Idaho Minimum Wage Workers Don’t Stand A Chance Paying For Daycare

Most of us are likely aware of just how expensive it is to raise children. From the moment they're born, you immediately realize that your bills will never be the same again.

How expensive is it to raise a child to the age of 18?

According to information from the USDA that was shared by Intuit, it can cost up to an estimated total of $312,750 or $17,375 a year to raise a child from birth to the age of 18.

Here's the crazy part... that cost goes up as the numbers we're seeing continue to rise throughout your child's life. The sad part is that if you want to work hard to pay for all that and then some to give your child an amazing life, you'll need to make a decent amount to support just one child. We haven't even tackled what it costs to have multiple children.

A portion of those massive lifetime expenses are due to one factor in particular: childcare.

If you want to provide, you'll either need to make a ton of money to support yourself and/or the potential stay-at-home spouse to avoid daycare costs. OR, you'll need to work in conjunction with your partner and factor in the cost of childcare. It almost feels like a catch-22 or a double-edged sword.

Using information from EPI.org, we were able to break down the stats of what it actually costs for childcare in Idaho and while it's not pretty, it's not as bad as the surrounding states but more on that in a moment.

Let's look at the staggering cost of childcare in Idaho...

It's sad to think about because there will always be people who say, "you should have planned or be ready to have a child."

While logically and ideally that makes sense, that's not always the case for some parents. People of all walks of life work minimum wage jobs and while there are assistance programs, hopefully, we'll eventually see a decline in costs... but probably not.

That being said, it's not so bad in Idaho when it comes to daycare costs. Let's look at how much daycare costs in surrounding states compared to Idaho.