Savings From Having No Children Pays for a House

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The federal government released two pieces of news recently. Together they show that skipping parenthood provides the cost of a home (which may have been previously owned or may be new), one that costs more than the national median.

According to a press release from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development:

The median sales price of new houses sold in July 2014 was $269,800; the average sales price was $339,100. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale at the end of July was 205,000. This represents a supply of 6.0 months at the current sales rate.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports:

[A] middle-income family with a child born in 2013 can expect to spend about $245,340 ($304,480 adjusted for projected inflation) for food, housing, childcare and education, and other child-rearing expenses up to age 18. Costs associated with pregnancy or expenses occurred after age 18, such as higher education, are not included.

That means the home can be redecorated and have a new lawn.

The Census Bureau also has reported that the average number of children in households with them is 1.86, putting the savings for having no children in these households at $456,330. That, in turn, would buy a home at the median price in an expensive city like Seattle or Boston.

Taking into account the expenses for college, and some people who skip having children can buy a mansion.

READ ALSO: The 10 Most Affordable Housing Markets in America

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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