Plan the month · · 6 min read
What a baby costs per month: a first-year budget, line by line
Instead of a scary number from the internet, fill in your own table: what you buy once, what goes out every month, and when the big childcare line arrives.
There's a good scan, a first picture on the fridge, and an excitement that's hard to explain. Then come the lists. A three-page equipment list from a WhatsApp group, half of which you'll never use. Stroller, bassinet, cot, changing table, monitor, wipe warmer.
And with the lists comes the number. Everyone you ask gives a different one. A colleague says one figure, an article online says another, and an uncle says "a baby costs a fortune" and leaves it there. None of the numbers sounds like your life, and most of them are frightening.
So you do what everyone does. Buy everything in advance, from someone else's list, and hope it's enough. Or decide this simply can't be planned, and walk into the first year with no number at all.
Being ready, or just being excited
There's a part of you that wants to be ready. To know everything will be at home the day you come back from the hospital, and that there won't be a surprise on the statement in month three.
And there's a part of you that doesn't want spreadsheets now, that wants to enjoy the excitement and feels that pricing a baby in shekels is cold, almost wrong. Sometimes a big purchase is exactly what brings calm: a stroller in the room is proof you're ready. Wanting to protect this moment is right. The moment really does matter.
There's room for both. One table, one evening, and then back to being excited.
What a baby costs: why there's no single number
It isn't that you failed to find the number. The general number just isn't yours. Every family decides differently, and each of those decisions moves the cost: a stroller handed down from a sister or a new one, breastfeeding or formula, childcare from three months or from a year, a grandmother who helps or doesn't.
Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics publishes a household expenditure survey by family composition, but an average of thousands of families doesn't know whether your stroller came from another family. So this article won't give you a sum. It gives you a structure, and you fill it in.
Here is what changes the picture: a baby isn't one enormous expense. It's a few new categories you can set up in advance. Three layers of spending, and one line of income that shifts during this period.
Your own table, filled in before the birth
A three-layer table you filled in yourselves, and a savings goal for equipment dated before the birth. No buying from other people's lists, no scary number from the internet, and no giving up the excitement.
A baby budget in three layers
| Layer | What goes in | When | Your estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment, once | Stroller, a place to sleep, car seat, bath | Before the birth and early on | ____ ILS |
| Monthly | Nappies, food, clothes, medicine and hygiene | Every month, from month one | ____ ILS |
| Childcare | Daycare, a family daycare, or a nanny | From the month you go back to work | ____ ILS |
| Income this period | Birth grant, maternity pay, child allowance | On National Insurance's schedule | ____ ILS |
Stage 1: Equipment, once
Go through the list and mark each item one of three ways: buy, receive or borrow, or skip. The middle column is the one that can move the total most. Siblings, friends and hand-me-down groups are happy to pass on gear that was used for a few months. Only what stays under "buy" goes into the estimate.
Equipment: we went through each item and decided buy, receive or skip
0 of 7 done
Stage 2: The monthly spend
Nappies, food, clothes that get swapped every few months, medicine and hygiene. The best estimate here comes from people near you who raised a baby recently, not from the internet. Ask two such couples what each line cost them a month, and take the average as your starting point.
Stage 3: Childcare, the big line
For many families this is the heaviest line, and it doesn't arrive on day one. It arrives the month you go back to work. Check the range where you live, and whether you might qualify for the daycare and family-daycare subsidy; the rules and eligibility are on the site of the ministry responsible for daycare subsidies. Mark on the table the month this line starts, because that's where the picture changes.
Stage 4: Income this period, in one line
Income changes in this period too. There's a birth grant (ma'anak leida, מענק לידה), maternity pay (dmei leida, דמי לידה) instead of salary during leave, and the child allowance. Check the amounts, eligibility and dates on the National Insurance Institute (Bituach Leumi) site, because they're updated. How to build the full cash flow for parental leave is in the article on saving for parental leave.
There's also the Savings for Every Child programme (chisachon lechol yeled, חיסכון לכל ילד). Per Bituach Leumi, from 1 January 2026 it deposits 58 ILS a month for every child, and parents can add another 58 ILS, 116 ILS a month in total. This article doesn't cover the choices inside that savings plan; those are in the article on child savings in 2026.
Tax and pension figures are as of September 2026; ceilings update yearly.
Stage 5: A trial month, and a goal for equipment
In the eighth month of pregnancy, open the categories and start recording what you buy. At the same time, open a savings goal for equipment, dated before the birth. That way the big purchases come out of money that has built up, not out of the month you bought them in. The amounts in the calculator below are an example only, not a cost estimate; put your own numbers in.
Baby equipment goal: how many months to get there
Time to the target
7 months
In AlphaHome: create a main category "Baby" with subcategories, say Equipment, Monthly and Childcare, and a savings goal "Baby equipment" with an amount and a date before the birth. The dashboard shows the monthly deposit the goal still needs until then. When an allowance comes in, record it as an income row, and a monthly allowance can be marked recurring.
When real life disagrees with the table
The first months cost more than you wrote down. That's completely normal. The first table is an educated guess, not a test. Today: don't fix anything in the middle of the rush. Next time: after three months, open the category and update the estimate to what actually went out.
You got three strollers as gifts, and you'd already bought one. It happens when the list isn't shared. Today: exchange or pass them on, and record what came back. Next time: share the list with the family, with a "we already have it" column.
Childcare where you live costs more than you planned. Better to find out now than the month it starts. Today: put the real number in the table. Next time: count the months left until the line starts, and plan from there. The article on sinking funds shows how to break a sum like that into months.
Parents who know their number
If you buy from other people's lists, the budget will be other people's. That's nobody's fault. Nobody ever handed you an empty table.
Now you have one. We're getting ready for our baby, not the baby on the list. And a family that knows what the first year will cost is free for what really matters that year: being parents.
This week, create a "Baby" category with three subcategories, Equipment, Monthly and Childcare, and write a first estimate of your own for each.
Do one thing this week
Open AlphaHome, record this month's income and fixed charges, and see how much is really free to spend. Everything in this article starts from that number.