The cost of having kids....

Research out this week suggests that the cost of raising a child has hit a staggering £271,000. According to insurance company Aviva, day to day costs including school trips, food, clothes, outings, university fees and childcare means us parents are spending around £271,499 on our kids before their 21st birthday.
These numbers do not, of course, factor in the Irish mammy who still washes, cleans, cooks, fends for and lends her kids money well into their 60s.
Still I’d say those figures are well below average for our four children. I mean, where in all these calculations are the figures for broken remote controls? So I decided to do my own sums and here’s what I’ve come up with.

Broken remote controls
Averaging one smashed, flushed, buried or dismantled remote control every two months approximately, figure does not include the petrol money to ferry child/children to casualty with concussions after remote control-related injuries to heads.
Total £5,040

Smashed windows
Windows getting in the way of speeding footballs and/or rocket-propelled shoes are an unfortunate consequence of having male children. Averaging in a new window every six months, including the ones smashed by yard brushes swung in a spinning motion around head – it may be impressive, it’s still a hit.
Total £1,680

Destroyed mobile phones
Mobile phones make for great hammers with which to bash things, they are great for flushing down toilets and also phoning people in Australia and leaving them hanging on for two days. They also make great beepy noises when you run over them on your bike.
Total £1,890

School Trousers
What with it being First Holy Communion year and all, my boys are always praying out the knees of their standard greys. And ripping them on wire, sticking ballpoint pens through them to see if it makes a hole, finding really tiny bits of loose thread and ripping them out to see what happens, drawing smiley faces on them with permanent marker and spilling olive oil-based consumables on them. Am keeping the recessional wolves from the door of Marks and Spencers by maintaining an average purchasing rate of two pairs per month.
Total £3,528

Cleaning products
In 21 years we would have gone through a positive mountain of baby wipes, a river of industrial strength carpet cleaner specialising in boke removal, hundreds of hard-core car valeting treatments and dozens of sand blasters to remove dried in Weetabix.
Total £4,890

Biscuits
A packet of 30 biscuits lasts approximately 20 seconds in our house. From point of purchase many don’t even make it to the car safely. Despite various camouflaging methods adapted by us, our boys manage to seek out, locate and destroy biscuits like a school of ravenous piranhas, often risking life and limb to achieve their custard cream goal.
So we’ll be averaging one packet of biscuits every 20 seconds for 21 years, not counting petrol and parking money for visits to casualty for fall related injuries acquired while seeking out biscuits.
Total £25,441,418

So in total, we’re not averaging £271,000 per kid. No way. We’re stratospheric in our spending. We’re looking at spending £25,455,146 in total on our children and their various needs, with the greatest bulk of that spend being on biscuits.
I may have to start saving now.