Many parents are financially unprepared.

Quote
Zzelda
The comments! eyes2

Here's a hot one ~

Quote
MORON
Most people can't afford their WIVES. But as you go through life, you find yourself accumulating a few. Lots of things are like that, including cats and children. They show up at your doorstep without knowing or caring whether you an afford them or not.

Life has that amusing way of presenting you with things but never asking if you can afford them. You just take them as they come and do the best you can!

:drool

Oh, good fucking gravy... :headbrick :crz :eyebrows

_________________________________________________________

Why live in a fishbowl, when you could be swimming in the ocean?

"She, and all other rabid breeders, are like crabs in a bucket headed to Red Lobster. When they see a smarter crab escaping, they try to pull it back in." - Miss Hannigan

"Yeah, that's what family is about - guilt tripping people into cleaning up someone else's mess." - mrs. chinaski

(Shameless blog promotion: http://popcornculturejunkie.wordpress.com/)

(Cornucopia of visual rantage: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD78oSD27mzAlVzsB0q2ibA)

More from the grab bag of stupidity:

Quote
NEVER go full retard!
Can you afford not to have a child? Greatest gift one can ever imagine.

"Won't somebody help me feed my babbies?!!! We're a poor, starving famblee!!" :bawl :fmbl

Quote
Another full retard
Good comment.

Having children can also make you smarter (according to Baby Center). This is especially true for emotional intelligence, which is the ability to understand others:

http://www.babycenter.com/0_big-story-how-motherhood-makes-you-smarter_1428975.bc

My score went up several points on the MCAT (medical college admissions test) verbal reasoning section - which is about understanding others.

Including the countless more fulfilling benefits as well, it has been wonderful having children.

Fucking liar...almost all breeders we encounter have at the most two brain cells.

Quote
Someone we can actually agree with
What a creepy looking baby. Wrinkled skin and a comb-over. Coupled with this article, it's birth control. Whole thing is probably redacted for Hobby Lobby employees...

Yup. wink

Quote
Call 1-800-WAAH, douchebag!
I don't like the tone of this article. The writer's limited, material perspective reveals a fearful and myopic approach to life.

Children are not a burden, but a gift. Providing for my children has been my greatest motivation for success.

Spending your money to raise them is the greatest investment in your future and everyone else's.

Blah, blah, blah... :Violin

_________________________________________________________

Why live in a fishbowl, when you could be swimming in the ocean?

"She, and all other rabid breeders, are like crabs in a bucket headed to Red Lobster. When they see a smarter crab escaping, they try to pull it back in." - Miss Hannigan

"Yeah, that's what family is about - guilt tripping people into cleaning up someone else's mess." - mrs. chinaski

(Shameless blog promotion: http://popcornculturejunkie.wordpress.com/)

(Cornucopia of visual rantage: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD78oSD27mzAlVzsB0q2ibA)

Quote
Zzelda
The comments! eyes2

Here's a hot one ~

Quote
MORON
Most people can't afford their WIVES. But as you go through life, you find yourself accumulating a few. Lots of things are like that, including cats and children. They show up at your doorstep without knowing or caring whether you an afford them or not.

Life has that amusing way of presenting you with things but never asking if you can afford them. You just take them as they come and do the best you can!

:drool

If a potential wife is a single mom, then I would not be recommend that any guy even attemps to afford her. He will go broke emotionally, financially and in every other way possible. On top of all that, he will never be her equal - he will be the scape goat of the problems that some other guy has created.

Life presents all kinds of things. Just because something is in front of us, it does not indicate that it is a good thing for us. Some time ago, I came across a rattle snake on a hiking trail. That did not indicate that I was going to stick my hand at it and grab it - some things that I come across in my life are better off being left alone.

Putting their fingers in their ears and going la la la is the best they can do to step away from reality.
Every adult knows that childrearing costs a ton of money. As a child, I knew my parents couldn't buy me everything but I couldn't quite understand why. Or why we had to go on assistance to be able to buy school books. I felt quite embarrassed whenever I had to explain it to the teacher, at the start of every school year, from 7th grade to 12th.
Now I can fully see that we didn't have much. Just imagine if I had brothers...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Don't you know how to deal with children?!"
"I don't like animals who act on instinct."
I think you're on to something Akihiko.

Quote

God willing, someday I hope to retire. I work my ass off and have decent things, but my main motivation is retirement and the idea that I do not ever, under any circumstance, want to struggle the way I did growing up. Kids do not fit into either one of those objectives.

Preach it.

