How to factor in FIRE when kids may or may not be in the future?

Investing / Portfolios
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I totally respect that, and for many it is the right decision. But note, that we also change ourselves as people with time, and what we want now might not be what we want in the future. It’s not constant, so priorities and wishes might change. I had kids a bit later in life - and I’ve done it all until then - until it started to be boring. Cocktails on beaches, travels, dinners in fancy restaurants, beers in bars, ski vacations, hikes, boats, been around the globe etc - all became routine.

Kids rewire your brain and you actually become a different person. You get an extra life experience. Some people say that parenthood is like “playing poker with real money” (i.e., high stakes, real consequences, skin in the game), while life without children can feel more like playing with play money or “just for fun,” in the sense that the stakes emotionally and financially are perceived as lower. I get to live once, so getting the full menu and dealing with it completes the experience. On a separate note, I know some older people, in their 60s, and life became a bit lonely for them, although they have FU money and can do whatever they want. We do change with time and what we want know is not what we’ll want in the future (just like what we wanted 5-10-15 years ago might not be what we want today).

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I stopped seeing FIRE as one number and started seeing it as levels of freedom
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This is true and it isn’t hyperbole. Having kids creates hormonal changes (also in the father!) and makes you a different person. So while you may not want to have kids, the post-parent-you probably will.

I saw the most extreme example with a friend of mine who never wanted kids, hated kids and was hell-bent on an aggressive climb up the corporate ladder.

When she fell pregnant, she was devastated. She didn’t want the kid, but various religious/social reasons meant that she wasn’t willing to have an abortion either.

When the kid was born there was a total transformation. She was focussed only on the child. Not only that, she made a complete 180 on her work too and said how stupid she was to have wasted her life in the multi-national company she worked for.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KJV)

I’d say the difference between a man and a father is greater than that between a child and man.

I remember once asking a colleague who had recently had a child what it was like. He told me “You have your life before kids, and your life afterwards. And the two are completely different.” As a someone in their late 20s at the time, I thought he was just exaggerating. I didn’t understand and honestly, I don’t think it was possible for me to understand.

In the same way you can try to explain to a child what is different as an adult from a child, but they won’t really get it. It just seems you grow a bit taller and get to do what you want. The changes as a parent are even more subtle, but impact greater.

Anyway, it is not to say that it is better: it is a different life, not a better life.

From a FIRE perspective, with unpredictability on the future in terms of spouse, kids it can be prudent to add a little buffer to your plans in case they change. As someone who FIREd once as a single person and then got un-FIREd when 2 kids came along, I know this well.

Also, I personally know of 3 cases where the mother was told they would never have children due to various medical reasons and nature unexpectedly found a way.

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I know one but it’s relevant to the thread: friend of mine was like your female friend above - and still is - doesn’t like kids, didn’t want kids. His wife was told she can’t have children for various reasons including having a single ovary. One unprotected occasion…pregnant. Twins. Not making this up.

Sadly my friend has still not come 'round.

Anyway, this is Cortana’s thread and decision so let’s not derail it further!

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One of the women I knew had something similar, Doctor: “something, something, uterus, something impossible to have children”.

The lady ended up having 4 kids.

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Direct experience here… never looked that hard to become a father, now I have two young kids. Not easy at all for me, i would have loved independence, but it’s hard to think about a life without them.

All the allocations from the canton go straight into their 100% equities account. The elder one - almost 6 - has the money i had when i was probably 28. The young one - not even 2 years old - has the money i had after working three months in Switzerland saving 70%.

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I actually expect social awareness on having a higher birth / fertility rate might play in favor of FIRE couples with children.

I give it another 10y or so until we get some real subsidies for families. Let’s be real, the 200-300CHF you get per kid is a joke, even with the tax discount. It should be much more, like factor 2-3x

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I agree that it’s not much. But money doesn’t seem to be the deciding factor for getting kids. Otherwise, only wealthy people would have kids. But I think statistics shows the opposite.

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There is some evidence that fertility rate is U-shaped. If you earn between 75-175k (which is the majority) having kids has quite a high impact on the lifestyle you can afford. I don’t have data but this effect is probably very pronounced in europe where income distribution is narrow.

If I wouldn’t plan to have kids I probably would save much less and already bought a sportscar.

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IMO, the major tax benefit come from daycare deduction up to 26k by kid.

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It’s a big discount, yes. But you need to pay that amount first, before you can deduct it and get 20-30% back. :wink:

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To be fair to non-parents I’m willing to offer the same benefit: for each 100 Fr. you transfer to me, I’ll transfer back a 30 Fr. rebate :smiley:

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Imho working so you can put your kids into daycare is a bit dystopian… Even if you earn really well why have kids at that point?

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I put my kids 100% from when they were aged 2. There are lots of advantages:

  1. They learn local language - at home we speak French and English so this way they grow up tri-lingual
  2. They socialize, unless you live in a generational household, or with lots of other kids on the same street, they have far more social interaction than at home
  3. You preserve your career: in reality, the kids will start kindergarten and school soon and will anyway be in a similar set-up
  4. Morning, evenings and weekends is not just enough, it is MORE than enough. I think in the first year, I spent more time with my eldest than my dad had ever spent with me in my lifetime! Yeah, my kids are interesting and fun but not every-waking-hour-interesting-and-fun.
  5. You keep your sanity. Spend 24/7 with your kids a few months and then report back on whether you want to do that for a few years :smiley: Thank you covid for that experience! (I joke, it was actually nice but way too exhausting)
  6. Would you make the same arguments for school? Why put them into full time school instead of home-schooling them? Why bother having kids if you’re going to send them to full time education? It’s an argument that makes no logical sense.
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You have to put them in school, I don’t think oursourcing your kids most of the time is healthy and to be honest, and I don’t want to attack anyone personally here, but this really shows. Swiss family ties in generl aren’t that strong anyway - but I still think sacraficing your kids and outsourcing them to a 3rd party is not something I (and my wifeI) will pursue - especially since we likely want a bigger family.

