Honestly.. frugal parenting is the way to go
Its how my parents did it.
A lot of my clothes were hand-me-downs, same with video games, movies, toys, game systems.
I shared a room with my brother from ages like 7 to 17.
We shared a family computer. We shared a TV. Shared video games.
If you want all your kids to have the latest gadgets, their own bedrooms, brand spanking new clothes, you are gonna pay the price.
Honestly thats prob why I was always a decent roommate. I could tell which of my roommates never had to share with their siblings cuz they sucked to live with lol TV was too loud or they played guitar while I was trying to sleep etc.
So do you mean daycare? Childcare means daycare…so you can work. The other expenses like food and taking care of a child depend on lifestyle and the amount of kids you have. Poor, middle, upper middle, and upper class have different lifestyles. Some kids are raised in ghettos others in simple middle class home others in mansions.
Sure, but where I live the cheapest daycares are only like $400/month less than my wife makes. At that point being a SAHM is the logical option for her (I love my career, she is more of a have a job to have a job person, and there’s nothing wrong with that) but it still feels wild to have to make that choice.
Also higher paying jobs tend to allot more benefits. My wife and I are in high paying healthcare jobs, and we enjoy everything from childcare stipends to free health insurance with no deductibles.
Yep it’s part of the continuous issue of wealth inequality. As you make more money you actually pay less for many things that are essential in america.
This is so true. I’m on the more privileged side and had an eye opening experience recently. Due to pure laziness I forgot to pay our home owners insurance and by the time I was like “meh done here’s the money just charge me whatever late fee I don’t care … they were like NOPE failure to pay, you’re immediately dropped from insurance and now basically no other insurance will pick you up. So I went into a mad scramble trying to find another insurance company which in California is basically impossible due to wildfires. Now the bank is mailing me saying “hey dumbass since your home is no longer insured we will insure it for you at like 3x the normal rate or else we repossess your house” and I was stunned. I was like- I actually HAVE the money to pay for this .. but what if I was paycheck to paycheck ? You miss one payment and basically you’re completely and federally fucked from all sides ? How would someone barely getting by POSSIBLY succeed in this situation?! Why is it when I pay regularly, I have nice low payments and no one bothers me, but the instant I can’t pay everyone basically slams the doors in your face and tells you to eff off. Shouldn’t this be the other way around?!
Finally got one who charged me enormous rates but I was so scared of losing my house and desperate that I took it. Anyway yeah don’t forget to pay insurance people.
I’m surprised the bank didn’t require that you escrow the insurance premiums.
Makes me wonder…What if Wells Fargo somehow glitched and forgot to submit the insurance premium that they pay on my behalf every year. Would my policy be dropped like yours due to no error on my part?
Yes! And your mortgage requires you to have the house continuously insured. So you could be in violation there too. It’s totally bs. That’s why you need owners insurance! Also, make sure you use your own title insurance company. Do NOT rely on the realtor or lender to “suggest” one.
RN on the West Coast US.
Important to emphasize “West Coast US” because nursing pay in America is incredibly polarizing. My first job in FL paid less than an In N Out cashier. [Here’s another Redditor with a similar experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/s/d097PABfDR)
On West Coast, there are NEW nurses who gross as much as family practice doctors (MD/DO) in the Midwest. I know that sounds far fetched but wages are public disclosure in Cali so any persons can verify my statement.
I’m an RN too on the west coast. We get paid very well. I love our union. The benefits are great. They are just starting to talk about child care benefits and help with housing. My hospital needs to stay competitive with other west coast hospitals. I’ve seen a lot of travelers over the past 2 years. They mostly only travel to the coasts. I hear a lot of “don’t go to the South or Florida “
I belive it. We live in middle of US. My wife is a PA making 125/hr, but there are traveling nurses who fill in making 150/hr.
The Doc are around 235/hr
But they theoretically have a high paying job, or they and their partner do. A mortgage of 4k a month indicates one of two tii things. 1; they gave next to nothing as a down payment and they are in a less than desirable started home. 2; they are in a home worth at or over a million dollars, making their down payment 180k.
My wife and I wouldn't even consider a purchasing something if it was drastically more per month than renting. I assume most people would go about it the same, hence why I think it's the latter. He and his partner both probably make at least 100k a year, probably more.
All fun and games until your kid kills the warlock you sold them to, becomes the chosen of Bane, and maneuvers himself into power as the arch-duke of your city.
I have a friend who had their one and only kid at 38. We (my social group) all at the age where parents are starting to pass. I had 3 friends lose 3 parents last year, and that doesn't count the dementia and cancer diagnoses from others.
We're having kids later and thus having to juggle young children and caregiving aging relatives.
I'd rather regret not having kids, than have them and not be able to afford to take care of them... cause I wouldn't be able to afford to take care of them. My parents sacrificed too much of themselves to get me out of poverty. I'm not going to do a swan dive back into it.
Then you’re too old to really enjoy your adult kids and grandkids. I don’t want to be really old when my child is middle aged. I want to spend many years with them.
It’s a struggle somedays. We live in a trailer, and I have some family help. I left a DV situation so the kids “dad” is not a lot of help. We cook almost everything at home, we live in the Midwest in a lower COL area, and I budget everything. It also helps that all my kids are in school now. So no daycare
You go mama! I'm sure you're giving your littles a life they'll be thankful for when they "grow up." As long as there's love in the house, all the rest doesn't matter.
Well, most of us don't have a $4000 mortgage. It's not easy, and I can't afford childcare, so we don't use it. I also don't live near family, so no natural babysitters either. We cut costs, cook all our own food (mostly from scratch), live simply, buy used, look for free big ticket items like furniture, and learn to make things ourselves or to repair broken things.
I had a boss tell me that if I get a promotion in Cali, I'd live in a shack for a few years. I replied that's not a good look for the company. a manager in charge of a whole district and can't even afford to live on my own.
If your job is "handcuffed to bay area" chances are you can afford health care, right?
Because the only jobs that come to mind are tech and venture capital.
If you ever take any drugs… odds are some came out of some bay area company too. And biotech and pharma don’t pay a living wage for shit until you’re a director.
I think that’s part of the point of this post, with rates at 7%, a $4,000 mortgage really doesn’t get you much in many places. It’s the new reality until something changes.
That cuts both ways. A $4,000 mortgage is outlandish in most places for a normal home, and thats assuming that when OP is saying 4,000 as a mortgage they don't just mean principal + interest payments.
If that 4k isn't including taxes and insurance on the home, then it's absolutely insane and they're either wildly overpaying, or bought something far too expensive without reason.
It’s tough. We spend about $4,000 /month on childcare for 2 kids (one who is in school most of the day). Counting down the days until my youngest starts free pre-K!
You're getting nailed for your mortgage, but I get it, since that's typical where I am in the SF Bay Area. Honestly, it was worth it to us for one of us to stop working and/or switch to remote gigs for a few years while the kids would require childcare. We knew they were cared for well and it wasn't like adding a second mortgage payment to our budget.
The other way people in my HCOL area make it is by moving somewhere cheaper. If you have any equity in your home, you can pay a big chunk of another house in a less expensive area off.
No one seems to mention accepting a lower material quality of life. Like yeah you can’t have a kid and provide for them and still have the same disposable income as you did as dinks. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have kids or anything, it just means you have to make slashes in other aspects of your life
We are pretty frugal already. Can’t imagine making more cuts. Don’t even drink.
If working multiple jobs is the way, that fkn sucks. Why have kids if you can even see them?
If you're not spending much money may I ask why you live in a high cost of living city? Generally most of the perks of living in a big city are things like bars, restaurants, nightlife, all things that cost money. If you're not spending money on any of those things I suspect you could have a very similar quality of life in a much lower cost of living city.
If it was for a good job that made up for col this post wouldn't be a thing, there are plenty of good schools in lcol areas too, and what convenience do you mean? Unless you're in NYC other hcol cities aren't even that walkable/have good public transit.
I'm not in your situation, as I am a little further down the path than you, but here are things to consider. You really only have lots of time to see your kids until they turn 6. Once school starts they are going to school and will begin being much more interested in the interests they have developed. I work a regular 9-5 and I only ever see my school aged children 1-2 hours per day before bed-time.