My DH and I are friends with another couple. Because we all work at the same place and have similar jobs, our household income is almost the same. They married at age 39 and we married in our early 40's. They are financially conservative and so are we. The major difference is they had one child and we had zero children.

Every month, I put $1800 away. Much of it goes into a 401k and index funds. . (Not company stock, index funds are much better.) I've been doing this for the past 20 years....the money gets taken out before I see it and I've learned to live on less. It's called discipline, and most Breeders don't have it.

Despite our aggressive level of saving, DH and I still have a nice house. (We are paying it off early.) We don't drive luxury cars...I drive a 2005 car. I maintain it and I intend to keep it as long as it makes economic sense to do so. We don't eat out all that much but we have our little luxuries. I get a massage a couple of times a month--it helps with chronic pain issues and I do have the money for salon services like face lasering and laser hair removal. (The face stuff helps me to age gracefully.) I pay $40/month for a pool membership because staying in shape makes me feel good and it's important. I eat decent food for health reasons. I don't feel deprived of anything I want.

There is NO QUESTION my financial lifestyle as I know it would be SHOT TO HELL if DH and I had sprogged. I remember speaking with our friends and hearing they paid $850 A MONTH FOR DAY CARE. I thought HOLY SHIT,, that's just daycare, that doesn't count clothing, food, medical expenses for a kid.

I get it that some parents find child-rearing satisfying in itself. They would not have a problem sacrificing for Snotleigh, but I'm not one of those people. Maybe it's because I had to sacrifice so much as a kid, but when I retire, my time will be MY TIME.

If I had to pay someone $850 just for the privilege of working so I could throw more money at a kid, I would be resentful as Hell. If I had to pay someone $50 just for the privilege of leaving my house and going on a date with my husband, I would be resentful as Hell. If I knew I had to work until age 70 to pay for someone's college, I'd feel trapped and resentful as Hell. Maybe I'll choose to work past my minimum retirement age, but it's nice to have the option not to.

Those WSJ people would be reading this with OUTRAGE and they would say something stupid such as OH JUST HAVE A KID ANYWAY....THEY ARE SO WUNDERFUL AND YOU LEARN TO LIVE ON LESS.

Not for me. The math doesn't add up.

My SIL got pregnant on her honeymoon, despite the fact that their financial situation wasn't that solid. They would have been struggling even in the best of scenarios, but the baby was born with a whole myriad of health problems. They spend a lot on doctors and treatments, plus they miss a lot of work because he's constantly in and out of the hospital. I have no idea how they manage to stay afloat, but I have a feeling it's because of the grandparents.

It doesn't seem like she learns, either, because after the kid's latest hospital stay she was saying that they had had a little money saved up and were planning on going on vacation, but having to miss work for a week because of him being in the hospital burned through the extra money.

If one week's worth of missed wages is enough to sink you, the last thing you should be thinking about is going on vacation. Shit, DH is a contractor (meaning no paid vacation time) so we have to factor the cost of his lost wages into the cost of any trip we want to take.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________
"Not every ejaculation deserves a name" - George Carlin

I hear those moronic comments everytime i use me and DH's financial situation as excuse. And it is actually a very good excuse because we don't have stable jobs and the payment is very low. At least i work part-time (have no possibility to go full-time) and DH has a minimum wage job. We are trying hard to study more and look for better but the situation is not that bright now.

The house, 2 cars and 2.5 brats are also a common thing in parts of developed Europe and you are seen as a failure if you don't accomplish these things by a certain age. My situation is different with my Eastern European relatives (mentioned them few times around here). They think that if you emigrated to green pastures then for sure you are rich and have no excuse not to breed especially if the welfare state provides. In reality things are totally different and if we had a kid we would be in deep shit. But nooo, they don't see that. Their favorite line is: "where two can eat there is always place for the third."eyes2

BABIES don't know when they are poor. CHILDREN most certainly do.
I can tell you when I realized I was in a poor family. I was still in diapers, they were cloth, there was a plastic panty shaped cover to contain liquid because this was an entire hand me down set of diapers and everything, and cloth diapers are only so absorbent.
When my legs got large enough that the gathered plastic of the diaper cover dug in painfully, pinched, and left red marks that were sore for hours, and I cried a lot because of it, asking for something, anything else other than the painful, scratchy plastic pants...
And the answer was NO. I knew something was wrong. Why didn't my mother want to stop this pain?
And I "potty trained" at two and a half because of how bad these things hurt. I use quotes there because I continued to have accidents well into grade school from the stress at home. But did I get help? No, I got shamed.
By the time I got to school it was very obvious that we were among the poorest kids attending there.