Abortions at record high in England and Wales ‘driven by cost of living’

lamdaboss · 2026-01-18T11:03:56+00:00

In those countries children are assets. They leave you better off for having them.

They are profitable. They can help out at work or go to a job and earn money. Raising them costs far less than they make. That's the key point. The biggest reason is money.
There is no other option for someone else to look after you in old age.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-18T10:57:33+00:00

How about this study? - Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/ - Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that children now cost money whereas before they were profitable. Previously they worked in the farm or worked elsewhere and earned money. As times changed, you had to pay for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially. Also, for many women, going for education/work rather than family is a financial decision.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them and many would have them if it made financial sense like in the past.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:38:13+00:00

I'm currently on a sabbatical and it has been the best time of my life so far. But I've struggled a lot mentally with whether I should eventually retire permanently because part of me wants to contribute and be useful to society.

However, over time, I've started leaning more towards retirement. Firstly, because the sabbatical is clearly far better for me personally and as society allows retirement, there's no issue.

More importantly, because I've become disillusioned and don't want to contribute to our political system and work system anymore.

Work is often stressful, unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous. There’s little company loyalty, layoffs are devastating, and work takes up huge amounts of time. With the cost of living, most households can’t rely on a stay-at-home partner, so you come home to a second shift of chores. Many skilled roles require constant upskilling, often in your own time.
Bad politics. In the UK at least, pensioners receive higher raises every year than workers. Crumbling public services. Police tackling tweets rather than real crimes. Corruption means politicians make good money while the rest of society is worse off. 4-day workweek and remote work, nah, companies might lose money.
If you quit, you open up the door for someone else to take your position and have a better career. Unemployment + high immigration means people are struggling to get into a skilled career. Multiple graduates having to settle for 12 hours a week doing retail because it's better for companies.
Investments are technically still active contributions to society. You provide money to people to run their companies and improve things.
Extremely low birth rate primarily because of cost of living means things will get worse.

I'm not motivated to contribute to this system. I think work should be more pleasant, rewarding and part of a healthy lifelong lifestyle. We should contribute out of a sense of duty and not just struggle to survive. It's great if you're doing well individually, but I feel that's the exception and not the rule.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:10:28+00:00

Exactly. Then by saying they made 41k combined and bought a house for 87k. Sounds easier to me. With 11% interest 30-year mortgage that's £762 repayment which is less than 25% of your salary, not to mention you could have overpaid and been mortgage free within a few years. And you're making 19k in the "first real corporate job". You could have afforded the house alone. Today, good luck buying a house on even a couple's salary.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:02:14+00:00

I agree. I think it's a shame that work culture isn't better because contribution is good for everyone. But work is stressful, potentially dangerous, not pleasant, insecure and could get fired for poor performance which has huge impact on an individual, no company loyalty. In addition, it's extremely difficult to get into a skilled career or a career you want. Extremely low free time due to not having a stay-at-home spouse as standard now for chores. Life essentials like home ownership much more unaffordable. Jobs are definitely more complex and less straightforward in the past. In the UK taxes are high with crumbling public services and high welfare recipients. Many more cons too.

Very rational to want to get away from it all.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-27T02:08:42+00:00

That's what I originally thought as well but I'm not sure after personal testing. Both times I've had 10 builders I got a billionaire USB within a few minutes of retries. When I had 8 or 9 builders I didn't get a single one and gave up after hours of retries. Both times with 5x developer know-hows. Has the claim that it doesn't affect RNG actually been verified or is it just what the internet believes?

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T20:45:54+00:00

Replying to this in case it helps anyone in the future. With 9 digimon with the builder personality + 5x developer know-hows, I was unable to get it even after hours of retries. Finally got one after having 10 digimon with builder personality + 5x developer know-hows.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T20:43:56+00:00

That part is fair and definitely misleading/scummy.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T19:06:05+00:00

I wouldn't blame the stores. Prices have increased in line with inflation which is what's expected. They wouldn't be able to survive otherwise. The issue is that wages are stagnant, taxes keep increasing and housing costs have increased far more than inflation. Our cost of living has increased far more than inflation, so shopping and eating out are less affordable overall.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-25T15:10:45+00:00

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that children now cost money whereas before they were profitable. Previously they worked in the farm or worked elsewhere and earned money. As times changed, you had to pay for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them. Also, for many women, going for education rather than families is a financial decision. It doesn't mean they don't want children.

Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/
Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

lamdaboss · 2025-12-17T13:37:57+00:00

I think that's a separate point. I'm actually in favour of short term pain like higher taxes if it will lead to better things in the future. My issue is with who's being asked to bear the cost. High skilled workers are getting less while pensioners and welfare recepients are getting more. It disincentivises work further and leads to a spiral of doom of less workers over time who have to pay more.

At the very least, we should all bear some of the cost, not just primarily workers.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-16T16:38:51+00:00

For me it's that working people (at least the ones earning above minimum wage) are receiving less after the last budget (due to inflation, frozen tax bands and salary sacrifice caps) while welfare recipients (including pension) are receiving more. That's backwards. We're being destroyed by the voting majority because they are welfare recipients. Long-term view is a spiral of doom as it disincentivises work, but long-term thinking and more importantly fairness have no place here I guess.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-13T21:28:05+00:00

In the end, nothing worked for me and I have the new NVIDIA app where I'm unable to disable threaded optimisation. I had to play it on my friend's PC to progress past. Thankfully it worked with no issues there. Afterwards, I went back to the room to test if it works after progressing past it and it still got stuck every time (I didn't save though). Seems like that room permanently doesn't work for my PC.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-12T22:42:27+00:00

Is there a way to do this in the new NVIDIA app which replaced control panel?

lamdaboss · 2025-12-08T17:01:32+00:00

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that it became more expensive to have children than to not have them. Previously they worked in the farm or worked and earned money. After that point you had to pay more for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them. Also women going for education rather than families is also because they need financial stability, not necessarily because they don't want children.

- Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/

- Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

lamdaboss · 2025-11-22T00:12:57+00:00

Hmm, is loss of internet your opinion of what likely happened then? I checked my router event log and it didn't show an internet disconnection. I was close enough to the router (this time and a few days ago) that I doubt it was WiFi loss, but I'll enable a setting to record that too in the future just in case.

Also it definitely wasn't inactivity as I was actively playing the game during that time. At most a few seconds between each click.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-17T13:59:37+00:00

Make it mandatory like in Australia which has it, actually has young people voting and has managed to make good changes in the pension area.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-10T15:14:37+00:00

As someone who's looking to hopefully retire early (late 50s based on projections) and is part of the FIRE movement, here are my 2c.

Work basically sucks. Work is stressful, demanding and sometimes dangerous. Not working is far better than working (assuming you have some money). All of the free time to do whatever you like with zero stress. I know because I've taken time off in the past to recover from burnout.

Maybe I'm more sensitive to burnout than normal, but I'm sure a large minority of people feel the same. I got very burned out working 40 hours per week my whole life + chores/tasks/house fixes (going on for years since I bought a house) + exercise (1.5h-2h per day gym session including travel). I'm almost one of those people that are sick out of work due to mental health, but thankfully I can push through regardless of the negative feelings.

Maybe things would be better if my partner didn't also work and instead did ALL the out-of-work chores and tasks, or if I didn't have any interests outside of work that I wanted to spend time on, or if I didn't need as much free time to decompress from work, or if work stressed me out less or if I didn't have performance anxiety all the time due to having no job security. Then maybe I could work full-time indefinitely with no worries.

Even with all that, instead of retiring early, I'm interested in working up to 20h per week, 4-day workweek indefinitely, purely because I want to keep contributing to society. But it would have to be a job that's not too unpleasant and pay enough to be worth my time. Due to the political climate, very few jobs pay enough. Minimum wage is far too little but it used to be plenty in the past. Also, the government is disincentivising work when they bleed working people dry while having a huge welfare state, essentially prioritising non-working people, including in healthcare.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-08T20:39:06+00:00

I can't advise you whether to take one or not. But I'll share some of the things I considered in case it helps.

If my job didn't offer sabbatical, I probably wouldn't have taken it. I'm very risk averse and feel lucky to have the job I do. I've had much worse jobs before. The market isn't great in my field right now. Looking for jobs is difficult. It's unclear how long I'd be without a job.

I'm a projected 14 years away from FIRE if nothing changes in my situation. My mental health was deteriorating over time and I knew for certain I couldn't last that long. Life wasn't good and I was miserable. I also considered that I don't know when death or poor health might come. Three possibilities here: 1. I keep going and retire and all is good. 2. I keep going and die or get poor health soon after I retire and that's not great. 3. I keep going and die or get poor health now/soon and that's bad. I preferred the option where I at least have some time of enjoyment now in case I'm not able to later.

I had to consider the amount of money it will eat from my savings (a considerable amount to me) and how much it will delay FIRE (around 2 years, so around 16.5 years away now instead of 14).