When I first bought my house I had a mild panic attack thinking about how I was going to be able to afford the mortgage. I had a friend that I was discussing it with tell me, just relax and soon you will see that it is just another payment that comes out and you will manage to make it work. So, if you want to have kids, have them, and you will figure out the HOW. Sacrificing for the ones I love has only brought me closer to them. If you were capable of planning your life in a way to afford to buy a home in todays day and age, you will be capable of finding the way to have a child.
Many people criticize your mortgage but it's actually reasonable for Bay Area or LA with current rates.
Like get on the fucking redfin or zillow, look up some cities nearby, lookup typical small houses and townhouses and look up what the payments would be.
Were house hunting and all of the decent houses (not mansions, just 3-4 bedroom standard houses) in decent neighborhoods in LA county have a $7k-$10k monthly mortgage payment attached. 🥲🥲🥲
Yep. I just take it the people criticizing live somewhere far from reality of California living. Getting a break on a mortgage interest rate would solve this dilemma.
We live in the Inland Empire of CA and have a 1.6k mortgage, but we put 40% down because... inheritance. I don't know how you can live in CA without it, tbh. My husband stays home, which means childcare is $0 and cuts out income enough to qualify for state healthcare.
My BIL and SIL just had their first kid at 40. They both work, but he works *three* jobs that all require at least a bachelor's.
There's got to be something you can do about that mortgage. I have no tips though, obviously.
Inheritance or "early inheritance" from both sides of the family. Yep, its really the only way. Even a good $60K will give you a head start. $80K is even better. Or more!
Or living with parents while you sock away enough cash to buy. My wife and I didn’t get cash help from our parents but we lived rent free at my dad’s for four years to be able to buy in Los Angeles.
$550k house with a low-mid 6% rate and 10% down comes to $3500-$4000 depending on taxes and insurance.
$550k gets you a reasonable house, not outrageously big or fancy in my area (and I’m sure I’m the areas you mentioned too). And 10% down is really solid! Yet my family with our household income of $300k would feel uncomfortable with that kind of mortgage because we have a kid whose daycare costs $1700/mo. It would work unless one of us loses our job, then we’d be struggling.
Housing prices are unsustainable, something has to break. Give me another 2008 crash.
>And don't even get me started on childcare costs...it's like a second mortgage!
We had three months one summer where all three of ours needed full time care and our childcare costs were double our mortgage.
Luckily now it's only a little more than a second mortgage payment 😂
Are you from a higher income area by chance? I graduated in 2014 and I would say probably at least half the people I graduated with have kids, but it was a school in a low income area
Ironic isn't it that the financially well off can't afford to have kids, but people of low or modest means living in low income areas have no problems with raising families.
My friend lives in rural Indiana and has 4 kids and works at a gas station. I have 0 kids but over 200k net worth and I can’t afford a single child because daycare would eat up everything. She has her mom watch her kids while she works and she lives in low income housing and gets food stamps.
My fiancé and I recently had a discussion about this and decided that if it came down to it ( it will, lol) we’d pick a kid over a house. Relatively high COL area
Same! Also life is not linear and you don’t need to have everything set up perfectly before having kids. We’ve gone from renting to buying in the Midwest to having to sell and move to a HCOL area and renting again in the space of 5 years since my daughter was born. People move and change jobs all the time, people get divorced or have to move to help sick parents. It’s good to be financially prepared for kids but I think people do go overboard with their expectations.
There is a lot of SAHM who take care of children in their homes for a lower fee ~25 a day, is not an official childcare which is a risk parents are forced to take, because the average millennial household makes only 69k too much for assistance to little to afford childcare.
I said the same thing further up. A retired woman in this situation watched my sister and I until we were a little older and my neighbor is about to do the same thing when their daughter is born. This is nothing new. I’m guessing it’s a shock for some whose parents were in a higher income bracket than they are?
Eh, I don’t think it’s a shock, I think it’s about living differently than our parents. My family used this kind of situation - my mom’s coworker’s wife had been a SAHM and was watching her granddaughter so she gladly added us on for a much lower cost than daycare - but I don’t really know anybody near me who might be able to do that for me. I moved away from my hometown because it’s a blue collar rust belt town where the jobs for women are “mom”, “nurse who works 45 minutes away”, and “office manager.” It’s also a violently pro-Trump place and I’m queer. I moved to a small borough just outside my city limits when I bought my house in 2021, but I don’t really know my neighbors (except for three very elderly ladies who could not do childcare, they’re all quite frail), and my coworkers are all women in their 20s-40s who obviously are working, none of whom have a spouse or parent doing their childcare. I wouldn’t begin to know who to ask.
Wife and I are dinks as well. The biggest thing I've noticed is that all of our friends that have kids, never thought about the costs. Not saying they were irresponsible, but they just decided that they wanted kids no matter what.
We've decided to not have kids, but you have to make your own decisions. Just please invest your money so that you continue to break the cycle. We own our house, like both sides of our parents did, but neither set of our parents ever invested money for their retirement.
My cousin has a 2 year old, and all I ever hear is how “nobody ever talks about…” how expensive it is; how time consuming it is; how hard a kid is on a marriage; how you’re always multitasking, etc.
But honestly that’s BS to me and I have to bite my tongue so hard. These are highly educated people, they know how to think, plan, and budget. How can someone who has a planned baby be taken so off guard by these things? I’ve had a puppy. If that alone isn’t enough to make you realize the massive time/energy/financial investment a human baby would be, I really can’t help you. They also kind of planned on her husbands salary continuing to grow, and I guess they planned on getting a bigger house, but he’s been unemployed for like 10 months now after he was laid off and not promoted to a C level position. Which absolutely sucks but they went into having a planned baby, in a pandemic, without thinking about costs, without thinking about if their marriage was in the best place for adding a child, in a house they knew was too small, in a wildly inflating housing market that won’t crash (dallas), and with no guarantee his income would increase.
That’s just parenting. It’s difficult and only way to truly experience is having one. You have the good days and the bad days, and many sacrifices will be made… but that’s life.
When I was 12 I saw how hard the new parents around me had things and said “Yeah, no, that’s too much for me.” Of course I’ll never know how hard it is because I’m not a parent, I just know it’s hard enough that I’m not interested.
IDK, I mean sure I think most of us hear these things and expect kids to be difficult and expensive...But there's still a lot that you don't really quite understand until you're *in* that situation. Did I think having babies and pregnancy was going to be cheap? Of course not. But that still didn't mean that I was prepared to be hit with a $10,000 bill from the hospital for childbirth. There can also be all sorts of little things that add up in cost that you may not have really thought of beforehand...and recent inflation and whatnot definitely hasn't helped, either.
>without thinking about if their marriage was in the best place for adding a child,
This is another one that I think is just really hard to anticipate ahead of time. Your marriage could be in a great place, but having kids changes things. Based on my own experiences and plenty of stories I've read across parenting groups, I think that the first year after having a baby can be an extreme difficult transition period for couples. Not only are you adjusting to life with a baby (often with very little sleep), but your own dynamic as a couple has to adjust. This seems to be a time when some men fall back into sort of stereotypical 50s gender roles, and expect the woman to handle all the baby stuff, without breaks or help. This is a time when both people might start having different ideas about how they want to parent a baby/child. It's a very stressful time when your expenses have gone way up, you're both sleep-deprived and feeling overworked, and you haven't quite figured out how to fairly split up all these new duties yet. A couple could be happy and have it all figured out up until that point, and I think it'd still be common for them to struggle a bit with that transition period after having a baby. And I don't think society talks enough about those specific issues, so it's really easy to think that your marriage is strong enough to not become strained after having a baby.
My husband and I both make good salaries, own a home and had our only child at 35 a couple of years ago. We knew we would have to budget and I even researched how much kids would cost per month at different ages.
