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Joshua, it seems like most of the proponents of FIRE, financial independence and early retirement, are either single people or childless couples. Do you think it's possible for families to achieve financial independence as well? Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Well, today we're going to talk about it. Do you think it's possible to build a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less if those 10 years involve your being very busy and involve your budget being burdened with the many expenses of children? Question comes in in inspiration from a listener of mine who writes in from Australia.

Writes in about a number of different things, but ultimately talks about this. This listener is newly engaged, planning to be married very soon, and says, "I despise having to take out a mortgage from a bank, which is one of my current joy-sapping tasks, only to be in debt for 30 years just so I can put a roof over my future family's head.

Previous generations were raised to simply accept this as part and parcel of being a man and providing for your family, but the more I think about it, the less empowering it actually is. We've created a society where due to the constant need for a growing economy, housing affordability is at an all-time low.

Nearly 35% of my take-home pay will go towards paying off a house for the majority of my working life. Talk about wage slavery. Financial freedom seems almost impossible for couples that want to marry young, have children, live on a single income, homeschool children, have a big enough house for their needs, have a level of stability in terms of not moving around and living in close proximity to family and support networks, etc.

The whole FIRE movement seems geared to single people who are happy to work seven days a week for the best years of their life, or do so with a partner for even more income, never have children and retire at 40, having lived a selfish life with no legacy left behind.

I recall your talking about what would make you happy on your deathbed, an extra zero in your net worth or children and family around you, and I couldn't agree more with your answer. Joshua, perhaps an episode on what financial freedom would or could look like for young families in our situation would be interesting.

Thank you. Well, this is interesting to me, and I will talk about it. And I'm actually intentionally choosing to talk about it now, where my wife and I are today. You might consider this show something of a marker in the sand, because I will record my thoughts here in the midst of the thick of it with young children, and then we will see how my thoughts work out in the coming years.

And you can judge for yourself in the coming years if we are able to accomplish our FIRE goals and FIRE plans, or if our goals are destroyed by our young family. For context, my wife and I have four young children, four children under the age of six, five and under.

And any of you who have four children certainly know that that is a challenging phase of life. Young children are certainly challenging in and of themselves. One is a challenge, two is a challenge, three is a challenge, and four is even more of a challenge. So when you have four young children, five and under, life is very different than it was a mere six years ago when we were a couple without any children.

And yet, things are not as easy as I expect them to be in 10 years. Not necessarily easy, but you know what I mean. It's one thing to travel with children who are independent and able to take care of themselves and able not to hurt themselves in some way.

It's another thing to care for young children. And of course, there are many financial ramifications to this as well. But I am committed to two things. Not necessarily with equal commitment, but I am committed to these two things. I love my children. I wish to care for them and provide for them.

And I value their presence in my life. I also wish to be a diligent steward of the resources that I have. And I wish to progressively work my way toward financial independence. And I have aggressive goals in that direction. So are these things contradictory? First, let's begin with the question.

Is retiring early? Is FIRE, early retirement financial independence, is it harder with children than without? In my answer, the obvious, in my opinion, the answer to that question seems obvious. Absolutely. It seems obvious to me that it is absolutely harder to become financially independent at an early age with children than without children.

I see no way to advance the argument that somehow children are going to help you to be financially independent faster or sooner. I don't see any line of argument that I could make in that direction. Rather, children are going to make early retirement and financial independence harder. They're probably going to make it take longer, and it's going to be more difficult on the process.

But is FIRE impossible if you have children? My answer is no. It's absolutely not impossible. So let's begin with the basic formula of financial independence. This is the same for everybody, no matter whether you are a single individual, a married couple without children, married couple with children, single parent with children without, I guess you wouldn't be a single parent without children.

You get the point. It's the same for everybody in every life stage, in every circumstance. The basic formula of financial independence is this. You need to earn income. You generate income in some form. Then you have expenses that are incurred to maintain yourself and your family in the lifestyle that you have chosen.

If your expenses are lower than your income, you generate savings. And then that savings needs to be invested well, and the better you can invest that savings for financial growth, the sooner you can get to a point at which you can live on the income from your investments. And that is the definition of financial independence that we are using today.

Your ability to live and maintain your lifestyle on the income from your investments. When you can live on the income from your investments, you are then by definition freed from the need to work for wages to support yourself and your family. And the idea is that you are freed from that need for the rest of your life.

Now, if we accept that this is the building block of financial independence, and we look at the problem, we recognize that the fastest results, the people who can achieve financial independence fastest are those who have a very high income, very low expenses, and who can generate very high investment returns.

So what results in the highest levels of income? Well, you are the people who earn the highest levels of income are generally those who produce extremely valuable work and who work very, very hard at it, and often who work very, very long hours, long hours of hard work that is considered to be valuable in the marketplace generates you high levels of income.

What about those who have the lowest expenses? Well, those who are able to minimize their lifestyle expenses to the smallest amount for living small living cheaply, very efficiently, those people are able to have the lowest expenses. And then what generates the highest investment returns? Generally, that would be applying large levels of time and energy and skill to your investments to earn outsized returns.

Now, the question is this, do children help with any of these things? The answer is obviously no. Children don't help with any of these things. Parents with children, or at least parents who value their time and effort with children and make a priority of their relationship with their children other than a priority of working.

Parents with children simply cannot work as much as those who don't have children. For me, this has been one of the biggest costs of my children. My work week is necessarily shorter than it would be without children. I cannot maintain the same levels of work that I maintained five years ago.

It's simply not possible for me to simultaneously work the number of hours in a week that I would like to work and also provide the care for my children and the care for my wife that I believe they deserve, that's important to me to provide for them. The time and energy that young children require of you is substantial.

They suck your time, they suck your energy, and it's necessary to provide for them. A number of months ago, we were in a particularly difficult time, and I was having lunch with my dad and he was asking me how things were going, and I said, number one prop in my face right now is figuring out how on earth to build time to work.

There were some weeks, a number of months ago, where I was lucky to work 10 or 15 or 20 hours in a week simply because the demands of my children, the needs of my wife, the needs of our household were so substantial that I couldn't carve out more than 10 to 20 hours in a week to work.

And so, there's no way that you can argue, that I see, there's no way that I can argue that somehow children help you to do longer, harder work. Now, there may be, we'll come to exceptions in a minute. What about expenses? Well, the expenses of your household if you have children are necessarily higher at almost every level simply because you are supporting more people.

And those people come with all kinds of extraneous expenses that are not there if you have fewer people. And then investment returns are, in most areas, probably harder to achieve. Whether it's due to the amount of time that you can invest, it's just harder to make better investment returns.

You're limited on the amount of time. Now, that might be where you have the most flexibility. For example, if as your children grow and they become more useful to do work, maybe you could do something like use the extra manpower that you have to buy and fix and flip houses and clean up the property more quickly, etc.

But if you compare even those benefits that we could perhaps argue for to the total amount of time required over a lifetime, that seems hard to me to argue. So, it seems obvious that children are not going to help you become financially independent faster. They're simply not. They're going to be a drain on your time, on your money, on your non-financial resources.

They are going to make it harder and longer for you to become financially independent. Now, the only line of argument that I think could be explored is there does seem to be some research to indicate that married men, I don't know if it's both married men and married women, at least, probably not because most women, their earnings go down when they have children because they spend more time with their children, become stay-at-home moms, etc.

But there does seem to be good evidence indicating that married men earn a higher level of income and in time generate a higher level of wealth than unmarried men. And I've often wondered about that and thought about that. I've wondered, is there a – and when you look at the correlation between higher income, higher wealth, and fatherhood, is it a correlation or is it a causation?

I'm not yet convinced of the answer to that. I've not seen the data that would indicate that you can prove causation. I look a lot at my own psychology to see if I can see one or the other. For me, I am increasingly convinced that being married and having children is a causal factor in my earning a higher income.

Personally, I find having children to be very motivating for me and to be very financially motivating. When I assess myself today versus, say, eight years ago before I was married, before I have children, I simply do not struggle with the things that I struggled with eight years ago. I don't struggle with all those silly things about, "Oh, I don't feel like getting out of bed," or "I don't feel like going to work." I don't struggle with motivation or any of those things.

And I don't think it's just related to chronological advancement of age, chronological age, because I have a number of friends who are my exact same age who went through – have gone through similar life paths. Many of them are entrepreneurs. But the ones that don't have children and who are unmarried in many ways seem to struggle with those exact same things that I struggled with when I was in college.

Many times they seem to be ruled by their feelings and how they feel at a certain day, whether they feel like working or don't feel like working. Many of my friends seem to be fairly drifting in their life. They don't seem to be particularly focused. And I just don't – I don't struggle with those things like I did when I was younger.

And so I am increasingly convinced that there's a causal factor to higher levels of motivation, higher levels of work ethic, higher levels of life organization. You simply can't be a father and have your family run at all smoothly and run your life in the same way that you did when you were single.

