How do people in their 30s afford 3 kids?

[Anonymous]

I'm 30 and we have one child after going through primary infertility. Now we're dealing with secondary fertility. I'm a SAHM and my husband makes $100k. We live in a nice apartment right next to a big park and I homeschool. We could comfortably afford one more child, but if we had three, we'd probably have to move further out and buy a house. I have a permanent knee injury and can't live in a house with stairs, so we'd have to move out pretty far and my husband is a city boy who refuses to drive to work.

[Anonymous]

We only have two kids, but at 33 we went straight for kids without owning a home. (We had to go through IVF, paying out of pocket for treatment, and we still have student loans.)

[Anonymous]

We make 380k at 37 and 38. We have 2 kids and can’t decide on a third. We pay 27k for private school and the other is in public. Travel is also very important to us. With all that it’s hard to afford a third. Plus we save 1000 for college for 2 every month. I know I need to decide soon I’m not getting any younger.

[Anonymous]

I waited bc the idea of young kids was unappealing to me. DH wanted kids so I agreed and got pregnant instantly. Had my first just shy of 40. Turns out I love babies and young kids and wanted more, DH who originally wanted kids for sure found it difficult and would have been fine with 1, but was in board for a second. By that point our HHI was around 600k which was good bc turns out we needed lots of IVF bc DH had major MF. My age was just an extra fun issue to get to deal with. What a mess. I would love 4 kids, but probably we r done at 2 even though we have one frozen. The IVF took several years and was incredibly difficult on many levels.

We definitely could have afforded 2 (or more without ivf) on a much lower HHI, but I also know that if I had kids earlier my income would be lower. We do save a lot and now have a nanny so we can both work without having to put our youngest who can’t wear a mask in daycare. It doesn’t feel like we’re rolling in money, but I know that a nanny is a luxury especially now. Health insurance is also expensive and not significantly subsidized by my employer, so even though my salary sounds big, once I pay for insurance, it’s equivalent to something significantly lower (but still plenty). Having made very little before grad school and now making far more, I find that the difference in lifestyle isn’t as different as I thought it would be. I think that likely is due to savings habits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they have money. Next question.

Where do they get this money from? I make $300k. I struggled in my 30s. I received nothing from my parents. Do these people’s parents just give them money?

I did not have any student loans - my college was paid for by Pell grant and TAP (NY state grant). I started working right after I graduated from college and did not have that aimlessly drifting around barista period. I did not struggle in my 30s either. By the time I was 30, I was married, had two kids and a house. The down payment for the house came from the condo I bought at 24.

+1 My parents made squat growing up and certainly couldn't give me money for college considering they never even saved for their own retirement. I did not take out huge loans, had some scholarships and had my loans paid off in 3 years after I graduated. I also worked multiple jobs before I had kids.

We now have 3 kids (my age at their birth was 32, 34, 35) who go to public school (one in preK) and do not have daycare expenses due to how we stagger our schedules at our flexible fed jobs. DH and I HHI is around 250K and we do fine. We live in a modest 4BD 2.5BA home on a quarter acre in a DC burb and fully realize and appreciate how fortunate we are to have the jobs we have. All 3 kids have a 529 plan and we contribute to our own retirement so at least I'm going to be better off than my parents and have my kids set up with something for school. It's definitely possible OP!

[Anonymous]

+2 DH and I have 3, currently under 40. No help from parents financially or otherwise. Neither of us had school loans. All our kids have 529s decently funded ($700/month) and we have a decent retirement assets. Live comfortably, own our house, not into conspicuous consumption, but we normally travel, but what we want. We have a nice house, but don’t drive luxury cars. I am guessing it is the student loans that limit you?

[Anonymous]

Ha. I’m Mormon and I can tell you how we do it.

1. Start having your kids as an undergraduate so you can use Medicaid to cover it (I did not do this but it is done often).

2. Get family to help with babysitting or pay a teenager to do it.

3. Family vacations are to national parks or relatives in another state.

4. Public school or homeschool and cheap extracurriculars

5. Put two kids in a room, three if you’re in NYC.

6. Budget budget budget. Lots of coupons and very little eating out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they have money. Next question.

Where do they get this money from? I make $300k. I struggled in my 30s. I received nothing from my parents. Do these people’s parents just give them money?

You would be shocked, OP. I know people who try to claim financial aid - meanwhile, their parents are funneling them money to keep up with the Joneses, and buy the "latest and greatest" vehicle, whatever. It's such BS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ha. I’m Mormon and I can tell you how we do it.

