Millennials having fewer kids could be a drag on the economy for the next decade, per BI

Millennials not having enough babies could crimp growth by 1-2 percentage points a year.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 24, 2024

Hard to argue with this, most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs. I think Gen Z is the same, but hat income did you older Millennials feel comfortable having children?

hedge said:

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Millennials having fewer kids could be a drag on the economy for the next decade, per BI

Millennials not having enough babies could crimp growth by 1-2 percentage points a year.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 24, 2024

Hard to argue with this, most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs. I think Gen Z is the same, but hat income did you older Millennials feel comfortable having children?

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Waiting to have kids is dumb. Good luck though.

Why do you say that?

[Out of bounds -- Staff]

There is a relationship between income and kids but opposite to what you imply. The lower the income, domestically and worldwide, the more children they have.

There is no income level that is "right" to have kids. The government supports those than cannot afford anything. After that, you just figure it out and work harder and/or make sacrifices.

Pretty sure the inflation caused by ongoing fiscal policies will be more impactful to negative growth than a decline in birth rates.

We need legal immigrants, and lots of them.

I have 6 kids, including 2 adopted internationally, but I can't carry everyone's water.

hedge said:

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Why do you say that?

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Waiting to have kids until you're in your 30s increases the chances of birth defects and other complications significantly. So there's that.

Also, the Trump tax bill hurt large families, as did the Covid stimulus, and the real estate investment laws, and the cash out refi laws. All of them hurt my family.

If you wait to have kids until you have "enough" money or are "comfortable", then you will likely never have kids.

94chem said:

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Also, the Trump tax bill hurt large families, as did the Covid stimulus, and the real estate investment laws, and the cash out refi laws. All of them hurt my family.

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How did the Trump tax bill hurt your family, specifically?

Get off F16, watch Possum Trot, and pray, y'all. Consider carefully your ways (Haggai - it's a great read!).

hedge said:

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most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs.

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That is your choice and is nothing wrong it, but when done in mass by the culture shift in our society it is not good and it is completely wrong to blame costs.

There are plenty of other people that are having kids and will raise them to prioritize family too so the problem self corrects over time.

The underlying issue is whether people use this "having kids later hurts the economy" nonsense to import foreigners legally or illegally. That is NOT the solution.

Have kids young and you will have limited resources with youth on your side.

Have kids later and you will have plenty of resources, but will have limited time and youth to spend with them.

It's a trade off. We waited until after I finished grad school, but we were still in our mid 20s.

My kids never have the best stuff, but they never want for anything. I do however have the time and energy to coach their teams, play on the weekends, and run around the soccer field with their teams. That is the stuff that actually matters.

ttha_aggie_09 said:

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There is a relationship between income and kids but opposite to what you imply. The lower the income, domestically and worldwide, the more children they have.

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Aggie95 said:

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If you wait to have kids until you have "enough" money or are "comfortable", then you will likely never have kids.

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Amen to that. And it's a choice. My two millennial and one zoomer kids, all homeowners with salaries less than $60K a year, (single earner, homeschooling moms) have six children and counting. And they couldn't be happier. They budget aggressively, pay cash for four-year-old cars, and get by just fine.

well_endowed_ag said:

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94chem said:

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Also, the Trump tax bill hurt large families, as did the Covid stimulus, and the real estate investment laws, and the cash out refi laws. All of them hurt my family.

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How did the Trump tax bill hurt your family, specifically?

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-Reductions in exemptions effectively raising the threshold for itemization, thus rais8ng taxes

-Loss of deductions for cash out refi. interest. Arbitrary law penalizing people with home equity versus those with large initial loans

-Illegal to deduct operation losses on real estate if you make over $150K, keeping small investors out if the market

-Phasing out stimulus at $150K, completely by $160K, with no regard for # of dependents, all it did was raise prices for my family.

We waited until our mid thirties. But by then, it was too late. 2 expensive rounds of IVF resulted in nothing.

Be prepared for that to be a result of waiting. There is a biological clock that ticks everyday.

This is news?