The kind of haphazard approach to life where you go with the flow and don't plan ahead, you don't think ahead, that seems to necessarily change when you become a father. I know a number of men who are older, never married. And when I compare their lives and their same haphazard approach, they seem to be stuck in this endless immaturity, this sense of drifting where they don't make clear plans.

They don't – they're not on top of things, really. Now, I don't think that it has to happen. I don't think that I'd recommend having children as financial motivation, necessarily. I don't see any reason why a single man can't develop himself to be focused and productive and to plan ahead and to deal with all those psychological weaknesses, etc.

But I do think that there is a causal influence where children in many ways have caused, at least in me with my own personal experience, major psychological changes. And those changes, I think, have served me well. Even things like self-confidence. I compare my own personal levels of self-confidence, and because I've long been a student of confidence, I've long watched and observed my own lacks of self-confidence, I'm convinced that having children and leading a family has instilled within me far higher levels of self-confidence than I would have if I continued to be single.

Even if I had the same level of chronological age, I'm convinced that simply the responsibilities and the experience of leading a family has given me much more self-confidence. Again, I compare myself to my friends and peers, who, a few of them that I am very close to, unmarried, no children.

And of course, I have many friends who are married with children. And I see marked differences in the level of personal self-confidence from those of us who have children. I think back to, and I've often thought, what if I went back and became a financial advisor? If I started over today as a financial advisor, I could with my current, I started in the business 11 years ago, I could with my current levels of personality and self-confidence change and do what previously took me three or four years, I could do it in a year.

And part of that might be to academic study, advanced chronological age, but I am convinced a big factor of it is the leading of children and the leading of family. When you recognize the responsibilities that you have towards people who depend upon you, and when you become accustomed to leading and directing a family, you simply don't care about other people's opinions as much, and you necessarily have to take a leadership role.

So, I'll continue to watch it as years go by, and if any of you come across good sociological data on the subject, I'd be interested to read it, because it's something I think a lot about. Is there a causal factor between children and being a husband and a father to increasing levels of income and increasing levels of wealth?

It's a question. But I'm increasingly convinced that for me, there has been a causal influence. It's not just correlation, it is causation. But again, I don't think it's necessary. I would never tell a single man, "You have to get married in order to be more productive in your life or to build greater levels of self-confidence." No, there's too many risks, there's too many dangers to marriage and children to make that argument, but it does seem to be a benefit that comes along with marriage and children.

So, with that caveat, let's continue. My opinion is this. Reaching financial independence will be harder and more time-consuming for you to do if you have children, but it's not impossible. Now, I don't think the question is going to be solved by simply financial analysis, because I don't think that really any of us would use financial independence as our primary, ultimate goal in life.

And this is, I think there are some young devotees of the financial independence philosophy who do hold this as a primary goal in life. And they seem to think that this will be a transformative thing, that once they reach financial independence, everything will be fine. To me, this is simply a mark of youthful exuberance and immaturity.

And there are plenty of mature people in the financial independence space who would caution that youthful perspective and say, "No, you're going to be the same person you are before financial independence as you are after financial independence." There may be some personal goals that you can pursue more, some things that bring more joy to your life that you can have the freedom and flexibility to pursue after financial independence.

But I don't think there's really anybody out there, at least anybody with some maturity, who would say that financial independence will be the defining thing in your happiness. Happy people will probably be happy before financial independence and will be happy afterward. And miserable people will probably be miserable before financial independence and will be miserable afterward.

So to me, that seems the expected perspective of most people who are mature. Most of the focus on financial independence, I think, where it does get out of whack comes from those who are, again, expressing a youthful exuberance. And in time, with more life experience, that will probably be tempered.

But I don't think there's anybody out there that's building their philosophy around financial independence as being the thing in their life. And so that's also not going to affect your perspective towards children. I think ultimately, your more basic level of worldview will be the thing that drives you, and then you look to see how financial independence fits in.

Most people probably don't think that much about their philosophy of children. There are people who are very pro-children. There are people who are very anti-children. But most people seem to take life as it comes, and they—children happen organically or they don't happen, and they just simply adjust as time goes on.

I do personally have a deep level of concern for what seems to me to be an increasing rejection of children. You see this a lot in popular culture right now, at least in the United States. You see it in Europe as well, from the British royal family to popular musicians and popular politicians.

There's people who sincerely seem to be having this intense personal moral struggle about whether it's ethically right and morally right to have children. And I feel very sad and a great deal of empathy for people who believe that. I remember reading one young girl's essay that she wrote on this, and she poured her heart out.

I think she was in her early 20s, and she wrote this really desperate essay where she poured her heart out about talking about how desperately she wanted to have children, but she had this intense ethical turmoil about doing so because of the impact that her children would have on the environment.

And she was worried about global warming and the world blowing up, and it's just really remarkable. But ultimately, I think the underlying philosophies will be much, much stronger than any of the financial philosophies, whether you value children, you value human life, or you don't. So once you decide those things, once you decide if you are in the perspective of humans are either a blight upon the earth – you see this a lot right now, where if you take the extreme form of some worldviews, many people seem to believe that human beings are the greatest curse upon the face of the earth.

And it's almost like some people dream that if every human being were vaporized from the surface of the earth – I don't know, raptured, you know, disappeared from the surface of the earth – then somehow this would make the greatest thing that could happen, because now the earth would be in its pure and perfect form, and things could flourish, and the carbon would go down in the atmosphere, and volcanoes would blow up less, and wolves would be able to roam the streets of – or roam the empty, grown-over streets of New York, and everything would be great.

The buffalo could return to the prairies, and the – I don't know, the great white shark could regenerate itself and rule the seas again. That seems to be some people's perspective. I don't hold any of that. I see human beings as the single greatest resource that the world exists.

I have zero fear whatsoever about somehow in the future – I mean, they've got the same tired, like, Malthusian overpopulation stuff that has been so utterly disproven in time over the decades, but it doesn't seem to die. It's this crazy philosophy that seems to continue on, even though there's no evidence for it whatsoever.

Or people talk about, "Oh, well, the natural carrying capacity of the earth is 5 billion people, or 1 billion people, or whatever their magic number is." It's absurd. The single greatest resource on the face of this earth is human ingenuity, and the human beings that exist. And every single problem that we face as a human species, we will solve it by the human resources that we have.

There is no problem today that is unsolvable. And to think otherwise is the most destructive, self-defeating philosophy. So, you may have guessed, I don't buy this in any way. And it's this most remarkable expression of pessimism when people feel that their own species is not worth propagating, that their own family is not worth propagating, that the highest and best good that they could do is to make sure that the human race stops with them, and practically that they just fold up and die too.

And you see this sense of pessimism that grips people, and they're stuck in this catastrophic viewpoint of the world that everything is falling apart and everything is dying, and there's no internal confidence to actually go on and build a brighter and better future. But rather, the sense of morose, foreboding catastrophism that results in them being depressed and wanting to end things every day.

It's crazy. Now, there do seem to be some strong religious trends. If you study the global populations, there seems to be a high correlation between theism and people who are increasing. In general, you see if you study religion and non-religion, you generally see that the most fundamentalist, highly religious sects in different religions tend to be the ones that are growing, and that's having a transformative influence on culture, and so that's fascinating to watch.

But I guess, at the end of the day, it comes down to your philosophy, you know? Do you see people as a blessing, as a good thing? Or are people fundamentally a bad thing? For me, it's fairly simple. The Bible says, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it." And so, I see human beings as the single greatest thing, the single greatest resource on the earth.

The basic commandment for people is love God and love your neighbor. We can't love your neighbor if you're simultaneously looking over at them and wishing they were dead and gone. And most fulfilling experiences in life are enhanced by our community and sharing those with other people. So, it's not to say that parenthood is easy.

It's certainly not. I doubt there's a parent out there who doesn't question if they wouldn't be happier at times without the work and the challenge that their children bring them. Just like probably there's not a couple out there that has chosen not to have children that wouldn't look over at parents and say, "Sometimes I wonder if we should make a different choice." I think most of us who are parents would admit that as much as we love our children, there are a lot of things in our life that are difficult without them.

But at the end of the day, you have to choose. Or throughout history, most people haven't had to choose. It just kind of happens naturally. But today, increasingly, people feel that they have to choose. And so, it's going to go down to your philosophy, your philosophy of the value of people, the value of humans, what you're here to do.

And in many ways, your positive feelings and optimism about the future or your pessimism about the future. So, you'll have to settle that yourself. But I don't think that financial independence is going to be the thing that makes the difference for you. So, assuming that you've settled it and assuming that you are in a situation where you've said, "Okay, I've got children," or "I'd like to have children," does that mean that I've got to kiss off financial independence?

Does the fact that I'm having children and I've got these two little children here in my household mean that for the rest of my life, I'm going to be stuck? I just can never grow financially? My answer is very loudly, no. Now, we need to, again, acknowledge reality. In my opinion, there's no question that children will increase the costs of your life and your lifestyle.

And there are some important inflection points for you to consider as you even consider the size of your family. For example, many people who do have children today are choosing to have only one child or possibly two children. The number of families today that have only one child or two children is at a historic high.

