Today I was having a conversation with Mom's housekeeper, who evidently is soon to be my housekeeper since Mom and Steven went behind my back and hired her for me one day a week. I love her she is a very sensible woman, and if it were not for her being born into abject poverty and lacking in funds for an education I think she would have a carrier other than a housekeeper. She is very well read, and very intelligent. She also does make pretty good money as a housekeeper, more than most teachers its just it is manual labor and she does have to work seven days a week. Anyway we were having a conversation about just kind of the basic things I wanted her to do for me, at Mom's she does everything laundry, windows, floors, you name it but I just primarily want her to clean the bathrooms at my house, and do the floors, and do our bedding, and i said well there really isn't much to pick up just mine and Steven's stuff (Steven won't use a hamper) and it isn't like we have any kids you have to pickup after and since we don't want any there probably never will be any for you to pickup after. She then turns to me and says "you don't want kids that is just so sad." I tend to get this remark a lot when I tell people I don't want children. I understand the concept of "it is diff. when they are your own children" and "you won't feel that way when you get older" but here is the thing I know myself pretty well. I'm not maternal, and Steven while he would make an excellent father knows I'm not maternal and we are both selfish. I don't mean to indicate that we dont' care of others we do but when it comes to our money and our time we are selfish in that we like to spend our time with each other and how we want and spend our money on ourselves. Children cost money and time. Then there is the whole situation where ppl. feel sorry for my parents because they won't have any grandchildren, I think most ppl. have figured out by now that Cody has no interest in having kids either. Let me be clear my own mother gets mad when ppl. feel sorry for her about this topic, Mom has another 4 years left on her term, she has other ambitions than being a grandma, and knows that if I have a kids she is going to have to help me raise it and she simply doesn't want to. I was a very late in life child making my parents very late in life grandparents if we were to have children and they dont' want to spend their twilight years running around after my kids which they know that if I have this carrier that they have paid for me a highly expensive education and Steven continues to work that they will be primarily responsible for my kids and they don't want to do it. I played an April fools joke on Mom last year and told her I was pregnant she did not speak to me for 2 days she was so mad, didn't even give me time to say April Fool. Here is my other issue and maybe it is the bigger underlying one, and that is I think it is borderline irresponsible to have children in this economy. I know that sounds terrible but we are now living in a society without a thriving middle class, with poor work environments for those who are employed, and with a crippling national debt. No, I do not want to bring a child into that situation. I'm a big believer in being able to afford your kids. I was born into a family where my parents home was paid off before I was born, I have gone to some of the best Universities around without student loans because my Mom and Dad had enough saved to send me, having no student loans is a huge leg up in my life, and I wanted for nothing. Today with Steven teaching school and me being a lawyer we may not be able to provide for our children what my parents provided for me. The truth is my generation is going to work longer and harder to receive financially half of what our parents had, it is going to take us more money to retire, it will cost us more to educate our children and the way the country is headed if you aren't in the top 5% of wage earners (which lawyers and teachers are not you have to be a major CEO to be in that category) you may not be able to send your child to college at all because of the expense, and certainly not debt free because you won't be able to save enough to do it in 18 years or you may be able to save enough to do it at the cost of not having any retirement because my generation will have to have private retirement accounts, the age of a paid pension is coming to an end. I see so many ppl. having kids, and yes they are precious, but those parents are living in the NOW, you know now I have a beautiful baby, now my child is walking etc. they aren't thinking in 18 years can educate this child, in 18 years will I have enough to retire and not be a burden to this child, they aren't thinking am I going to be able to provide everything this child needs and be able to provide for my old age or pay off this house. Children cost money and I do think it is highly socially irresponsible having one and not knowing how you will pay for it, and being to able to handle a child financially when the child is very young is like an installment contract where the price of what you are purchasing increases over time so by the time year 18 comes around you are going to be paying 30 times the original amount, you need to be able to pay that amount from the get go. I also know ppl. say well my kids didn't grow up w/all those things and it