I had a friend say to me when I left my job, “Don’t wait to have kids until you can afford them or you never will.” With estimates of raising a child today going up to $355,000, no wonder no one can ever afford to have kids. Of course I speculate how accurate these estimations are especially considering that if you didn’t have kids and made more money, you would probably blow it on something else. But doesn’t it make more sense to wait until you are financially stable to have children? Or is it better to be younger and more physically fit? And is there really a trade off?
The all important ‘they’ say that money is the biggest stress on a marriage. (I would think that with supposedly 70% of Americans cheating, adultery would be a bigger issue but maybe money fights are leading people astray.) So wouldn’t it make more sense to not be worrying about money when having a child? But according to conventional wisdom, you’ll never be able to afford them anyway.
So let’s assume that the $355,000 price tag is correct. Is that really much more than a very nice home in a suburb of a big city? And you have 18 years to pay it off. Why don’t people save up for having kids like they do a down payment on a house? Are we really using the excuse that we don’t make enough money as a way of putting off having them? And if so, why can’t we just say that we are having too much fun without a baby right now to have one?
And then there is the trade off for waiting to afford children. Once again, you aren’t getting any younger. Waking up with them, chasing after them, and keeping ahead of them are only going to get harder. We are biologically meant to have children when we are young but are we mentally and financially ready? Mentally is debatable. But financially, do our kids really need everything factored into the equation? Do they really need video games and cell phones? Do they really need to have the latest style in clothes or their own cars? What do they really need anything more than shelter, food, education, and love?
I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, what is wrong with waiting until you can afford kids? And better yet, how do you know when you can?
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