There's never been a period in history where so many families have chosen, so many parents have chosen to only have one or two children and then restricted their, through whatever circumstances or means, chosen not to have any more children. That's a really unique and modern development, and it's having very substantial influences on the world today.

In some cases, it's having catastrophic influences on the world today. But it is fascinating to analyze it from a financial perspective. One child adds very modestly to the household budget of a couple. I guess before I even go to one child, we should talk about the financial benefits of being single versus the financial benefits of going through life as a married couple.

That one's a little bit more difficult because a lot of it will come down to the quality of your relationships. If you are in a very low quality, contentious marriage relationship, in many ways, I think you can make a good argument that it's a lot better to be single.

You have a high degree of freedom and independence. You can easily disassociate yourself from people that you don't wish to be with. Whereas when you're married, you can't do that. You're married, you're in it for life, you are in it. Whether it's happy for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, you're in it.

Now, financially, I do think the best financial arrangement, the most efficient financial relationship arrangement is going to be with two people working together. You can have such economy of expenses. It's cheaper for two people to live together in one house than it is for two individual single people to maintain two separate houses.

When you can add your income together, you can mutually support one another. One person is going to go to school, one person's going to start a business. Well, if the other person is earning wages, they can support that other person, which makes it so much easier to go to school to increase your earning power or to go through the temporary financial shortfall of starting a business.

So two people married is vastly superior financially to two individuals. There's only a reduction of cost when two people get married versus the cost of maintaining two separate households. But it's not necessarily the same way when you have children. So one child adds very modestly to the household budget.

In general, I'm going to ignore things like birth expenses, not that they're immaterial, but simply that they're a one-time expense that is not repeated and they can be calculated. They're not insubstantial, but they're a one-time expense. The more important expenses are the expenses that continue throughout childhood until the age of adulthood.

So for example, one child to go from a couple of two to a family of three means that there's going to be a 33% increase in your restaurant costs when you go out to eat. There's not necessarily a 33% increase in cooking at home costs, but there will always be a 33% increase in restaurant costs.

There'll be a 33% increase in plane ticket costs. Whenever you go somewhere, you buy three plane tickets instead of two plane tickets. That's a really substantial cost. But some other things are only going to be marginally affected. Maybe you'll might have to have a slightly larger house, but you can still get by with a small house if you have one child.

A two-bedroom house is adequate. A two-bedroom, one-bathroom house is certainly adequate. You need a little more space than perhaps the couple could get by with in a tiny studio apartment, but a small house is still adequate. So only slightly larger expenses. And frankly, you can stick one child just about anywhere.

If you have a small closet in your studio apartment, you can convert that closet into a perfectly serviceable bedroom for one child. Most of the world lives that way. Most of the world doesn't have these huge extra bedroom for one child. They convert a small closet or a small little room where the child can have a private bed.

You probably don't need a bigger car if you have three children. Maybe if you had a smart car as a couple, it doesn't work. You need a third seat. But a little hatchback still does. A little four-seat hatchback will work fine if you have one child. And then if you want to do fun things, you want to travel the world, well, you can still get by on a small sailboat or a little tiny RV.

There's not a lot of big expense there with having one child. You will have significant costs in things like clothing. For example, you have a child. That means now that you have to acquire new clothing for that child. And that can be a major ongoing expense for children because they grow so quickly.

And there's no real efficiency of reuse from multiple children. If you have four children and you have sets of clothing that you buy for the first one, with the exception of a few things that got worn out, most of the clothing can be handed down one by one. But you probably have cousins or nieces or nephews.

You could probably get a lot of clothing donated as well. So there's not going to be a huge increase there. You will have costs that you incur for education of the child, depending on what structure you use for that. Those costs might be small or there might be substantial hobbies, classes, et cetera.

But one child only adds modestly to the household budget. Two children, still very modest. There are costs that will significantly increase from now on as your children grow to a point where they eat a normal adult-sized food, which happens pretty quickly. If you go out to eat, you're going to have double the restaurant cost if you have two children than if you were a couple.

You're going to have double the plane ticket cost. But there are still things that are not so much more. You can still fit in one hotel room when you travel. Yeah, you get two beds, but you can still fit in one room. You don't have to double your hotel rooms.

The small house is still doable. You can still fit in a small car. You may have a higher cost of clothing. Maybe you have a boy and a girl. Now you have two wardrobes that you have to buy and you don't have any efficiency of reuse, but you can handle that in other ways.

Now, when you get to three children, there does start to be an incrementally higher cost. You now have a massive increase in your plane tickets, your restaurant costs. It's double, more than double. You're getting five meals instead of two. You're getting five plane tickets instead of two. And now you're at the point where you will probably need to be committed to a bigger house for the duration of your child-rearing years.

At this point, you're probably going to be on track for a three-bedroom house, especially if you have both boys and girls. You can still maybe get by with a five-seat car, but if your children start to grow pretty large, it's going to be physically tight. Very rarely will a family with three children still skip by with that tiny little five-seat hatchback.

You start to get some broad shoulders on boys. You start to get some broad hips on girls. They don't fit. At least I don't fit that well in the hatchback. I remember when I was younger, my parents were trying to buy a smaller minivan. And one of the things was they stuck me in the backseat and they looked at it and said, "Yeah, this little minivan is not going to work for us." And I had to get a full-size van.

Just your children get bigger, but the costs are incremental with three. Now, for children, you start to get tougher. Restaurants, very high. You're paying three to six times more than a couple would pay at a restaurant. Three to six times more for plane tickets. So instead of one or two plane tickets for a single person or a couple, you're now at six.

That adds up. These days I buy six plane tickets. So that makes it much more substantial to get on an airplane. You probably have outgrown one hotel room at this point in time. It would be a very rare hotel room where you can fit four children and two parents in that hotel room.

When the children are small, you can do it. But as your children grow, you're pretty much locked into two hotel rooms when you go somewhere. You're definitely going to want a larger house. You start to outgrow most cars and SUVs on the market if you have four children. You can still fit into something like a double cab pickup truck if you have bench seats front and back, but it's tight.

You're going to need a full-size pickup. You can't get by with an F-150 anymore. You need the F-250. You can't fit in a Jeep. You can't fit in a Toyota Prius. So your vehicles, you need a minivan or a seven-seat SUV. And even if you get something like a seven-seat SUV, most of them are going to be tight unless you get the very biggest ones, a big Ford Expedition XL or big Chevy Suburban or Excursion or something like that.

You don't get much luggage space. Yeah, the Honda Pilot has seven seats, but by the time you flip down one, you don't have enough luggage space. They just don't work. If you're going to go traveling, you need a big RV with a bunkhouse. You can't just go down to 1-800-RV-4-RENT and rent whatever they have because there simply aren't enough beds.

You don't fit on a 32-foot sailboat. You don't fit in most things, and so you've got to think bigger. And five children, that would be a big inflection point. Now, generally, your plane tickets add up a lot. You officially always need a minivan. So now, when you go on vacation, you're going to need two hotel rooms.

You're going to need to rent a much more expensive car. You can't fit into the $12 a day car. You've got to have the $45 a day minivan. Six children, now you always need a full-size van or you need multiple cars. You need a big house, etc. Now, there are some efficiencies that can grow financially with you if you have a larger family.

For example, let's say that you already have a larger car. Many people with two children will drive a minivan, and it doesn't actually cost you anything extra if you're already going to have a minivan with two children to have a total of five children in your minivan instead of two children in the minivan.

And it doesn't cost you all that much on your fuel mileage to drive around with seven people total in your minivan versus four people total. Maybe you lose half a mile per gallon because of the increased weight, but not much. And you gain some other efficiencies. You have more drivers.

If you have children who are older and have more drivers, and you're going to drive across the country, you can drive straight through because you have more drivers. It's easier. If you have more children, you get efficiencies, economies of scale with things like clothing. You can reuse clothing from one child to the next.

Things like shoes, things like books. You don't have to go out and buy a whole new set of books for the fifth child. You've already accumulated them for one. And so there's a big difference between a couple and investing in a home library with one child. But a home library for one child can now be reused again and again for two, three, four, five, six children, however many you have.

Same thing again with clothing, shoes, etc. Size of housing. You don't, just because you have more children doesn't necessarily automatically mean that you have to go to that much of a bigger house. If you're willing to be cozy, you can fit things into three rooms. When I was growing up, I'm the youngest of seven children.

Although at that time, yeah, there was a time in my life where all of us lived in a relatively small three bedroom house. Now it was tight and my parents didn't do that for a long time. They adjusted their living circumstances and moved to a bigger house fairly quickly.

But the point is, it is doable. A three bedroom house can have, in our case, we had four boys in one room and three girls in the other. So that, there are, it can be done. You don't have to automatically commit yourself to a huge giant house just because you have children.

There are benefits. You have more help. There's more cooks in the kitchen, more gardeners outside, more tutors for the younger children. And there, you have more people to rely upon. For example, one of the benefits of having more than, more, having children and having more children is that you can rely on your children as you go through life.