And to anyone arguing otherwise. Having two kids from an upper-middle family not only creates two more consumers to feed the economy (sounds familiar ….) that family spends a ton to make sure Bradford and Tiffie can live life without consequence.

For most people, it really does come down to costs. A lot of families need two incomes to survive. But when you need two incomes, the costs of childcare to make that possible are more expensive than what the 2nd income can bring it.

The realities is that raising kids *now* is different than even 10 or 15 years ago.

You can finger point and blame and shame millennials and gen z all you want, but the economic realities of today make it damn difficult to afford to have kids.

So what you're saying is that if there isn't a human to consume something, you can't sell that something? No way! I don't give two craps about this nation anymore, so whatever. I've checked out. Good luck with your future, you'll need it.

Quote:

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And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

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The Dems have wrecked this nation.

The only reason a reducing population is a problem for us is because we have a ponzi scheme that forces younger generations to subsidize the older.

If we had a true free market, then it would be no problem. The fewer mouths to feed would cancel out the fewer workers.

Neither I nor are any of my 3 siblings a part of this problem. We had our 3rd in March, and Good Lord willing, we aren't done. My 3 siblings have 15 kids between them with #16 on the way.

94chem said:

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Also, the Trump tax bill hurt large families, as did the Covid stimulus, and the real estate investment laws, and the cash out refi laws. All of them hurt my family.

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That's all stuff regarding established families... the concept alluded to is being in a place where you are confident to start a family or even able to "adult enough" to do so.

...

OP; I have a hard time giving a crap about our gdp when the quality of life is tanking for so many. Let's see if we can get energy and home costs down, maybe some wage growth... then we can worry about the gdp from there.

A declining population does affect the markets and their growth projections. Investing in this new world will be different than in the past but it seems most advisors are oblivious. Very frustrating for me personally.

Having kids isn't a financial decision, or shouldn't be.
It should be about having a family and sharing love and experiences. If you wait too long to start, you are shorting yourself both time and personal fulfillment.

You will never be "ready" for kids, but having them is the greatest blessing of my life and many others.
I know people that chose not to have kids and their latter years were quite lonely.

We waited until I was 27 to start, I was 28 when first son was born, 37 when my youngest was born. He is just a soph in HS and I'm 52. I will be almost 60 when he is out of college. Honestly I feel like we waited almost too long.

Some people can't have kids, or are never able to even adopt and really want kids. Other people are crap parents and probably should never have ever had them. I was an only child and it was kinda lonely at times. But Family is my world and so for me, it was what I was meant for and while I only have 3 kids, there is nothing better than time with them

hedge said:

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Millennials having fewer kids could be a drag on the economy for the next decade, per BI

Millennials not having enough babies could crimp growth by 1-2 percentage points a year.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 24, 2024

Hard to argue with this, most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs. I think Gen Z is the same, but hat income did you older Millennials feel comfortable having children?

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Just have kids, man. If you have kids when your combined income is 80k, you'll learn how to raise kids on 80k. Wife and I combined for 80kish when the first was born. We had to cut back on our preferences, but it was all "extra" anyways. Eat at home, not out 5 days a week. Skip vacation for a year or two. It's not the end of the world.

What would be the end of the world to me is knowing my kids would have never existed due to either my fear or selfishness. Having excess money and comfort has sort of become a god in America.

Didn't start having kids until I was 37 and wife was 32 (we met later in life). I wish we had met sooner and started a family 10 years before we did.

If we had, my kids would be out of college and fully on their own. We have enough to retire now - except for the fact we have two high school age kids that we have to get through college.

So...instead of retiring at 55 - I will work until I'm 60 then retire.

While I was an active dad and we did a lot of things as a family, keeping up with teenagers ability to be super active would have been easier being early 40s instead of early 50s.

I would have much rather figured out the finances of having kids earlier. It just didn't work out that way, but had I met my wife sooner we would have absolutely had kids sooner and probably more than 2.

Pay me now....pay me later. Pay me later has it's downsides. Just do it!

