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Often the first trick is having children. It turns out to be a good way to spend a lot of money. Especially having relatively more children. Other ways are avoi

Often the first trick is having children. It turns out to be a good way to spend a lot of money. Especially having relatively more children. Other ways are avoiding good investments (it’s already easy today and was even easier 40 years ago when brokerages were more high touch and it was harder to find good information. Another aspect is being bad at investing in the typical way: switching from equities to bonds when there’s a market crash), avoiding investing at all (eg just putting money in a savings account), just spending a lot of money on depreciating assets and not saving, and not earning so much money in the early years when compounding pays off the most or the later years due to seeking out things other than high pay. In many ways it’s not so different from today.

ghaff 5y ago
People could also end up with extended periods of unemployment. Inflation was brutal around 1980. (~14%) Software development barely existed as a career option and you almost certainly needed a degree to land a job. When I graduated from engineering grad school in 1981, my highest offer was $27K and that was a sector (oil biz) which was pretty high-flying at the time. That's about $80K today which is certainly not nothing but probably on the low end of what a lot of software developers expect. (I had the good timing to go back to grad school--which had been in the plans anyway--just as the oil biz was entering one of its cyclical downturns.)
- mcguire 5y ago
  "When I graduated from engineering grad school in 1981, my highest offer was $27K and that was a sector (oil biz) which was pretty high-flying at the time." Hey, I remember that! My mother was retired from the bank she worked at for 40 years when the oil biz blew up in the late '80s.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    This was in about 1984. But I was also in the offshore drilling business which was especially sensitive to oil prices given that offshore drilling was relatively expensive.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > Software development barely existed as a career option and you almost certainly needed a degree to land a job. I graduated in 1979. Both statements are quite incorrect. Software was paying well at the time, and was remarkable as more than a few in it had no degree, and certainly not a CS degree.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    I have a college and graduate degree. At a previous job, on my team of 6, I had 50% of the higher education degrees :)
  - aj7 5y ago
    I had a friend who barely knew anything about software, but was fairly motivated. He was offered $40k in 1980. At the sane time, I was making $28k with a PhD in Physics working on lasers. We were young guys, it ruined our relationship.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I don't know what things are like at Microsoft today, but in the 90s they had not only developers with no degree, they even had dev leads with no degree. Microsoft only cared about competence.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Often the first trick is having children. It turns out to be a good way to spend a lot of money. After hearing this for years, I assumed we’d be hemorrhaging cash once we had kids. As it turns out, kids have been surprisingly much cheaper than I thought. It’s very possible to spend exorbitant amounts of money on children, but it’s not a necessity. Obviously, plenty of families are raising kids at the median US income which is vastly lower than what we can make in tech careers. The internet narrative that kids will destroy your finances has been greatly exaggerated for those of us in tech careers. I suggest everyone considering children take some time to talk to actual prenatal around them rather than assuming the worst from internet anecdotes.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  From what I've read, a decent portion of the cost is in additional housing expenses. If a couple is planning on having children, those housing costs will most likely come at prior to actually having kids, moving into a larger space in preparation. As a result, the cost difference at the time of having kids isn't as much of a jump. (At least, that's my interpretation of the available data as I put together estimated budgets for the next 5/10/20 years.)
  - dtnewman 5y ago
    Child care is crazy expensive if you have two working parents with full time jobs. Most schools or day cares let out around three. If you normally get home between six and seven like most people do then you still need to figure out a few hours of care which means hiring someone. But finding a good person who only wants those hours is hard. And even if your daycare has late hours many people don’t want their kid in daycare for that long, since they don’t get individual attention and if you can afford it you probably don’t want your child in daycare from 8-6 every day. So unless you have family nearby who help you raise kids, it can cost a fortune.
    - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
      > Child care is crazy expensive if you have two working parents with full time jobs. Childcare is expensive, but it's still a fraction of the after-tax compensation of most professional jobs. Recent tax changes have made it even more affordable. > Most schools or day cares let out around three. If you normally get home between six and seven like most people do then you still need to figure out a few hours of care which means hiring someone. Every daycare we toured was open until 5-6PM. I don't know anyone who hires additional help for a couple hours in the afternoon. If you're in tech, it's not hard to find a job that allows both parents to stagger their working hours so that one can pick them up. Around here, it's very common for parents of young children to come into the office early and leave early to pick up kids. It's a common practice and plenty of companies support it. > So unless you have family nearby who help you raise kids, it can cost a fortune. Again, this hasn't been my experience nor that of any of my parent friends. Also keep in mind that kids grow up fast and daycare isn't something you need to do forever. Frankly, most non-parents I know have vastly overestimated how expensive and painful it is to raise kids. This is especially true of those who grew up reading Reddit, where angry /r/childfree posts used to hit the front page with regularity.