Pretend you only have one child. Many couples, one child. And in later years, your child goes out and gets married to a spouse who comes from an only child family. And as is the norm increasingly today, they have one child. Now, pretend that you and your spouse are now old and you need some help.

You need someone to be there with you to keep you company, perhaps to give you some help around the house. Well, very likely, your in-law child's parents are also in a similar stage. And so what frequently happens in parts of the world where there are changing day demographics and what's increasingly going to happen in the United States is that you'll find that your child and their spouse, who of course is an only child, will have four old people to take care of.

So now you have two middle-aged people who may or may not have a child to either have additional work for them or additional help for them, but you have two middle-aged people caring for four old people. That's really tough. That's really, really tough. That's very different than if you as the adult had four or six children and now the four or six children can share around the care for mom and dad.

And this is one of the things that has happened demographically with old age welfare programs in the United States and is happening throughout much of the world, which is why it's going to be so tough on old people, is because as people started to have fewer children, all of the math of the programs has fallen apart, where you don't have enough young workers working, earning money, paying taxes to support the older programs, and you don't have enough workers to care for all the old people.

So right now things are working, but at some point in time there's going to be, demographically, unless there's some major change, which I don't see any reason why that would happen fast, at some point in time the young people are going to look at the old people and say, "Yeah, we can't do it anymore." And what happens then?

I don't know. But it's not necessarily a bright future for a lot of older people. And now as those government programs start to increasingly collapse, as the government programs start to have fewer funds, as there are fewer younger workers to care for the older people, you're going to see the government institutional financialized programs start to go down.

Now it's a much scarier thing. Imagine yourself as an 85-year-old, and yet you have one child who is not doing well themselves. Your future looks a lot scarier than if you have three children who can care for you, and one of them has the financial flexibility and the lifestyle flexibility where they can care for you.

So that may be one thing. You have more people to rely on as your children grow. It's interesting that that's a very touchy subject for most people today. When I used to do retirement planning for individuals who were planning to retire, the number one goal that most retirees seem to have is not being a burden on their children.

Now I think we all share that, right? None of us want to be a burden on our children. But what's fascinating is that that's a relatively new thing, culturally. Most historical cultures seem to have a different expectation of their children. Most historical cultures have seemed to say we invest in our children when they're young, and our children owe us a duty of care when we are older.

I personally believe that's the right thing, that I owe my parents a duty of care. But it is, it makes a big difference. I would say one other simple expression today would be simply the ability of, if you're currently caring for your older parents. I remember when my grandparents, I have one grandmother still alive, she's 105 years old, but when my other grandparents were in their 90s and my parents were caring for them, my parents built a house, moved them in with us, wanted to provide care, we never wanted to send my grandparents to an institution.

And so that care is really, really burdensome. It's really tough. And my grandfather had dementia, required full-time care for many years. That's very, very challenging. But one of the things I'm grateful for and proud of is that at the time, my parents had children who were adult children who were able to help and relieve some of that burden.

Now, my parents still bore the primary burden of caring for their parents, as they should, but some of us grandchildren were able to be there. At the time, I had graduated from college, I moved back with my parents, and one of the reasons I did that was because I was able to help care for my aged grandparents.

My siblings also were able to do that. It was much easier for us to provide respite care so that my parents could get away. They weren't stuck in the same way that so many today are, where you have a single individual or a couple caring for parents, or often a single child who is a single parent caring for aged parents.

It's very, very difficult. So, perhaps I belabor that too much, but as you have more children, you have more people to rely on. And in many ways, there's more security, even emotional security. If you have one child and your child dies, that can be really, really tough. Obviously, it's tough if any child dies, but I think there's a great comfort that parents can take if they have other children to comfort them in their time of loss.

I had one sister that died when she was 14 years old. And one of the things I'm very grateful for is that I wasn't one of two children. And my family, we missed my sister very, very much, very, very much. But I don't feel this just constant, never-ending pain of loss because I have many other siblings.

Our family get-togethers and holiday celebrations are noisy, exuberant, jubilant affairs. And of course, there is probably a lifelong sense of loss of the death of one of my – of a sibling. But the fact is, my parents still have six other children to enjoy their old years with, to enjoy the fruits of their labors with, to enjoy the many grandchildren and the great riches of that.

And that wouldn't be the case if they had only one child. I had a former co-worker of mine who – he had one child. And I think it was – he had, I don't know all the circumstances of his marriages, but he was in a second marriage with – where his wife didn't have any other children.

They had one child. And he was extremely involved in his son's life, extremely involved. And they had many rich and rewarding experiences throughout their lifetime. My co-worker was financially extremely affluent, had plenty of money, plenty of time freedom. They spent years – they bought an RV and his son was into dirt biking.

And so, they would go all around the country in this RV and enter all the dirt bike races. He was a devoted, loving father and seemed to have a rich and rewarding relationship with his son. For circumstances I never learned, his son committed suicide when he was in his early 20s.

And I just remember talking with my friend – we weren't at the point where I ever inquired about the circumstances, it was none of my business. But my friend had all the money in the world, was extremely financially well off, had all the toys, the fast cars, the big boats, the beautiful big houses on the water, had everything, and was totally set up.

Retired at a very young age, pursued an active retirement out sport fishing in his big giant boat, traveling the world, big RV, traveling around with his wife. And yet, it seemed like there was this just deep emotional pain and loss that could never be changed. And he was psychologically healthy, but as I reflected on it, I imagined myself in his position and I thought how painful that would be.

How painful that would be. In comparison, I have another friend of mine who he and his wife had eight children, and two of their children have died. Their oldest also committed suicide in early 20s, and one other child died in an accident. But as I looked at them, I see that through the pain, through the deep pain, and I don't know what pain could go deeper for a parent than when a child commits suicide.

I pray that I never experience it personally, but man. How does it get more difficult than that? But through the pain, as I look at this other family, I'm grateful that they're surrounded by their children and they have this love and this comfort that comes from their other children.

Now, these days, we don't think much about that, the advancements of medical science and the advancements of, you know, we don't think much about losing children. Prior generations thought much more about it. Most of us don't. And yet, I don't think it's foolish to think about it. That just the, that if you have one child, if your child dies, it's, have a deep impact on your life.

So, whether it's people to rely upon and having, or just the joy of that. You gain, even as you have more children, you do gain many efficiencies in many aspects of life. You gain efficiencies with child care, for example. Let's say that your husband, your wife, and you are both working.

You have one child, you're paying for daycare. Well, financially, that sometimes works out. You have three children now. It often works out financially very superior for a mom to be a full-time mom. And so, if mom is going to stay at home and care for the children with one child or with three children, there's not a difference in incremental cost financially.

There's certainly a difference of incremental amount of work and stress and skills that she has to learn to care for three children versus one, but there's not an incremental financial difference. You're not paying three times the child care costs with, if mom is at home. You do, of course, have other considerations.

I think every parent, you wonder if there's an optimal amount of focused one-on-one time. If your time is divided among four children versus one child, there's no question that you have less time with each child with four than one, and you look at that and you think about that.

But you do gain efficiencies. There are many efficiencies with more children. I think you can justify some financial expenditures because you have more children to allow yourself to give your children a richer experience. Example that comes to mind is when I was growing up, we were homeschooled, but we always had an expensive microscope.

My parents had bought a very expensive professional level microscope for our science classes and science experiments. We'd go look at pond water and stuff like that. We were the only family I ever knew who had a microscope like that. Most children, of course, have the microscope in school, but we always had a nice fancy expensive microscope.

Well, if you amortize the cost of a fancy expensive microscope over a bunch of children versus the cost of one, you could perhaps justify some of those expenses. The counter argument is, of course, maybe you have more money if you have one child and you can easily justify it that way.

The point is that there are some benefits there. I think you can make some good arguments that you are providing your children a better circumstance if you have multiple children, better growing up circumstance. For example, you're creating a family network, a tribe or a clan for your children to rely upon.

And if you can maintain a positive, healthy home atmosphere and positive, loving relationships between parent and child and among siblings, I think the network that you build for your children of their siblings is one of the most valuable assets they have in life. Today, I would say that I rely on and value my siblings very, very deeply.

And when you think about how to provide for somebody, when you build a support network for children and for siblings, it's a lot stronger than I can imagine anything else being created outside. And if you look at the world, kind of popular level, and you start talking to people, it seems like many people don't have much of a support network.

Many people have difficult relationships with their parents. Of course, many people don't, and we want positive relationships. But some people seem to have difficult relationships with their parents where they feel like they can't rely on their parents. And they don't even have the emotional freedom to expect to rely on their parents, even as adults.

And then many people don't have siblings that they can rely on. They don't have those close bonds and relationships. And then as local communities have increasingly fractured, unless somebody has a strong church community where they can rely on, where instead of it being, you know, I attend religious services here, but rather they feel a part of a family, many people are going through life alone, fighting alone.

I'll tell you, that has never been my experience. And when you talk about the confidence that can be created to pursue something, to start a business, etc. When you feel like you have a deep reserve, when you feel like you have a safety net that's built up with people, it creates more confidence in you.

