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A luxury lifestyle is cheaper than a child. The last estimates I’ve seen are around $300K (and that was before the recent bouts of inflation) to raise a kid and

A luxury lifestyle is cheaper than a child. The last estimates I’ve seen are around $300K (and that was before the recent bouts of inflation) to raise a kid and that didn’t include college. So that’s like a Lamborghini, right? Or a lot of fancy vacations. And that’s just one kid; you might get some economies of scale with more, but the marginal costs are there too.

bcaxis 3y ago
If this was actually true I'd be bankrupt many times over.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  I'm sure it depends on how you do things. I think the housing square footage and vehicle requirements a lot of people say they require seem way too high to me. But I suppose there are some regulatory requirements that must be met these days - I was looking at an old station wagon with some buddies and noted that it had what I called the "unrestrained child tub" in the back. I bet you could fit six kids in there easy since there were no seat belts at all. Obviously that wouldn't fly today. Nowadays, it's "I need an SUV with a 3rd row for the kids". And houses today are also probably a lot bigger than they need to be; often justified as a requirement for families. I don't think it's really necessary, but I seem to be an outlier with my 950 square foot house. I imagine you've made more pragmatic choices, but I think there is also an element of luck; a lot of people get bankrupted by medical needs, and each kid is a reverse lottery ticket there. Speaking as someone who was once a kid with a lot of medical needs that didn't always get addressed, I can tell you that that does happen sometimes. And I needed to go to school; with my medical issues, the trades or military or whatever was never an option, so someone had to pay for that. I guess all I can say is "shit's tough"; sometimes you get lucky, but I never seem to.
kthejoker2 3y ago
Yeah this wildly off. 4 kids, typical tech salary ladder career / upper middle class lifestyle, my marginal costs are maaaaybe another $40k year in total ... and I get about a $25k tax break for having them.
- silverquiet 3y ago
  In other words, you're spending more than half the median US household income on raising children. I think this is more a statement about your wealth than the affordability of children.

bcaxis 3y ago

If this was actually true I'd be bankrupt many times over.

silverquiet 3y ago
I'm sure it depends on how you do things. I think the housing square footage and vehicle requirements a lot of people say they require seem way too high to me. But I suppose there are some regulatory requirements that must be met these days - I was looking at an old station wagon with some buddies and noted that it had what I called the "unrestrained child tub" in the back. I bet you could fit six kids in there easy since there were no seat belts at all. Obviously that wouldn't fly today. Nowadays, it's "I need an SUV with a 3rd row for the kids". And houses today are also probably a lot bigger than they need to be; often justified as a requirement for families. I don't think it's really necessary, but I seem to be an outlier with my 950 square foot house. I imagine you've made more pragmatic choices, but I think there is also an element of luck; a lot of people get bankrupted by medical needs, and each kid is a reverse lottery ticket there. Speaking as someone who was once a kid with a lot of medical needs that didn't always get addressed, I can tell you that that does happen sometimes. And I needed to go to school; with my medical issues, the trades or military or whatever was never an option, so someone had to pay for that. I guess all I can say is "shit's tough"; sometimes you get lucky, but I never seem to.

kthejoker2 3y ago

Yeah this wildly off. 4 kids, typical tech salary ladder career / upper middle class lifestyle, my marginal costs are maaaaybe another $40k year in total ... and I get about a $25k tax break for having them.

silverquiet 3y ago
In other words, you're spending more than half the median US household income on raising children. I think this is more a statement about your wealth than the affordability of children.