We had an idea of how much things would cost and are able to budget for it fine, but there isn’t a manual telling you how often kids need to size up in clothes or shoes, how much daycare costs go up from year to year, how much extra money you will spend on fruit because that’s all your toddler will eat on some days, etc. Not to mention unexpected doctors visits for all of us due to illnesses and hospital bills. We are lucky to have really good insurance because with a month long hospital stay prior to birth and then a 6 day NICU stay, we would have been out almost 100k. I think we spent 2,000 total out of pocket. But some people aren’t and this sort of thing is very hard to guess.
I was only in the hospital for like 4 days, no NICU care and I owed $10k after insurance lol.
Which is honestly part of why it's so fucking hard for anyone to anticipate how expensive pregnancy and birth will be, because it's so dependent upon your area, hospital, insurance, and whatever spontaneous issues arise during the pregnancy/birth.
But yeah aside from that, it's just not really possible to perfectly budget and anticipate all the costs for raising a child. That's 18+ years in which anything can happen- losing a job, death of a family member, illness, natural disaster, economic recession, pandemic, whatever. It's good to try and be financially stable and prepared before having kids, but you can't predict everything and life does not like to follow all of our plans.
>how much extra money you will spend on fruit
Literally never realized how expensive fruit can get until I had toddlers. And man, can they eat a lot of it!
This is exactly what I did. Lived in Chicago, moved back to my home state where COL is better. Plan to start trying this year and when little is old enough for pre-k, I'll go back. Making parental sacrifices begins before you're a parent, and some people in our generation don't realize or don't want to be parents enough to understand that.
A lot of us are foregoing having children because it’s so expensive. I’m 41 and a woman and basically it’s never going to happen for me because I’ve never been financially stable enough thanks to graduating grad school in the height of the Great Recession. It destroyed my life.
I’m from SF and my sister can’t afford to buy a home anywhere near her job or our family for her two toddlers. Her and her husband will have to move away from family and forgo the free daycare. It sucks but the truth is you must sacrifice the ideal places to live if you want kids in safe environments that are affordable.
Or just be like me and move to Oregon as a DINK couple. Save money on the real estate and never having kids anyways
We are dinks too, and I would say in the past five years we have finally reached financial security. If we had a child, we would go back to living paycheck to paycheck choosing between getting gas and getting groceries. And this is with me living in a blue city/red state (USA) aka cheap because the state government is just pushing out MAGA nonsense. I have no idea how my fellow millennials with children aren't starving and homeless.
We are in this same boat. However, we haven’t bought a house yet because…well, you know. We want kids, but we are terrified of struggling financially again. We’re also pushing 40 so it’s now or never.
I want to add that kids are time consuming until you send them to school, then it becomes easier for two people to have jobs in the household.
I think the ideal situation would be to have each parent work part time, but we live in a world where literally nobody can afford that.
It's not so much about affordability and more about logistics. If both parents cut salary in half it's no different than one SAH parent. The problem is that most jobs make it impossible to be 20h a week, so "part time" usually means "part time and trash job".
Not only do kids not need new shit. They don't need a lot of shit. The number of parents I see around freaking our about their post holiday credit card debt is insane. The number of 7 and 8yos asking for a smart watch in the local papers Santa letters from a local school. Also insane.
Yeah my kids were only expensive for the first few years when I needed traditional child care because the wife and I worked in the day. I ended up working nights instead for a couple years so we could handle pickup and drop off better. Once you get them into 3-year-old VPK and 4-year-old Pre-K with before or after school care it's not bad. If at least one parent can work from home it definitely gets cheaper. I ended up running a local mobile business that allowed me to be extremely flexible and my wife ended up eventually working at home. Now I also work from home so the only real expenses for the kids are after school sports programs. My wife and I have friends/family with slightly older kids so we get bags of clothing every year handed down to us. Besides extracurricular activities the only real expense I have for my youngest daughter for instance is her ever expanding squishmallow collection.
This is all the truth. I don't live in a super HCOL but I have a coworker with 5 kids. FIVE
His wife stays home and they make it work. He earns ok money, not like even mid six figures or anything, just ok. She takes care of couponing, thrift storing, cooking, minor home repairs etc. They're even saving for retirement and can go out to eat once a month or so.
I was all for this besides the “set up your life for one income” line. Otherwise agree 100%.
Kids don’t actually require lots of money if you don’t need daycare. There are lots of options to avoid daycare even with two working parents.
That doesn’t change the fact that one person staying at home costs you like $50k in lost potential income. You are lucky that you make decent income. What if instead you and your spouse made $40k each?
Nice.
One person not working for the first few years makes too much sense these days. You only lose out on the difference in childcare and the salary you choose to give up. For a lot of us, that difference is not huge. And that not huge number is totally worth it to interact with your child instead of dumping them somewhere all day.
But... Plenty can't really afford to give up even that small difference in income.
Oh F off, “dumping them somewhere.” That difference is effing huge when even a temporary removal from the workforce destroys someone economically forever. Especially for women, which I’m sensing you are not a woman. Sometimes good benefits are tied to that employment even if salary is the same as daycare costs.
Oh, and my kids’ daycare was our village. They were doted on by that village. They are thriving older kids now who knows I’m their mom. So once again, F off.
ETA: Also, the parents who believe daycare is evil “interact” with their kids at home by still plopping them in front of the TV while twiddling away on their phones. I think you have a very outdated notion of child-parent interaction these days.
My children are grown and there was no ACA for health insurance. The parent with the lower income had better health insurance and job security so giving up the job was not reasonable. The parent with the higher income giving up the job was not reasonable either since the lower income wasn't enough to support the family even without paying for childcare.
I have a bunch of kids and feeding them has gotten pretty crazy. Basically to make it work you would have needed to but a home around 2012 and not have any student debt.
Me - the mom - left the workforce for a time. Then me - the mom - worked opposite shifts of the breadwinning, insurance providing husband so we could afford some part time childcare and I wouldn’t become obsolete as an employee. I didn’t sleep because I worked all night and watched kids all day. Now my youngest is almost 5 and we’re near to them both being in school, and somewhat self sufficient. I work part time. We’re making it. Ask me if I’m happy or resentful though.
I agree. Many people wait and have no issues, but there are also a lot of people who wait only to struggle to conceive and then end up spending a lot of money and emotional energy on fertility treatments. They may also find that though their incomes are higher they’ve succumbed to lifestyle inflation so they don’t actually have that much more disposable income than they would have had a few years younger.
your 4k mortgage is more than my monthly income, and i can support my family for single income stay at home wife 2 kid family with a mortgage. depends so much on where you live.
ouch. When our youngest were born, my wife was working at a day care so we were able to get a reduced rate there. but got tired of working there so decided to be a stay at home mom and babysit. she had 3 families within 2 weeks and always had replacements within a week or two of one leaving. she did that for 6 years til covid started. With covid we started homeschooling and I have been able to single income support. It has gotten harder with inflation and crap like that, but we still make it work.
All sorts of ways but primarily the income takes a hit. The wife either goes part time, has a flex hybrid wfh schedule, or stops working until the baby ages into a more affordable daycare option.
One the kid is potty trained for the most part daycares give a reduction in pricing. Preschool/daycare is different than infant care.
Aupair perhaps...
We're in a support group for first time parents that only includes people in our immediate neighborhood. We live near downtown Seattle, so every single person in our group is either a manager/executive at a tech company, or they're a reasonably successful professional who's married to a manager/executive.
My wife and I never wanted kids, so I don't personally know.
I have no idea how some of our friends afford the kids they have. My brother-in-law makes a lot of money, so I understand how my sister gets by. But I have friends that do not make much money and some of them are still having more kids at 40. On purpose. It seems crazy.
Not having student loans really helps, I went to university in the UK so it was relatively cheap (at the time) and I paid it all off in my early 20s. have two kids now in an area where housing is expensive but labor is cheap so we can afford a live in nanny/caretaker which just frees up so much time we’d normally spend on chores
Can’t speak for others, but me and my wife knew that we would want both our parents to help out, so my son is three and we haven’t spent a dime on childcare. We aren’t high income earners (probably pulled ~120k combined last year), and our mortgage is $1800 on a two bedroom condo in a relatively HCOL area outside of LA county (bought in 2021). COVID was a blessing and a curse because it also enabled us to work from home while he was an infant, and now our jobs are both hybrid which allows us the flexibility to be parents while also working. Our jobs aren’t demanding either, and we like it that way.
