[JPKab]

"At the age of 29, I've likely forever lost the following opportunities due to cost and probable inability to make up for lost wages and career potential:

- Getting married. - Having children. - Studying any more, whether that means grad school, law school, or even just night classes at a random community college."

So let's go through this step by step:

1) Getting married doesn't require money if you find the right wife, the kind you REALLY want. My wife and I were married by a justice of the peace in a living room with nobody watching. Why? Because we didn't have money, and post 2008, our families didn't either. We "eloped" so that we could be the bad guys, and eliminate the guilt from our families about not being able to pay for a wedding. It worked great. Her parents and mine felt zero guilt, although there was temporary anger towards us. Having zero guests made sure there was no envy between relatives, and all is well now.

2) Having children: Interesting how white, middle class people think having kids is the most expensive thing ever. It's not. My wife was considered to be so infertile that the Dr. wouldn't even prescribe her birth control. She wasn't even having periods. She got pregnant through some crazy and awesome quirk, and we became parents when we hadn't planned on it at all. At first we freaked, but then when I met neighborhood kids (El Salvadoran) in the barrio (very safe by the way) we were living in, and realized how well they were doing in school, life, and health, I realized you don't have to be rich to have kids. You just have to be smart enough to realize that kids need love, patience, shelter, and food. They DON'T need $800 strollers, $400 cribs, a nursery, NEW clothes. NEW anything. You can get all of it at the thrift shop. I make decent money now, but I didn't then. LEARN from immigrants. You live in fucking Canada, and like the U.S. your nation is filled with people who know how to stretch a buck and be happy. Your parents didn't know how to do either thing nearly as well, IMHO. (I'm speaking generically about the baby boomer generation, who I think as a whole were shitty savers and rather shitty parents. I exclude my Dad from this, because he taught me to live on the cheap my whole life.)

3)Studying any more: If you think that law school, or grad school are what it takes to get ahead from your situation, you are a fucking fool. Both are rip offs even IF you HAVE the money and time. You are much better served by going to night classes at community college (provided you have access to one that works with the private sector business community to train in valuable, marketable skills). Or you can go online and educate yourself in the arcane technological arts which are guaranteed to get "your foot in the door" of a business. I got into my field as a lowly programmer. Now I do IT strategy, data governance, business analysis, as well as the fun techy stuff that I choose to focus on. Point is this: if i wanted to, I could just be the business guy that most people want to be. But I got my foot in the door on a weird skill that universities suck at teaching in a time and cost efficient manner. Where did I learn said skills? Online classes that cost me $300 a pop. A total of 4 over the course of a year. I attended a major university. I loved it, but compared to the new generation of online education, it was a fucking rip off.

Stop whining, and start learning from others who have made a life for themselves. We are not the baby boomers. The house in the suburbs doesn't really make sense. Kids don't need their own yard if they can go to a park that's the size of a 100 yards and filled with 100 kids for them to play with, instead of 1 yard where they play by themselves.

[Diederich]

> 2) Having children: Interesting how white, middle class people think having kids is the most expensive thing ever. It's not. ...

Exactly.

Our child's clothing, toys and books come from:

1. Yard sales 2. Helping hands 3. Friends and neighbors 4. Craigslist and Freecycle

Guess what? We give 100% of those things away in time. We've taught our son the concept of not holding onto physical things. All of his things came from someone else, and he gives all of his things to someone else.

He's completely good with that; at 9 years of age, he'll bring a bag of toys and books to the car and say that he'd like to give these away.

Our biggest child related expense is where we're living. We wanted an excellent public school, so we're living in Mountain View, where it's CRAZY expensive, instead of somewhere else that's cheaper.

We are fortunate that we have very solid and affordable health care through my company, though he has needed very little of it.

Thanks, JPKab, for pointing this out.

[geebee]

I think you've made some good observations around the expense of material goods, but as the parent of two kids, I already do this. It helps, but it doesn't address the really expensive things about life with kids.

