"A few years ago, one of my friends confessed something over coffee. She leaned forward. Her voice fell to a hush: “I love my kids, but from a financial standpoint, I regret having them.”
My friend is a tenured professor. She’s published books with major presses, including Oxford. People beg her to speak at conferences.
Despite all this, her family is barely getting by. (Her husband is also a highly-regarded professor in engineering.) When she was done talking, her face glowed with shame.
It’s a common story these days."
I always knew I would be too poor to afford kids, plus my parents were terrible role models for me about parenting, so I am childless by choice and never have regretted it, even tho when I was young it cost me any chance for LTRs in the dating game. Even with all that, I still was never financially secure until I was 59 years old, three years ago, when I inherited enough money to retire and could begin receiving SS Survivor's benefits at age 60. Until then, my whole adult life was living paycheck to paycheck and being poor.