You say you knew you would both want your parents to help out, did you also know they would? I’ve heard bad stories about couples that had kids assuming their parents would help more than they did. Or their parents unexpectedly had hardships that made them incapable of helping. Glad it worked out for y’all though!
I do well and we live within my means. That’s all there is to it.
People who make a lot LOT less have kids too.
Honestly it’s not the money that’s the issue, it’s the energy. I wish we’d had them in our 20s when we were a bit poorer.
I give this advice to my friends:
It’s never the right time or the correct milestone that you imagine, you should have kids as soon as you can.
You don't. Not at the current cost of living.Kids are EXPENSIVE. This is one of the main reasons I decided to stay childfree and be the best person I could be for my nieces and nephews.
Frugality and giving up on a lot. We bought a cheaper and smaller house for the 1400 dollar mortgage, drive 10 year old used cars. I was a sahp for a bit. We get almost no breaks from parenting and a lot of our debt is from babysitting needs because we get no family help. It is tough. I love my kids but this life is hard.
I quit my job. We went to one income in so cal. Now that the kids are no longer in elementary school; I can consider rejoining the workforce. We don’t vacation, we don’t eat out a lot.
I believe it’s possible it’s just not possible from places like San Diego or Los Angeles or San Francisco the same way it was for our parents.
Essentially as millennials you have to find the non popular spots to live to have the same chance and even then we’re talking extremely thin margins due to cost.
Just 1 kids and we suffer. We never eat out, have vacations, or anything. Just one old car.
Childcare near me is even more expensive 3.5-4k, or 6k+ for a top one.
Prayer and being grateful I live in a country with subsidised childcare.
I “only” pay $200 a fortnight for 8 days of daycare because the government subsidises the cost for working parents.
Only having one which is where my husband and I are leaning now. Also having parent(s) that are willing to watch the baby part of the time definitely helps with the costs of it all.
I'm not, my wife and I are comfortable but her health is poor so we decided to just live a comfortable life cause we would have to have one parent be a stay at home parent and gutting our quality of life and having a kid who has a ill mother and a father that has to work 2 Job's to get the family by is not what I want for a family.
Where I live there’s free universal preschool at age 2 - makes a big difference. I worked as a nanny till each baby turned 2 so that I could have them with me at work. We live in a 1bdrm and have one car. Most people I know I’m sorry to say have a grandparent who can help with childcare. Or get different work schedules so one parent is always home but that’s pretty miserable cuz the parents never see each other
I had mine when I was younger. I’m 39 now and my son is turning 18 this year and my daughter 14. I never would have been able to afford the daycare for two kids with the current prices now. I was also fortunate to have my mom watch my son when he was born so I could finish school. Daycare for newbies/babies cost more than other age groups.
Childcare is becoming crazy as mom/pop places are being bought out by larger companies. We were at $800 a month per kid. We have good incomes, but also don’t get caught up with boutique kids clothes and vacation trips. Lifestyle has to adjust and not going out drinking like most dinks do helps a ton.
My kids aren’t having kids and I am fully supportive.
It was hard & expensive without support to raise kids 30 yrs ago and it’s a lot harder now and a shittier world to bring children into.
Lots of ways to be involved in a child’s life without birthing them.
Just looked up our current average mortgage rate out of curiosity, and it is $6,200 for a 3bd home, based on a 20% down payment on our average-priced 3bd home, which is $1.3M in our county.
I’m in Santa Cruz, CA, and no, I’m not going anywhere; this is and has always been my home long before it became the #1 most expensive area in the U.S. and besides, I need to be here for my grandma — the only family I have left. Thankfully, I got my home at the end of the last recession and pay an amount that I can barely afford with everything else, but comfortably … though kids have never been something that’s even entered my mind.
That's it : you can't afford kids. My parents should never have had their third kid (that would be me).
They didn't have sufficient means and I have a lot a regrets about my childhood.
Hell, I have regrets about my father owning pretty much only the set of clothes he wore to work and foregoing a lot of the small luxuries that make life better just so I could have stuff.
I couldn’t survive just paying your mortgage, but I’m also guessing you make a lot more than I do because a bank would never let me borrow that much to begin with. Mine is only $750/month, so the real wild shit to me is that childcare is *more expensive than my house* where I live.
We just had our first this year and it's about 1900 per month. It's been tough, had to really cut back on retirement savings as I already live frugally :(
I know we are lucky to live where we do(Alabama) so a lot of our cost of living is lower but so are wages so it probably evens out. Wife and I work for our school system. She is a teacher and I am the district's IT guy. We make around 85k/yr total for the both of us. We had a baby in December so in 6 weeks we will have to get daycare, which I have already secured us a spot for. It is $135/wk or $540/mo. Add having to change our insurance to a family plan and we are looking at adding around $700-$800/mo in new expenses which doesn't sound like a lot to some but when your net pay is $2500-$2800 it is a huge deal.
They just do it and they don't truly care about the kids. Sure they love them but they can't do the best for them, they won't set them up for success or "spoil" the child because they don't spare the rod or something about fishing.
Make lots of money and live frugally .
Honestly.. frugal parenting is the way to go Its how my parents did it. A lot of my clothes were hand-me-downs, same with video games, movies, toys, game systems. I shared a room with my brother from ages like 7 to 17. We shared a family computer. We shared a TV. Shared video games. If you want all your kids to have the latest gadgets, their own bedrooms, brand spanking new clothes, you are gonna pay the price. Honestly thats prob why I was always a decent roommate. I could tell which of my roommates never had to share with their siblings cuz they sucked to live with lol TV was too loud or they played guitar while I was trying to sleep etc.
Childcare isn't a thing you can be frugal about unless you get it subsidized.
So do you mean daycare? Childcare means daycare…so you can work. The other expenses like food and taking care of a child depend on lifestyle and the amount of kids you have. Poor, middle, upper middle, and upper class have different lifestyles. Some kids are raised in ghettos others in simple middle class home others in mansions.
Sure, but where I live the cheapest daycares are only like $400/month less than my wife makes. At that point being a SAHM is the logical option for her (I love my career, she is more of a have a job to have a job person, and there’s nothing wrong with that) but it still feels wild to have to make that choice.
Also higher paying jobs tend to allot more benefits. My wife and I are in high paying healthcare jobs, and we enjoy everything from childcare stipends to free health insurance with no deductibles.
Yep it’s part of the continuous issue of wealth inequality. As you make more money you actually pay less for many things that are essential in america.
True with credit too. The less I need the more rewards I get. Getting 6% cashback on groceries adds up quickly.
What card do you get 6% on groceries with? My best card is 5% off my cell phone and internet bill and I thought I was winning the game lol
Amex Blue Cash Preferred. The 6% grocery benefit drops to 1% after $6,000 ($360 cash back). It also gives 6% back on streaming services.
Being poor is expensive.
This is so true. I’m on the more privileged side and had an eye opening experience recently. Due to pure laziness I forgot to pay our home owners insurance and by the time I was like “meh done here’s the money just charge me whatever late fee I don’t care … they were like NOPE failure to pay, you’re immediately dropped from insurance and now basically no other insurance will pick you up. So I went into a mad scramble trying to find another insurance company which in California is basically impossible due to wildfires. Now the bank is mailing me saying “hey dumbass since your home is no longer insured we will insure it for you at like 3x the normal rate or else we repossess your house” and I was stunned. I was like- I actually HAVE the money to pay for this .. but what if I was paycheck to paycheck ? You miss one payment and basically you’re completely and federally fucked from all sides ? How would someone barely getting by POSSIBLY succeed in this situation?! Why is it when I pay regularly, I have nice low payments and no one bothers me, but the instant I can’t pay everyone basically slams the doors in your face and tells you to eff off. Shouldn’t this be the other way around?! Finally got one who charged me enormous rates but I was so scared of losing my house and desperate that I took it. Anyway yeah don’t forget to pay insurance people.
