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Comment by nautilus12 | Hacker News Reader

Bye bye any hopes of raising a family.

Nice of you to impose your outdated values on how to live on others. The OP might perfectly be happy to not raise a family or just be interested in being with a partner without having kids.

If you don't have kids, this kind of lifestyle is perfectly sustainable and you can live happily on it. Kids are not a pre-requisite for happiness and it annoys me how so many discussions here start to equate standard of living and happiness to a situation where kids are involved.

Not just outdated values, but skewed. The idea that having kids is something that requires you to be a wage slave lacks imagination and perspective.

You can absolutely raise children without a high salaried position, big house and tons of plastic junk. People do it all the time.

In this case the author is in an even better position - he has savings, a house, a growing business, and has managed to get his expenses down to the point where he's breaking even. That's great! Why would anyone think this lifestyle would make him ineligible for parenthood?

Some would say kids would benefit more from a parent with this lifestyle (happy, living with purpose, knows how to budget, flexible work situation that lets them be around more often) than the big house and toys that the average American developer's job gets you.

Whoa, what an assumption, this says more about you than anything. I said goodbye "any" hopes of having children which says that "if" he wanted to have a family there is no way that he could do it in this way. What kind of chip do you have on your shoulder about children?

Not the guy you’re responding to but I also have a chip on my shoulder about children: people won’t shut up about me having them. My wife and I made the decision to not have children but every conversation it gets brought up. We buy a two seater car: there goes any hope of having children. We go on a two week vacation: you won’t be able to do that if you have children. She quits her job: nows the perfect time to have children! It gets old REALLY quickly.

Some people don’t want children. Ever. But there’s a lot of people just like you who can’t stop talking about children in every conversation. Why?

Seems like a really self centered worldview....

A lot of the "expense" of children is entirely discretionary. Yes, they do cost extra money to raise, but depending on where you live and your lifestyle, it doesn't have to be nearly the financial burden that some create an illusion of being a necessity. As a father of 3, when I look at most of the expenses related to my kids, the biggest ones are absolutely discretionary. Children are not born with expectations of a standard of living; that's something you define for them as your dependents. The idea that people with low-to-no income are unable to start families is provably false with examples all around us.

As also a father of three, the only significant kid-related expense we have currently (wife stays home with them) is the extra food they eat.

Basically that just means we don't go out to eat that often. Kids eating grocery store food is pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things (though I hear this changes once they get to their teenage years).

... assuming the author harbors such aspirations in the first place, which you and I don't know. And, frankly, nobody needs to know.

And no such assumption was made in the original statement.

Then why did you publicly make that statement in the first place?

I was saying "any" such hopes. IF someone had such an aspiration, then this would not be a possible course of action.

>And, frankly, nobody needs to know.

Well, it's hard to argue that it's not relevant to the discussion...

No. It's not. The blogpost said that he is able to live frugally because he has no dependents such as children. That's all there is to know.

You can ask "why?" but nobody is obligated to give you an answer. Pushing hard for an answer is considered rude. You may be asking someone to tell you really painful experiences they went through.

If worse comes to worse and he goes to $0 in the account, he can probably just get another job. I guarantee employers will look upon his self directed work ethic positively.

He can live his life without the regret of not trying to venture out on his own.

Edit: typo

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