The Banned said:

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hedge said:

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Millennials having fewer kids could be a drag on the economy for the next decade, per BI

Millennials not having enough babies could crimp growth by 1-2 percentage points a year.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 24, 2024

Hard to argue with this, most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs. I think Gen Z is the same, but hat income did you older Millennials feel comfortable having children?

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Just have kids, man. If you have kids when your combined income is 80k, you'll learn how to raise kids on 80k. Wife and I combined for 80kish when the first was born. We had to cut back on our preferences, but it was all "extra" anyways. Eat at home, not out 5 days a week. Skip vacation for a year or two. It's not the end of the world.

What would be the end of the world to me is knowing my kids would have never existed due to either my fear or selfishness. Having excess money and comfort has sort of become a god in America.

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Same. Wife and I together made $95k when my oldest was born. When she was 11 months olds I dropped out of the workforce to attend law school and my wife quit to move with me. We had our second the summer of my 2L year and were living completely off of savings.

The oldest turns 13 in September and the youngest just turned 10. Having kids was the best decision that I ever made. Period.

I do wish that I had them earlier. I'll be working until I am close to 70.

hedge said:

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Millennials having fewer kids could be a drag on the economy for the next decade, per BI

Millennials not having enough babies could crimp growth by 1-2 percentage points a year.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 24, 2024

Hard to argue with this, most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs. I think Gen Z is the same, but hat income did you older Millennials feel comfortable having children?

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The problem isn't that people are waiting to have kids until they feel financially secure. The problem is people thinking you should wait until you are financially secure before having kids. Now you should make sure you have a strong and stable marriage but that needs to be a priority to find and build, the finances is a secondary issue to that. The problem is that Millennials and Gen Z haven't prioritized marriage and don't have realistic expectations of marriage. Feminism, dating apps, online porn, materialism, and general cultural acceptance of not getting married are far bigger drivers than economics. Some of the folks having the most kids have are people in rural areas who have very little money and that's how things have always been. Blaming economics is just an easy excuse that avoids the deeper problems.

BTW, that doesn't mean there aren't serious economic issues at all. It's just the idea that "Well, if GDP were 5% and incomes rose while inflation fell then people would be having lots of kids" is simply wrong. At best it impacts the margins. I also agree that lack of kids will impact the economy as families with children drive demand.

hedge said:

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Millennials having fewer kids could be a drag on the economy for the next decade, per BI

Millennials not having enough babies could crimp growth by 1-2 percentage points a year.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 24, 2024

Hard to argue with this, most of my friend including myself have delayed or opted out of having children due to costs. I think Gen Z is the same, but hat income did you older Millennials feel comfortable having children?

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not having kids because they are too expensive is a complete BS excuse. Newsflash - kids cost money and you have to sacrifice wants to have them. We raised four kids and put them through college with my wife at home. We didn't go to star bucks every morning, drive $60k vehicles or travel overseas for our vacations but we still had a good life.

I think younger people now just don't want to sacrifice their good life to have kids.

Saying it's because of money is a lame excuse. This isn't the first generation that isn't independent wealthy enough to have kids in their mid-20's.

Yea, aren't you the type that complains when people are on welfare with kids. I don't think it's responsible to have a child if you genuinely can't afford it

I was in grad school when my wife got pregnant with our first. She had complications and had to quit work. I borrowed a lot more money than planned. I had just started a job making $28k/yr when number two came along a year after the first one, and then number three 22 months after that one. Needless to say, finances were a mess, and it took a long time to climb out of that hole.

Did not take one red cent of public assistance even though we qualified for it. I refused and took care of my family by borrowing and ultimately paying off every one of those loans with interest.

But thank God they came along when they did, because if we had waited until we were financially stable, we wouldn't have had children because my wife eventually developed a condition that required removal of her reproductive capability.

hedge said:

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Yea, aren't you the type that complains when people are on welfare with kids. I don't think it's responsible to have a child if you genuinely can't afford it

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Most people on welfare with kids are single moms that keep popping them out.

Very different from young married couples with jobs.