u/nadiasheikh_life

I'm trying to understand what families realistically consider part of the monthly cost of raising a child now.

School fees are obvious, but extracurriculars seem to create a second layer of recurring expenses: swimming, football, dance, tuition, coding, weekend workshops, summer camps... plus transport to all of these.

Individually, none of these sounds huge, but once a child is doing 2-3 activities, it can become a meaningful monthly expense pretty quickly.

How much of your monthly budget goes to your child's extracurricular activities?

This came up in a conversation recently and I genuinely don't know what I'd choose.

Say you're in your late 20s/early 30s. You could make around ₹1.5L outside Mumbai and love close to your parents, or make ₹2L in Mumbai with better career opportunities while seeing your parents only a few times a year.

When you're younger, moving away for your career feels almost automatic, but as our parents get older, I wonder if that thought process starts changing.

For people who've actually had to make this decision, how did you think about it?