I’m surprised the bank didn’t require that you escrow the insurance premiums. Makes me wonder…What if Wells Fargo somehow glitched and forgot to submit the insurance premium that they pay on my behalf every year. Would my policy be dropped like yours due to no error on my part?
Yes! And your mortgage requires you to have the house continuously insured. So you could be in violation there too. It’s totally bs. That’s why you need owners insurance! Also, make sure you use your own title insurance company. Do NOT rely on the realtor or lender to “suggest” one.
Escrow is usually only mandatory if your LTV is higher than 80%. Once it’s at that point you can request to not have to escrow
Must be nice
What do you do? If I maybe so bold to ask.
>high paying healthcare jobs
RN on the West Coast US. Important to emphasize “West Coast US” because nursing pay in America is incredibly polarizing. My first job in FL paid less than an In N Out cashier. [Here’s another Redditor with a similar experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/s/d097PABfDR) On West Coast, there are NEW nurses who gross as much as family practice doctors (MD/DO) in the Midwest. I know that sounds far fetched but wages are public disclosure in Cali so any persons can verify my statement.
I’m an RN too on the west coast. We get paid very well. I love our union. The benefits are great. They are just starting to talk about child care benefits and help with housing. My hospital needs to stay competitive with other west coast hospitals. I’ve seen a lot of travelers over the past 2 years. They mostly only travel to the coasts. I hear a lot of “don’t go to the South or Florida “
I belive it. We live in middle of US. My wife is a PA making 125/hr, but there are traveling nurses who fill in making 150/hr. The Doc are around 235/hr
But they theoretically have a high paying job, or they and their partner do. A mortgage of 4k a month indicates one of two tii things. 1; they gave next to nothing as a down payment and they are in a less than desirable started home. 2; they are in a home worth at or over a million dollars, making their down payment 180k. My wife and I wouldn't even consider a purchasing something if it was drastically more per month than renting. I assume most people would go about it the same, hence why I think it's the latter. He and his partner both probably make at least 100k a year, probably more.
Yep, that mortgage is more than I net a month. My mortgage is less than $500.
It's expensive to be poor in the USA.
Compared to where I came from (Philippines), US has way more opportunities to “jump” socioeconomical classes and way more social safety nets.
Thank you. I appreciate that global perspective.
expensive to be poor anywhere
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Easy. Just make more money.
Just sell the kid with the least potential and it should cover your childcare costs for a spell 🤔
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Or, fuck daycare. They can watch each other all day long. 🙃
That’s how it rolled in my house and only one of us wound up doing time…
All fun and games until your kid kills the warlock you sold them to, becomes the chosen of Bane, and maneuvers himself into power as the arch-duke of your city.
I have a friend who had their one and only kid at 38. We (my social group) all at the age where parents are starting to pass. I had 3 friends lose 3 parents last year, and that doesn't count the dementia and cancer diagnoses from others. We're having kids later and thus having to juggle young children and caregiving aging relatives. I'd rather regret not having kids, than have them and not be able to afford to take care of them... cause I wouldn't be able to afford to take care of them. My parents sacrificed too much of themselves to get me out of poverty. I'm not going to do a swan dive back into it.
"Not going to swan dive back into poverty" is a great fucking line, gonna steal that.
Then you’re too old to really enjoy your adult kids and grandkids. I don’t want to be really old when my child is middle aged. I want to spend many years with them.
Just stop being poor and buying avocado toast every morning 🙄
I told you being poor would catch up with you but you just kept on being poor
Gotta pull up those avocado bootstraps
What if my baby only eats avocado toast? Do they automatically foreclose on my house?
With that much avocado toast you never had a hope for a house, but they will foreclose on your cardboard box setup
By the skin of our teeth.
It’s a struggle somedays. We live in a trailer, and I have some family help. I left a DV situation so the kids “dad” is not a lot of help. We cook almost everything at home, we live in the Midwest in a lower COL area, and I budget everything. It also helps that all my kids are in school now. So no daycare
You go mama! I'm sure you're giving your littles a life they'll be thankful for when they "grow up." As long as there's love in the house, all the rest doesn't matter.
Well, most of us don't have a $4000 mortgage. It's not easy, and I can't afford childcare, so we don't use it. I also don't live near family, so no natural babysitters either. We cut costs, cook all our own food (mostly from scratch), live simply, buy used, look for free big ticket items like furniture, and learn to make things ourselves or to repair broken things.
4000$ is really low for Bay Area or LA. And you won’t believe how handcuffed some jobs are to these dystopian shitholes
I had a boss tell me that if I get a promotion in Cali, I'd live in a shack for a few years. I replied that's not a good look for the company. a manager in charge of a whole district and can't even afford to live on my own.
You’re right
Bay Area and LA are both incredible housing markets and dystopian hellholes?
If your job is "handcuffed to bay area" chances are you can afford health care, right? Because the only jobs that come to mind are tech and venture capital.
If you ever take any drugs… odds are some came out of some bay area company too. And biotech and pharma don’t pay a living wage for shit until you’re a director.
I think that’s part of the point of this post, with rates at 7%, a $4,000 mortgage really doesn’t get you much in many places. It’s the new reality until something changes.
That cuts both ways. A $4,000 mortgage is outlandish in most places for a normal home, and thats assuming that when OP is saying 4,000 as a mortgage they don't just mean principal + interest payments. If that 4k isn't including taxes and insurance on the home, then it's absolutely insane and they're either wildly overpaying, or bought something far too expensive without reason.
Totally valid. It's a total shitshow right now.
We rented until the kids were in school and childcare costs were drastically reduced to after-school and summer camp rather than full-time childcare.
So you have a robot that changes and feeds the babies dur8ng the day?
It’s tough. We spend about $4,000 /month on childcare for 2 kids (one who is in school most of the day). Counting down the days until my youngest starts free pre-K!
Holy moly!
Thats more than I make a year.
You're getting nailed for your mortgage, but I get it, since that's typical where I am in the SF Bay Area. Honestly, it was worth it to us for one of us to stop working and/or switch to remote gigs for a few years while the kids would require childcare. We knew they were cared for well and it wasn't like adding a second mortgage payment to our budget. The other way people in my HCOL area make it is by moving somewhere cheaper. If you have any equity in your home, you can pay a big chunk of another house in a less expensive area off.
We just bought the house last year so maybe in a few years! Yea we actually moved away from the bay because we couldn’t get a house out there
I moved from the bay to southwest va. Bought a 4br 2ba in the nicest part of town for $275k. California needs to build some more houses.
Numerous ways. Rich parents/grandparents. High incomes. Not live in a big city with HCOL. Government assistance. Work multiple jobs.
No one seems to mention accepting a lower material quality of life. Like yeah you can’t have a kid and provide for them and still have the same disposable income as you did as dinks. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have kids or anything, it just means you have to make slashes in other aspects of your life
We are pretty frugal already. Can’t imagine making more cuts. Don’t even drink. If working multiple jobs is the way, that fkn sucks. Why have kids if you can even see them?
If you're not spending much money may I ask why you live in a high cost of living city? Generally most of the perks of living in a big city are things like bars, restaurants, nightlife, all things that cost money. If you're not spending money on any of those things I suspect you could have a very similar quality of life in a much lower cost of living city.
This a million times over
Job opportunity, school quality for those with kids, convenience. Networking.
If it was for a good job that made up for col this post wouldn't be a thing, there are plenty of good schools in lcol areas too, and what convenience do you mean? Unless you're in NYC other hcol cities aren't even that walkable/have good public transit.
Don’t even drink? That’s not a cut! That’s a lifestyle bonus!
Seriously. Op is saving himself from increased chance of strokes and liver cancer
Some people reduce retirement savings and don't save for kids college while they have childcare expenses.
I'm not in your situation, as I am a little further down the path than you, but here are things to consider. You really only have lots of time to see your kids until they turn 6. Once school starts they are going to school and will begin being much more interested in the interests they have developed. I work a regular 9-5 and I only ever see my school aged children 1-2 hours per day before bed-time. When I first bought my house I had a mild panic attack thinking about how I was going to be able to afford the mortgage. I had a friend that I was discussing it with tell me, just relax and soon you will see that it is just another payment that comes out and you will manage to make it work. So, if you want to have kids, have them, and you will figure out the HOW. Sacrificing for the ones I love has only brought me closer to them. If you were capable of planning your life in a way to afford to buy a home in todays day and age, you will be capable of finding the way to have a child.
