Had mine at 28, now 30. The kid has been the most affordable thing about my life the last 2 years. It wasn’t the kid that demanded to switch strollers on a weekly basis and it wasn’t the kid who threatened suicide and all kinds of other things when I didn’t buy shit.
I’m making do on 50 hours of work a month, give or take, until I can get my kid to reliably stay at kindergarten for multiple hours per day. My ex is not paying any child support AND is still getting the small monthly national child support payments that every kid gets until the age of 18 or 19 or something. It does help that I have a family home that was empty already so I only need to pay to heat this big old house (not cheap) and I have some support from my mom who occasionally helps out with clothes and other expenses.
When I also had to pay the entire upkeep of my ex and her other child (who, to be fair, also didn’t cost that much to feed and clothe, despite my ex only buying Nike, Guess and other overpriced brands for her), I was working 200+ hours a month AND getting essentially an entire national median salary in parental pay (first 1.5 years after child is born) and still had to keep borrowing more and more money from friends. Would’ve been enough money to COMFORTABLY raise 5-6 children with anyone other than my ex, pretty much. This while my ex didn’t work since BEFORE the pregnancy started. In fact, the pregnancy was her plan to keep me around.
So I’d argue that a lot of people could afford to have kids by 30 as long as they do it with the right partner. A lot of my friends make more money than I ever did, while my own income was a “holy shit” moment for some of my other friends and family when I came clean about everything going on in my life, particularly what my ex did to my finances. Of course my country is more affordable too, I don’t live in the US. Kindergarten is less than 100 EUR a month, kid now eats mostly the same stuff I do (no more special baby foods to spend on, besides formula which is pretty affordable, I use locally made stuff) and grows fairly slowly so I don’t have to buy new clothes every single month. Diapers are still an expense and will be for a few more months at least, but that’s also 50-60 EUR a month, not more.
Had mine at 28, now 30. The kid has been the most affordable thing about my life the last 2 years. It wasn’t the kid that demanded to switch strollers on a weekly basis and it wasn’t the kid who threatened suicide and all kinds of other things when I didn’t buy shit.
I’m making do on 50 hours of work a month, give or take, until I can get my kid to reliably stay at kindergarten for multiple hours per day. My ex is not paying any child support AND is still getting the small monthly national child support payments that every kid gets until the age of 18 or 19 or something. It does help that I have a family home that was empty already so I only need to pay to heat this big old house (not cheap) and I have some support from my mom who occasionally helps out with clothes and other expenses.
When I also had to pay the entire upkeep of my ex and her other child (who, to be fair, also didn’t cost that much to feed and clothe, despite my ex only buying Nike, Guess and other overpriced brands for her), I was working 200+ hours a month AND getting essentially an entire national median salary in parental pay (first 1.5 years after child is born) and still had to keep borrowing more and more money from friends. Would’ve been enough money to COMFORTABLY raise 5-6 children with anyone other than my ex, pretty much. This while my ex didn’t work since BEFORE the pregnancy started. In fact, the pregnancy was her plan to keep me around.
So I’d argue that a lot of people could afford to have kids by 30 as long as they do it with the right partner. A lot of my friends make more money than I ever did, while my own income was a “holy shit” moment for some of my other friends and family when I came clean about everything going on in my life, particularly what my ex did to my finances. Of course my country is more affordable too, I don’t live in the US. Kindergarten is less than 100 EUR a month, kid now eats mostly the same stuff I do (no more special baby foods to spend on, besides formula which is pretty affordable, I use locally made stuff) and grows fairly slowly so I don’t have to buy new clothes every single month. Diapers are still an expense and will be for a few more months at least, but that’s also 50-60 EUR a month, not more.