[kidsthesedays]

I agree that most is silly. Certainly many though.

Consider: When I was single I lived a very very very comfortable life on $22,000 a year (cash, not income). I put that much in my checking account and everything else in savings and investment. This was after I spent several years putting the majority of my pay on loans to become debt free and paid off the $60,000 in student loans and a very small car loan.

If someone makes a salary of $30,000 a year than they probably take home around $22,000 after taxes and insurance. It would be much less comfortable for them to have a lot of savings. True, not impossible, but much much harder than me since their takehome pay is equal to my "frugal" pay. They would have to give up much more than I do. Obviously you can't max out your 401(k) and IRA on that salary, maxing those out would be more than your take home pay! Basically - not possible until you get past median income (which is around $50k)

As an aside I don't think children have to be that expensive... Granted I don't have them but I see all my friends spending a massive amount of money on very silly things for their kids. Nobody needs the majority of crap that is bought for kids. Household size has, IIR, doubled in the last 60 years. It isn't like kids' needs have changed to take up double space since my grandparents were raising them - it is parents just give them more.

[fweespeech]

> If someone makes a salary of $30,000 a year than they probably take home around $22,000 after taxes and insurance. It would be much less comfortable for them to have a lot of savings. True, not impossible, but much much harder than me since their takehome pay is equal to my "frugal" pay. They would have to give up much more than I do. Obviously you can't max out your 401(k) and IRA on that salary, maxing those out would be more than your take home pay!

Yes, but the amount they'd save is "a few thousand a year". I doubt they'd save more than $3,000/year after the big expenses and random things happening [e.g. dental, medical]

You'd need around $1,000,000 to produce $30,000 a year [3% "safe return"] indefinitely.

http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/calculators/401k/

You'd need to save for 35 years to retire before 60 [using the defaults, no employer match since you need access before you could access a IRA/401k, etc] which is what /r/financialindependence is about.

Mr Money Mustache and all of their idols retire early [by 40] and that is what they emphasize. That simply isn't possible on $30k/year in the US.

EDIT:

> Which was exactly my point. :)

Ah okay. I thought you were like the guy I was replying to who is completely 100% convinced that they can retire in their 30s like /r/FI aims for if they'd just "save more money".

[kidsthesedays]

Which was exactly my point. :)

You'd have to basically be homeless to save enough to be able to retire very early on a modest income such as $30,000.

[bigtunacan]

There is no way around it; kids ARE expensive. The bulk cost of raising kids is not all of the unnecessary things, even with all of the crap kids have today compared to prior generations, that is all incidental costs.

The real costs of kids are the necessities. Child care, clothing, food, medical & dental expenses.

I live in the midwest and send/sent my children to a daycare that is extremely price conscious even for this area. It cost me over $7000 per year per child. So when I had 3 kids in day care at the same time; I was paying $21,000 a year just for daycare. For some people that is not sustainable; it is as much or more than they earn.

[kidsthesedays]

This is what confuses me, when I was growing up there was poor kids childcare that I went to that was dirt cheap. Don't they exist anymore? Our (lower income) city offered free summer camp and I went to a variety of after school programs. Sure you can't do that with babies though (I don't think).

The vast majority of my clothes were hand-me-downs or thrift store or sometimes sales rack stuff. My mom and her sisters and brothers passed around garbage bags full of their kids' old clothes for the smaller kids and clothes were passed on to coworkers and friends. Several kids all wore clothes until they fell apart. I was allowed to have one pair of shoes (only from Payless) and I wore them either until they didn't fit or until the next schoolyear came. My parents didn't spend hardly anything at all on clothes.

Medical costs obviously are high (unless you are in the military)

I never even felt deprived or anything either. Not being able to pick out my clothes wasn't even a big issue for me.

[seestheday]

What state/city? I'm assuming you live in the US. I live in Canada and I've never heard of a poor kids childcare of free summer camp paid for by the city even here.

People talking about saving money by not spending money on clothes and toys really don't know what they're talking about. Brand new clothes and toys today are super cheap compared to what they were when I was a kid. For example, I just bought some brand new baby shoes and shirts on sale for $2 at the grocery store. If I was poor it would cost me more in bus fare to get to the used clothing store than I would have saved had I just bought stuff new at the grocery store. The biggest cost for me _by_far_ is childcare and summer camps.

[kidsthesedays]

Maybe you gotta live in a low income area. I went to the YMCA, YWCA, Boys and Girls Club, some place that is run by a couple nuns and sponsored by a charity... I think we may have gotten subsidies from somewhere though? Honestly I am not sure, I just know that they were cheap and that's where all the poor kids went (including me).

These places were pretty friggin boring though, just a bunch of sitting around doing not much of anything except playing with yarn with minimal supervision.

The "free camp" (as we called it) was especially boring.