I could and did live frugally before I had kids.
How can one continue living in a small apartment with lead and asbestos hazards is beyond me.
How can one continue living in a small apartment with lead and asbestos hazards is beyond me.
I read on HN all the time that once you have kid it is unavoidable to spend 300k$ a year. But yet 99.9% of the world and the US manages to raise kids with a fraction of that income and they turn out mostly fine. (Before you ask, yes I have kids and yes we still live simply)
Meanwhile I would bet there is an inverse correlation between spending for the kids and kids happiness.
She went out and bought a massive Cadillac Escalade.
To haul around a 10 pound infant.
That's exaggerating a bit, but some places near offices are kind of that way. (Why I love working remote, which absolutely increases the spectrum of choices.)
I certainly agree that it'd be hard to have kids in a small space though, I definitely appreciate having more room - especially with a WFH setup.
I always have been fairly frugal and am in semi-retirement now from the residues of my last two small start-ups (to which COVID was unkind, so died simultaneously!).
My extended family has/had big houses, including one in which a famous film was set it seems, but I see those as mainly expensive liabilities. Never owned a car. Etc etc.
[0] As described by a visiting Secretary of State!
The truth is you don’t need a home or an SUV or a front lawn to raise children. And it’s also not necessarily better for them. It might be more cushy, sure, but that doesn’t mean it materially improves their lives in any meaningful way.