Two cohabiting adults get some economy of scale benefit, but then children add the entire childcare category to the expenses. Housing and Transportation costs, the largest fraction of the budget, both see only marginal increases with each additional family member.
All costs took the average for the region or metro area. It really does cost $96,000 on average to live in America.
The source is a SmartAsset report that pulled data from the MIT Living Wage calculator. It takes the average regional costs for housing, transportation, taxes, etc, and then SmartAsset used a 50/30/20 rule to estimate comfortable living wages from basic needs expenses.
Two cohabiting adults get some economy of scale benefit, but then children add the entire childcare category to the expenses. Housing and Transportation costs, the largest fraction of the budget, both see only marginal increases with each additional family member.
All costs took the average for the region or metro area. It really does cost $96,000 on average to live in America.
The source is a SmartAsset report that pulled data from the MIT Living Wage calculator. It takes the average regional costs for housing, transportation, taxes, etc, and then SmartAsset used a 50/30/20 rule to estimate comfortable living wages from basic needs expenses.