The best things in life are free - unless you're a parent, according to research published today showing Britons spend £38 billion a year raising their kids.

Research for online bank Egg found that parents spend around £2,916 a year on daughters, compared to £2,790 on sons, excluding the cost of education.

This equates to £49,572 and £47,430 respectively for the first 17 years of a child's life.

The findings also identified around 178,000 youngsters who had an annual budget of more than £20,000 for holidays, clothes, pocket money, hobbies and school trips.

And the offspring of the super wealthy - around 18,000 little rich kids - had an annual budget of £50,000 each, equating to £850,000 over the course of their childhood.

Furthermore, the bank of mum and dad carries on well into adulthood, it seems. The survey found that many parents go on providing help with money matters for their offspring into their middle age and beyond.

Some 631,000 children were provided with significant financial support from their parents, despite being aged 30 or older, and 148,000 of these were aged 44 or over.

Excluding the cost of education, the biggest expense for parents when it comes to their children was holidays, which swallowed up a staggering £9.25 billion a year.

This was followed by food (£8.16 billion) and hobbies (£7.267 billion). Other costs include clothes, pocket money and school trips.

For those considering educating their children in private schools, the annual cost rose significantly - according to the Independent Schools Council, the average fee for a day pupil at a private school is £7,911 per annum.

Andy Deller, director of banking and insurance at Egg, said: "Raising a family is an expensive business and for many the financial cost of having children does not stop when they leave school.

"It is clear from our research that with rising house prices and the growing cost of higher education, parents appear to be providing significant financial support for their offspring for longer.

"Parents work hard to support their families, but many do not put in place measures, such as relevant life cover, which would protect and secure these costs moving forward, should the unthinkable happen to them or their partner."