[dvdhnt]

The thing is, rent rises faster than income. There are numerous emotional and social costs to having children, too. I should know, we have two of them.

Even making low six figures doesn't seem like enough in my low to mid CoL area. It's incredibly taxing to invest yourself into the lives of two small humans while still maintaining your own life.

So yeah, people could live like pilgrims and have kids, but why? That's not the main obstacle in 2020. Societal, cultural, and economic uncertainty is far and away more of an obstacle than budgeting.

[xyzzyz]

The thing is, rent rises faster than income.

That’s why most married people with kids take a mortgage. Mortgage payments stay flat, but the actual expense goes down over time, because you pay less and less of interest and more of principal.

[dvdhnt]

Anecdotally, my mortgage went up every year due to some combination of assessment values, property taxes, or whatever black magic Wells Fargo and the government had in their pocket.