This won't answer that for you, and it won't hand you a regret percentage — no honest tool can predict how a life turns out. It does two real things: it works out what a child would actually cost you, in money you enter, and it lays your own answers about the rest back out so the trade-off is visible instead of looping in your head.
Ad — site owner placement
Leaderboard / responsive display unit here. Top-of-page is the appropriate spot — outside the result, never between someone's situation and their answer.
Part 1
The money — this part is real arithmetic
No life-trajectory modelling, no predictions. Just the two financial questions that actually have numeric answers: the early-years cash squeeze, and the long-run cost against what that money would otherwise grow to. Not sure what numbers to enter? How to actually think about the cost of a child walks through the ones people get wrong.
Accessible cash — not locked retirement accounts.
$0$200k+
After tax, both partners if applicable. Today's number, before any child.
$1k$25k
Everything you spend now, before a child. The real number, not the optimistic one.
$500$20k
Childcare is usually the biggest line. Look up local daycare rates rather than guessing low — this is the number people most underestimate.
$300$4k
Reduced hours, a pause, slower progression — for whoever takes that on. Zero is allowed; underestimating it is the common mistake.
$0$8k
For the long-run comparison. 18 is a common reference; the cost is roughly steady-state, not the same every year, so read it as a scale, not a prophecy.
Part 2
Everything money can't answer — your read, not a score
These do not get turned into a percentage, a regret index, or a recommendation. They get reflected back so you can see the shape of your own thinking. The decision underneath them is yours and isn't a math problem.
Your own pull toward it — not what's expected of you.
Not reallyDeeply
If there's no partner in the picture, set this to where you'd want it to be and note that to yourself.
Real mismatchFully aligned
Family nearby, community, help you could actually call on — not in theory.
Largely on our ownStrong support
Time, autonomy, the shape of your days. Neither answer is the right one.
Glad to trade itI value it highly
Monthly surplus today
Income minus expenses, before a child
Monthly surplus with a child
After added cost and lost caregiving income
If surplus goes negative — runway
How long savings absorb the monthly shortfall
Total added cost over the years entered
(Added cost + lost income) across the horizon
What that sum would otherwise become
Same money invested instead, ~5%/yr — an illustration, not a forecast
Why it landed here — traceable to the numbers you entered