When I was pregnant with our first little lad, Jack, my hubby decided he was going to start a social experiment to track the cost of raising a child. He didn’t believe the reports that it typically costs £250k to raise a child to the age of 18 and was going to prove it!  Focusing on my pregnancy, I didn’t take too much heed but I soon realised, he was deadly serious and was intend on recruiting me into the process!

From the time we had Jack, everything we spent on him was recorded – initially just as a simple list in an excel spreadsheet. But as a software developer, hubby soon took things a step further and developed an app that could be used for recording the data. Things were getting a little more involved as the app recorded more information like dates, proportions of shopping bills and categories. Was it an essential costs or a luxury?!! (Another post entirely!) As hubby spent time building the app, any doubt I had about his commitment to the experiment was gone. He was serious about this but I wondered what the point was? Nobody was going to be as mad as us pair and want to record expenses over a 18 year period, surely?!

But unbeknown to me, this wasn’t the end game for hubby and by building the app, he was testing ideas for a whole host of Apps including his latest Budget App. Recording expenses and categorising them would all come into Budget and subsequent projects which are still in the planning.

Though the actual development is well over my head, I now understand that hubby has several projects in the pipeline to expand the Costs to Expect family and keep me busy with marketing!

As if that won’t keep us both busy enough, yes, we’re still tracking those costs!!