Choose wisely

Some interesting figures I recently happened upon:

Estimated cost of raising one child and putting them through college: $297,000.00

Estimated cost of maintaining a chimpanzee in captivity for 60 years: $300,000.00

That's pretty close, dollar-wise. To make a decision as whether or not to get a chimp or have a child, you'd have to consider other factors. Pros and cons, if you will. Both look adorable in striped shirts and suspenders. Both can learn to ride a tricycle. And both can do a rudimentary imitation of applause. But only the chimp can successfully execute a backflip. Then again, the odds are good that the chimp will attempt to tear your balls off when it reaches a certain age in order to assume the dominant place in your famial heirarchy.























A head-to-head comparison of a baby chimpanzee and an actual human baby.
The chimp is obviously much cuter.



Another thing to keep in mind is that the above child / college estimate is just that: an estimate. It's based on the most updated college costs projections I could find, which are for the year 2020. If you had a child now, he/she would not be entering their first year of college until 2024, at which point first year tuition would probably be another 28% higher, and the same goes for the subsequent 3 years.

A chimp on the other hand, can make you money. That's right. You can charge people to come look at it, or you could rent it out to a monkey wrangler who could get roles in commercials, movies or TV shows. And the cost of carrots and Monkey Chow will certainly remain more stable than always-escalating college costs.

There you go. You have the information. What you do with it is entirely up to you.