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Having six kids does not help your finances living in a Tier 1 city (assuming you need at least a three bedroom for that sized family). Each one costs $250k-$300k to raise 0-18 (per Brookings) without accounting for daycare, private school, or college. Hard to have sympathy for the financially irresponsible.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2022/08/30/its-getti... (2022)

https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/01/13/cost-raising-chil... (2017)

https://gothamist.com/news/it-could-cost-you-500k-to-raise-a... (2014)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991744 (additional citations from a previous comment)

Not trying to dispute anything here, as I don't think anyone sane would suggest it isn't expensive to have kids, but the Brookings article in particular is kind of hard to parse. $310k for kid #2 born in 2015 to a middle-income family. What's middle-income in this case? How does that change for higher income which would be more representative of HN readers? How does that change if it's kid #1 instead of 2? They also say "adjusted for higher expected future inflation" but don't say what numbers they're using. Elsewhere they say that inflation is increasing the cost by about $26k overall. Over 18 years that's $120/mo which for a $300k expense is pretty insignificant overall. And in general, I don't think people take cost into account for children this granularly. Who is looking at $290k over 18 years and thinks "yeah let's do it" then balks at $310k? Nobody.

> And in general, I don't think people take cost into account for children this granularly. Who is looking at $290k over 18 years and thinks "yeah let's do it" then balks at $310k? Nobody.

40% of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US [1]. Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death [2]. Between 9 and 12 million children are exposed to chronic hungry (fluctuates year to year) [3]. High level, the citations and data strongly suggest that no one (or very few people) does the math, and then they're all surprised pikchu when US socioeconomics comes for them.

You'd laugh at someone when they buy a Lambo and can't afford the gas for it, but no one batts an eye when people do the same with kids.

[1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-u...

[2] https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2023/04/17/poverty-4th-greates...

[3] https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/child-hunge...

The feeding America statistics are grossly inflated.

It is based on survey data with set questions. Answering yes to any of the following can categorize you as food insecure

A parent lost weight (for any reason)

Adult(s) cut size or skipped meals in 3 or more months of the year

Relied on few kinds of low-cost food to feed child(ren)

If Elon Musk skips breakfast to lose weight and succeeds, his family qualifies as food insecure.

This is why you see very different summary statistics. 1 in 5 children suffer food insecurity versus 0.9% of children have gone hungry at lest once in the last year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31277978

I have other citations if that one is not to your liking.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-works-for...

> The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) delivers more nutrition assistance to low-income children than any other federal program, making it the nation’s largest child nutrition program. In 2016, SNAP will help about 20 million children each month — about one in four U.S. children — while providing about $30 billion in nutrition benefits for children over the course of the year.[2] (See Figure 1.) While SNAP provides only a modest benefit — just $1.35 on average per person per meal for households with children — it forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of America’s children, lifting millions of families and their children out of poverty and improving food security. Research shows that its support can have surprisingly important long-lasting effects.

That indicates that there are important programs in place, which makes sense.

That is a very different claim than 10 million children are going hungry despite this program.

You are just wrong. I don't know if you are intentionally wrong or mistaken. But going by the link in your other response you linked to (love the self-quotes), is the survey that the government uses to generate its results. Question 8 (which refers to parents losing weight on the survey) asks:

> In the last 12 months, did you lose weight because there wasn't enough money for food

(Emphasis added)

All the other questions also specify that underlying causes should be money or resource based.

>40% of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US

Note that 61% of unintended pregnancies are aborted.(1) So it would be mistaken to think that 40% of children born are unintended.

(1)https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-world...

> 40% of pregnancies annually are unintended in the US [1].

Misleading - what is important is what % of children are unintended.

Given the sea change in recent laws, I expect those numbers to come closer to parity in the next few years.

Doubt it will to a substantial degree, they will not prevent large majority of abortions.

Most people are willing to drive to a legal state for something as important as an abortion.

e: Not that 6% [0] potentially isn't absolutely massive, and that is before Florida.

[0]: https://archive.is/IZWQi

Correction, most people who can afford to do so (both financially and with respect to risk, e.g. of losing their job) would be willing to. The jury is out on what percentage of people wouldn't be able to but it's certainly quite a bit above 0.

Sorry, which part of my statement is your "correction" correcting?

I made my statement about 'most' people and 'large majority' precisely because they do not cover all people.

He's correcting your statement because the population "most" and "large majority" are drawn from is different. "Most people own a yacht" and "A large majority of billionaires own a yacht" are different statements, but not because of the semantic difference between "most" and "large majority".

