Is anyone reason for not having more kids $$$?
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Anonymous
I was referring to the 700k dual lawyer family who still had student loans and car loans on their old non luxury car while paying for private school. |
Anonymous
Yes and that’s me!! We save for retirement and college! Obviously! If we didn’t save we would in fact be “living it up.” Also having cars on very low interest car loans is not financially irresponsible. |
Anonymous
| Yes, it is a major factor, but only because I feel like if I had a third I would want a mother's helper or maybe even an au pair, and I don't think we could afford that. I would love to have a third, but I'm a SAHM with no local family and found it very stressful to be alone with an infant and 2.5 yr old the entire summer before my daughter started preschool. I don't think I could handle being home with an infant and toddler again. Maybe we will have a third when my son starts preschool, but even then, I'm not sure I want to coordinate a baby's naps with pickups for preschool AND elementary school. If I had money for a mother's helper or au pair for a year, I would definitely have a third child. |
Anonymous
You do you. We have about $4m saved and we are 40. We do live it up. We travel often and well. We do have a few nice cars. My kids attend school with neighborhood kids in our GS10 school. You go ahead paying that low interest on your old non luxury car. That is more sad than paying interest on at least a Mercedes or Tesla. |
Anonymous
| Uhhh... yea, its one of the most common reasons. I cant afford to have 2 in childcare |
Anonymous
Cool. I’m under 35 with two kids. Different choices. |
Anonymous
| Yes. Money as well as time. Both resources are finite. |
Anonymous
| Yes. Saving $400k per kid for college isn’t a joke. |
Anonymous
| I am 43. My spouse is 44. We have one daughter who's 7. Our age plays a big factor into having a second child. We don't want to be in our 60s with a teenager in high school. |
Anonymous
| It is absolutely a factor, but we are fortunate that it is not a deciding factor. |
Anonymous
| We have an HHI of 225 and have three. We can’t afford another because each maternity leave is $$$ (I am breadwinner), plus infant care. We have been paying so much in childcare we are behind in college savings. So we could afford one more on a day to day basis but it would compromise our ability to save for the future. |
Anonymous
| We stopped at 2 because we want to pay for college for 2 kids, go on fun vacations. |
Anonymous
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We stopped at one. HHI back then of probably $300k. Now (8 years later) around $1m. While of course we could have comfortably had a second kid, financial was a major reason for stopping at 1.
We pay around 45% taxes on our income (no loopholes when it's all earned income), so only get to keep around half after taxes. We are both biglaw lawyers. Work very reasonable hours for lawyers, but definitely work close to "full time". If we had two kids, given our focus on quality family time, it's almost certain one -- or both -- of us would have had to have scaled back on their job. Currently, I make +$400k, but probably would have ended up only making $150k if we'd had two kids - think, government lawyer or similar (if I worked at all - our son has some mild special needs that require a lot of meetings/appts so with two kids, I might have thrown up my hands and quit. But we didn't know about the SNs when we decided on one kid). We also plan to fully fund college and grad school for DS. So plan around $1m for that, thinking 10-15 years in the future. We have always wanted to retire very early. Ideally 55. We can't wait to start spending time together as a family and not working 9-6 every day. We live in a $1m house, old reasonably priced cars. No major vacations. I assume a second kid would have added $50k a year during a few of the early childcare years (nanny, plus general extra costs of a second kid). During school aged years, I assume another $15k a year for 12 years. So if we'd had a second kid, we'd be saving at least $150k less per year than now (that's after tax) - which over 20 years is $3m. But would need probably $1.3m extra to save for school plus annual extra costs. So adding an extra kid would have meant we'd have after-tax $3.3m in extra costs/opportunity costs over 20 years (20 years of lost income plus additional costs). Assuming $400k after tax income (based on the expected lower income with two kids and one of us cutting back hours), we'd have to work almost 10 extra years to make up that $3.3m. As said, retiring early (solely to hang out with our family more and work less) is a huge goal for us. A second kid would have meant 10 additional working years to end up at the same financial place. That wasn't a trade off we were interested in. |
Anonymous
| I believe 90K is a fair, living compensation in this area for a qualified, nurturing nanny with authorization to work in the US. |
Anonymous
| Not money, age and energy. |