase in the future – which would require an added outlay tens of thousands

• Laya’s survey covered a certain range of costs. There are many others – such as summer activities. In 2015, we also did a survey on childcare costs and came up with a much bigger figure – over a quarter of a million - by including a wider range of costs.

• One major item not included in the Laya report is the cost of housing. If you have kids you can’t really live in a tiny two-bedroom house or apartment. You need a family home, ideally one located near schools. And there is a huge premium of hundreds of thousands for that. It’s an added cost of hundreds of thousands of euros over the lifetime of the mortgage – a cost that’s doubled by the interest you pay. Of course, at the end of that period you get to own a valuable home.

The bottom line is that parents are always going to be put to the pin of their collar financially because they love their kids and will spend whatever cash they have on them.

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In the Laya survey many items, some annual costs have surprisingly fallen since 2015, namely:

• Communion and confirmation gifts:  down 79% to €120

• Family holidays: down 35% to €1079

• Birthday present: down 70% to €148 

At first glance, this seems like good news – until you realise the underlying cause of this trend.

It’s not because these things are getting cheaper; it’s because they are discretionary and families can’t afford them.

What this tells us is that families are under enormous financial pressure and are cutting back everywhere they can, even on holidays and birthday and communion presents.