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’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.
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 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?
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.