didn't affect them, that is where you are wrong it does. My husband was deeply affected by his families early finances. My in laws do great today financially but when Steven was little they lived in a trailer, and he can remember them being what he describes as poor. If anyone says the phrase "trailer trash" he gets deeply offended because he knows that until he was 5 or 6 he lived in a trailer. He also can remember not getting things he wanted because they could not afford it and to this day if I say something like let's cut back a little this month he jumps to the conclusion we are broke. Well we aren't broke but any thought that we might not be 100% financially stable deeply troubles him so when I say let's cut back and save 100 dollars he here's the sky is falling and we are broke, he doesn't ever want to be financially unstable again because he knows he it felt when he was young. He won't go back to school until I get out, even though I think he needs to be going now, because he knows going back will require a student loan and any form of debt scares him, because he associates it with being poor, and Steven has told me himself more than once that he attributes this attitude he has towards money to his early childhood. The reason I handle all of our finances is simply that he cannot handle the stress of money because he knows what it is to live without it and the stress of handling it scares him. So what you are doing to your children in their early years because of your financial debacles does affect them, even into adulthood. I just know that for me personally in order to have a kid I would need my dream home to be built, it to be at least 50% to 60% paid off, my salary to be at least somewhere in the 50,000 to 60,000 range, my savings to be over 100,000 and everything else cars, trucks, land paid off, and I won't have a kid under other financial circumstances, because to do so wold scare the living daylights out of me. I would constantly be up at night thinking how am I going to pay for this kid. For me and Steven to retire on 30,000 a year we need over a million dollars saved up in private accounts by the time we hit retirement, a private education at the best universities could cost half a million dollars, so we would have to live off one salary and save the other for retirement and education of a kid, and that is just one kid if you have two you can double that and add on interest. My own education has cost my parents well over 400,000 dollars, so yes I know children are expensive you add in that they have bought me cars, given me property to start my home, given me a home, and ya I've probably cost them 600,00 bucks easy, and I wouldn't raise my child any diff. than I have been raised. The best thing you can do for your kid is send them out into the world with no debt, and good financial practices. I have no debt and I thank God every night for it because most of my classmates are looking at 400,000 in debt and a starting salary of about 45,000 with a bad job market so that is if they find work. The same lawyer who were billing 500 an hour 3 years ago are now billing half that, that is scary for our profession and makes our future very uncertain. My own husband is a public employee, a teacher, and we all know how teachers are getting treated these days especially here in Oklahoma being a teacher is very uncertain and I pray to God nightly dear Lord please let my husband keep his job. I recently had a friend who asked me why in the world I prayed that every night, and the simple answer is teachers have a rough road ahead of them in this state and have been thrown under the bus so many times this legislative session that it is daunting, if I were to have a kid with Steven's job uncertain (because the jobs of all of our teachers in this state are uncertain in this political climate wheter you choose to believe that or not it is just the truth look at the legislation) and me in law school with no income I would be about the most irresponsible human I know. I'm 26 and Steven and I may change our minds and have a kid we have a cut off point and it is me turning 31 so if in the next 5 years we change our minds, achieve all the above mentioned financial goals, and the economy picks back up, and we decide to not be selfish then we may have a kid. In the meantime please don't feel sorry for me, or Steven or say our not having kids is sad. When you look at all the money and worry we are saving ourselves by not having any kids you might actually be jealous of us, if you don't have kids you can travel change carriers, get educations, save large amounts of money for your golden years so you will be taken care of properly, and let's not forget that kids interfere with well ( how you spend your time and what you spend it doing ;). Just on a side note many ppl. have children so they will have someone to look after them in their old age, from my work in the nursing home industry I can tell you that plan doesn't pan out most patients in nursing homes their kids never darken the door, same for assisted living facilities, and hospice, the thing that will get you threw your old age is money, if you want to be taken care of in style money is the only thing that will do it not your kids, besides you should have kids for you to take care of them not the other way round.
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