Now, many people are seeking to use government and government forces to create that safety net, to establish a universal basic income and basic welfare programs, etc. Maybe, right, maybe that can have an influence. I can concede that that might help some people. But at the end of the day, a check from the government is nothing compared to the support of your brother.

I don't see how it can compare. And especially as the government becomes increasingly bankrupt, how does that compare to the support of your brother? So, if you feel like you have a wide family network with siblings that you can rely on, it creates this intense sense of belonging, an intense sense of place.

And I think that has untold ripple effects. I've only recently begun thinking about this, but realizing I think how important that is. I think children who grow up with multiple siblings have better social skills, have better coping skills. I recently saw some evidence that I'd never seen before, but I saw some evidence that children who grow up with multiple siblings have much higher rates of staying married, lower rates of divorce.

Now, I'd like to see that corroborated and dig into that. It was just, I saw it in passing, but I can easily believe that. When you grow up, learning to cope with sharing a room with siblings and learning how to control yourself and learning how to move together as part of a group, it creates, I think, a much healthier, balanced personality that makes it easier to integrate with your spouse.

I think it's very challenging to raise an only child and not have that only child have this sense of entitlement. Not impossible, but much more challenging than if a child grows up among others. And I'll just tell you, as a child growing up in a big family, I think it's a lot more fun.

A lot more fun. When you fact that you always have multiple playmates, you can always put together a game, a sports game all by yourself without having to get five neighbor kids out of their house, it's simply a lot more fun. We certainly aren't at this stage in our parenting, but I'm imagining a day in the future when parenting will be easier because the children can be together, they can protect one another, they can care for one another, and mom and dad can sit back and they can go on an adventure, and because they have built-in friends.

I think that's really useful. So I share those things because I think those arguments may be underrepresented in the marketplace. I don't think that those give financial proof that a family with children is going to become financially independent earlier. I acknowledge that firsthand. But I think they're offsetting benefits that are probably under-discussed.

And if you focus on everything financial, and the only lens through which you view things is the dollars and cents, I think you've got a very shallow, thin, and inferior worldview. This is one of the things that deeply bothers me and troubles me about our modern society, that we have a tendency to bring everything back to measurements in terms of dollars.

I believe dollars are a very useful measurement. They're a very useful barometer. But when you...they need to be kept in their place. And it really bothers me that increasingly many people measure even their self-worth, not by who they are as a person, not by their ontological reality in the world, but based upon their earning ability.

And people measure one person versus another and say, "Well, I earn this much, and this person doesn't earn this much." And there's this intense class warfare, especially in the United States, where the culture is so fixated on money. And everyone's, "Well, men earn more than women, and women earn more than men." And I look at those arguments and I think, "Do you really value yourself exclusively based upon your annual productive income, your personal GDP, your growth, your personal output, economic output?" To me, that seems the thinnest and most depressing of statistics to measure yourself on rather than your ontological worth, your...rather than your role in life, your husband, your father, your wife, your mother, your son, your daughter, a valued member of your community, your good neighbor, your loyal citizen, you are a helper of those in need.

Is that not more important than your annual income? And it's...everything always comes down to annual income. It's really, really, I think, a really destructive worldview to measure your worth by your net worth, to measure your contribution by your income. It's not that net worth can't be a useful metric.

It's useful to track your productivity. I think it's very important to track your net worth because it's a barometer, it's a metric that you can judge to see your general efficiency with productivity. It's a measurement of your productivity. But that doesn't mean that if your net worth is declining for a good reason, that you're worth less as a person.

And the same thing with your income. Do we really say that the person who makes $500,000 a year is a more important member of society than my wife, who makes $0 per year, and yet is pouring out her life into molding and shaping the lives of children, and who lays down her life into molding their character and shaping and forming their personality so that they grow into mature and stable adults?

Is it really more helpful and more valuable if she goes and becomes a top-flight attorney, making $500,000 a year, so that we can hire people to do that work with our children? I find that the most insane of concepts, except that's the primary metric. Especially mothers labor under this burden that somehow they have to produce more financially in order to be worth more.

My husband will love me more if I make more money. It's crazy. So let's assume that you're not making financial decisions based on the money, the finances, but that you are seeking to work within the constraints of your situation toward financial independence, even perhaps while you're caring for your children.

Well, I would say first, let your larger family give you the personal motivation to earn more money. I think, personally, it's easier for you to become financially independent, even perhaps if you have five children, if you have a household income of $500,000 and household expenses of $100,000, than if you're single, casting about, earning $40,000 per year.

You're going to have an easier plan to financial independence, earning half a million dollars per year, even if you have five children, than if you're single, earning $40,000 per year. So I see no reason whatsoever that you should simply say, "Well, I have children, thus I can't make a lot of money." That's silly.

Let your motivation and even just the duties and the responsibilities that you have motivate you to earn more money, motivate you to build a better business. First, the data's on your side. People who have children tend to make more money. And as I stated earlier, I think there is a causative influence there.

Not absolute, but there is a causative influence there. My opinion and reality is this. Most people don't make much money because they never decide to make much money. And they never pursue that as an important goal. Most people have never set an income goal in their life or made a plan as to how they could double or triple or 10x their income.

And so because they never decide to do it, they never specify it and state it clearly as a goal, they never do it. Because they're never tuned into the opportunities to do it. They're never tuned into the ways to do it. They're never thinking about how they could accomplish it.

Now, can you do that as a single person? Of course you can. Any single person could set out a goal and say, "My goal is to double my income. My goal is to make $100,000 a year. My goal is to make a million dollars a year." And there are many people who will accomplish that, never marry whatsoever, never have children, and accomplish those goals.

So of course that's possible. But it's certainly a little bit more important, probably, to people when they have others who are depending on their income. That was my experience. I never have cared that much about making more money. I generally have always been more comfortable just simply simplifying my goals and expenses.

If I were single, I'd probably be living in the back of a pickup truck parked out in some random national forest land in Utah, staring at the red rocks every day, reading nonstop, living on $5,000 a year. Because I've never cared that much about making a lot of money as compared to indulging my own lazy streak and sitting around and enjoying my intellectual pursuits.

Knowing what I know now, I would bet you that's where I'd be. But yet, I don't want to stick my wife in the back of a random pickup truck and tell her, "Figure out how to live here and stare at the red rock cliffs." I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to tell my children, "Yeah, we're broke, but we're going to live in this cargo trailer in the middle of nowhere because we can do it cheap, and I'm not going to provide any interesting opportunities for you." That's absurd. And so I embrace a totally different perspective, and I have a much deeper level of motivation and a much more useful, greater use of money than I would if I were single.

So I say embrace it and let the goals, let the things that you desire to create and provide for your children, the experiences, the opportunities, the things, the relationships, the opportunities, let that motivate you. And instead of sitting around being a dirt bag, living in the back of your pickup truck, earn a million dollars a year and let that motivate you.

I think that's powerful and may move you in the direction of financial independence. I think you can adjust your family lifestyle to an efficient mode of operation and gain from those benefits. The reality is a dual income, no child household, where both parents work for wage, both adults, both people in the, in the, the husband and wife, a dual income, no child household, where both people work for wages is absolutely the least efficient financial life possible.

It's the most inefficient financial plan I can imagine. You have extremely high taxes that come in on earned income. You have very few deductions, no business deductions available to you, not even any deductions related to children, no child tax credits or whatever the equivalent is in your country. You have no family business, you have no built-in helpers.

If things are bought, you buy everything with after-tax income. It's extremely inefficient. Now you don't have to have children to adjust it to be more efficient, certainly not. Just because a couple doesn't have children doesn't mean that they can't both run their own businesses. They can and they should if they're inclined towards entrepreneurship, but adjust your family structure and use what you've got.

If you have a dual income household and you have a child and now mom stays home with the baby to pour her life into that baby, you probably won't lose all that much spending power that can't be made up in other areas. You're going to have lower tax rates, you're going to have more efficiency at home, better family frugality, so just simply use that as a benefit.

Now, remember, and this is especially to my listener who is engaged, not yet married, remember that you have different phases of your life and you can build your plan efficiently while also simultaneously incorporating your children. If you are engaged and not yet married, I would caution you and say this, you do not need the same lifestyle as a newlywed that you might need if you have three teenage children.

So, plan accordingly. When you are newlyweds, and this listener especially was not distraught but annoyed with the fact that because they value having children, that they're going to be locked into an expensive house in the suburbs and they're just kind of going to be stuck into the normal wage slavery of life.

I deny that. I deny that wholeheartedly. Keep your expenses super cheap, especially before you have children. When my wife and I were married, we rented a really cheap apartment. We had a tiny 243 square foot studio apartment that we rented for $500 a month. Take advantage of the efficiency, the financial efficiency of that phase of life.

Prior to that time, she was renting the apartment for $500 a month and I was renting for, I think more than that, I can't remember now, but at least $500 a month. I think it was more than that. And so, our per person cost for apartment rental went from, let's just pretend I was running for $500 a month myself.