Our kids also will likely be trilingual - but i’m also a native Swiss German speaker, so integration isn’t a problem.

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How much time do you plan to spend with your kids? How much will you outsource to your wife?

I hear this attitude surprisingly often from people who don’t have kids (and therefore do not understand the reality and real life experience of child care dynamics) and who do not intend to be the one to give up their job to look after kids.

Also you don’t have to put them in school, home-schooling is also possible.

One thing to realize: the relationship with kids is personal. The wife cannot substitute your time with the kids any more than daycare can.

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It’s actually very healthy… but for the whole family. On top of what PhilMongoose already said, your child will learn to behave around other children, from early on, which makes a huge difference later when they go to kindergarten and get more and more social. I see a lot of children who stay at home until kindergarten but while at home, they get a phone or a tablet or 3-4 hours of screen time per day because the parents can’t take it anymore. Yes, the child needs your full attention during the entire time he/she is awake… and assuming you can do that at home for the whole day it’s absurd. Unless you let them play alone by themselves, that can be teached to them, but then it’s not a better life that they have. Then, if children go in kita for example, the mental load for the family and wife is lower, depression really is a thing for stay at home moms. Not to mention lastly, career impact, savings impact etc.

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I remember reading that, at least in Europe, the second part of the U is mostly the old-wealth ultra-catholics families, who often have many children for religious reasons.
Not sure how it applies to Protestant Zürich.

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Yeah, unfortunately as immigrants we have no family here who can help so it is unrelenting between work and children.

But we are both fairly strict with regards to screens. No phones/tablets for the kids. No TV at home.

For a couple of years I let them watch Peppa Pig 4 mins a day to help with their English but once they could read this was replaced with them reading. I let my son watch some octonauts so he knows what it is and can interact with his friends at school about it.

But otherwise, I don’t like screens as they are too stimulating for kids. Even when we fly, I don’t give them screen time. I notice a big difference between kids who use screens a lot and those that don’t: the ones that do seem to get very quickly and easily bored.

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I’ll “work” from home as much as possible, so 3-4d a week + weekends. My wife will likely stay at home, since she’s stuck in a dead end career / job, that’s not worth pursuing further while having kids. She earns like 50K full time - you can get a job anytime that pays this, even as a returning mother ( in her field).

I don’t think you need to give up your job to have kids - but I also don’t think career is something that goes before family. We’re in a free country, do as you please of course. This Forum has a heavy tilt towards high earners and expats - I also earn decent, but not so high and for me, this would be a deal breaker. I’d rather raise 4 kids on 60K than to work for 120K+ and only have them on the weekends.

You’re presenting a strawman argument. I never said to give kids a tablet for 4 hours - that’s the worst thing you can do. Raising your kids yoruself doesn’t mean they become tablet-addicts. Our neigbourhood is also full of children, so this isn’t a problem.

In the end it’s a preference - no matter what choice, you ofc need to raise your kid properly for it to become a propper adult. That includes socializing, discipline, etc. My personal experience and also the people I see around me that come from parents that likely put them into Kitas isn’t very good - not because they aren’t polite or decent, but because Swiss society (and other Swiss people) doesn’t teach the family values I want to teach to my children and who I’ve been taught.

The fact that “keeping your job” even is a consideration, when it means outsourcing your kids, is a good example. This isn’t just like cleaning your house - I want the maximum possible influence, when it comes to the development of my children (within a reasonable manner) and forfeighting said influency for some Fränkli is - as I said - very dystopian to me personally.

This argument just doesn’t appeal to me - anything can give you depression, sometimes you just need to “tough it up buttercup”… Kids are a 20y very intense and then stilll a life long commitment - and more than that, once they’re out, you already spent like 90% of the time you had with them.

We do have my parents here, but they live > 20’ far away by car - hence my wife will stay home. A kid in Kita costs 25-40K a year

I think teaching media competence and especially how to use tools (like AI) to ease the school life of the is quite smart - provided they use it well. But kids <5-7y really don’t need a smartphone at all and reading sounds much more productive :+1:

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You might want to do an exercise:

  • Map out your child’s day e.g. 12 hours from 7:30am to 7:30pm
  • For each half hour slot, map out what activity the child will do: time with which parents, physical activity, social activity, languages learned etc.
  • Figure out the logistics too e.g. for lunch who prepares, what happens to kid during this time etc.
  • Review if it is plausible (e.g. one parent with full on 8 hours a day activity with kid is not realistic from energy/sanity perspective)
  • Then map this out for a week including weekends

Compare the curriculum in daycare scenario vs stay at home scenario. When we did this, we found the daycare scenario far better for the kids. What we do with kids in morning and evening can then complement what they do in daycare.

I also did the same for home-schooling, but even if you ignore the social aspects, it made more sense to augment state school rather than go full home-schooling. Private school was also an excellent option with full day teaching and bi-lingual lessons.

By way of background, I’ve taught in 2 schools and did my Masters thesis in Mathematics Teaching. Teaching is no joke. The work required to prepare lessons (admittedly many good resources now available) is already huge and teaching itself is a skill, on top of that you have to align with official curriculum.

Ultimately, the academic learning might be less important than learning how to interact socially.

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