When my wife and I decided to have a baby, I already knew that it was going to be an expensive, but rewarding, venture. The fact that there’s even a nickname for people couples who both have jobs and don’t have a baby (double-income-no-kids) helped clue me into this as well.

But no one ever really told us what made having a child so expensive. Some people mentioned the costs of outfitting the nursery could amount to several thousands of dollars. Looking at catalogues from fancy furniture stores, I could see how this would be the case. Even Walmart furniture seemed expensive. But we are lucky enough to have wonderful family and friends, and will be receiving (or borrowing) the vast majority of our baby related items from them. For the rest, we turned to our old standby, Ikea, whose “Gulliver” crib has glowing reviews on the internet and yet only costs $99, 1/3rd to 1/5th the cost of other cribs we looked at.

Someone else mentioned all the hospital costs, and we’ll get hit with our insurance deductible, but that should be it. A hit to our finances, yes, but nothing major, and just a one time cost.

Diapers? They were always the first thing mentioned with baby costs, because of how many you go through. But I did some searching and found Huggies on Amazon, using subscribe-and-save, for about 15 cents each. And they’ll automatically be delivered once a month.

So where do all those ridiculous costs lie? Daycare.

My wife and I both work full time, and we both really enjoy our jobs. She would probably go crazy being at home all day, and I’m at a point in my career where I’m not ready to work from home. So we’re looking at full time care, 8-5, five days a week. The cost? About $1,400 a month.

Let’s think about that number. $1,400 a month is $16,800 per year. That’s equivalent to having a full time $11/hr job. It’s also roughly equal to a mortage for a $300,000 home. You could lease a pair of Mercedes for the same cost.

Pretty unbelievable when you think about it.