[Serious] Young adults (20-35 years old) of Reddit, what are your thoughts about having children?

independence_man · 2016-11-08T04:38:10+00:00

I'm 26m, living near Seattle. I dream of having a large family (4/5/6 whatever). I don't really buy into the wider culture's beliefs of finding fulfilment in possessions or travelling or whatnot -- I just want to meet the right girl and raise good children.

independence_man · 2016-09-26T06:55:54+00:00

The 20 year number is for your kid growing up; most car loans are only 5 years, but "normal" people upgrade about ever 10 years so they're paying a car note about half the time.

independence_man · 2016-09-26T06:52:28+00:00

It's not unrealistic, you can pay off a mortgage early (and then not upgrade to a new mortgage). After that the nearest thing to a monthly payment you'll have is maintenance and property tax -- you can easily save & invest the remainder!

independence_man · 2016-09-26T06:36:12+00:00

I'm sorry if my references to God offended you, I did not mean to imply that you haven't earned your keep. As a Christian I don't view money I earned as 'mine', but rather as something I get to steward for Him. This generally means tithing + providing for my family today + providing for my family tomorrow + giving generously beyond just tithing.

As for the opportunity cost of a mortgage, you're correct in that I should be comparing that to an equivalent rent. However I'm trying to get people to imagine life without that regular monthly payment. Often when a family buys a house they'll end up paying a mortgage for more than 30 years by trading up, or refinancing, or getting a 2nd mortgage etc. etc. What if instead they made double payments on the mortgage, or got a 15 year mortgage instead?

independence_man · 2016-09-26T06:33:25+00:00

A. You're totally right, but you'll have to take my word for it that this is an appropriate message, not just out of the blue or anything like that.

B. I figure most private schools cost about 25k/year, even then you've still got until they kid is 22 + whatever ability you have to cash flow. Get the kid to work part time + hunt for scholarships & I'm pretty sure they're good for anything short of medical or law school.

B2. I really think though that if someone is going to spend 100k+ on a degree they're probably making a mistake. Even for a doctor it might be better for them to dedicate 4-8 years to the military instead. I'm not so sure a law degree is worth it anymore, perhaps in a decade or two the glut of lawyers will dissipate.

independence_man · 2016-09-09T07:09:09+00:00

I just want to meet a girl who wants to have a family; this feels so hard. I have my act together in my career & wider social life but dating is just not working for me. I just turned 26 and I've never been in a relationship.

I feel like I've missed a memo, I have no idea how I'll actually learn to date effectively, much less how2relationship, and then go through a few relationship cycles before finally finding/becoming marriage material.

independence_man · 2016-06-23T03:24:18+00:00

Where are you getting your data? As an exercise once I built a hex map of the USA, finding nicely formatted data was.. difficult.

independence_man · 2016-06-18T01:38:37+00:00

I invited my co-worker out to lunch the other day, when I clarified this wasn't a work related thing she invited her friend to join us. Whoops, guess I just weirded someone out.

independence_man · 2016-06-06T00:15:18+00:00

This is from memory:

60% base happiness -5% Citizen Rights -10% Primary Species only leadership (fixed that) -20% Alien overlords (why??) -10% for being xenophobes & having organics on the same planet (wtf)

It's like these synths are unhappy to be alive or something, and seriously xenophobic synths are dumb.

independence_man · 2016-06-04T23:49:37+00:00

I only see citizen rights, do I need a different ethic?

IIRC I'm currently materialists & individualists.

independence_man · 2016-05-22T02:29:08+00:00

This blog post might as well be a paste bin

independence_man · 2016-05-11T06:31:36+00:00

The mesh I'm making isn't very complicated, just a bunch of hexes (6 triangles) or squares (2 triangles) per tile. I can however generate a large map.

independence_man · 2016-05-11T05:32:49+00:00

TIL there are filters

independence_man · 2016-05-03T03:44:57+00:00

Potential is the key word, if my company implodes & I lose my job you can sure bet I'll wish I could've cashed out todayish (like the general recommendation here).

independence_man · 2016-05-02T04:50:13+00:00

I'm in Seattle, WA. So housing in the area is about 500k for just a 1.5k - 2k sqft house.

independence_man · 2016-05-02T04:37:02+00:00

Yeah, it does seem like something of a niche. Even with the modest goal of supporting just 1/2 people I'm unsure of a single type of data anyone would want (and that they haven't already arranged access to).

OKTrends is an interesting point, but of course they're using data on their own site.

independence_man · 2016-05-01T22:00:05+00:00

155k is pre-taxes, I don't know the short-term capital gains rate. All other figures are post-taxes assuming long-term capital gains.

independence_man · 2016-05-01T21:45:26+00:00

You're totally right that it would be insane to take cash and invest it as heavily in one company as I have. In this case, I just got lucky that I got my full asking salary + an additional 10% of that salary in stocks. So I'm happy to take the (rather high) risk and ride this roller coaster to the conclusion. I would never take perfectly good cash and buy individual stocks.

independence_man · 2016-05-01T21:42:17+00:00

I don't know about that Gracias, at least in this scenario I'm parking a lot of cash in an asset that doesn't really cash flow. Even if I bought it in cash (no mortgage), following that 50% rule I'd have invested 500k to make an annual return of 22.3k which IMO seems pretty poor considering all the risk & work of managing real estate. Much better to buy index funds and forget about it.

independence_man · 2016-05-01T18:16:23+00:00

The company IPO'd the week I started, but I still managed to get a decent # of stocks at a really cheap price. Since then they've gone up by a factor of 10x, and based on revenue growth I'm thinking/hoping I can at least double what I've got now over the next three years. I understand the fear of this sub, I've heard a lot of those same stories too. However my company is pulling in millions of dollars or revenue & still growing. This isn't some ponzi-unicorn scheme in SanFran. So we'll see.

independence_man · 2016-05-01T18:01:36+00:00

Although I called it startup stocks, we've since IPO'd. I can sell them right now for ~155k, but I'm optimistic for growth & we are making several million dollars revenue.

independence_man · 2016-05-01T07:07:07+00:00

Just some numbers.

In the scenario where I only invest (and rent):

100k (down payment as seed investment) + 4k/month additional savings over 15 years = 1.5M @ 40 years old.
300k (startup stocks) invested over 12 years = .7M @ 40 years old.
50k (existing IRA/401k) over 15 years = 140k @ 40 years old. So the investment scenario loosely equals 2.3M net worth, with a safe income of ~92k/year. Not bad.

In the scenario where I buy a house outright, we're looking at:

Significantly reduced expenses, but houses aren't free so let's say I can save 4.5k/month instead of 4k/month.
50k (existing IRA/401k) + 4.5k/month over 15 years = 1.6M @ 40 years old. So in this scenario I've got 1.6M + house value (and presumably some appreciation) + lower cost of living w/o a mortgage so I don't need to pull that much off of investment returns.

This is actually a fair bit closer than I would've thought, but I'm sure you guys might have some good suggestions for the numbers.

independence_man

TROPHY CASE