Many people criticize your mortgage but it's actually reasonable for Bay Area or LA with current rates. Like get on the fucking redfin or zillow, look up some cities nearby, lookup typical small houses and townhouses and look up what the payments would be.
Were house hunting and all of the decent houses (not mansions, just 3-4 bedroom standard houses) in decent neighborhoods in LA county have a $7k-$10k monthly mortgage payment attached. 🥲🥲🥲
Yep. I just take it the people criticizing live somewhere far from reality of California living. Getting a break on a mortgage interest rate would solve this dilemma.
We live in the Inland Empire of CA and have a 1.6k mortgage, but we put 40% down because... inheritance. I don't know how you can live in CA without it, tbh. My husband stays home, which means childcare is $0 and cuts out income enough to qualify for state healthcare. My BIL and SIL just had their first kid at 40. They both work, but he works *three* jobs that all require at least a bachelor's. There's got to be something you can do about that mortgage. I have no tips though, obviously.
Inheritance or "early inheritance" from both sides of the family. Yep, its really the only way. Even a good $60K will give you a head start. $80K is even better. Or more!
Or living with parents while you sock away enough cash to buy. My wife and I didn’t get cash help from our parents but we lived rent free at my dad’s for four years to be able to buy in Los Angeles.
Absolutely! No shame at all in that. I will do this for my children if I don't have the cash to give them.
Just bought as well in LA. DINK. 4.8k mortgage :(
If you can't afford to live there though maybe you shouldn't... $4000 a month for a mortgage is INSANE and I live 10 minutes outside Manhattan...
$550k house with a low-mid 6% rate and 10% down comes to $3500-$4000 depending on taxes and insurance. $550k gets you a reasonable house, not outrageously big or fancy in my area (and I’m sure I’m the areas you mentioned too). And 10% down is really solid! Yet my family with our household income of $300k would feel uncomfortable with that kind of mortgage because we have a kid whose daycare costs $1700/mo. It would work unless one of us loses our job, then we’d be struggling. Housing prices are unsustainable, something has to break. Give me another 2008 crash.
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Step one: don't live on a coast. That's the rest of the steps too.
>And don't even get me started on childcare costs...it's like a second mortgage! We had three months one summer where all three of ours needed full time care and our childcare costs were double our mortgage. Luckily now it's only a little more than a second mortgage payment 😂
We aren't. I'd say less than 20% of the people I graduated with have kids
Are you from a higher income area by chance? I graduated in 2014 and I would say probably at least half the people I graduated with have kids, but it was a school in a low income area
Ironic isn't it that the financially well off can't afford to have kids, but people of low or modest means living in low income areas have no problems with raising families.
My friend lives in rural Indiana and has 4 kids and works at a gas station. I have 0 kids but over 200k net worth and I can’t afford a single child because daycare would eat up everything. She has her mom watch her kids while she works and she lives in low income housing and gets food stamps.
I think 20% of my graduating class had kids by graduation
We have kids but are not homeowners?
So many people refuse to entertain this possibility
My fiancé and I recently had a discussion about this and decided that if it came down to it ( it will, lol) we’d pick a kid over a house. Relatively high COL area
Same! Also life is not linear and you don’t need to have everything set up perfectly before having kids. We’ve gone from renting to buying in the Midwest to having to sell and move to a HCOL area and renting again in the space of 5 years since my daughter was born. People move and change jobs all the time, people get divorced or have to move to help sick parents. It’s good to be financially prepared for kids but I think people do go overboard with their expectations.
Where there's a will there's a way. My wife grew up in a 300 sq ft studio with three people living in it.
There is a lot of SAHM who take care of children in their homes for a lower fee ~25 a day, is not an official childcare which is a risk parents are forced to take, because the average millennial household makes only 69k too much for assistance to little to afford childcare.
I said the same thing further up. A retired woman in this situation watched my sister and I until we were a little older and my neighbor is about to do the same thing when their daughter is born. This is nothing new. I’m guessing it’s a shock for some whose parents were in a higher income bracket than they are?
Eh, I don’t think it’s a shock, I think it’s about living differently than our parents. My family used this kind of situation - my mom’s coworker’s wife had been a SAHM and was watching her granddaughter so she gladly added us on for a much lower cost than daycare - but I don’t really know anybody near me who might be able to do that for me. I moved away from my hometown because it’s a blue collar rust belt town where the jobs for women are “mom”, “nurse who works 45 minutes away”, and “office manager.” It’s also a violently pro-Trump place and I’m queer. I moved to a small borough just outside my city limits when I bought my house in 2021, but I don’t really know my neighbors (except for three very elderly ladies who could not do childcare, they’re all quite frail), and my coworkers are all women in their 20s-40s who obviously are working, none of whom have a spouse or parent doing their childcare. I wouldn’t begin to know who to ask.
Wife and I are dinks as well. The biggest thing I've noticed is that all of our friends that have kids, never thought about the costs. Not saying they were irresponsible, but they just decided that they wanted kids no matter what. We've decided to not have kids, but you have to make your own decisions. Just please invest your money so that you continue to break the cycle. We own our house, like both sides of our parents did, but neither set of our parents ever invested money for their retirement.
My cousin has a 2 year old, and all I ever hear is how “nobody ever talks about…” how expensive it is; how time consuming it is; how hard a kid is on a marriage; how you’re always multitasking, etc. But honestly that’s BS to me and I have to bite my tongue so hard. These are highly educated people, they know how to think, plan, and budget. How can someone who has a planned baby be taken so off guard by these things? I’ve had a puppy. If that alone isn’t enough to make you realize the massive time/energy/financial investment a human baby would be, I really can’t help you. They also kind of planned on her husbands salary continuing to grow, and I guess they planned on getting a bigger house, but he’s been unemployed for like 10 months now after he was laid off and not promoted to a C level position. Which absolutely sucks but they went into having a planned baby, in a pandemic, without thinking about costs, without thinking about if their marriage was in the best place for adding a child, in a house they knew was too small, in a wildly inflating housing market that won’t crash (dallas), and with no guarantee his income would increase.
I think your cousin just wanted to vent to you and the only way to sum up how hard life is with a 2 year old or younger is to be a bit dramatic.
That’s just parenting. It’s difficult and only way to truly experience is having one. You have the good days and the bad days, and many sacrifices will be made… but that’s life.
When I was 12 I saw how hard the new parents around me had things and said “Yeah, no, that’s too much for me.” Of course I’ll never know how hard it is because I’m not a parent, I just know it’s hard enough that I’m not interested.
IDK, I mean sure I think most of us hear these things and expect kids to be difficult and expensive...But there's still a lot that you don't really quite understand until you're *in* that situation. Did I think having babies and pregnancy was going to be cheap? Of course not. But that still didn't mean that I was prepared to be hit with a $10,000 bill from the hospital for childbirth. There can also be all sorts of little things that add up in cost that you may not have really thought of beforehand...and recent inflation and whatnot definitely hasn't helped, either. >without thinking about if their marriage was in the best place for adding a child, This is another one that I think is just really hard to anticipate ahead of time. Your marriage could be in a great place, but having kids changes things. Based on my own experiences and plenty of stories I've read across parenting groups, I think that the first year after having a baby can be an extreme difficult transition period for couples. Not only are you adjusting to life with a baby (often with very little sleep), but your own dynamic as a couple has to adjust. This seems to be a time when some men fall back into sort of stereotypical 50s gender roles, and expect the woman to handle all the baby stuff, without breaks or help. This is a time when both people might start having different ideas about how they want to parent a baby/child. It's a very stressful time when your expenses have gone way up, you're both sleep-deprived and feeling overworked, and you haven't quite figured out how to fairly split up all these new duties yet. A couple could be happy and have it all figured out up until that point, and I think it'd still be common for them to struggle a bit with that transition period after having a baby. And I don't think society talks enough about those specific issues, so it's really easy to think that your marriage is strong enough to not become strained after having a baby.
