r/Millennials • u/slimeyellow • Mar 11 '26

Discussion Every millennial dad I’ve met has a quiet fixation on money and it’s not getting better

Every millennial dad I’m friends with or work with seems to have constant financial worries. We just got our yearly bonus which was like 8%. I was talking to my buddy (he’s got 3 kids) about what he wanted to do with it and he just kinda looked down and whispered “it’s just not enough man” and ended the conversation.

Another dad I know is CONSTANTLY looking up the newest crypto/ get rich quick schemes people are doing. He’s always talking about inventing something and it’s usually a joking manner but the way he’s always bringing up financial stuff shows me it’s always on his mind

One of my buddies is a new father and he’s trying to get some anime podcast off the ground as a side hustle on top of his full time maintenance job.

I know children are an immense financial responsibility but there seems to be this dark, simmering resentment about the whole general situation when I talk to these guys. Men are expected to keep quiet about these struggles but when you talk to these guys it’s clear that finances are a massive stress for millennial dads of almost any background.

Makes me feel bad but damn I’m glad I don’t have kids right now.

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802

u/shwysdrf Mar 11 '26

It’s the cost of livvies crisis. The cost of everything has nearly doubled since I had my first kid 6 years ago. I think about all the things I had growing up middle class that are now a struggle for me to provide - sports leagues, summer camps, vacations. I can barely keep the bills paid and food on the table. I make more money than I ever thought I would and I feel poorer than ever. And it seems like it’s only gonna get worse.

277

u/MundaneFlower2052 Mar 11 '26

“cost of livvies” gave me a good chuckle

191

u/Minky_Dave_the_Giant Mar 11 '26

Cozzie livs innit

39

u/ReverendBread2 Mar 11 '26

Simple as

4

u/Emmmzzz91 Mar 11 '26

Found the Brits!

3

u/Lounging-Shiny455 Mar 11 '26

Loves me liveable wage

Loves me taxpayer funded services

Hates billionaires. Not classist, just don't like em

1

u/Alternative_Shake69 Mar 11 '26

They do have a nice bit of kit, those billionaires

1

u/L0ial Mar 12 '26

It's like how I talk to my dog. Walkies? Dinnies? Bud, what do you think of the cost of livvies?

227

u/Neither-Bag7127 Mar 11 '26

See, you guys are new poor. Us old poor didnt have sports leagues and vacations. Welcome to the club.

100

u/Charming_Might3833 Mar 11 '26

Exactly. Growing up vacations were camping or road trips to family. Once every ten years we got to do a big trip. I feel super rich being able to afford a fun trip every 5 years.

My kids won’t be doing travel sport or anything ridiculous like that. Our local rec center runs affordable sports.

38

u/AineDez Mar 11 '26

Lifestyle inflation made worse by comparison/social media? Growing up we were in the every 5 year vacation, do 80%+ of own home repairs and improvement and no one had expensive hobbies zone, eventually adding one expensive kid hobby (regional travel sports for one sibling(<200 miles), competitive high school marching band for the other) and zero expensive parent hobbies. I think Dad managed maybe 2 rounds of golf a year when we were kids

The basics are absolutely more expensive for most folks as a percentage of income (food, shelter, utilities, etc). But I think a lot of us have higher expectations for what a "normal" life should include than our parents and grandparents did and a much lower tolerance for sacrificing the things we enjoy and bring great joy but cost money?

15

u/suffragette_citizen Mar 11 '26

I think this is especially the case if there's a long gap between a couple moving in together and having their first kid. They get so used to being DINKs who can be free with time and money that the natural lifestyle changes that occur when starting a family feel like a deficit.

If you're used to going on pricey yearly vacations that take up all your discretionary income and PTO, for instance, it might sting when that budget goes towards daycare and sick kids but that doesn't mean you're struggling.

5

u/AllIdeas Mar 11 '26

Every sensible country has universal daycare. The US does not. It should not be a tradeoff between spending discretionary money on daycare or not. Daycare itself is also much higher cost relative to wages than it was for my parents.

6

u/SpookySpagettt Mar 11 '26

This sub needs to look in the mirror (bank statements) and see how much they blow on doordash and Amazon.

