Research Shows That If ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Were Real, They Would Have Bankrupt Their Parents

Raising a kid is expensive. Raising anything is expensive. Doing anything is expensive. Life sucks.

Sorry, I got into a zone there, back to raising kids — The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates parents blow around $250,000 to raise a child to the age of 17. That seems a bit low but I’m not going to question government research because they’ll find me. They’re always watching. Always.

Anyway, that cost only takes into consideration the normal things adults foot the bill for like education, recreational activities, grub, birthday gifts, but doesn’t take in account all of the additional charges for all the times the kid screws up. Think about all of shit you broke around the house. Yeah, that stuff.

Matt J. Michel, editor at Proceedings of the Natural Institute of Science, decided to estimate the loot parents spend on damages from kids. He wanted to find the “worst case scenario” kid to study so he picked a kid who not only cost his parents money in damages but probably took years off their lives — Calvin.

Michel then went through the complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics and marked every bit of damage caused by Calvin or Hobbes that was actually portrayed or specifically mentioned by Calvin or his parents. The results are absurd.

Calvin (and Hobbes) cost his parents about $1,800 in damage per year with a grand total over $15,000 for his ten years as a 6-year-old.

So the moral of the story is “don’t have kids”, or if you do, don’t give them a stuffed animal to play with. They’ll send you broke.

H/T 22 Words