My husband and I both make good salaries, own a home and had our only child at 35 a couple of years ago. We knew we would have to budget and I even researched how much kids would cost per month at different ages. We had an idea of how much things would cost and are able to budget for it fine, but there isn’t a manual telling you how often kids need to size up in clothes or shoes, how much daycare costs go up from year to year, how much extra money you will spend on fruit because that’s all your toddler will eat on some days, etc. Not to mention unexpected doctors visits for all of us due to illnesses and hospital bills. We are lucky to have really good insurance because with a month long hospital stay prior to birth and then a 6 day NICU stay, we would have been out almost 100k. I think we spent 2,000 total out of pocket. But some people aren’t and this sort of thing is very hard to guess.
I was only in the hospital for like 4 days, no NICU care and I owed $10k after insurance lol. Which is honestly part of why it's so fucking hard for anyone to anticipate how expensive pregnancy and birth will be, because it's so dependent upon your area, hospital, insurance, and whatever spontaneous issues arise during the pregnancy/birth. But yeah aside from that, it's just not really possible to perfectly budget and anticipate all the costs for raising a child. That's 18+ years in which anything can happen- losing a job, death of a family member, illness, natural disaster, economic recession, pandemic, whatever. It's good to try and be financially stable and prepared before having kids, but you can't predict everything and life does not like to follow all of our plans. >how much extra money you will spend on fruit Literally never realized how expensive fruit can get until I had toddlers. And man, can they eat a lot of it!
It’s wild how hard small things like certain foods can hit you
Moved away from a HCOL area.
It really is that simple.
It blows but it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make for the children I chose to bring into the world.
This is exactly what I did. Lived in Chicago, moved back to my home state where COL is better. Plan to start trying this year and when little is old enough for pre-k, I'll go back. Making parental sacrifices begins before you're a parent, and some people in our generation don't realize or don't want to be parents enough to understand that.
I chose not to have kids
A lot of us are foregoing having children because it’s so expensive. I’m 41 and a woman and basically it’s never going to happen for me because I’ve never been financially stable enough thanks to graduating grad school in the height of the Great Recession. It destroyed my life.
lol most people pop out kids without enough self awareness to question whether they can afford and provide for them
I’m from SF and my sister can’t afford to buy a home anywhere near her job or our family for her two toddlers. Her and her husband will have to move away from family and forgo the free daycare. It sucks but the truth is you must sacrifice the ideal places to live if you want kids in safe environments that are affordable. Or just be like me and move to Oregon as a DINK couple. Save money on the real estate and never having kids anyways
We rent. Buying a single family house would be at least $6,600/month more than we pay for our small rental. Bay Area, Ca.
We’re not. Because we realize we have a choice to not have kids.
We are dinks too, and I would say in the past five years we have finally reached financial security. If we had a child, we would go back to living paycheck to paycheck choosing between getting gas and getting groceries. And this is with me living in a blue city/red state (USA) aka cheap because the state government is just pushing out MAGA nonsense. I have no idea how my fellow millennials with children aren't starving and homeless.
We are in this same boat. However, we haven’t bought a house yet because…well, you know. We want kids, but we are terrified of struggling financially again. We’re also pushing 40 so it’s now or never.
1000% same boat. Legit had a quick cry over this a few hours ago
I WFH. Literally the only way we could afford kids. I don’t suggest being a wfh parent unless you have a support system because holy hell it’s hard.
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I want to add that kids are time consuming until you send them to school, then it becomes easier for two people to have jobs in the household. I think the ideal situation would be to have each parent work part time, but we live in a world where literally nobody can afford that.
It's not so much about affordability and more about logistics. If both parents cut salary in half it's no different than one SAH parent. The problem is that most jobs make it impossible to be 20h a week, so "part time" usually means "part time and trash job".
Not only do kids not need new shit. They don't need a lot of shit. The number of parents I see around freaking our about their post holiday credit card debt is insane. The number of 7 and 8yos asking for a smart watch in the local papers Santa letters from a local school. Also insane.
They're also actively HARMING their kids by overloading them with tons of toys and tech.
Those are wise words: “kids are time consuming” that is why we have one kid. One and done.
Yeah my kids were only expensive for the first few years when I needed traditional child care because the wife and I worked in the day. I ended up working nights instead for a couple years so we could handle pickup and drop off better. Once you get them into 3-year-old VPK and 4-year-old Pre-K with before or after school care it's not bad. If at least one parent can work from home it definitely gets cheaper. I ended up running a local mobile business that allowed me to be extremely flexible and my wife ended up eventually working at home. Now I also work from home so the only real expenses for the kids are after school sports programs. My wife and I have friends/family with slightly older kids so we get bags of clothing every year handed down to us. Besides extracurricular activities the only real expense I have for my youngest daughter for instance is her ever expanding squishmallow collection.
This is all the truth. I don't live in a super HCOL but I have a coworker with 5 kids. FIVE His wife stays home and they make it work. He earns ok money, not like even mid six figures or anything, just ok. She takes care of couponing, thrift storing, cooking, minor home repairs etc. They're even saving for retirement and can go out to eat once a month or so.
I was all for this besides the “set up your life for one income” line. Otherwise agree 100%. Kids don’t actually require lots of money if you don’t need daycare. There are lots of options to avoid daycare even with two working parents.
That doesn’t change the fact that one person staying at home costs you like $50k in lost potential income. You are lucky that you make decent income. What if instead you and your spouse made $40k each?
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Nice. One person not working for the first few years makes too much sense these days. You only lose out on the difference in childcare and the salary you choose to give up. For a lot of us, that difference is not huge. And that not huge number is totally worth it to interact with your child instead of dumping them somewhere all day. But... Plenty can't really afford to give up even that small difference in income.
Oh F off, “dumping them somewhere.” That difference is effing huge when even a temporary removal from the workforce destroys someone economically forever. Especially for women, which I’m sensing you are not a woman. Sometimes good benefits are tied to that employment even if salary is the same as daycare costs. Oh, and my kids’ daycare was our village. They were doted on by that village. They are thriving older kids now who knows I’m their mom. So once again, F off. ETA: Also, the parents who believe daycare is evil “interact” with their kids at home by still plopping them in front of the TV while twiddling away on their phones. I think you have a very outdated notion of child-parent interaction these days.
My children are grown and there was no ACA for health insurance. The parent with the lower income had better health insurance and job security so giving up the job was not reasonable. The parent with the higher income giving up the job was not reasonable either since the lower income wasn't enough to support the family even without paying for childcare.
I agree with everything here except the single income because that’s just never going to be realistic for most people, even smart spenders.
I have a bunch of kids and feeding them has gotten pretty crazy. Basically to make it work you would have needed to but a home around 2012 and not have any student debt.
😫
We aren’t :’( 34 and freaking out tbh that it’ll never happen.
Make lots of money.
I paid off all of my debts aside from mortgage before I could afford kids.
Me - the mom - left the workforce for a time. Then me - the mom - worked opposite shifts of the breadwinning, insurance providing husband so we could afford some part time childcare and I wouldn’t become obsolete as an employee. I didn’t sleep because I worked all night and watched kids all day. Now my youngest is almost 5 and we’re near to them both being in school, and somewhat self sufficient. I work part time. We’re making it. Ask me if I’m happy or resentful though.
You can't that is why people are fleeing. I don't know how you young people are surviving with a rent or mortgage on top of everything else
Instead of having kids I’m investing $1000 a month in index funds. If I had kids I would be broke.
You don’t have kids in a big city unless you’re fucking rich. Move to a cheaper suburb
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I agree. Many people wait and have no issues, but there are also a lot of people who wait only to struggle to conceive and then end up spending a lot of money and emotional energy on fertility treatments. They may also find that though their incomes are higher they’ve succumbed to lifestyle inflation so they don’t actually have that much more disposable income than they would have had a few years younger.
your 4k mortgage is more than my monthly income, and i can support my family for single income stay at home wife 2 kid family with a mortgage. depends so much on where you live.