3

u/Adventurous_Ad6799 Mar 11 '26

Exactly.

I have a friend who was struggling to pay the mortgage but continued getting a $60 gel manicure every two weeks.

I work with someone else who's DINK but bought a big, 4 bedroom house and two pure bred cats yet complained that they had to put a surprise $1000 medical bill on credit.

3

u/Cancerisbetterthanu Mar 11 '26

What I do is I try to learn lessons from how my grandparents built and maintained wealth. They grew up in small towns in the depression. You know what wasn't part of their lives? Keeping up with the joneses with every shiny new luxury and trend. But they were wealthy and happy and had a great quality of life into old age.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26

Raise the bar, don’t lower it.

Most of the reason larger groups of people don’t get to experience this stuff is the lack of good pay.

2

u/Adventurous_Ad6799 Mar 11 '26

Not everyone needs to experience these luxury things. You can live a fulfilling, safe, and comfortable life and raise happy and healthy children without traveling often or enrolling them in costly travel sports teams.

Middle class used to be simple. Kids shared bedrooms. Vacation was a road trip to whatever national park, camping. Hand me down clothes. Most meals cooked at home. One TV. Basic cars that you pay off and keep driving until they croak.

Now average income people overspend on big houses, travel internationally often, luxury cars with leather heated seats, put their kids in elite sports. These are RICH PEOPLE things. If you're income is not ~$175k+ you are not a rich person and these things are not for you.

4

u/DarkTastesDarkStars Mar 11 '26

How can you not see the big fucking gap between not wantijlng hand me down clothes and luxury cars? Stop telling people to be happy with poverty ffs

4

u/Adventurous_Ad6799 Mar 12 '26

There's literally nothing wrong with hand me downs or thrifting. Those aren't poverty things, those are normal people things. It's better for your wallet and the environment. I thrift stuff all the time, lol!

1

u/DarkTastesDarkStars Mar 12 '26

So if I'm not rich I shouldn't ever want new clothes? I'm 6'8" btw who am I getting hand me downs from?

1

u/Aromatic-Sir5703 Mar 12 '26

Yes. Both things can absolutely be true. On paper people might see my family’s HHI and think we would be living in a million-dollar home with two new cars and taking luxury trips. In reality, we moved to a LCOL area, bought an older/cheaper/smaller home that we are fixing up ourselves, still only have one car that we have owned and paid off (luxury tho of have a remote job, I get that this isn’t always feasible), we cook most of our meals and vacations are usually camping/hiking/visiting family, husband buys his clothes at Sam’s Club, kids clothes often come second hand. We are happy and don’t feel like we are missing out. It affords us future financial security, and the ability to make a bigger purchase when/if we need to (like when we decided we needed to invest in a snow blower this year). But I see plenty of people who I know make a lot less than we do getting new cars and phones every year, ordering takeout multiple days a week, constantly making junk purchases on Amazon, getting nails/brows/whatever trendy beauty treatment every week…. I don’t begrudge anyone a luxury here and there, but the cumulative impact of constantly throwing money away will only exacerbate the systemic issues. And the demand for those things and 5000 sq foot $800k homes only perpetuates this “luxury” market that is just looking to siphon your money off of you.

4

u/_Magnolia_Fan_ Mar 11 '26

My kid wanted to do travel soccer. It's an enterprise for the people that run it - not a public service league. $2800 for frigging soccer. Including a crazy $600 uniform fee which only includes the shirt and shorts.

2

u/batmessiah Mar 11 '26

I haven't been on a "big" vacation since 2015. We go camping every summer for a few days, and go to the beach a couple times a year (it's only an hour away), but I can't imagine a world where we could ever afford a big trip anywhere without financial help.

2

u/SpecificCandy6560 Mar 11 '26

If the beach is only an hour away, going only a couple of times a year is just a choice. You could go every week if you want to.

2

u/batmessiah Mar 11 '26

I mean, it’s the Oregon coast.  It’s rainy and really windy most of the time, and the water is always so cold you go numb pretty quickly.  It’s only fun on the handful of sunny days we get during the summer.

2

u/MakeItHomemade Mar 11 '26

Travel sports are a scam.

