Raising a child has long been called priceless. The bill, though, is getting harder to ignore.
The cost of raising a child through age 18 in the U.S. now stands at $303,418, according to LendingTree’s latest annual analysis—the first time the estimate has topped $300,000 since the company began tracking it in 2023. That works out to about $16,857 a year, up 1.9% from $297,674 in the prior year’s report. Over a longer stretch, the climb is steeper: The 18-year total is up 27.8% from LendingTree’s first report.
