Currently I'm achieving this through contracting but I would much rather have a more typical employment situation to reduce the administrative burden and the need for sales.
Pardon my ignorance but in your view how is having a child supposed to push this in the other direction? Do you see having a child as an opportunity/reason to raise the 20 hours/week to 40 hours/week and stay away from home longer? Because I thought the point of raising children was so you could spend some of your time raising a family, and my impression was most older people would rather be with their families than at work. Do you see yourself wishing that you could work 40 hours when you have children or something? Wouldn't it make more sense to work more now and save for that future instead so you don't have to work as hard then?
On top of that, you have to remember that you can't have kids by yourself (at least not easily, if you're male): you need a willing partner. If you're working your ass off to save money for kids, that means you're either letting your relationship suffer because you're at work all the time, or you're missing out on opportunities to find a partner. And the older you get, the harder it is to find a good partner (really, you need to find her in college; if you haven't found her by age 25, you probably won't).
All in all, our society simply isn't set up to have an enjoyable middle-class lifestyle and have kids. You need to pick one or the other: either be poor and have kids and struggle financially, or enjoy a more financially comfortable lifestyle and forgo having kids. Also, having a happy relationship and having kids are at odds with each other, so again you have to pick one. Either have kids and look forward to divorce and child support or at least a miserable marriage where you dread coming home from work, or find a partner who doesn't want kids and enjoy spending time with her.
It's little wonder that the birth rates in developed nations have fallen so low.
That's a very dark line of thinking, and I'm sorry your life has led you to believe that is the case.
It's absolutely possible to have kids and a happy relationship, just as it's absolutely possible to not have kids and have a happy relationship, or have kids and a miserable relationship, or not have kids and have a miserable relationship.
Also, it's possible to have a middle-class lifestyle with kids; difficult, but possible. Living in the middle states of the US, with an in-demand skillset relative to the area you live in, and a semi-frugal mindset- it's absolutely possible. In San Francisco or DC? Not so much.
Oh, I completely agree it's possible. Plenty of people do. But what are the odds that you'll achieve this? IMO, not very good. Considering the divorce rate, and how many kids grow up with divorced parents these days, I think the odds are actually against you. I think it makes perfect sense to avoid a situation that has a greater-than-50% chance of horrible failure (and given the struggles I see my single-parent friends going through, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I use the word 'horrible').
>Living in the middle states of the US, with an in-demand skillset relative to the area you live in, and a semi-frugal mindset- it's absolutely possible. In San Francisco or DC? Not so much.
Yeah, as with anything, YMMV. But if you're a software engineer or similar (as is probably rather common here), you're not going to do well in the middle states of the US; there just aren't many jobs there, and they don't pay that well, and you have the problem that if that job doesn't work out, you now have to pack up and move because that was the only such job within commutable distance. So we're mainly stuck in high cost-of-living locales (and to be honest, I've lived in both, and the lost CoL places have their own problems, such as lots of very conservative people and policies, making them not a lot of fun to live in).
If i chose to do it like you sugested. Work 100% and save 50%, there is no way in hell that i would save that 50%. Nobody would. When you only have 10$ in bank to buy a lunch you buy it for max 10$ but if you have 100$ you have to force yourself to spend only 10$. you probably would not. I know that i would not do it 100% of time. So in the end you end up saving alot less then 50%.
when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.
I would agree with you but this is not the situation we're talking about there. The OP is totally comfortable living with 50% of the income; clearly he's not counting pennies when he goes out to get lunch, and I assumed that's not a situation he's looking to get himself into either (but if he is for some reason, then OK, you're right).
It very much seemed like he'd be still living pretty darn comfortably and getting everything he wants at 50% pay. Unless you like to spend money just for the hell of it, I don't see why you'd spend more on your lunch just because you're making more money, when you're already eating whatever you want anyway.
> when you get your child, the extra time that you have if you work less will be spend between you, your child/family, your alone time ( if you value it, will be not even close to 50% ) and because having a family is way more expensive, all the money you saved when working 100% and supposed to save 50% would be spend 3 times faster then when you where alone, and then you would have to go back to work.
I was thinking more like, invest the money in something instead of directly spending (say) 10 years' worth of 2x salary in like 3 years of daily life expenses. Maybe even use it to start your own business and dictate your own hours... so many possibilities I can't even think of when you have the money.