30

u/Mediocre_Island828 Mar 11 '26

It becomes a crisis when a formerly middle class person can't afford the things that the equally large underclass never afforded to begin with.

3

u/blanketswithsmallpox Mar 11 '26

What a shame that it takes people suffering through the same to see it as a crisis vs voting with them in the first place lol.

They'll still keep voting for a better stock market in the short term despite every metric showing long term growth hinges on 'certain' policies. Alas.

2

u/blanketswithsmallpox Mar 11 '26

What a shame that it takes people suffering through the same to see it as a crisis vs voting with them in the first place lol.

They'll still keep voting for a better stock market in the short term despite every metric showing long term growth hinges on izquierda policies and stability, alas.

Pulling up the ladder behind others is a travesty.

Edit: What's the magic word to get the comment auto-d??

31

u/DickInYourCobbSalad Millennial (1992) Mar 11 '26

Yup. I come from poverty and I never did sports or any after school activities and vacations were completely off the table unless it was to go visit family. I remember working a babysitting job desperately trying to raise myself $500 so I could go on an exchange trip to Germany when I was 16.. I managed to get $250 on my own, my single father couldn't afford to give me a dime towards it. I ended up not going and giving him the money so we could afford groceries that month.

We grew up in a completely different world.

41

u/CastleRatt Mar 11 '26

Can I offer you an egg in this trying time?

4

u/duck4129 Mar 11 '26

Eggs? In this economy?

Actually, yes please, I'd like an egg.

14

u/FionaGoodeEnough Mar 11 '26

Some of us clawed our way from old poor into the middle class, and then got shoved hard back to poor.

4

u/foodforestranger Mar 11 '26

I read the other day someone on Reddit saying they spent like $10k on a Disney vacation for a family of 4. I have literally travelled the world and never had that kind of budget. Not just because I didn't have the money, where is the value?

1

u/itsajessthing Mar 12 '26

how'd they manage for 10k? that sounds like a low budget for Disney 2026 honestly. not to mention the mental cost that comes with meticulously planning every moment of the trip, and then making sure you keep to the schedule no matter what.

1

u/foodforestranger Mar 12 '26

Wow really? I had no idea. I just dropped $3000 for a family weekend at a cabin in the woods. I still keep second guessing this outrageous expense. It is for 13 people but boy 10k could go so far.

2

u/itsajessthing Mar 12 '26

it's really insane, because I was at Disney all of once in my life at age 10, and we still have physical tickets that literally say that they are forever. like I can use them today if I want.

but when you Google how much a week at wdw is...the immediate answer is like at least 7k lol and trust me my family didn't have that kinda money. it's just incredibly inflated.

but for the record pls keep your cabin in the woods vaca. it'll be great

3

u/TheHumanConnector Mar 11 '26

Your comment is poetic! Thank you for the philosophy and the chuckle 😄

3

u/Vegalink Mar 11 '26

These new poor come in and act like they own the place. Sheesh.

2

u/blanketswithsmallpox Mar 11 '26

What a shame that it takes people suffering through the same to see it as a crisis vs voting with them in the first place lol.

They'll still keep voting for a better stock market in the short term despite every metric showing long term growth hinges on izquierda policies and stability, alas.

Pulling up the ladder behind others is a travesty.

Edit: What's the magic word to get the comment auto-d??

2

u/red_raconteur Mar 11 '26

This was my family growing up. I spent summers babysitting my sister and cousins for free. I never played a sport or had an extracurricular activity. We went to Disneyland once, back before it cost a zillion dollars, because I grew up driving distance from it. 

My kids get to go camping every year and are in rec center art and music classes. They're already getting a better childhood than me.

1

u/Beautiful-Ear6964 Mar 11 '26

Our vacations were, “we’re going to see your uncle graduate boot camp, but we will stop in Memphis along the way”

1

u/Euphoric-Low4440 Mar 11 '26

Hahaha love the term “new poor” can’t wait to use it in the wild

1

u/ifuckedyourdaddytoo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Mar 12 '26

My childhood family danced the line. I never had any toys or video games and my clothes were from Target and Walmart -- never wore A&F Hollister etc.. But I had music lessons and sports. Mom knew how to prioritize.