You take two people running at cheap, which is that's certainly cheap, $500 a month and bring those two people into one. Now, your monthly rental cost per person drops at $250. And because you, maybe you maintain both your incomes, now you have an extra $500 of savings. Just because you marry doesn't mean your life has to get more expensive.

Let it embrace the cheapness of it. Live cheap, live small. Even when you have children, the vast majority of baby expenses are unnecessary. Now, most first time parents think they are necessary. And then after you've had a few babies, you pretty much simplify and you don't really need the vast majority of the stuff that you get.

There is a joy, especially that your wife will experience of creating a beautiful nest. And it's nice to be able to provide that. It's nice to have your wife develop a beautiful nursery and have it painted just how she wants it and have her stencils just how she wanted it and a beautiful, perfect bedding.

It's fun. And it's really nice. And that's enjoyable. But it's not necessary. And if you as a couple collectively share the goal of financial independence, you might simplify that nest a little bit. One of the things that I would do differently going back in time, when at that phase of life, I did not have the goal of being financially independent at an early age.

I had a fairly stable life. I had a stable, profitable business. I was making excellent money. As far as I could see, looking at the future, I had a fairly clear 40-year plan. I was a financial advisor. I had built a stable practice. I wasn't going to fail out of the business.

I had clients that I liked. I didn't foresee any major changes. And so after we'd been married a year, we bought a house. And I was very careful and thoughtful in that house purchase. But I wasn't trying to cheap out and get the cheapest place that I could live.

I was looking to get a very comfortable house that was modest because the house that you choose drives so many other expenses in your life. So I wanted a modest house, but a comfortable house. I wanted a house that was big enough, big enough for children, but not too big, comfortable enough, but not too comfortable, small enough, but not too small.

And so we shopped carefully. And I thought I found what I thought was the perfect house. It was a large three-bedroom, two-bath house. I had just under a half an acre of land right in the middle of town. I wanted to have chickens. I wanted to have a garden.

I was right in the middle of everything. We could walk to the library, walk to the grocery store. I was less than, I think, about a quarter of a mile from my office. So I could walk to work. And I did. And it was great. And I loved it.

And so I went ahead and bought the house because we thought it was the perfect house at the perfect time. But it did make a major change. But we didn't have early financial independence as a goal. I didn't foresee any reason why I would ever need to change my career.

I had total time freedom. I could come and go. And so I didn't see the benefit of being financially independent. I had pensions. I had passive income. So the early financial independence plan was simply that I could live on the passive income from my practice. I didn't need to have huge amounts of savings.

So we bought a house, fixed it up how we wanted it. And we made a lot of frugal decisions along the way. But in hindsight, if I were doing it over again, I wish we had stayed in the tiny little studio apartment. We, my wife, we had worked it out where she would put a baby if we had a baby.

I don't think we could have had-- the toddler would have been uncomfortable to bathe, but a baby was no big deal. I wish we'd stayed in a studio apartment. And instead of buying a house for our own personal lifestyle, I wish we'd bought an investment house instead and just simply made that the first purchase.

No, we didn't. But I point out to you that you could. If you have a desire to be financially independent, just don't move into the hedonic adaptation phase. Keep things simple. Live in a small apartment. Live cheap. And maximize the time that you are a newly married couple before you have children.

Don't spend money on big infrastructure expenses. Spend money on fun, on experiences. Go skiing, go surfing, go on vacation. Enjoy that time as newlyweds. Lighten up on your entertainment budget. Just minimize on those other things. The best thing that we really loved about a tiny studio apartment, it took no time whatsoever to clean.

On Saturday morning, we lived near the beach. On Saturday morning, we would say, "Okay, let's clean the house." And 10 minutes later, we'd get on our bicycles and we'd go to the beach. And that is the thing to do as newlyweds. So live cheap. Live inexpensively. Now, as you start to expand, maybe you have a baby in a little tiny apartment, recognize that children are generally not self-aware enough to have much other than basic needs.

A three-year-old child does not care whether you live in a huge giant house or whether you live in a single wide mobile home or whatever the Australian equivalent of that is. A sandbox is enticing to a child, whether it's a natural sandbox at the beach or whether it's a designer sandbox at your big fancy house.

So there's no reason to expand your lifestyle all that much at an early age. And you don't need to buy when you have young children, you don't need to buy all the expensive things. Just take a picnic and go to the beach or go to the forest or go on a hike and think very carefully about any kind of expectations that you start to build into your children.

There's no reason why you have to build children with expensive tastes. Now, if you live in downtown New York City and you put your children into the designer daycare and the designer elementary school that everybody has to get into, and your children are surrounded by peers who have all the latest and greatest gadgets and who are spending their weekends at the expensive place, et cetera, you're going to build into your children expensive tastes.

And they're going to be bugging you for expensive gadgets and doing this and going to that and the other thing and all your money will be gone. But that's your fault for building those expectations into your children. You can also build the expectations into your children of a simple lifestyle, which has the ancillary benefit of being a frugal lifestyle.

Now, am I saying that we should abuse our children by not providing for them opportunities? No, but I don't see that it's any benefit to establish these expectations in a child that in order to be happy, they have to be part of a consumer culture. I think the exact opposite.

I want to be happy with simple life, with simple toys. And so why should I not want the same thing for my child? So how do you adjust your financial independence plan to the phases of your life? Well, here's what I say. If you don't have any money, rent a small, cheap apartment, whatever the smallest, cheapest thing is.

Maybe you live in a sailboat. You can live on a sailboat as a young married couple and save a ton of money. If you're in England, you can live on a riverboat. If you're in the United States, you can live in a single wide or live in an RV.

Do it. It's fun. It's an adventure and it saves you a ton of money. Don't buy a house just because you had a baby. Buy a rental house and stay living on the sailboat. You can have a one-year-old, a two-year-old, and a three-year-old in the RV. You can have two or three children in the RV and be totally comfortable.

So live in the sailboat, live in the RV, and buy a rental house. Then, as you start to have, maybe you have two or three children and your oldest is two, three, four years old, whatever, buy a duplex or a quadruplex and live in one small unit. Yes, it's only two bedrooms, one bath, but you can easily put three or four children in one of the bedrooms of a two-bedroom apartment.

The kids, it's fun. It's a lot better for a child to share a room than to think, "Oh, I've got three children. I have to have a five-bedroom house so everyone can have a bed or a bed, its own room." Far better for the children to share rooms. You don't have the same concerns about privacy that you'll have in the future.

The children will enjoy it. You don't need the space. Children don't take up that much space. They're kind of small for a long time. So live in one of the two-bedroom apartments in your duplex or your quad that you bought and let your tenants pay it off and save money.

Work hard, build a business, save money. Then as you start to get into the phase of life where you need to expand, it's one thing to have a child that's not walking on a sailboat. It's another thing to figure out how to engage your seven-year-old. So as you start to need a little space, then if you've put the foundation in place in those early years, go ahead and expand.

Expand to the three-bedroom, two-bath house in the suburbs, but don't make it a 30-year plan or a 40-year plan. Just be smart about it and recognize that at this phase of life, this is what we need and figure out how to get there efficiently. Just because you need a bigger house doesn't mean you can't do it for less.

There's a reason why people in the country probably on average have larger families than those living downtown. Now, do people in the country have more children or do people with children move to the country? Probably both. But most people with a number of children don't want to live in downtown San Francisco.

It's just not conducive to family life. The suburbs are a much better fit. That's why those suburbs were built. But now you have children. Does that mean that you have to go and buy the most expensive house? No. Does that mean that you have to live in California? No.

You can adjust, and if you have flexibility for your career, figure out how to adjust. Figure out how to adjust things with your family. Think of different strategies. For example, one of the things that I'm grateful for is my parents built a house when we were younger. We had outgrown the first house that we lived in that my parents owned.

We moved out of it. They rented it out, moved into a rental house. The rental house worked for a while, but in time, the landlord was ready to sell it and demolish it actually. And so my dad was trying to figure out what do I do. He didn't have the money where he could afford, with my mom being at home, he didn't have the money where he could afford to easily comfortably buy a house, given high housing prices in town.

But he did have the money where he was able to buy an acre of land, 30 minutes outside of town, out in the, would be a little bit farther out than the suburbs. And he had the time freedom, even though he was working a traditional salaried job, he had the ability to do work from home, and so he built a house.

And he did a lot of the work himself. Not all of it. Hired a general contractor for some of it, but he did a lot of work himself. And he had the benefit of having a bunch of children. I don't know if it adds time to it, or helps, but he did have a bunch of children.

And it was a really unique thing because we spent a couple of years building a house. And I would say on the net, the children were helpful. We did the roof. Children can easily do roofing. We did not the plumbing, but we did the electrical work. He did the electrical work himself, but children can run wires.

It's not that hard when you have some direction. We didn't do the drywall, but we did all the painting. We moved into the house. We didn't have floors. We laid all the floors. Did some of the tile work, laid all the wood floors, et cetera. And so in that period, that had the couple benefits of number one, being able to build a big, huge house.

