Comment by throw93930 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw93930 | Hacker News Reader

It is "birth control" but in sort of opposite way. People are now much better informed, thanks to internet and devices like iphone. They do not have to relly on state education (that wants more babies) and popular shows like Friends.

State founded school is not going to tell you it costs $1200000 to raise baby, or you have 50% chance it will be taken away.

It will also push stats made in lab controlled conditions, and gloss over unreliability of such medications in real life (like if you would skip a pill for a few days).

Failure rate of birth control in normal life is around 10% per year (if you drink, forget to take pill at very exact time, use antibiotics). So there would be about chance 50% to get unwanted baby over years. Well informed person will not make such mistake.

Edit: about the cost

I said the "cost is", not that they are "spending it". There is lost opportunity, lost salary, lost investments, inflation...

It is not 18, more like 24 years.

Let's do some some math, take $600 rent over 18 years = $129,600. With 5% annual rent increase $202k. If you would reinvest that rental income with 5% yearly return $304k!!!

Stay at home mum for 5 years, at $60k = $300k. If you invest that into retirement account when baby would go to school, for 12 years at 5% yearly return it is $538k

> State founded school is not going to tell you it costs $1200000 to raise baby

Completely wrong. Not even plausible. You think every family is spending $67K per year, per baby, until they're 18? What?

>it costs $1200000 to raise baby

What exactly are you planning to do with all that money anyway? Consume things?

retire? Retiring only on Social Security is pretty tough, and $1.2M would provide like $4K/month income which on top of Social Security may allow for modest lifestyle in some low COL area.

Wrt. the original post i'd agree with GP - better information/education is probably the most powerful birth control.

So consume things

Is paying for healthcare and rent and basic food still "consume things"?

If you don't have children to inherit your fortune to, you can retire with full exhaustion of capital - that will yield way more than 4k$/month. Plus, if you don't have children there is not much holding you in the US - you can look at 2nd world countries. I.e. That money buys you a good retirement lifestyle in Mexiko, Brazil, Argentina etc. Or Vietnam, Thailand etc. if you are more into asia.

> If you don't have children to inherit your fortune to, you can retire with full exhaustion of capital - that will yield way more than 4k$/month.

As a lone elderly person you're likely to be scammed and lose a lot of that capital near the end, without close people that like and support you. Elders are incredibly vulnerable to financial scams, specially those enabled by technologic means they are not familiar with.

> As a lone elderly person you're likely to be scammed

That is just utter BS. Yes, it is usally the elderly who got scammed, but saying that because you are elderly you are likely to be scammed is reverse causation. Especially if you manage to accumulate 1.2m$ in your life, you are financially literate and far less likely to fall into a money scam.

Nothing? Because I do not have that money!

The right question is "to what age".

Get all McKinsey and calculate a TCO of a baby from conception to end-of-uni. $1.2M is low-end even for eastern EU, it's more like twice that.

0-to-23. $100K/year. This what a baby costs.

Yeah, but you didn't consider the resale value.

Or the potential for end of life care.

And apparently grandkids are neat, but it's hard to have those without having kids. Not sure how to value that one.

If I had $300k going through my bank account every year I really think I would have noticed by now.

You’re just making up numbers

Well, lets buy a house, car.. wife should stay at home for couple of years, education, health care...

>wife should stay at home for couple of years

That’s awfully presumptuous and gendered.

>buy a car

Assuming you don’t already have one and live somewhere where a car is needed. Plenty of parents with no cars or who had 1 and continue to live with 1.

>buy a house

Plenty of people do that with or without kids and plenty of parents rent.

>education

Plenty of people go to public school.

>healthcare

Valid but also people’s situations vary wildly here.

Actually raising a child costs more than $1.2M - just $20K/year invested in S&P500 over the last 20 years would have grown to more than $1.2M. Or those $20K/year could be spend on the child. And $20K/year is pretty low.

I’d check that math - that’s 67k/yr, not 20k/yr. 1.2mill/18 years.

I’m a parent and yeah it’s expensive but not multiple mortgages expensive unless you’re choosing certain expenses like very costly private schools. I also don’t compare parenthood with investing in the S&P 500 as they are radically different undertakings, but that’s a different discussion entirely.

>I’d check that math - that’s 67k/yr, not 20k/yr. 1.2mill/18 years.

It is meaningless calculating cost by simple division when the endeavor takes 2 decades. Money today are different from money 20 years ago. S&P500 is pretty reasonable and well accepted device to calculate opportunity cost over such long timeframes.

I didn’t set these numbers, the other dude did then you backed it up even going so far as to lecture me about how 20k isn’t enough to raise a kid. I completely agree that this is meaningless, but I’m also not going to let 1.2mill suddenly equal 20k/yr raising a kid!

>going so far as to lecture me about how 20k isn’t enough to raise a kid.

i expressed my opinion. You may have different one. Expressing an opinion different than yours isn't "lecturing".

>I’m also not going to let 1.2mill suddenly equal 20k/yr raising a kid!

using S&P500 as the opportunity cost evaluator the 20k/yr results in even more than $1.2M. I don't see what you're arguing about. Do you have a better opportunity cost evaluator than S&P500?

I don’t even know what you’re trying to say anymore mate. Have a good weekend.

> Actually raising a child costs more than $1.2M - just $20K/year invested in S&P500 over the last 20 years would have grown to more than $1.2M.

The future markets of a shrinking world, with consumer and worker cohorts dwindling year after year, will be very different from the last 20. This is paradoxal reasoning. Your're counting on going childless, while the market remains the same, other people keep having children to grow the market. But if everybody else does the same it doesn't work. The mean investment probably will give negative returns, in a fast shrinking world.

alternatively, the things can go very opposite to what you're saying as robots/AI will make many jobs more productive requiring less people thus driving the economy even more profitable than the last 20 years. The society wouldn't need those very expensive children for the jobs where robots would do.

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