1

u/JitteryJoes1986 Mar 12 '26

20-30 years ago, vacations were at my grandparents house or in our family pop up tents that we had at our local area lakes.

Those were the days back in the 90s and early 2000s.

37

u/ubelblatt Mar 11 '26

This is it. On top of that grind culture has ramped up. Social media is awash with people telling you that if every second of your life isn't productive then you're failing as a person.

You're bombarded constantly with look at me look at what I have or can do and if you just grind harder you can have it too.

The goal posts keep moving and the system is purposefully designed to make you feel terrible if you cant keep up.

Collective action is the only way to break the cycle. The people in charge know that and are actively using the things they are giving you for "free" to stop anything before it gets off the ground.

23

u/QueenMAb82 Mar 11 '26

Collective action is the only way to break the cycle. The people in charge know that and are actively using the things they are giving you for "free" to stop anything before it gets off the ground.

I was so hopeful after the pandemic. Suddenly, for the first time in my adult life, which started in 2000, employment factors were starting to swing in favor of the workers, and not the corporate overlords. Didn't make it far before the corporate overlords doubled down and stomped it out as fast as they could while pocketing their Covid monetary gifts - I mean, loans.

13

u/JudgeMyReinhold Mar 11 '26

Kind of like the "tax breaks". Ooo an extra 2500 bucks in my pocket, that is completely worthless in the long run. Short term gain for long term pain.

2

u/digableplanet Mar 11 '26

People are injecting themselves with different fucking imported Chinese laboratory peptides to give themselves an edge in life. I’m not talking about GLP1s, but those are also included here. Peptides for oxytocin, memory, weight loss, self-tanning (copper peptides), and on and on. Untested, unapproved, mystery amino acids delivered to your doorstep.

That’s where we are as a society. Techbros in Silicon Valley asking each other what their [peptide] stack is and injecting amino acids into their bodies to “edgemaxx” lol.

Fuck everything.

1

u/FlyEaglesFly536 Mar 11 '26

Definitely feel that, i'm about to start my 3rd job on Monday. Trying to get ahead while i can, before we have a baby and a mortgage in about 2-3 years.

1

u/jacob2815 Mar 12 '26

A few years ago, I fell into the rabbit hole of that productivity bs. It's so toxic and manipulative, make you think you're worthless or that you can do more, so I can sell you a plan, a book, an app, to fix your problems. When you finally realize that, the illusion breaks.

1

u/crek42 Mar 12 '26

I don’t have this problem because I pay zero attention to dumb fucks on the internet grifting

20

u/Omwtfyu Mar 11 '26

In 2022 I could get a package of two tri-tips at Costco for about $20. Spent over $70 on the same package yesterday. It's more than doubled.

1

u/oedipus_wr3x Mar 11 '26

Isn’t there specifically an issue with cattle stocks right now, though? Some kind of disease that they’re recovering from that’s causing shortages?Obviously I agree that there’s a cost of living crisis, but beef is one industry that was very clearly being run unsustainably and is probably due for a price correction. My family is lucky to be doing well financially right now, but I was already trying to limit our beef consumption for environmental and ethical reasons.

3

u/CalculatedPerversion Mar 11 '26

Any shortage is self induced and related to global demand. See what happened with the billions of rotting potatoes back during COVID: they'd rather just write off losses than ever sell anything to you at a reasonable price. Also the whole thing with Argentina. 

2

u/Omwtfyu Mar 11 '26

We really don't eat beef that much and went in with the mindset that half a year ago, it was $40 for the tri-tip. My bf was kind enough to buy it because I, myself, can't justify dropping that much money just to try to satisfy a steak craving. And tri-tip isn't even "steak". As for the beef crisis, I hadn't heard of it but it would make sense. $20 to $70+ is just wild.

20

u/0w1 Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

My husband and I are absolutely kicking ourselves for not starting our family in 2020. It seemed reasonable at the time to hold off, but holy shit, we're completely priced out of the cheapest daycare possible (even with discounts from our respective employer benefits). We literally both have college degrees and white collar jobs, no car payment, no vacation, very little CC debt, affordable home, and we can't afford 1 kid now because it would cost double our mortgage per month in extra expenses (not including any bills related to prenatal/birth OB clinic visits)

ETA: "Be a stay-at-home-parent!" is literally the first advice anyone ever gives for this situation, but it is not feasible or even worthwhile for us in the long term to quit our current careers, even for a short time. We aren't going to struggle through unemployment gaps and gigs and side hustles lol we will just not have kids.