1. Start having your kids as an undergraduate so you can use Medicaid to cover it (I did not do this but it is done often).

2. Get family to help with babysitting or pay a teenager to do it.

3. Family vacations are to national parks or relatives in another state.

4. Public school or homeschool and cheap extracurriculars

5. Put two kids in a room, three if you’re in NYC.

6. Budget budget budget. Lots of coupons and very little eating out.

Also every Mormon I know did their undergrad at a church school like BYU (very cheap), a state school, or a prestigious school on scholarship. Mormons have a kind of Puritan hangup about debt.

And I don’t personally know any Mormon who is getting substantial help from a parent. My dad paid for my undergrad at BYU and gave me 10K for a down payment on a house and that’s more than most Mormon parents do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make $700k a year with two big jobs. I’m pregnant with our third (at 35) and it’s gonna be a stretch.

Do these kids wear Chanel and Gucci?

Those night nannies and vacation homes really add up. It's so hard to get ahead these days.

It's the highest end designer clothes and the multiple (4-6) overseas vacations per year, not anything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 kids is nothing....

My mother’s neighbor were up to five or six when they hit 40 and now have ten total. Wife is a SAHM and husband is an engineer so probably makes no more than$300k

Here’s how they do it:

1. No $ towards college for any of them.
2. Hand me downs.
3. Not sure that the kids do a ton of outside activities besides church stuff
4. Went to some private Christian school on financial aid
5. Live in Howard county instead of someplace closer in.

I wouldn’t say that there kids seem happy per se but they definitely are well adjusted and kind. Certainly not my vision of raising kids but seems to work for them. I will say though there is no way this would have worked if any of their children had any sort of SN.

If they are making $300K, even $200K there is no excuse not to save even for community college or two years.

What an asinine thing to say. You have no idea what expenses they have.

No, its not. They get handy downs, they don't do activities outside of church and at private school. They can afford it.

Well, costs for 10 kids add up, even if they don’t do activities outside of church and use hand me downs. They do have to find a house to put all those kids in and buy food to feed them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they have money. Next question.

Where do they get this money from? I make $300k. I struggled in my 30s. I received nothing from my parents. Do these people’s parents just give them money?

You would be shocked, OP. I know people who try to claim financial aid - meanwhile, their parents are funneling them money to keep up with the Joneses, and buy the "latest and greatest" vehicle, whatever. It's such BS.

I know a guy who got full financial aid to college for being poor and actually told me money’s been tight since they bought their second Tesla (and not the cheap Tesla either).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ha. I’m Mormon and I can tell you how we do it.

1. Start having your kids as an undergraduate so you can use Medicaid to cover it (I did not do this but it is done often).

2. Get family to help with babysitting or pay a teenager to do it.

3. Family vacations are to national parks or relatives in another state.

4. Public school or homeschool and cheap extracurriculars

5. Put two kids in a room, three if you’re in NYC.

6. Budget budget budget. Lots of coupons and very little eating out.

This is how the Mormons I know do it. Also, I don’t know if this is unique to my area or something all Mormons do, but they are huge on food storage. They don’t buy bread, they buy huge bags of wheat from some Mormon supply store and grind it down. At the beginning of this month, they got a bunch of those huge pumpkins for practically nothing, baked them and puréed them. They buy seconds at the apple orchard and make a zillion quarts of applesauce.
Even the Mormons I know who live in apartments have a closet dedicated to a six month supply of food for their families.
I think it takes some of the stress off of being a SAHM to know that you can at least feed your family if something happened to your husband’s job.

Anyway, I love my Mormon friends. Hanging out with them is always cheap and easy. I feel pretty lucky to have the benefit of a lot of LDS friends without actually having to be LDS myself.

[Anonymous]

I had my first at 27, last at 34. My parents didn’t give me money, but they had money themselves, which is huge.
I never thought I was going to need to take care of them, and I knew that they were there as a safety net if something happened to me. I was never worried that if I didn’t have enough saved that I would end up in a shelter or not being able to feed my kids.

We were also kind of dumb. In retrospect, life would have been a lot easier if we had waited a few years.

[Anonymous]

By age 36, I had been married for 9 years and bought and sold a house, then moved up to larger home on the profit of the first. SAHM and 3rd baby born at 36.

Still in same house, 18 years later and just now doing major renovations.

I guess the answer is we loved rather frugally; lived with outdated and shabby kitchens and bathrooms, covered most everything with paint and made minor cosmetic fixes. No exotic vacations, bought sensibly, saved.