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Comment by geomark | Hacker News Reader

Childless friends tell me they won't have kids because they are too expensive. I tell them they are thinking about it wrong. They own a house and talk about it as their best investment. Well, kids are an investment. A high risk/high reward investment for sure. But possibly the greatest investment they will ever make, due at least in part to the reason your friend mentioned.

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> I tell them they're thinking about it wrong

You're talking about kids as financial investments and they're the irrational ones?

BTW, the average cost of raising a child 0-17 in the US ~$230k. That amount alone sitting in an index fund over many decades will provide for you more than any single person ever could.

So you have a big pile of cash. And you will just use it to pay someone to take care of you in your old age. And they will do it lovingly because you paid them. They won't take advantage or even abuse you when you get to the point of not being able to do anything about it yourself.

My counterpoint to this is: it's worth it to regret the last few years than to regret it an entire lifetime. I know I'll regret kids.

Edit: Goes without saying that you'll need to plan for your retirement. I fully anticipate assisted suicide being a legal option during my old age.

What if the childless friends are planning to kill themselves once they need assistance? Then their calculations make sense.

I have kids, but I still do not want them to spend their time caring for me on a constant basis. I hope I have the ability and physical will to take myself out before that happens. I saw what my parents gave up taking care of one set of my grandparents, I do not wish that on anyone.

They “lived” into the upper 90s (over a span of 30 years since the grandparents were 15 years apart in age) and I consider my parents to have wasted many of their best years.

It seems very sad to me to think of it as wasting your best years taking care of your aging parents. I considered it a privilege to take care of my parents to the end. To each his own.

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