Child care is 24k-30k a year, with wait lists that can exceed a year. Parents don't have a choice, if they are lucky enough to get a daycare spot they have to take it wherever it is at.
Gas in Seattle is still around $4.60 a gallon, nearly $1 more per gallon than outside the city.
> 2 million for a home fit for two kids?
A 70yr old home in an above average neighborhood, with 3 bedrooms, costs 1.2 million. If you want that house in an area with highly ranked public schools, you will be approaching 2 million. If you want 4 bedrooms (home office if your company does wfh), add another 200-300k. For the areas with the best public schools, you'll need to go to a neighboring city and those houses can easily reach 2 million, home prices near the nicest schools have nearly doubled in the last 3 years.
A note about schools here, the school you go to is based on where you live, and schools are funded with property taxes. This means more expensive neighborhoods have better schools. In some schools the pipes still have lead in them and the water is unsafe to drink. The city does not have enough money to fund the schools and as such even has repeatedly cut programs as schools are ran in a shoestring budget year after year.
Because of this there is a lot of competition between parents to buy houses in nicer neighborhoods, which dramatically increases home prices.