ghaff 5y ago

People could also end up with extended periods of unemployment. Inflation was brutal around 1980. (~14%) Software development barely existed as a career option and you almost certainly needed a degree to land a job. When I graduated from engineering grad school in 1981, my highest offer was $27K and that was a sector (oil biz) which was pretty high-flying at the time. That's about $80K today which is certainly not nothing but probably on the low end of what a lot of software developers expect. (I had the good timing to go back to grad school--which had been in the plans anyway--just as the oil biz was entering one of its cyclical downturns.)

mcguire 5y ago
"When I graduated from engineering grad school in 1981, my highest offer was $27K and that was a sector (oil biz) which was pretty high-flying at the time." Hey, I remember that! My mother was retired from the bank she worked at for 40 years when the oil biz blew up in the late '80s.
- ghaff 5y ago
  This was in about 1984. But I was also in the offshore drilling business which was especially sensitive to oil prices given that offshore drilling was relatively expensive.
WalterBright 5y ago
> Software development barely existed as a career option and you almost certainly needed a degree to land a job. I graduated in 1979. Both statements are quite incorrect. Software was paying well at the time, and was remarkable as more than a few in it had no degree, and certainly not a CS degree.
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  I have a college and graduate degree. At a previous job, on my team of 6, I had 50% of the higher education degrees :)
- aj7 5y ago
  I had a friend who barely knew anything about software, but was fairly motivated. He was offered $40k in 1980. At the sane time, I was making $28k with a PhD in Physics working on lasers. We were young guys, it ruined our relationship.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I don't know what things are like at Microsoft today, but in the 90s they had not only developers with no degree, they even had dev leads with no degree. Microsoft only cared about competence.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Often the first trick is having children. It turns out to be a good way to spend a lot of money. After hearing this for years, I assumed we’d be hemorrhaging cash once we had kids. As it turns out, kids have been surprisingly much cheaper than I thought. It’s very possible to spend exorbitant amounts of money on children, but it’s not a necessity. Obviously, plenty of families are raising kids at the median US income which is vastly lower than what we can make in tech careers. The internet narrative that kids will destroy your finances has been greatly exaggerated for those of us in tech careers. I suggest everyone considering children take some time to talk to actual prenatal around them rather than assuming the worst from internet anecdotes.

MereInterest 5y ago
From what I've read, a decent portion of the cost is in additional housing expenses. If a couple is planning on having children, those housing costs will most likely come at prior to actually having kids, moving into a larger space in preparation. As a result, the cost difference at the time of having kids isn't as much of a jump. (At least, that's my interpretation of the available data as I put together estimated budgets for the next 5/10/20 years.)
- dtnewman 5y ago
  Child care is crazy expensive if you have two working parents with full time jobs. Most schools or day cares let out around three. If you normally get home between six and seven like most people do then you still need to figure out a few hours of care which means hiring someone. But finding a good person who only wants those hours is hard. And even if your daycare has late hours many people don’t want their kid in daycare for that long, since they don’t get individual attention and if you can afford it you probably don’t want your child in daycare from 8-6 every day. So unless you have family nearby who help you raise kids, it can cost a fortune.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > Child care is crazy expensive if you have two working parents with full time jobs. Childcare is expensive, but it's still a fraction of the after-tax compensation of most professional jobs. Recent tax changes have made it even more affordable. > Most schools or day cares let out around three. If you normally get home between six and seven like most people do then you still need to figure out a few hours of care which means hiring someone. Every daycare we toured was open until 5-6PM. I don't know anyone who hires additional help for a couple hours in the afternoon. If you're in tech, it's not hard to find a job that allows both parents to stagger their working hours so that one can pick them up. Around here, it's very common for parents of young children to come into the office early and leave early to pick up kids. It's a common practice and plenty of companies support it. > So unless you have family nearby who help you raise kids, it can cost a fortune. Again, this hasn't been my experience nor that of any of my parent friends. Also keep in mind that kids grow up fast and daycare isn't something you need to do forever. Frankly, most non-parents I know have vastly overestimated how expensive and painful it is to raise kids. This is especially true of those who grew up reading Reddit, where angry /r/childfree posts used to hit the front page with regularity.