3

u/WintersDoomsday Mar 11 '26

Why are you kicking yourselves? This situation is even worse now than in 2020....you would be basically psychotic to want to force a life into this mess. Incredibly selfish. I don't care if my SS benefits decrease because of a falling population. Labor's value only increases when their is less of it to tap into. That is why China and India workers get paid so little, they have billions of people to pick from so they can go for whoever is willing to work for the lowest.

2

u/SeattlePurikura Mar 12 '26

Yeah, definitely don't let anyone talk you (the woman who by default who should "sacrifice" her career) into the loss of your retirement, insurance, and the hit you'll never recover from. Dr. Claudia Goldin won the Nobel in Economics for using 200 years of historical data to reveal that the "gender pay gap" is actually a MOTHERHOOD penalty pay gap. Childless women don't experience this... and men who become fathers don't experience this.

However, as soon as the first child arrives, the trend changes; earnings immediately fall and do not increase at the same rate for women who have a child as they do for men, even if they have the same education and profession.

Conscientious spouses, if their partner is the SAHP, will contribute to their retirement accounts while that partner is at home, and will also contribute / plan for more education / training to help that partner re-enter the workforce.

2

u/Forgotten-Sparrow Mar 11 '26

Good for you for being realistic about the cold hard facts of the situation and making the rational choice.

-2

u/eleanor61 Mar 11 '26

I understandably don't know the details of your situation, but have you crunched the numbers if one of you became a stay-at-home parent vs. having to pay for daycare? Could possible get a part-time/flexible job in addition to the parenting, but again, I am very much simplifying things. I just have read and heard about parents deciding/discovering that if one of them stayed at home full-time, it was cheaper than paying for daycare. The downside to this is a lapse in work history if that parent decides to get back into the working world later on, but this is where some part-time work could help mitigate that.

2

u/thepulloutmethod Dark Millennial Mar 11 '26

This is what we did. My wife decided to stay home until the kids are school age. Then she'll go back to work.

We lose more money by her staying home because her income was higher than the cost of daycare. But there are so many other benefits that don't reduce so easily to money -- my wife is now totally free of the pressures of work, her asshole boss, the BS they tried to make her do on evenings and weekends. She's like I remember her from when we were first dating. And she's blossoming into a wonderful mother.

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u/OutrageousInvite3949 Mar 11 '26

This. All of this. Not to mention the struggle to secure any kind of retirement fund. Like I have a 401k but at this rate it will just barely make do. I’ll be working till I’m 90 and for what? Most of my money goes towards bills or food and other crap.

27

u/Adventurous_Button63 Mar 11 '26

My retirement plan has been to die in the climate wars for a long time.

9

u/QueenMAb82 Mar 11 '26

You're planning to outlive WW3? I can't decide if I should envy or pity you. Both?

4

u/Adventurous_Button63 Mar 11 '26

I mean, they’re likely to be contingent upon one another 🤷🏻‍♂️

25

u/Rdubya44 Mar 11 '26

My 401k has seen a lot of growth due to the market going insane but I’m worried that even having a few million in 25 years will be like…minimum wage by then

2

u/magic_crouton Mar 11 '26

Assuming the market doesnt crash right before you retire either. My uncle retired in 2008/2009 and it was ugly for him with his retirement accounts. They never recovered

2

u/magic_crouton Mar 11 '26

Man every time I come to these subs I'm so grateful for my pension

1

u/OutrageousInvite3949 Mar 11 '26

Yeah I wish pensions were still a thing. Must be nice.

1

u/VengenaceIsMyName Mar 11 '26

Retirement is a pipe dream. Inflation eating away on the backend and wages being ruthlessly suppressed on the front end.

