This thread has slowly arrived at the place where I want to chime in. One of the things I wish someone had told me when my children were small was... these kids are expensive. Maybe it's because I am indulgent--which I am--but maybe it's because they are so able to learn new things so quickly that you want to "feed" that hunger. When we first bought our house, we stretched a little to get into a "great school district". Have we ever used said district? Sure... for a couple of years. But really we've paid for private school. and Online school. And "tutor/mentors". We've spent thousands of dollars on what some would call enrichment which for us has just been trying to keep our children's minds satisfied.
I've finally looked around the 'hood and realized that the other children don't ask their parents for violin lessons at age 4, or clamor to do "more math now!, mommy".
I know folks on this list who have probably spent 4x what we have...and others who have taken a different tack, but I imagine that we can all agree that the potential to spend and spend is great.
If I had to do it all again, I'd buy much less house, but probably still in our same community.
