These are non-questions to any parent. Parental love is unconditional and largely unaccountable. It's heartless and clinical to count your child as a cost centre, and we are not suggesting you do that.

Understanding expenses does not imply condemning them. On the contrary, it is only a first step towards gaining an advantage over them. In fact, if you do manage to chip away at the warm, fuzzy feeling of pride and accomplishment and examine the costs of raising a child, you would be able to do a far better job of being the provider.

The dichotomy of spending on your children is a conflict between the present and the future. Should you cave in and buy the Rs 25,000 Playstation 3 that your son has been nagging you for? Will it come from the money you have been saving for his graduation? Will that Barbie-themed Rs 50,000 party you threw on your daughter's birthday be the reason she will have to do her hotel management in Goa instead of Geneva? The only way to solve these dilemmas is to plan ahead and start investing. Now.

Two big-ticket costs that all parents have to provide for fall under the heads education and marriage. Post-graduate education is expensive, and in this globalised world, if you want to give your child the advantage of an international education, multiply the cost by 10 times, often even more. A grand celebration to mark your child's wedding is a great Indian dream and something that all parents would like to put some money away for.

1. Second baby

Most couples can afford one child and want to do the best for him or her. As financial decisions go, the second child is usually one that swings the balances. The thought of having to keep away double the amount of what you need for a child can be daunting.

Often, when the kids are young, one plus one does not add up to two - you could re-use and recycle and keep your expenses slightly lower. But, as they grow older, two children can be a real strain on finances. Guitar lessons for one, football coaching for the other, science tuitions for one and mathematics for the other can add up to a tidy sum every month.

A second child had always featured in Jayant Bhadauria and Kamalika Nandi's life plans. It's just that they did not really have the time to have one. Jayant works in a multinational software company in Mumbai and Kamalika looks after marketing for an outsourcing company.

Between work, their travelling schedules and looking after Kamini, their four-year-old daughter, the second child remained something to be done sometime in the future. Which was why, in September, when Kamalika discovered she was pregnant, for a minute she didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

"Of course, money was not the first thing I thought about," says Kamalika. "Once the news sank in, I did realise that we would have to start looking at our expenses. So far, if I have seen something and liked it, I have ended up buying it if I felt the price was fair. Now, I feel, there would be a little bit of a compromise there. I do want the best for my kids, but that does not necessarily mean the most expensive."

Text: Veena Venugopal, with inputs from Biren M. Shah, Kayezad E. Adajania, Sunil Dhawan and Sunita Abraham

Image: Children take a joy ride on the last day of Appu Ghar's functioning in New Delhi.