My partner and I - both well-educated and well-employed professionals - sketched out our long-term financial plan recently. The only way we envisioned owning property would be to build our own a considerable distance away from our small city's center. That alone proved to be a significant part of our budget, which is already under considerable pressure from student loans and car payments.

We estimated the expenses for future children and the picture was not pretty. Then we factored in higher education, assuming costs rise at the same rate as the last 30 years - roughly our lifetimes - and concluded that by the time our future kids are at college age, they will likely be paying for most of it themselves, with debt they may hold their entire lives.

So we aren't having any.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am not simply saying that I am forgoing children because their college costs would be too high, I'm saying EVERYTHING is too expensive, and college in 20-30 years, assuming current rates, will be forbiddingly so.