Is it possible to have a big family MMM style?

[acroy]

6 kids, low 6figs, 65-70% savings rate, I consider our lifestyle semi-badasss. Semi-ass? half-ass?

We do carry more of a financial risk of course, i.e. if one of the kiddos becomes very ill.

Carefully examine life's priorities. Money is not everything; it's a means to an end. Kids > $$ (for us)

[sarajeanne]

It is possible, but harder. We have 4 kids and have saved enough now for retirement at ages 37 and 42. How with four kids? We both always worked and saved one income. I did have a monster income for the past 3 years so that helped. You have to be willing to make sacrifices though and it does push retirement back several years.

[Merrie]

I believe that in order to achieve FIRE one needs a surplus of income during their early adult years in order to invest. Starting a large family also is often started during our early adult years. It seems to me that they are competing goals.

Bingo.

For me, getting ahead in my career was a competing goal with having the family I wanted. I chose the family. I don't regret it, but I'm pretty sure I'd be happier at work if I'd done it differently. I could have maybe figured out a way to have both, and if I could do it all over again I think I'd know how, but at the time I couldn't figure it out. Same goes for investing/paying off debt, I was definitely a doofus about it.

If you don't have your financial house in order before having kids, it'll be way harder to achieve after having them.

[kathrynd]

Had a discussion with an elderly man the other day. He was one of 15 kids...with a stay at home mom, and his dad worked.
He and I joked that with the Child Tax benefits now, people with large families would get a good paycheque.

In Nova Scotia, it breaks down this way.
$20k for the working parent, before any income tax is owed (+ spouse deduction)

5481.91 month - child tax benefiit
224.08 GST month (paid quarterly)
-------------
=5705.99 total
+20k income

This is $88,471 yr

[Ednjenn]

We have 9 Kids currently and I’m now getting into badassity full swing.  I appreciate all the replies and love how much we’ve learned just by trolling around.  I’m blessed to have a very stable defined benefit pension and the ability to retire at 99% in my early 50s .  While it’s still later than most it will be appreciated due to the sacrifices a large family takes just for day to day operation.   Well worth it however as most don’t wish for more money on their deathbeds but the relationships are paramount!

[AMandM]

+1 to Goldielocks' post, and also

Not to be a doom-sayer, but really the thing that will kill your forward progress towards FIRE is divorce (and there is a whole other thread on here about it being a weapon of financial mass distruction)  Having lots of kids is really not the problem, its when the courts get involved and you have to support other households that FIRE gets harder and harder to get to.

And IME splitting up a non-marriage with kids involved can be even messier than getting divorced, financially and legally.  Of course no-one can predict the future, but be realistic: do you have grounds for lifetime confidence in your fiance?  Do your friends and family agree (assuming they're sane and stable themselves)?  Does your fiance want more kids? 

Speaking as a mother of seven, I think these are far more important issues than your debt load or retirement date.

[GU]

Seriously, developed nations are in no danger of over-populating the planet. We have the opposite problem -- not enough births to support our aging population. Ask Japan how their low birth rate is working out for them. We need more kids to be born in the U.S. or we're going to be in trouble. If not for immigration of children to this country (by people from underdeveloped nations with higher birth rates like Mexico) we'd already have a bigger problem like Japan.

Now, developed nations (and now developing -- I'm looking at you China and India) have an absolute problem with over-consumption of resources and over-production of pollution that is in far disproportion to their populations. But that is independent from, and almost completely irrelevant to, those country's birth rates. The fact that the U.S. produces something like 20% of the world's carbon emissions with < 5% of the population has everything to do with industry productivity (our large GDP) and automobile emissions, and almost nothing to do with the number of children being born (other than some of those kids will grow up one day to possibly drive a car which, in the US, will have low emissions anyway).

If you want to point fingers, look at your buddy China -- they are now consuming and polluting above all nations.

Regarding the OP: Have as many kids as you want, forget what anyone else thinks you should do.

The UN projects that, by the year 2100, Europe will actually have a lower population than it currently does, both Asia and Latin America will be about the same, and North America will have a modest increase (adding 140 million people).  But Sub-Saharan Africa is slated to add about 3.2 billion more people by 2100. If there's a "population bomb," and I'm very skeptical that there is, Sub-Saharan Africa will be the primary culprit.

Go to page 7 of this pdf (paginated as page 1) to view the data:  https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_KeyFindings.pdf

[121 Seconds]

We have 5 kids and in our part of Australia that is now quite unusual. When we are out together you can sense people are turning their heads to do a quick count.

I think one of the big points of MMM is to get your life and finances sorted so you can then go and live the life you desire.

For us that won't necessarily result in an uber early retirement as such for me, but we choose to live on one wage to maximise the time we have with the kids.

Remember life doesn't start at retirement, but don't waste your time trading hours at work to buy rubbish that you don't need.

Hopefully our time invested with the kids will help them to continue to grow some of their own food, be responsible, thoughtful contributors to society and be loving and kind to others.

[soccerluvof4]

Kimberly Clark announced yesterday they are laying of 5k people and shutting down plants due to the lack of babies being born.  Just thought I would toss that out there for the people that are worried to many kids are going to ruin the planet.

Anyhow , yes its totally possible. We have 4 kids , two in college now and 2 at home. Its all about the decisions you make, how you want to raise them and in our case our kids "were/are  a lot of our entertainment. For me its simply if you love kids and are fiscal responsible you can make it work at most any income. Yes there is sacrifice but a loving family the rewards so weigh out the sacrifice.
 I do respect those that don't have kids because better that then to have them just because.A lot of my friends who didnt have kids took comfort in ours.   The key is wanting them for the right reasons and taking the responsibility to help them become contributing members in society.  Wish you the best and wish we would have had more.

