Posted by Dave on November 22, 2011
This is a guest post by Dave, who is also looking to retire no later than 45, but unlike Tim has no kids and doesn’t want any. Dave is from Ontario and is working towards his CGA certification.
In my “debut” post 2 years ago, I discussed my wife’s and my aversion to having children. This past weekend we talked about this again and are still fairly steadfast in maintaining our childless household. This is kind of an amusing viewpoint to have, as I am writing this post while going to see my new niece, just born an hour ago (apparently my brother doesn’t really agree with me and my views on children as this is his second girl born in 17 months). My wife and I spent the weekend with our nephews, aged 8 and 4 and after we were done playing with them (which was fun) we were both very happy for the quiet ride home.
In the past two years, my views haven’t really changed around having kids although I think my reasons have a little bit. In my first article, I wrote about how expensive kids would be and how it would limit my chances of retiring early. Since then, I have come to believe that kids are as expensive as you make them. If you go out and outfit an entire room with fancy furniture, buy disposable diapers, and attempt to buy your kid a good childhood, then I could see how having children could easily approach the average cost of $250,000 I quoted in my original post. Otherwise, I think costs could be kept down fairly low.
Where my views have changed, beyond my own personal preference to be free to do what I want to do when I want to do it (maintaining what could be called a selfish lifestyle) I really don’t know why I would add to the population. The UN recently had a huge celebration that we as a species have achieved a population of 7 billion people. For me to make a decision to add to this, is essentially being selfish. I can’t really see how me and my wife adding to the population is really going to help anything. The only reason I would be having a kid is because I would want one, as the choice is available. Everyone out there adding to the 7 billion people on the planet is basically saying “What’s one more person?”
I’m not getting all Malthusian here or anything, I’m sure that we’ll somehow figure out a way to get more food for the next 7 billion people on the planet – I’m simply saying that, from the standpoint of the species as a whole maybe we should calm down a little bit in our population growth. I don’t think the addition of another few billion people is going to have a positive effect on the planet, but nobody really talks about that (I’m going to say that population control is not a very popular campaign to run on).
So, no real change here, from my wife or myself. We love kids, we just love to be done with them after a visit. We are enjoying our freedom, and the maintenance of our DINK status.
I understand that this is kind of a charged subject, but my question of the day is can you see how down the road the planet will be a better place if we maintain our current level of growth? Thinking of this, would you think twice before adding to this growth?
Posted by Canadian Dream on August 26, 2011
With a deep sigh I realized that summer is coming to a close faster than I would like which means it will soon be back to school time from my oldest son and….myself.
The little guy is much easier out of the two of us as we got his school list which includes crayons, pencils, glue, paint shirt and of course some new clothes and shoes (the kid is growing like a bad weed). As of today we got just about everything the kid needs for a mere $132. A fraction of the average Canadian back to school spending that comes in at $319.
How do we keep the costs down? Well here is what works for us:
- Shop the deals. For example Staples provided a lot of basic items like glue and pencils because of their sale prices. Old Navy had a good sale that my wife got a lot of clothing for a steal and then Walmart rounded out some of the clothes and shoes.
- Does it have to be new? Then we recycled several items from last year that were still fine like his pencil case and lunchbox. For a paint shirt I dug into my shirts to find the one I liked the least and stuffed it in his backpack. Look around your house and you might be surprised to find out what you already own.
- Buy Quality for Some Items. We made the mistake last year of getting a backpack that our son loved, but it was poorly made. It only lasted a year unlike his first backpack which got several years of use because we bought better quality.
As for me I’m heading back to take some adult education classes to get a Professional Management Certificate from my local university. You might wonder why I would bother to get more education when I plan on retiring early? Well the classes are mostly business based which will provide some useful skills for my day job, my school board job and even my own business. My philosophy in life is learning something new never kills you and often more helpful than I expect.
I haven’t even started my classes yet, but I’ve learned a few important things about my adult education so far:
- Get it Free. My day job is actually paying for me to take this certificate as they are looking for people to have more business skills in the company. Talk about a nice $4000 job perk! If that isn’t possible check out this article on ways to pay for it.
- Try to Get Paid Time Off. Beyond the generous paying for the classes my work is also paying me my usual wage to attend. So how is that for a nice touch to make you want to attend class: get paid to learn.
- Giving Up Some Things. Beyond the obvious purely financial support to attend these classes I also know I will have to give up some of my free time to study. So that means less books to read and movies for entertainment for a while, but I think it will be worth it.
So how much have you spend on your kids for back to school spending? Or would you bother taking some extra classes yourself?
Posted by Dave on May 17, 2011
This is a guest post by Dave, who is also looking to retire no later than 45, but unlike Tim has no kids and doesn’t want any. Dave is from Ontario and is working towards his CGA certification.
My seven-year-old nephew had a very profitable Sunday – it was his first communion at his church and in total he received $500 in cash. I don’t know about most people, but I really wouldn’t know what to do with $500 at that age – I couldn’t fathom the amount of stuff that I would be able to buy with that much money . I don’t think I ever had $500 in my name until I started my first job when I was 11 years old.
I was curious, so I calculated what this amount of money would work out to at a conventional retirement age (65) at 7% interest compounded once per year (just a simple calculation) – around $25,000. This got me thinking – if I were a parent (which I never plan to be) would it make sense to set up a “retirement” account for my kids? If for example, you started a DRiP (Dividend Reinvestment Plan) with $1,500 and added an additional $1,500 per year until your child was 18, by age 65 (in an ideal world of course) the dividend account would be worth over $1,000,000*.
I understand that this amount of money may not be achievable for most people, but really any amount of money would work out to a sizable amount of money 65 years later.
To me, a parent starting up this kind of portfolio would have been much more useful than say an education account (something that I didn’t get, but is discussed at length sometimes in many personal finance blogs). Perhaps I would have appreciated the education account while I was scraping by going to school, but down the road I believe I would appreciate having the “cushion” of a future retirement account accruing money that I’m not having to save right now.
What a retirement portfolio started at age zero would provide is freedom later in life. If I knew at age 15 or so that I wouldn’t have to save for retirement (or at least not very much) perhaps my life would have been a little different. Right now I wouldn’t have to work full time, as I would only really need “subsistence” level wages (to pay for current expenses) rather than worry about future expenses. As long as the parent has provided at least a small amount of personal finance knowledge I think that most people would be able to experience more in life than working the normal 8+ hours a day 5 days a week.
Is this a wacky idea created by someone who doesn’t understand what it means to have kids, or would you parents (or “someday parents”) think about creating an account that would provide for your child’s retirement? For me, I think I would be more than appreciative as an adult having an account like this. I personally think that too much weight is put on saving for kids education, something that they should be able to pay for themselves. This is simply an option that may help down the road.
*I’m not looking at taxes or anything here, this is just the pure compounded portfolio.