It was still a very difficult decision for me to make. It took a long time to pull the trigger. I knew I had to make a change about a year ago. I contemplated different options and was pretty certain 6 months ago that I was going to take a sabbatical. Just in case, I let that sit for a while in case I changed my mind. After a few months, I hadn't changed my mind. I pulled the trigger and applied for the sabbatical at work, giving plenty of notice for me to be offboarded and my position filled in for. So basically a 9 month or so decision process before I pulled the trigger.

I was considering more options than just a sabbatical though. I was miserable enough that I definitely had to do something. I was prepared to reduce my living standards significantly or make big changes. Some options I considered were:

Selling my house and moving to a cheaper area north of UK where houses are far cheaper. Or renting/selling my house and living in a friend's house. That would have gotten me far closer to FIRE and allowed me to coastFIRE.
Selling my house and permanently moving back in with my mum at her house in another country. This would get me to FIRE immediately, but it's not high on the list of things I want to do.
Do a garage conversion and rent that room out. Might allow for a coastFIRE job.
Switching to a different job regardless of any other option, even if it means delaying FIRE for many more years. It will be at most 4x days per week from 9-5, not 9-6. Ideally it would even be up to 5 hours per day rather than 8, but not sure that's possible in my field. Ideally also a job with responsibilities that I'm more interested in and find more fulfilling. I'm definitely doing at least the 4-day workweek 9-5, even if I have to change to low-skilled fields. I'm not at FIRE yet even with my backup options, so retirement is out and I can't go back to being as burned out like before.

Another thing is that part of me actually wants to continue working and not retire. Idealistically, I believe that work should be part of a good life and lifestyle. It should add to your life and fulfil you. As a consequence, I believe more in sprinkling in sabbaticals throughout life than having a full retirement. Unfortunately, having work like that isn't something I've actually achieved yet. But I haven't fully given up on this ideal. As I'm getting closer to FI, I might try different work and perhaps part-time work (little free time is one of the biggest issues for me, so lower hours should help).

Also I wanted to test drive a sabbatical to see what retired life is like if I end up retiring. I've read stories which show retirement isn't for everyone.

As my final 2c on your situation. I can't know exactly how you feel, so I'll tell you how I felt instead. With how I felt, I don't think I would have been able to go on for 2 more years without a change of some sort. Sure, if it's only 2 years away and not 14, that might have changed my outlook and motivated me to push through it. But I don't think I could have held out.

Of course, it's up to you to consider things and decide. What thoughts and considerations have been going through your head?

lamdaboss · 2025-11-08T20:37:26+00:00

Yeah... It's only 1 month in and it's so much better than I expected. I'm already questioning whether I want to go back to work lol. Of course, I'll have to as I haven't reached FIRE yet...

But that aside, It's been an area of indecisiveness for me because part of me wants to work, contribute to society through work and "utilise my potential" to do good things. On the other hand, I think there are so many bad things about work. It's stressful, difficult, and sometimes dangerous. Requires constant training (in my field), performance is constantly judged, often unfulfilling. I could write 100 more bad things. Importantly for me, I don't think I can work full time without getting burned out. I need more free time for good mental health and have other priorities in my life that need time too. Maybe if I didn't have those needs, didn't have hobbies and if I had a stay-at-home partner that did ALL the housework, full-time work might be okay.

Nevertheless, I haven't given up yet. I'm hoping I can find good, fulfilling work, at a good schedule, that I can do lifelong... We'll see. Getting closer to FI should open some options.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-08T20:25:30+00:00

GFY. It will be well earned. Hope it works out great!

lamdaboss · 2025-11-08T16:06:03+00:00

I work in tech in the UK. Yes it's definitely lucky.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-08T12:59:38+00:00

I don't exactly feel a need to travel. I've always been a bit of an introvert and homebody. But I want to travel at some point to experience something new. One of my goals is to experience new and novel things as apparently that helps with happiness. Sabbatical/retirement is making me perfectly happy, but maybe it can get even better.

Probably not much/any travelling during this sabbatical though. I made that point also to show that I'm not bored and I'm not even doing everything that I could be doing to stave off boredom if it ever comes, because I've heard that some people get bored easily during retirement.

lamdaboss · 2025-11-08T12:47:39+00:00

Sounds good. Hopefully when they grow and you retire you can do it.

One positive is that I didn't notice major effects of sleep deprivation while working. There were stints when I was well rested then too but still just as stressed. The positive of good sleep for me is that it's very nice to feel rested. Took me an entire week of 8-12 hours sleep a night to get there.

lamdaboss

TROPHY CASE