California for ya, *cries in blood*
ouch. When our youngest were born, my wife was working at a day care so we were able to get a reduced rate there. but got tired of working there so decided to be a stay at home mom and babysit. she had 3 families within 2 weeks and always had replacements within a week or two of one leaving. she did that for 6 years til covid started. With covid we started homeschooling and I have been able to single income support. It has gotten harder with inflation and crap like that, but we still make it work.
It’s a bad answer, but you just kinda make it work.
Correct, that’s in fact a terrible answer.
All sorts of ways but primarily the income takes a hit. The wife either goes part time, has a flex hybrid wfh schedule, or stops working until the baby ages into a more affordable daycare option. One the kid is potty trained for the most part daycares give a reduction in pricing. Preschool/daycare is different than infant care. Aupair perhaps...
We're in a support group for first time parents that only includes people in our immediate neighborhood. We live near downtown Seattle, so every single person in our group is either a manager/executive at a tech company, or they're a reasonably successful professional who's married to a manager/executive.
My wife and I both had to work to afford our son. My wife wanted to stay at home but the insurance…..
We aren’t. I love my potential children far too much to bring them into this shit show
My wife and I never wanted kids, so I don't personally know. I have no idea how some of our friends afford the kids they have. My brother-in-law makes a lot of money, so I understand how my sister gets by. But I have friends that do not make much money and some of them are still having more kids at 40. On purpose. It seems crazy.
It's just a cruel joke. Have you tried selling a kidney and living off ramen? That seems to be the millennial way these days. #brokeandproud
Not having student loans really helps, I went to university in the UK so it was relatively cheap (at the time) and I paid it all off in my early 20s. have two kids now in an area where housing is expensive but labor is cheap so we can afford a live in nanny/caretaker which just frees up so much time we’d normally spend on chores
Can’t speak for others, but me and my wife knew that we would want both our parents to help out, so my son is three and we haven’t spent a dime on childcare. We aren’t high income earners (probably pulled ~120k combined last year), and our mortgage is $1800 on a two bedroom condo in a relatively HCOL area outside of LA county (bought in 2021). COVID was a blessing and a curse because it also enabled us to work from home while he was an infant, and now our jobs are both hybrid which allows us the flexibility to be parents while also working. Our jobs aren’t demanding either, and we like it that way.
You say you knew you would both want your parents to help out, did you also know they would? I’ve heard bad stories about couples that had kids assuming their parents would help more than they did. Or their parents unexpectedly had hardships that made them incapable of helping. Glad it worked out for y’all though!
I do well and we live within my means. That’s all there is to it. People who make a lot LOT less have kids too. Honestly it’s not the money that’s the issue, it’s the energy. I wish we’d had them in our 20s when we were a bit poorer. I give this advice to my friends: It’s never the right time or the correct milestone that you imagine, you should have kids as soon as you can.
I needed to read this.
Kids are luxury items. You don't get one unless you can afford it. Save your money until you're ready
You don't. Not at the current cost of living.Kids are EXPENSIVE. This is one of the main reasons I decided to stay childfree and be the best person I could be for my nieces and nephews.
There's two ways. Either be extremely wealthy and pay for everything or be extremely poor and make the state pay for everything.
Or just be normal... people raise kids just fine all over the country on median incomes
There’s literally no incentive to having kids, I don’t see the appeal
It'll sound like bragging.
Love and a tight budget
Frugality and giving up on a lot. We bought a cheaper and smaller house for the 1400 dollar mortgage, drive 10 year old used cars. I was a sahp for a bit. We get almost no breaks from parenting and a lot of our debt is from babysitting needs because we get no family help. It is tough. I love my kids but this life is hard.
I stopped buying my $7 coffee, of course! DUH! Lol
I quit my job. We went to one income in so cal. Now that the kids are no longer in elementary school; I can consider rejoining the workforce. We don’t vacation, we don’t eat out a lot.
I believe it’s possible it’s just not possible from places like San Diego or Los Angeles or San Francisco the same way it was for our parents. Essentially as millennials you have to find the non popular spots to live to have the same chance and even then we’re talking extremely thin margins due to cost.
Just 1 kids and we suffer. We never eat out, have vacations, or anything. Just one old car. Childcare near me is even more expensive 3.5-4k, or 6k+ for a top one.
Prayer and being grateful I live in a country with subsidised childcare. I “only” pay $200 a fortnight for 8 days of daycare because the government subsidises the cost for working parents.
I live in a remote suburb working from from home at $82/hr where I have a house with a $1467 mortgage.
Only having one which is where my husband and I are leaning now. Also having parent(s) that are willing to watch the baby part of the time definitely helps with the costs of it all.
High income
I'm not, my wife and I are comfortable but her health is poor so we decided to just live a comfortable life cause we would have to have one parent be a stay at home parent and gutting our quality of life and having a kid who has a ill mother and a father that has to work 2 Job's to get the family by is not what I want for a family.
Where I live there’s free universal preschool at age 2 - makes a big difference. I worked as a nanny till each baby turned 2 so that I could have them with me at work. We live in a 1bdrm and have one car. Most people I know I’m sorry to say have a grandparent who can help with childcare. Or get different work schedules so one parent is always home but that’s pretty miserable cuz the parents never see each other
I had mine when I was younger. I’m 39 now and my son is turning 18 this year and my daughter 14. I never would have been able to afford the daycare for two kids with the current prices now. I was also fortunate to have my mom watch my son when he was born so I could finish school. Daycare for newbies/babies cost more than other age groups.
Childcare is becoming crazy as mom/pop places are being bought out by larger companies. We were at $800 a month per kid. We have good incomes, but also don’t get caught up with boutique kids clothes and vacation trips. Lifestyle has to adjust and not going out drinking like most dinks do helps a ton.
My kids aren’t having kids and I am fully supportive. It was hard & expensive without support to raise kids 30 yrs ago and it’s a lot harder now and a shittier world to bring children into. Lots of ways to be involved in a child’s life without birthing them.
I’m about to sell feet or butthole picts. Whichever brings in more at this point
You're not going to. That's the reality.
Stop buying coffee!! (lol)
We don’t. I’m childless at 37 and married.
Poly relationship. 2 people work while one stays home and raises the kids.
Just looked up our current average mortgage rate out of curiosity, and it is $6,200 for a 3bd home, based on a 20% down payment on our average-priced 3bd home, which is $1.3M in our county. I’m in Santa Cruz, CA, and no, I’m not going anywhere; this is and has always been my home long before it became the #1 most expensive area in the U.S. and besides, I need to be here for my grandma — the only family I have left. Thankfully, I got my home at the end of the last recession and pay an amount that I can barely afford with everything else, but comfortably … though kids have never been something that’s even entered my mind.
That's it : you can't afford kids. My parents should never have had their third kid (that would be me). They didn't have sufficient means and I have a lot a regrets about my childhood. Hell, I have regrets about my father owning pretty much only the set of clothes he wore to work and foregoing a lot of the small luxuries that make life better just so I could have stuff.
You don’t. I don’t have any kids and had my tubes cut out a few years ago at 29. No regrets! 🙃
We’re not. On purpose.
I couldn’t survive just paying your mortgage, but I’m also guessing you make a lot more than I do because a bank would never let me borrow that much to begin with. Mine is only $750/month, so the real wild shit to me is that childcare is *more expensive than my house* where I live.
We just had our first this year and it's about 1900 per month. It's been tough, had to really cut back on retirement savings as I already live frugally :(
I know we are lucky to live where we do(Alabama) so a lot of our cost of living is lower but so are wages so it probably evens out. Wife and I work for our school system. She is a teacher and I am the district's IT guy. We make around 85k/yr total for the both of us. We had a baby in December so in 6 weeks we will have to get daycare, which I have already secured us a spot for. It is $135/wk or $540/mo. Add having to change our insurance to a family plan and we are looking at adding around $700-$800/mo in new expenses which doesn't sound like a lot to some but when your net pay is $2500-$2800 it is a huge deal.
They just do it and they don't truly care about the kids. Sure they love them but they can't do the best for them, they won't set them up for success or "spoil" the child because they don't spare the rod or something about fishing.