Or, to put it another way, he's saying a lot of people (maybe even most people who accidentally get pregnant) cannot afford the monetary/time/etc costs to go to another state to get an abortion.

1. Large majority of abortions will be unaffected: Unless we consider large majority 95%+, this is true.

2. Most people can afford to travel to another state: Trivially true.

Sure, the population of the statements are different (abortions vs. people), but they are both true and do not need to be corrected. Moreover, they would still be true even if you switched which population the 'most' was for and which one the 'large majority' was for.

Your first point is just reiterating your assertion that we're disputing. Your second point is not "clearly true" or "true at all". The average cost to travel for an abortion is in the thousands, given the need to stay multiple days and the fact that insurance may not cover it. Most Americans cannot afford an unexpected multi-thousand dollar expense. Half cannot afford a surprise $400 bill[1].

The majority of people in America are unable to cross state lines to get an abortion, financially or in the time off work.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-04/most-amer...

If they can't afford $2K for an abortion and related travel, having the child obviously isn't exactly a cost-free alternative.

Of course it's not a cost free alternative. They probably know that it costs substantially more and that's why they want an abortion. But, it's the only alternative they can actually pay for because it's the only one that doesn't demand thousands of dollars up front (and $2k would be below average.)

When I said they couldn't afford it, I mean it was something they would have to convince someone to loan them money to do. They likely don't have a credit card with that limit, and payday loans usually top out below $1,000 (according to Google).

And all that is without addressing the fact that they need to suddenly take several days off work (because most states have waiting periods) and not get fired.

Can't squeeze blood from a stone. Not having the money today frequently means you have to make sub-optimal future decisions as well.

> Each one costs $250k-$300k to raise 0-18 (per Brookings) without accounting for daycare, private school, or college.

$250k / 18 years / 12 months a year = $1,150/mo on average to feed + clothe a child, take it on vacation, put it in sports, buy it school supplies, and take it to the doctor, deal with a broken arm, birthday presents, tutoring, etc.

About $265/week. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. Call it 3 meals a day. $37.95/day to raise a kid. $12.65/meal 3 times a day for 18 years. (that's 100% of the budget for food, obviously unrealistic). 80% of the budget is $10/meal 7 days a week before inflation.

Eaten at home, I cannot imagine a breakfast approaching $10. School lunches (the majority of lunches in any given year) average $4.33.

There's a lot of variability in those costs. A third of the estimate is just housing. It's not quite as simple as saying that each kid will cost you another $1400 out of pocket each month.

They easily will for the first six years of their lives in NYC, assuming both parents work.

On what, though? Well over a thousand bucks a month per kid? The dollar figure specifically excluded daycare.

For a religious family with six children that is probably not the case.

Further the financial stress almost always passes to the children in one form or the other. The kids through no choice of their own may get stuck with a big bag of guilt, anger, apathy, insecurity, and more.

This is why public institutions are so important. This is why studying the real impact of socio-economic disparities on an individuals pursuit of happiness is so important.

> “My situation wasn’t someone who’s frivolous.“

Sending 6 kids to a private religious school sounds extremely frivolous to me.

I'd say it depends on the quality relative to the other options. In some areas near me, people will choose a Catholic school even when they aren't Catholic. My own experience with a public vs religious elementary school was much better at the public school.

I went to an inner city urban high school and anyone suggesting that you must withdraw from your 401k to send your kids to private school if you live in NYC is out of touch.

Frivolous would suggest the decision is not weighty. Religious schooling is considered very important to many people. It may not be the choice you or I would make, but I have a hard time imagining it as a casual choice.

>someone who is good at the economy please help budget this. my family is dying[0]

[0]https://dril.fandom.com/wiki/Candles

I think we have different ideas of "extremely frivolous."

Perhaps "unnecessary."

What do you think money is for?

Wow, what poor financial decision making. It's literally the dril candles joke but with religious private school instead of candles.

I love how everyone assumes that man left $0 in retirement savings:

"Now working in the public sector and paying into a pension..."

The words immediately following your ellipsis are: "...Mr. Scharf, 55, calculates that if he retires at 70, he can draw 40 percent of his former salary."

Working until 70 and even at that having only 40% of his former salary sounds like a pretty bad financial planning outcome, especially if you voluntarily put yourself into that situation.

