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I am approaching 50 and never had kids. A decade ago, I lost my entire life savings to a gold digging fraud, and I ended up deep into debt for the first time in

I am approaching 50 and never had kids. A decade ago, I lost my entire life savings to a gold digging fraud, and I ended up deep into debt for the first time in my life just to save my farmstead. I am still climbing out of that hole. I had to restart my retirement plans from scratch, but I still have almost nothing saved. That should start to change in another couple of years, but it will be too little and too late to make much of a dent. I may yet lose my farm. A few years ago, I married a younger woman, and we have talked about having kids. While that's something that I have wanted for decades, the costs of having and raising children are now so significant that I would be unable to save anything for retirement. This article only seems to confirm that assessment. Being in tech, I expect to be pushed out of the workforce well before retirement age, before my hypothetical kids even would be ready to go off to college. Of course, I would be unable to afford to save anything to help pay for their school either, putting them at a relative disadvantage. I don't want to disappoint my wife, but I don't believe that we can afford to have even one kid. This has been one of the most painful realizations in my adult life, and it has made me incredibly bitter and resentful.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Sorry to hear about your situation. I don’t know that pain but I know it is painful for people I know that want kids but can’t have them for various reasons. In your case, since it is an economic decision, I do wonder if there are ways to get around it. Could one of you leave your job to take care of kids full time? For many people the net income from working (after taxes after child care etc) is not worth being away from their kids, and often it is even a strictly better financial decision to stay home when you do the math. But if you both are earning enough in your jobs where that would not be the case, I wonder if you’re actually earning enough but overestimating the costs of taking care of a kid? Remember they have ways of getting aid for college and they can also work to put themselves through college - or take cheaper routes like community college before regular college (assuming you’re in the US). I don’t know your whole situation of course, so apologies if this is naive or offensive.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Sorry to hear about your situation. I don’t know that pain but I know it is painful for people I know that want kids but can’t have them for various reasons. In your case, since it is an economic decision, I do wonder if there are ways to get around it. Could one of you leave your job to take care of kids full time? For many people the net income from working (after taxes after child care etc) is not worth being away from their kids, and often it is even a strictly better financial decision to stay home when you do the math. But if you both are earning enough in your jobs where that would not be the case, I wonder if you’re actually earning enough but overestimating the costs of taking care of a kid? Remember they have ways of getting aid for college and they can also work to put themselves through college - or take cheaper routes like community college before regular college (assuming you’re in the US). I don’t know your whole situation of course, so apologies if this is naive or offensive.