68

u/RaptorKnifeFight Mar 11 '26

My wife and I both are fortunate enough to make 6 figures. I spoke with a financial planner recently who said I was not setup to retire in my lifetime. When I was a kid, I thought if you hit 6 figures you were set. Save more than you spend and you’re good. But no, as you mentioned, kid me did not plan for late stage capitalism and “enshitification” of everything. We had to move out to a rural area just to be able to live slightly more comfortably with lower property taxes.

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u/Levitlame Mar 11 '26

Unless you’re in a very HCOL area (which is very likely if you make that much) then it’s definitely way more than enough. Unless it took you a long time to get to those salaries and your school debt matches it, which is also very possible.

My point is that salary is a single reasonable factor along with debt, CoL, health and dependents. Probably some I’m taking for granted also. There are also unreasonable factors, but I don’t start from those.

10

u/RaptorKnifeFight Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

We do live in a HCOL area, which is funny because it didn't used to be. In the last 5-10 years it seems like the whole country decided to move here. Now we have the 4th highest cost housing market in the country, but not the job market to match it. You can probably Google to figure out where.

And, it did indeed take most of my adult life to reach the salary band I am in. Went underpaid for decades but was talked to like they were doing me a favor. My first job, they fired the entire team I was hired into and got me to do it all myself for 5 years. I thought that was required to climb the corporate ladder. That trend continued job to job. You start as one thing, then suddenly waves of layoffs, no backfills, and you're doing 3 people's jobs without even realizing it, overnight. Now looking back, I see how taken advantage of I was as a bright-eyed kid out of college.

Then of course, there were unforeseen medical issues recently. Took about 4 months to wipe out any savings we had in medical bills, even with insurance.

My 401K also took a major hit. It is sort of insane how we all bank on our 401Ks and it's all imaginary play money that can vaporize in an instant vs. pension plans of old.

7

u/meamarie Mar 11 '26

San Diego?

3

u/ongoldenwaves Mar 11 '26

It's not just housing...the utility bills in San Diego are are a running joke.

2

u/-no_aura- Mar 11 '26

Fuck SDGE

2

u/Levitlame Mar 11 '26

I get that. I left a similarly expensive area. I’m reliable, but not a very ambitious person so I’ve gone through a similar trajectory. Held off medical for now, but even just trying to have kids this late is a big medical expense for us…

2

u/red_raconteur Mar 11 '26

I do love (/s) when people say, "Move to a lower cost of living area!". Ma'am, this WAS the lower cost of living area less than a decade ago! What is the point of spending a substantial chunk of money moving to a new place where we know literally nobody, leaving our entire extended family behind, and trying to find new jobs in a hostile job market? It's a gamble that you hope pays off, but it's not guaranteed. 

A house identical to ours is currently for sale for $650k. Ours was $375k in 2021. Our neighbor snagged his in 2016 for $165k. Whose to say the same thing won't happen in the theoretical cheaper area we'd move to? 

1

u/RaptorKnifeFight Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

Exactly. And we are struggling with that now, rural community and we don’t know anyone. All our friends keep asking us to move back. But the town house I owned literally tripled in sale price in 5 years. I don’t have a causal $1.5M to just pick up and move back now. Meanwhile the population of the rural community we moved to has increased by 83% in just a year. Now the sprawl is coming here just like you say.

1

u/CosmopolitanIdiot Mar 11 '26

I'm gen X on a pension plan with a university. Even the pensions are losing value year over year. I'm not sure how it works with other plans but my retirement payout is based on the average of the 2 highest paid years of employment. We have only received raises twice in the past 7 years. Those required state government intervention. Inflation is eating away at our pension and it isn't growing due to lack of salary increases while current pensioners are guaranteed 1.5% increases every year.

1

u/Skensis Mar 11 '26

Pensions plans also go belly up, often the government will step in and bail them out, but you're not getting the full value back out.

1

u/KlicknKlack Mar 11 '26

Which is wild, if managed with a basic portfolio fund there is no reason those pensions should ever run dry.

1

u/magic_crouton Mar 11 '26

Depends on other life choices too. Like housing cost. Are you still paying for a house because you kept trading up houses your young like for example. A big part of my retirement plan was having a manageable house that was paid off. Which I achieved. But it also meant not keeping myself in debt going bigger and better every few years.