When we moved into the house, there were 10 people living in the house. Six children, two parents, two grandparents, 10 people living in this big, huge house, huge house. But we also had the benefit of doing it at a lower cost because we did a lot of the work ourselves.

And that formed a valuable part of my education and my siblings' educations, where for years, many of us used those carpentry skills, used those building skills, and used that to generate income because we had far more skills than our peers. So you can't do that with a three-year-old. The three-year-old shouldn't necessarily be out crawling through the rafters, stringing wires, but you can do it with a nine-year-old.

You can do it with a 12-year-old. And that's about the time in your life where you might need a little bit more space. The three-year-old is not thinking about how nice the house is or how much space there is. They're thinking about their Legos. They're thinking about their dolls.

But as they start to grow, use them and form that as a valuable part of their life and their education, et cetera. Now, I don't know what the ideas are that will work in your situation, but you can find them. And everything else that we talk about in good personal financial management and frugality holds constant.

Just because you need a bigger car doesn't mean you need to spend a lot of money. The minivan that we have, I paid $3,000 for it years ago. I've driven it, what, 60,000 miles? I think I've had probably $1,000 of repairs, general maintenance. I mean, it's been great. I paid $3,000 for it.

It's five-star crash safety test rating, et cetera. It's just as safe as a $40,000 minivan. Just because you have children doesn't mean you have to go and buy a brand new Honda Odyssey. So don't think that just because I need a bigger car, I automatically have to spend $30,000.

You don't. Just because you want to travel and build experiences with your children doesn't mean it has to destroy your family budget. If Disney World will destroy your budget, don't go to Disney World and don't nurture a love of Disney in your children. Parents create this thing. Now, many parents love Disney and they want their children to have the experience of Disney.

And so they create it intentionally. They expose their children to the Disney characters and they build this passion for Disney stuff in their children. And then it's their greatest achievement as a parent to take their children to Disney. That's fine. You're a parent. You can parent your children how you want.

But recognize that you're the one building that in your children. You build the connection to Disney, which then builds the $10,000 Disney bill into your life when they're a little bit older. If you want to do it, fine. But you can also build connections to almost anything else. If you don't want to go to Disney, take your children to the national park.

Teach them to love hiking. Teach them to love swimming. Teach them to love snorkeling. Teach them to love kayaking. It's a lot easier and cheaper to teach your children to love snorkeling or kayaking and spend a couple hundred dollars on snorkel gear and kayaking gear. And then go to places where you can camp and snorkel and kayak and build rich, rewarding family relationships.

Your children will be grinning and having tons of smiles at the end of the day. Just as much, maybe more, I'm biased, but just as much as if you went to Disney World. The choice is yours. What are you going to build in your children? Just because you need more food to feed the hungry mouths doesn't mean you need to spend like crazy.

There is obviously an increasingly caught increasing marginal cost of food, but you can grow a garden and offset that. It's a very healthy thing for children to be involved in. I'm sitting here looking out the window at my garden right now that my children helped me plant. You can buy your food in bulk.

You will have to make a change of restaurants. I don't see any way around that. There's just no way where you can afford to hire servants in a restaurant to feed you and five children as cheaply and as afford as rationally as you can if you and your five children do the work.

That is certainly one where there's a big, big difference and a big change. But you can still go to restaurants sometimes and you can still plan ahead at how to do that frugally. And if you make enough money, you can still go to restaurants. But keep your hobbies simple.

Do the children all need the super high end stuff? Do you need individual expensive lessons at the most elite place on Saturday morning? Or can the family develop a hobby that builds those same skills? Many times we as parents want so much to give our children the best of everything that we automatically assume that that means that we have to spend.

It doesn't. If you want to make a happier, more adjusted child, and if you had to pick from these two extremes, you don't. Just trying to make a point. You might have parents, they work in high status, high prestige jobs, and they're worried about doing the best thing for their children.

So they buy all the most expensive schools for their children, all the most elite things. They hire the world's most expensive nanny to take care of the children and take them to school back and forth. They hire the world's most expensive housekeeper to have the house in perfect situation.

They buy the world's most beautiful house. They buy all the coolest gadgets and the coolest things and the best clothes that their child looks totally great. And then they don't see their child because they're busy working all the time. And their child grows up without the emotional security of knowing that mom and dad love me.

Now you flip that and you could have the poorest family in the world that doesn't have money to go and do anything except play at the local park, that doesn't have the time and the money to go out to restaurants. But you have parents who pour themselves into their children and the child has the emotional security of knowing mom and dad love me.

I ask you, which child do you think will be more successful in life? The evidence is all around you. Now that doesn't mean that a wealthy parent who wants to put their child in the fancy school and buys all the fanciest things can't also make sure that their child knows that they love them.

They certainly can. And it doesn't mean that a poor parent can't neglect their child because they're spending so much time worrying about money such that their child grows up without foundations. Obviously, the money is not the causal factor. But the money is not necessary to build the emotional security into the child.

And I would say this. Plan your fund around things your family can do with you. And plan your financial independence around your children. I believe that the costs of raising children are higher than the costs of not having children. I also believe the rewards are incalculably higher. Now, since I have children, I'm biased.

And I have a tendency towards confirmation bias. I want to believe that my wife and I made the best decision to have children because I have children. That's confirmation bias. And if you don't want to have children, you're going to want to believe that your life is happier than those who have children.

And there's good evidence that you could look at on both those situations. I'm recording this episode, as I said at the beginning, I'm recording this episode while my wife are in one of the most tiring, demanding seasons of our life, where we get to the end of the day, and I don't have a lot of energy left at the end of the day, and neither does she.

So, I think we're in the thick of it right now. But I still, I look at others, and I walked around me, and to me, I see tremendous joy. My children bring me tremendous joy, tremendous satisfaction. I'm so grateful to be blessed with them. Let me give you some examples from the world of fun.

I, over time, I enjoy looking at different YouTube channels, and I watch different people, and I am a student of life. I study what people do, and I try to do my best with the limited information that's presented to try to understand how people think, what they see, and just to watch people.

There's a channel that I found years ago on YouTube. So, I'll use YouTube channels. You can look up these channels if you want. Years ago, I found this YouTube channel because it was on RVing, and it's called Gone With the Winds, W-Y-N-N-S. The protagonist on the channel are Jason and Nikki Wynn, and for a long time, they lived in an RV, traveled around.

Very good. Jason is an excellent videographer. Just a lovely couple. No children. And so, a couple years ago, they sold their RV, and they bought a sailboat. Currently, they're sailing in the South Pacific. Young, relatively young couple. I don't know how old they are, but young, vibrant couple, beautiful people, very fashionable, very fit, very healthy, very fun.

They have winsome personalities. Just really lovely, really lovely people. Young couple, no children, sailing the South Pacific. Week after week after week, they produce these sailing videos, and they're so beautifully done. And they bore me because it's just beautiful waves, another sunset, and oh look, we saw this other cool thing.

Now, I'm not denying that it's fun, but they're kind of boring. I don't really watch them. I flip to them every now and then. But there's another couple. There's another channel that I watch. This channel is called Sailing Zatara, Z-A-T-A-R-A. And this couple, or this family, is currently also in the South Pacific, sailing in the South Pacific.

This is Keith and Renee are the parents, but they have four children. Oldest on the boat with them, they have another fifth child that's older, but oldest on the boat with them, I think is about 18, 19. Youngest is 11 or 12 at this point in time. Four beautiful children.

Now, is it just confirmation bias? Maybe. But I find that channel so much more engaging. First, it's an actually, it's a family project. The children all do voiceovers on the video. I think mom's the primary video editor, but the children do all the family voiceovers. And I was recently comparing, both channels had an episode recently where they had some engine trouble.

And in the one, in the wins, Jason is down in the engine compartment working all by himself. Where in the other, Keith is in the engine compartment, and he's got his two teenage children helping him, working with him, et cetera. The joy, the hijinks, the fun, the fulfillment of Zatara seems to me much more fulfilling than the wins.

Now, that family with the four children has had years of work, but they're sailing the world with their children. They've been on the sailing full time for the last two years. They had to buy a much bigger boat. They've got a five bedroom, five bath catamaran sailboat. Jason and Nikki's boat is smaller.

So they had to spend more money to buy a bigger boat. They had to spend more money on just about everything. Ask me to trade places, I'd much rather be Keith than Jason. Much rather be the father of four teenagers and have the joy of showing my children, my teenage children, shaping their lives, the South Pacific, diving with them, fishing with them, living with them, schooling with them, teaching them business than Jason.

Both people are out sailing the South Pacific. Now, I'm sure that Keith, the father of four, had to make a whole lot more money than Jason, the part of the couple. I don't know anything about them, but Keith was a businessman, sold some businesses. Keith had to make a lot more money to be able to afford it.

I get the impression that Jason and Nikki probably primarily depend on their income from their video work to provide for their lifestyle. I'm sure they have savings, of course, but they're not financially independent in the same way that I think Keith is, the father is. But there's a richness there.

