Cell phone I need to have for my work. $300 per month in clothes includes diapers and wipes, as well as toddler clothes which you are constantly buying more of. You sound like you haven’t shopped for a toddler in years. Even at the bargain store you’re looking at $10 - $20 an outfit at current prices. Diapers and wipes prices are outrageous even at Costco. And there’s almost no way you are only spending $600 per month in groceries right now for a family of four.

Also, we are both working, and we do not make much more than $100k per year. It is what it is when you go through a divorce at 26 and have to restart your career in a different place. My wife makes roughly equal to myself, so either we pay for daycare and have enough to cover our needs… or we have her stay home and fall woefully short.

I’ve done the math over and over to find a way to live more comfortably at 100k. Or to find a way to allow my wife to stay at home so we can live more comfortably. It is nearly impossible. Sure I could sell our cars, but the used car market currently would cost more than I currently pay per month on those, and we don’t have the cash to buy another car straight-up. Our situation and area would not allow for just having bikes. There are no cheaper living situations, not even by renting. Have you had experience in how much these things cost lately? This isn’t the same world as 5 or 10 years ago. Just 3 years ago we were living on less and feeling great. It is frustrating.

Expenses for a family with young kids right now are much more than it sounds like you anticipate. I wish there was another way to put it. And unfortunately many of us feel trapped with no way to lower our bills because the housing market sucks, the renting market sucks, the car market sucks, the job market suck, and food and gas prices are absurd. There are almost no areas of our expenses which are not caught up in an inflationary spiral. It’s a really tough time to have a young family lately.