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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

Kids are frighteningly expensive. If I had none, I’d live in a bigger house, have more free time and would be much more free to move to pursue better opportunities than I am now. In many places your first consideration when looking for a house is which school your kids are going to.

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> If I had none, I’d live in a bigger house

This alone says a lot.

If you were to step outside society and design something from the ground up, one of your easiest assumptions would be "larger families should have easier access to larger housing", wherein reality the exact opposite is true.

An aggressive federal housing construction plan targeting families would do an untold amount of good.

I explain it to people of reproductive age as such: Kids cost roughly $270k (2022 inflation adjusted from earlier USDA data) to raise from birth to 18. Each child. Can you afford a Supercar or a fancy boat? If not, how can you afford a kid? And more than one? Good. Luck.

> Kids cost roughly $270k (2022 inflation adjusted from earlier USDA data) to raise from birth to 18. Each child. Can you afford a Supercar or a fancy boat? If not, how can you afford a kid?

an 18 year auto loan sounds like a bad idea. but $15k (nominal) per year is less than state university tuition.

Back out from current housing, healthcare, food, fuel and other non discretionary costs to what wage/income you’d need to be in the black including the cost of children. Last I checked, the math doesn’t pencil out until you’re hitting ~$50k-$60k/year, a bit below median income ($67k/year), and you’re cutting it really close.

Reasoning from first principles is depressing sometimes.

https://www.zippia.com/research/should-i-have-a-baby/

Could probably afford one with a 18 year installment plan. ;-) Also, hand-me-downs.

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