I estimate that my diabetes costs me $1,000 a month. Now, most of that is due to the fact that I am currently paying COBRA prices from my health insurance. When my wife lost her job and started her own company, I could not obtain insurance elsewhere, so as expensive as it is, I'm riding out COBRA until it ends and I can find another solution. Of course, all this will be moot in a couple of months when insurance companies must insure those with pre-existing conditions, but my purpose is not to get into that debate here. My wife and two children are on a separate policy and their healthcare costs are about $350 a month.
For the purposes of this discussion, let's consider that if I was not diabetic and we were on a family policy it's not unreasonable to expect that our family's total monthly healthcare cost would be more like $500.
That's a car payment or from one half to one third of a house payment. I imagine our entire family could eat for $500 a month if we did not go out much. That's two weeks (which is six days for us) of daycare.
A year's worth of diabetes-related expenses would easily buy me the top-of-the-line Specialized Tarmac or Roubaix. Heck, you can get into a decent small-displacement motorcycle or scooter for that much and throw in some gas to boot.
Of course in the end, like most parents, we would end up spending the money on the kids. That's a lot of soccer league fees and clothes.
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