But arguably if you remain childfree you'll be able to throw money at the problem - you can afford a luxury nursing home.
It doesn't work out well.
The people in the nursing homes/hospice still are only their to be paid. They don't care about you deep down.
So, things like bedsores are allowed to fester, cancer diagnoses come a bit later than you'd like, loneliness sets it (especially during covid), your diapers aren't changed all that much, you get sent out to the ER even for little things, etc. Your care is, essentially, being chosen by a lawyer and then enacted by a low paid employee who would like a real career where they don't treat old crazy people like babies.
Sure, you can choose a super luxe home to the tune of ~$50k/mo. I had an extended relative that was on a great series of pensions (guaranteed income) and was in a home that was costing ~$25k/mo. They were there for ~15 years. It still didn't go all that well and the family was called in at least twice a week to help out with things. Other people there without family nearby, let alone any at all, didn't fair nearly was well, typically 2-3 years. Then covid hit, and all hell broke loose for everyone.
If you don't have someone watching out for you that really does care for you, you're going to be treated poorly. Especially if you develop any mental problems in your old age.
You don't have to have kiddos, but you do have to have someone out there nearby who really will get out of bed at 3am for the third time this month to come help you when you're blind and demented to physically lift you up and wipe your incontinence off.
But as life slides towards that state, it's amazing how people still find very good reasons to stick around. It's strange to us, but even blind and demented, life is still worth living.
In my little bit on experience, the only thing that makes life not worth living seems to be pain. When we're in a lot of pain, then people tend to opt out of living. But until there is pain, there's still something in life that makes it all worthwhile.
Kids won't always do this. In fact it's possible for kids to be the ones treating you poorly in your old age, and it happens more often than people like to admit.
> You don't have to have kiddos, but you do have to have someone out there nearby who really will get out of bed at 3am for the third time this month to come help you when you're blind and demented to physically lift you up and wipe your incontinence off.
Again, you're making a huge assumption that if you have kids, they will be caring. Maybe you've never seen people whose kids are nasty or simply uncaring, but anybody who has kids is making that gamble.
But if you're the one raising them, you've got a hell of a way to bias that coin flip. Or, to extend the metaphor, mint new coins.
That said, I'll throw in my two cents here because it's as good a place as any. Though I have internal conflict on the whole issue of having children, I have to say that treating them as a means of investment for old age care has two issues - one, it seems kind of like a dick move to them, and two, it's far from guaranteed; they could have their own ideas.
Yes some parents would rather send thier kids to a private school and to be frank, we do, but that is a choice not a requirement.
I don't know any place where the only option for schooling is an expensive private school.
Saying that kids are not financial worth it, then constantly moving the goal posts to create a strawman to justify it is a waste of people's time.
If someone wants to argue that kids with special needs who require private schooling and a fully detached house in Palo Alto are expensive and a stretch to financially justify that is one thing but let's get a clear play field so that the goal posts are not constantly in flux.
Forgoing children is no guarantee of a luxury lifestyle nor grant you a luxury stay during your twilight years.