[swampwiz]

My fiancé and I have one son, 14 months old. We have mortgage and student loan debt that we are working on. I've always wanted a big family, maybe 3 or 4 children. However, after reading the blog and forums it seems like having more than one, maybe two children seems frowned upon. Is having more kids in a situation like ours completely irresponsible?

At one golden time in our recent history, it was quite easy for a man of decent moral stock to get a job and have his wife as a homemaker, with the kids well-nourished and attending quality, well-funded public schools - the glorious Middle Class that the GI & Silent Generations were able to be a part of.

The situation now is that the costs of raising a family is so high that the necessary welfare payments makes it so that unless someone is doing quite well, it just doesn't pay to both work and have a family.  It is precisely this reason it is politically popular to force people to work (even though having another body do an hour of work in the labor force gets balanced out by some other body having one less hour of work - think of the wonderful system of the "scheduling application" - since the underlying economic reasoning by a Rational Economic Actor would tell the worker that his net income after taxes and loss of means-tested benefits is just not worth his time.  For folks who don't need the finer things in life and who generate their happiness through family, it is worth it to just stay home and pump, followed by pumping out children.  The folks who have managed to make it well can afford the family and the finer things.  The folks in the middle have to overcome a true net deficit (non-dischargeable student loans) and high costs (i.e., housing, health care coverage, and nowadays, private school to keep junior from the unwashed mob), only to have a career that is constantly in danger of being made obsolete from a new way to arbitrage cheap foreign labor or Artificial Intelligence (or robots).

I think we have reached the "Mouse Utopia" peak.

[eaknet]

I have 6 kids, one 5 figure income,  and a 50% savings rate.  So...

Saw this and knew I had to post. I thought I was doing well with 4 kids, one 5 figure income, and a 50% savings rate.  So.....my hat goes off to you.

[Thegoblinchief]

Human impact: Homo sapiens caused more species to become extinct pre-Agricultural Revolution with a global population of several million than they’ve made extinct since the Columbian Exchange.

I’m big into environmentalism and sustainability, particularly on the agricultural side. The “feed the world” question, soil loss, carbon cycles, all fascinate me. Overpopulation is less of an issue than the way modern society is designed. Whether we can redesign society without a hard collapse because of resource depletion is a hard question, and history does not offer favorable examples. There are a number of alternative agricultural and urban planning models that could drastically reduce our planetary impact with small impact to quality of life, but they require huge paradigm shifts to enact.

I have three kids, we had our first at only 21 and until the last couple years made a median income, and we’re still not close to six figures. It’s a single income currently, but I worked part time for many years until recently. I ran a few scenarios and if we had the same number of kids, even having them very young, but had our frugal spending levels and had waited to buy our house until after the crash (when we would have had a more responsibly sized down payment) we would already be close to FI, maybe 3 years away or so.

As it stands we were relatively irresponsible in our 20s and didn’t find MMM until 29, but even so we should be FI by 45-50, possibly 5 years longer if we decide to buy acreage and move out of the city.

[Michael in ABQ]

Five kids here and I'm the sole breadwinner making about $70k a year. It's tough and right now we only save about 15-20%. Hopefully I can get my income up closer to the six-figure mark in the next few years. We homeschool as well so that's added work for my wife.

We made a conscious decision even before we got married that we were going to have a large family and she would stay home and homeschool them. We knew it would mean a lower standard of living than if we had both worked full time for a few years after college and delayed having kids or sent them to public school or daycare so she could work. My wife worked for about a year while I finished up college but we had our first child two months after I graduated so it's been just my income since then.

Our family is more important than money and the reason I want to achieve FIRE is to be able to spend more time with them.

[Lifestyle Deflation]

110% in favor of big family. I only have 1 child right now (baby) but the goal is 5+.

There's really nothing like the joy of having a large family. We'll figure out a way to make it work financially. The financial aspect to me is secondary to the life and legacy I want to leave.

I grew up in a big family (6 kids) and it was really great to have a group of siblings who look out for eachother, grew up the same way, etc. I want the same thing for my kids.

[champion]

One key thing to keep in mind on this topic is that most of us on here are richer than most people who have ever lived.  Yes, "the system" has gotten better at extracting money from people via inflation, taxation, inflated health care prices, inflated college prices, etc.  But overall this is a land of plenty relative to most places and most times in history.  If they could have 5 kids back then, so can we.  And the parents of those big families 200 years ago didn't have to work until they were 65 either.  ;-)

The average American house is now 2400 square feet, up from 1200 square feet 50 years ago.  If we think the average American house is necessary for us, then our costs will be high.  But the modern Averages are not necessary at all. 

Be fruitful and mulitply!

[JLee]

One key thing to keep in mind on this topic is that most of us on here are richer than most people who have ever lived.  Yes, "the system" has gotten better at extracting money from people via inflation, taxation, inflated health care prices, inflated college prices, etc.  But overall this is a land of plenty relative to most places and most times in history.  If they could have 5 kids back then, so can we.  And the parents of those big families 200 years ago didn't have to work until they were 65 either.  ;-)

The average American house is now 2400 square feet, up from 1200 square feet 50 years ago.  If we think the average American house is necessary for us, then our costs will be high.  But the modern Averages are not necessary at all. 

Be fruitful and mulitply!

Minor point - that's the average size of new construction (and has kept creeping up).  Generally people buying/building new construction are going to be more affluent, and with the rich getting richer I can't really say I'm surprised.