For me, the big whoppers have been day care and the loss of income on scaling back on work. Full time day care is about 24K a year in San Francisco.

http://www.housing.berkeley.edu/child/facstaff/

This is the faculty/staff daycare that has a long, long waiting list at UC Berkeley - it is considered a very desirable program, so it's possible that you could get something much cheaper.

Another huge expense is housing. I fit a family of 4 in a fairly small (1200 sql ft) house with a garage and backyard (sweet!) in an unfashionable part of SF. Mortgage runs me about $3400 a month - sadly, if I'd waited to buy, I could probably have had this for $2600. Rent would probably be somewhere around that range.

Buying a stroller used is a great idea (I bought all cribs and beds used, and it saved me some money, but I'm really optimizing around something that takes at most 10% of the budget, if that).

I want to be sure to say I'm not complaining, I consider myself pretty lucky to have these things. 1200 sq ft with a garage and a yard is pretty excellent. Nice day care is a luxury. And I get to live in SF, which is where I grew up, and I really like it here.

I wouldn't say you "can't have kids" if you can't afford these things, so I agree with you there, but I just don't think you've identified the real heavy hitters where it comes to the expense of raising a family.

But I really don't think the problem with middle class people is that they are spending too much on strollers. It does take some serious $$$ to stay middle class in San Francisco.

[JPKab]

Diederich, it's interesting how you pointed out living in an expensive school district is your biggest child related expense. My wife and I did the same thing. We chose to live in a 1 bedroom high-rise, so obviously we sacrificed on space and "the yard." Instead we get a short (walkable or train) commute, nice parks, and have a adapted our apartment to imitate those of the Japanese (and other space efficient cultures) so that the 1 bedroom aspect isn't a problem. I love what you were saying about teaching your son to donate toys and other possessions. My son is 5, but we still need to work on that with him. Thanks for mentioning that, because it reminded me of how important it is that we follow your lead on that.

[ChrisHugh]

How "white"? How odd. I didn't know attitudes and ideas had colors.

[JPKab]

You got me there. I wish I could think of a word to describe the group of people who have been brainwashed into thinking that if they don't spend shitloads of money on stuff, and buy a big house in the burbs, that they are bad parents......

But you are right, saying it's a "white" thing is racist of me. There are people of all colors who get trapped into this bullshit, as well as people of all colors who are not fooled by it.

[WiseWeasel]

Bourgeois. Closest English term I can think of which conveys a similar notion is WASP.

I believe they might have been called "city-folk" at some point... maybe the equivalent of suburbanites or gated-community-dwellers today. Maybe saying, "that's a gated-community mentality!" would convey a similar meaning in a succinct and relatively PC way.

[drcube]

What do you think the "W" stands for in WASP?

[WiseWeasel]

I am fully aware of what it represents, hence the need to come up with a less divisive term. I was just observing that it's often used in that context.

[luser001]

I admire what you're doing, but I just wanted to point out that there's a HUGE difference between denying yourself something because you can and denying yourself something because you can't afford it.

The $3 beer incident was poignant.

I found the book 'Nickel and Dimed' eye-opening.

Good job with your kid!

[amalag]

Great comment! I gotta agree with you. Just live below your means and you will do fine. And you absolutely right about getting your foot in the door. I did it with some linux skills that I picked up and just kept learning on the job. I am still amazed at a friend of mine who does well with just data integration, stuff that I showed him, but he made a business out of. And yeah kids don't need designer clothes to be happy. My wife says she is going to get our kid 1 toy and he better be happy with it. We'll see.

[AnthonyJoseph]

"who I think as a whole were shitty savers and rather shitty parents."

I agree, also except for mine, who was for all intents an purposes an immigrant.

This was a really great post. Look to the people who grew up with nothing to learn that it really isn't that bad to have "nothing". (I wish I could make those quotes even more sarcastic).