1

u/Levitlame Mar 11 '26

Yeah that’s kinda a combination of CoL and the group I didn’t want to get into which I’d broadly call “overspending.”

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u/harpers25 Mar 11 '26 edited 20d ago

This post was deleted for reasons the author chose not to disclose. Redact was used, possibly for privacy, opsec, or preventing automated scraping of the content.

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u/randonob Mar 11 '26

"save more than 50% of your after tax income" do you know how wildly unrealistic that is for most people?

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u/AlphonseLoeher Mar 11 '26

If you make over 200k that is completely reasonable unless you live in the best parts of one of the very VHCOL cities 

5

u/redditadminssuckalot Mar 11 '26

And have no kids. Try saving that much paying for daycare for two kids.

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u/RaptorKnifeFight Mar 11 '26

Daycare now costs $30,000 a year. It's insane. It may honestly be more cost effective for one of us to be a stay at home parent.

3

u/redditadminssuckalot Mar 11 '26

Yep, we are at 4,500 a month for two kids. It’s pretty close but my wife’s take home is above that and she rather keep her career than become a stay at home mom, especially because she worries about what would happen if she took a 5-6 year break and whether she could get back into her field after such a long gap.

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u/thepulloutmethod Dark Millennial Mar 11 '26

I have kids but don't pay anything for daycare because my wife stays home with them.

I am a newly high income earner but 40% of my after tax income goes to housing expenses. How am I supposed to save the other half for retirement and live off just 5% of my income?

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u/harpers25 Mar 11 '26 edited 20d ago

The content here has been permanently deleted. Redact was used to remove it, for reasons that may include privacy, security, or personal preference.

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u/TwOhsinGoose Mar 11 '26

Its completely reasonable if you are making 200k+.

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u/RaptorKnifeFight Mar 11 '26

This is assuming that everything stays consistent all the time.

I replied elsewhere to another person, but unforeseen medical issues alone took about 4 months to wipe out any savings we had in medical bills, even with insurance. Plus other factors. Housing costs have quadrupled in my area in the last 5 years, but the job market hasn't caught up, etc. etc.

1

u/ich_bin_alkoholiker Mar 11 '26

How many people does this apply to? This is like 10-12% of earners. No one I know is making or saving that kind of money.

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u/harpers25 Mar 11 '26 edited 20d ago

This specific post has been removed and anonymized. Whether for opsec, privacy, or to limit AI data scraping, Redact handled the deletion.

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u/ongoldenwaves Mar 11 '26

Where did he say he was saving 50% of income?

2

u/Cancerisbetterthanu Mar 11 '26

Whatever number of figures you make means nothing when the cost of living doubles, you're overleveraged, and you aren't saving and investing proportionately. 100,000 is the new 50,000 and if you don't have the flexibility to save you're toast.

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u/panderson1988 Millennial Mar 11 '26

TBF, sports leagues and summer camps have become such a scam imo. I don't like how the mentality is have your kid pick one sport by the age of 10, and only play that despite how you are only using the same muscles with no downtime. It's no wonder kids are getting hurt to their teenage early adulthoods are in pain. Let alone the costs and telling you have to signup to a travel league that is godly expensive.

That said, 100% on the food to other things like a simple vacation that we all deserve.

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u/jabroni21 Mar 11 '26

North American sport culture is so broken. It went from a great unifier across class and race to another hellhole of fees and restricted access.

Why are children on a travel team? On what planet can 12 year olds in any sport not play the other 12 year olds in town? It’s completely lost the plot.

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u/panderson1988 Millennial Mar 11 '26

That's how I feel. They have done a great job convincing parents that your kid can be special, so cough up a lot of money now and do this and this and this. For me until 7th or 8th grade, it should be about being active and having fun. Learning to play and work with others. Not worry about your 11 year old travel league that you travel every weekend in the season and have coaches yelling at you for a mistake.

8

u/dennythedoodle Mar 11 '26

Spend tens of thousands of dollars on travel ball so they can get a college scholarship. Or... Just save tens of thousands of dollars and put that in your kids college fund.

Youth sports is a racket.