He paid penalty on 401k withdrawals. I made no assumption that he left $0, but it is a stupid decision to pay 401k penalty in almost all situations.

Getting a gauge on private schools in my experience is difficult because each family's situation is different. There are the typical non-denom prep schools which cost a car payment every year. And then there the private religious schools which are more of a sliding scale. Prices go down further if you have scholarships, being a member of their church, parent volunteer, etc.

I've seen $15k up to ~$50k /yr (non-boarding—I've seen boarding as high as $70k)

The ~$15k ones tend to be Catholic or otherwise religious, and quality varies from "worse than the local public schools, actually" up to "notably better than the local public schools, though not as good as a really good private school".

Some cheap secular schools are only a little more expensive than the bottom end of the religious ones, but they don't tend to be much better than average public-school quality (nb. that may still be a lot better than some particular public school district)

Always take the opportunity to note that public schools cannot refuse anyone. Private schools can kick out low performers if it could help raise the average student performance on standardized tests.

Yes, of course, they benefit hugely from the ability to select students. They're also less answerable to parents or the public than public schools, in many way, which can free them up to ignore stupid demands from parents (they select families, as much as they select students)—or free them up to maintain stupid policies or approaches that could never fly in public schools, which is sometimes exactly what their customers want (as in the case of e.g. fundamentalist religious schools). They're more answerable to the set of expectations they've created for their families, than to the particular whims or desires of any given family, or any constituency present in the broader public.

... which doesn't necessarily mean preferring a better school that's only better due to selection bias (and knock-on effects from being able to remove very-disruptive or low performing students) is a bad way to go, at the individual level, if one has that option. The observation's more relevant to policy-making, than to the relative merits of those options to any given family.

They also don't have to cater to special education students (although some private non-profit schools do, for sure), and they don't have to subsidize special education funding with normal student funding.

One of the consequences of our state (Washington) going to a state-wide student funding model is that public schools really don't want to lose their non-special education students, because they get a fixed amount of money per student and if they lose too many of the students to private that don't need (and don't get) extra resources, they don't have enough funding to provide programs to the rest.

> They also don't have to cater to special education students (although some private non-profit schools do, for sure), and they don't have to subsidize special education funding with normal student funding.

Yep, absolutely, and that part of their ability to select their students is a major factor in the "look, private schools can educate kids for less than public schools spend, with similar or better outcomes!" sort of stats that get passed around.

If your social support depends on your membership in that community, which depends on your kids attending a similar school, you’ll dig deep to preserve it.

Uh, no - there is no way paying for an urban day school through 401k withdrawals makes any financial sense.

Right I think they're saying that someone's social/family/community life is more complex than a financial calculation. It's not about making this "make sense" in terms of endorsing it as an outsider, but about understanding what circumstances would lead to someone feeling like this makes sense for them.

I don't disagree that the person feels that this makes sense for them, but I am not confusing how this person feels with what they ought to be doing.

At the limit case (and withdrawing from your 401k to support your 6 children going to private school is definitely a limit case), you can absolutely reason about what 'makes sense' and this simply is not it.

If it leads to your kids into an upper echelon college like Harvard, which then sets up their trajectory for a very lucrative career, it seems entirely sane to me. The lifetime earning potential of a Harvard grad and chance of being the President is so much higher than someone who dropped out and maybe managed to get a GED later on in lift that it's not even funny.

Not only is that a ridiculous long-tail reason to send your kids to private school, it is not actually clear that (once you account for selection effects) it is easier to get into Harvard from some private school than public school.

Your kid can go to an inner city public school, complete with going through a metal detector and x-ray every day, and go to Harvard. It's not likely, but it wasn't likely in the other school either.

> The lifetime earning potential of a Harvard grad and chance of being the President is so much higher

You've misunderstood the cause/effect here. The kinds of people who go to Harvard (i.e., rich and/or smart young people) are indeed more likely to make more money and be elected president. But Harvard itself isn't what made it happen. It was being rich and/or smart.

Millions of families make this reasoning and spend $30k or more per year and per kid from age 2. Very few of these kids make it to Harvard or other top 4 colleges, maybe 1 will become president.

Sane Western countries have free and decent public education; and parents can't withdraw their future retirement early to fund dreams.

The thing is money runs out, eternal damnation is forever.

A well-funded movement tells people they will go to hell if they send kids to public school.

Agreed. I would add that he probably shouldn't be budgeting to have that money go into his 401k in the first place. He's paying more in tax + penalty to do this.

Religion, huh?