BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Night Owl - and CF List - EMPOWERING

This made me laugh out loud!

Great list, by the way. I think I would have every single one on my list as well.

That's awful. What a nightmare. I would hate to be in that position. I know a lot of people that don't have much in the way of savings, and this would crush them.

That's cool, Mike! I hope you have a blast. You know, my Dad is an electrical engineer, and I think he hates it, too. He's always stressed out, but he had three kids, and that type of job pays well, as you know. I've often wondered if he would have been happier doing something else. And whenever I've complained about not liking my job, or being dissatisfied in life, he's just kind of shrugs. Like liking your job is a luxury he can't afford.

Wow--what a great list!! My big ones are the environmental impacts, no time for self/couple relationship, and of course you never know what you're going to get regarding problems/attitude/illnesses, etc. So glad to see there are so many others who feel this way too!

It's wild to me how families survive financially. Houston has one of the lowest costs of living in the country, and Alvin is even lower, yet on my husband's engineer salary, which is twice the average income here, we still just seem to get by. When we look at our finances, it's because DH puts in as much as he can towards retirement, then there's insurance, life insurance, and the money we spend on maintaining our health, like buying healthy food and going to the doctor. We're also paying for me to attend school and we have student loans.

But it's not like we've got all kinds of extra cash. We have enough to pay our mortgage, which is actually quite low compared to a lot of people, and to go on vacation every year and handle unplanned expenses like hospital bills, etc. But we're not driving BMWs or wearing name-brand clothes. We've got lots of cheap, pressboard furniture in our house.

I just don't understand how the families all around us do it.

Me neither. Maybe we aim higher, like it's a huge goal for us to be debt-free. If we had a kid or two, we'd be heading down the path to more debt right away. When I was looking at the whole idea from our budget perpective, it got very scary.

Yet, if I say that to people they say "Of anyone YOU could do it", because we own a house, and I have a good job, But the only reason we have what we do is is BECAUSE we HAVEN'T had kids. If I'd had kids before now, we'd never be where we are in life, as far as careers, housing, etc. But just the same, we still have to try really hard just to stay financially stable as it is. I really really don't understand either how people are pulling it off.

I think a lot of people are living in HUGE debt. I don't mean mortgages or car payments. Everyone has that. I mean tens of thousands of dollars on credit cards.

I'm freaking out because we have $700 on our credit card right now, other than that, we have the mortgage, the home equity loan, the car and DH's school loan (which should be paid up in less than 2 years, yay!) I've worked REALLY hard to get the debt amount down to where it is, making extra payments where I can.

And that's just us! We bought a little car, we have only $9,000 left to pay on it. If we had to buy a $20,000 SUV or something, we'd be in a lot of trouble. We go clothes shopping every six months or so. If we had to buy clothes every other month for growing children, we'd be in rags!

My sister, who has 2 kids and is severely in debt, just shrugs and says "it's the American way." I think having a mortgage and a car payment is the American way, not having thousand-dollar bills on five credit cards. But that's the only way the average person can afford kids, isn't it? And isn't it more important to have kids than to have money?

My only debt is my mortgage. I spend a lot on skiing and biking, but scrimp on other expenditures. Here are some examples.

1) If I am home, I don't eat out. On weekend trips, I take as much of my own food as possible.
2) No TV set at home, therefore no cable TV bill.
3) My vintage 1998 PC died a month ago. I am not going to replace it any time soon. The library and office PCs are close to home. A biking trip to Europe next summer or fall is much higher priority.
4) My townhouse is furnished with garage sale furniture.
5) I don't buy books either. What the local library doesn't have, they can get through inter library loan.

Debt is the American way???? Since when? Who would want that? That is a very new concept and I think people are whacked to just accept that. Our grandparents certainly didn't live that way. Our grandparents had a very different deal when they were having kids, and people today must be in denial to think huge debt is the way to go. How are people planning to ever retire?

That's one of of the big ones that pushed us over the fence. Maybe we are better off than most people who are in their 20's and having kids, but if we start now (at 38/51) we are launching into a huge financial burden that most people our age have well behind them. It would make any sort of retirement most likely impossible in my husband's lifetime, and who knows about me... That is sad.

DH is always saying when I worry about money, "we are SO much better off than ALL of our friends!"

Is that supposed to make me feel better?

We have a pair of friends who have a house in the next town. It would have been cheaper for them to buy a new house, but they love their neighborhood and the school is across the alley from them. So they decided to spend more than they would on a new house to put on an addition. They spent over a year living in 3 rooms of their house. They spent SO much money on their new house. They literally have zero equity. They cannot be approved for another loan for a few years because they maxed out every possibility. They are literally $50,000+ in debt just from this house.

During construction, the school behind them closed. They were really mad. That's why they stayed there in the first place, so that their future children could walk across the alley for school.

The whole REASON they built the addition was for children. So now, they are saying, "house is done, we'll start planning the kids soon!"

Are you kidding me? And how are you going to feed and clothe these future children? I can't even begin to imagine how they're going to pay off that debt. And yet they keep going out and buying XBox 360, games for XBox, games for their other gaming systems, etc.

I just don't understand how two really intelligent people can do this to themselves.