I think Jason and Nikki are enjoying themselves. But to me, their lives strike me as a little bit empty. They have two cats they dote on. They have friends. They're having a good time. They seem to be really enjoying their trip. At the end of the day, I find it boring compared to the joy of the same exact places, but showing those to the children, helping the children to establish themselves.

Give you another example. This is another YouTube channel that I like. This YouTube channel is called Epic Family Road Trip. Parents are a Canadian couple. I forget their names. They have three teenage children. They started off in an RV, traveled the United States in an RV. Then they moved to a Jeep, traveled around New Zealand for six months in a Jeep with a rooftop tent.

They're currently in a Jeep with a rooftop tent and a little trailer with another rooftop tent, traveling full time as a family of five with three teenagers, traveling all in the remote areas of the United States and Canada. They went out to Mexico as well. But along the way, they're working with their children.

They're volunteering with their children. Their children are running the YouTube stuff or editing videos, becoming great photographers. They're talking about marketing and branding and building brand relationships, etc. And I look at that family, and I don't think they're ultimately financially independent. They don't, of course, say, but being a financial planner, I can pick up on the clues.

I think they have enough savings to keep them going for now. But after they were on the road for a while, they had to figure out a source of income, and they started to do that together. And the father does speaking and some coaching, etc. They're not financially independent, but they're at a phase of their life where they're with their children constantly at that very tender age that children and adolescents go through in their teenage years.

And I look at the fun that they're having. The father just celebrated a birthday. I can't remember if it was a 50th birthday. The joy of that birthday was tremendous, at least that I could see in the video. There's a warmth and a love that comes through. It's palpable.

It's tangible. And you can see the children learn and grow through their working, through their service, through their fun. I compare that with another YouTube channel that I watch sometimes called Technomadia, Chris and Cherie, who are a middle-aged couple. No idea if they're married or not, but they were very clear they didn't want children.

They don't have any children, middle-aged couple. They've been living on the road full-time for a number of years. They started in a little trailer. Then over time, they built a business. They have a business where they provide basically digital tech consulting that helps for nomads, etc. They review how to stay connected on the road.

So they do a great job, really, really good, really good job. They live part of the year in a bus, an old restored bus that they've restored. They live part of the year in a sailboat. They're doing the Great Loop, not a sailboat, sorry, a powerboat, a large powerboat.

They're doing the Great Loop in the United States. They bought another small RV recently, and they do videos and such. They seem like they're having a nice time. They get to work together. They get independence. They can come and go as they like. But man, if I could trade places with one of them, either Chris or the Epic Family Road Trip father, put me on the road with my teenage kids.

Even if it's only a few years and we can't do it forever, just to me, there seems like there's a joy of life that Chris and Cherie don't get access to. I don't think that children have to keep you from having fun. A couple other ones, big families. There's a family, has a YouTube channel, I think a website, called the Kellogg family.

They have 12 children. They live in, lived, currently live sort of, well, I don't know if they live in an RV right now. I think they're in Europe, but they have lived in an RV. Have lived in an RV. Their kids love kayaking. That's their thing. And they have this beat up old redneck looking RV that they lived in with, I think, their younger 10 children.

And they're out kayaking. It's absolute bedlam. But there's also just a joy and a liveliness to their lives. Now they're in Europe traveling all over. Don't tell me it can't be done. They got 12 children. Can't discern that they have a lot of money. I think that as a programmer, again, kind of a redneck looking RV, but you go back and you watch those videos and is it bedlam?

Absolutely. Is it hugely stressful? I'm sure it is. Is it fun? The kids are having a ball. The parents are having fun. There's another channel, Norpin South, nine children, I think five adopted, four biological, something like that. Nine children, traveled in an RV, traveled around Europe, et cetera. Are they financially independent living on savings?

Nope. Their income. But there's a sense of joy in the life. There's a sense of liveliness. Just because you have children and it costs you a lot of money doesn't mean that you automatically can't do anything fun. I was like Greg Denny's work. He's been on the show in the past, world schooling family.

Six children, travel the world, working on the road. There were lots and lots of inspirational, none of those YouTube channels that I mentioned are necessarily financially independent, although they range. Probably the most financially independent would be the sailing family, sailing Zatarra, ranging down to the Kellogg show. They're not financially independent.

I would guess not. They don't have a lot of money. They're just making it work, living and working on the road. But you could find inspirational stories of families who've become financially independent. Amy Decision, founder of the Tightwad Gazette. I think she and her husband had either five or six children.

I forget now. He retired from the Navy, had a small Navy pension. Then she built the newsletter business, Tightwad Gazette. He became Mr. Dad, did all the dad things while she built the business. But because of their hardcore frugality, they were able to raise their children, healthy, successful children, but also become financially independent.

She retired from public life. I tried to get her on the show, talked to her on the phone for a while. She wouldn't come on. She didn't want to. She didn't see the reason to it. There are other people too. Charles Long wrote the book How to Survive Without a Salary.

He told such fun and interesting stories about his conserver lifestyle, but also doing it with children, traveled the world with his children. I compare him to, I think, Ernie Zelinsky. There's a difference in writing. I don't know if Ernie has kids or not, but you read it and the point is that there are lots of people who can become financially independent with children and without children.

And yet, with children, I think children can be a source of tremendous joy and satisfaction. I don't believe that children necessarily solve anything in life. They don't make it easier to become financially independent. Children are tough. A lot of work. A lot, a lot of work. They can tire you out.

They can wear you out. I have nowhere near the amount of energy, creativity, time to work that I once had. I wish I had been more productive before I had children. But I don't think that children doom you to a life of poverty, either financially or emotionally. On the contrary, I think it's very possible to build great financial abundance and to enjoy the joy that comes with people.

Yes, your life will be different. I have no interest in forcing anyone to have children. That's a very personal decision. I don't think it's anybody's business but you and your spouse. But if you choose to have children, or you want to have children, I don't believe that you should think that means that you can't be financially independent.

It doesn't. When you start to think about the phases of life, recognize that children are in your life for a relatively short period of time. Probably about 20 years per child, depending on how many years you're having babies. That 20 years, if you have babies for 10 years, maybe it's 30 years that you're planning on.

But in reality, those years are not all the same. And financially, they don't have to look like the standard American or Australian model. As I've talked about, babies have certain needs, young children have certain needs, teenagers have certain needs, and then they're gone. And then your life changes again.

So you might require a more creative approach. You might not be able to come, maybe if you didn't have children from 20 to 25, you could become financially independent. But if you have three children for 20 to 25, your financial independence plans change. But don't think that having children means you can't become financially independent.

I believe that parents with children can become financially independent. But those people who choose not to have children may become... Parents with children can become financially independent, and they'll have the joys and the fun of financial independence, and they'll also have the experience of having children. Whereas those people who choose not to have children may become financially independent and experience the fun and the joy of that process.

But they will never experience the joy and the trials of having children. Which one is better? I'm biased. I don't know how to differentiate between my confirmation bias to want to tell myself I did the right thing, I had the right solution. There have been many times I have thought, "This would be a lot easier if I didn't have children." I don't know how I'll ever be able to Jeep around the world.

I can't fit my family into a Jeep. I've thought about, "Okay, I'll build a six-door Jeep. I'll need $100,000." I don't know how I'll do those things. But where I'm at today, in the thick of it, if I were making the same decision, if I had the decision to make over again, I wouldn't change a thing about having children.

I'd change a few things of how hard I worked before I had children. I'd change a few things about my financial productivity before having children. I will not deny that I do experience a bit of envy of those parents who were able to capture the vision of FI and build financial independence before they have children.

I don't know how, I don't think there's a parent out there that wouldn't say, "It doesn't seem like it'd be easier if I didn't have to simultaneously be financially productive and care for young children." But I can't change that. All I can do is try to help other people do differently, but I can't change that for myself.

But I wouldn't change it. So you have to make your own decisions. Hope this was helpful to you. Hope it was a little bit inspiring to you. Thank you for listening to today's show. I'll record separately a kind of conversation on the future of the show. I am excited about things.

The last, I'll tell you, I mean, you've noticed there can be some heavy costs to having children. Last month's have been very difficult. We had a sick baby, a colicky baby for three months. Man, that makes it hard to work. It's just a tremendous burden on your wife, on you.

It's really, really challenging. And it does make things less productive. And I thank you for sticking with me through the difficult times. At the moment though, we're in a good work phase and I've got a lot of plans and I've got a lot of clarity on the future of Radical Personal Finance, which I will share with you in the future.

For now, though, if you haven't bought either my credit card course or my How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis course, and you want to help me be able to buy food for my children, please, please, please, I need food for my children. Kidding. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/store helps you do that.

And I had a great response to many of you who reached out to me for consulting work. Continue to take some private consulting clients if you'd like information on that. Email me, Joshua@RadicalPersonalFinance.com. Email me, Joshua@RadicalPersonalFinance.com. Thank you. Get the perfect gift for the wine lover in your life at WineEnthusiast.com.

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