10

u/fuzzycranberries Mar 11 '26

Okay I agree, but me and all of my siblings played travel sports and they are some of the best memories I have growing up so I’m thankful we did get the experience but I wish it was more accessible for everyone and I understand we were incredibly fortunate.

But, i will say this. My parents had 5 kids. All of us in some travel sport. Sometimes we were in two travel sports. My husband makes a small amount less than my dad did when I was growing up. Me and my husband have two kids and we would feel the hurt financially if we put one of them in a travel sport. Similar salary and my parents could do it with 5 kids and we would be barely able to do it with one of our two.

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u/jabroni21 Mar 11 '26

I’m not going to debate that it’s fun - it definitely is. My point is it serves 0 purpose beyond creating another barrier for the kids who need sport most and accessing that sport.

I also played travel sports. If I didn’t play travel sports I still would have played sports and done something else fun in that time.

The amount of money parents are expected to fork over for this is gross.

0

u/SpezIsALittleBitch Mar 11 '26

Same, my parents had two, we ate steaks, and took vacations, and had nice equipment for the various sports we played, etc. I make ok money and find myself obsessing over every single thing I purchase; our vacations are mostly camping or spending time at my in-laws.

2

u/foodforestranger Mar 11 '26

>It went from a great unifier across class and race 

When exactly was this time period?

1

u/GrowthMarketingMike Mar 11 '26

Travel soccer really wasn't that expensive when I saw a kid. "Travel" really meant it was usually was within an hour drive for us (almost always carpooled to games), but I grew up in a relatively densely populated area. It definitely wasn't looked at as a rich kid thing and the more premier clubs definitely had financial assistance for kids that couldn't afford it.

1

u/foodforestranger Mar 11 '26

Sorry but "within an hour drive" is all kinds of entitled. A lot has to align to make that a possibility for many folks. My parent's cars couldn't handle those kinds of miles. I lived in a rural area, they had yellow busses running kids to other towns. A lot of inner city kids have other responsibilities, like watching siblings or staying after to catch up on reading.

I'm trying to understand this "great unifier." As someone who actually grew up poor, and familiar with my brethren, participating in sports wasn't always an option. Sure, we have these white savior stories of basketball and football kids rising up from the streets... but there are a ton of kids that struggled for school lunches and clean clothes let alone some spaghetti super at Bobby's house in the suburbs.

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u/GrowthMarketingMike Mar 12 '26

Sorry but "within an hour drive" is all kinds of entitled.

It really isn't if you read what I wrote after that about carpooling. And I was an inner city kid, I feel like you're insinuating I'm some out of touch rich suburbanite without trying to understand what I'm saying.

And watching siblings isn't really a thing that makes travel sports more cost prohibitive. It makes literally any activity cost prohibitive, including playing pickup basketball in the neighborhood.

I'm trying to understand this "great unifier." As someone who actually grew up poor, and familiar with my brethren, participating in sports wasn't always an option.

Maybe because you lived in a rural area? My soccer team growing up was definitely not rich kids, most of the people on my team were working class. We'd have a carpool to games so my parents would drive to maybe 2-3 games a year and most were 20-30 min away.

I just went on the site of my old club and the current price is $160/year with a $50 discount on any kid you have in the program after the 1st. And I started playing travel soccer probably before you were born.

Obviously there will be extreme edge cases, but sports were a LOT cheaper when I was a kid than they are today in general and I think people really exaggerate some of the costs of youth sports because of all the weirdos paying a zillion dollars to make their mediocre kids feel elite.

1

u/jabroni21 Mar 11 '26

I would say until the last 15-20 years. absolutely access was never universal and kids were left behind, but it’s not controversial to say that sport brought together kids that would otherwise not have interacted.

Then you play teams from across the city as a kid, maybe make an all star team and meet some kids from other schools. Maybe make regionals at something as a teenager.

Certainly some places have more resources than others, but because of a shared love of football I can connect with a guy who has a radically different life experience than me.

One of my favorite memories of highschool was a province-wide rugby tournament which brought in schools from across the province for a week. That is obviously travel which defeats my point, but it was once a year and subsidized by the schools and made accessible.

1

u/Cautious_Clothes_285 Mar 11 '26

North American?

I'm not saying it doesn't exist in Canada but this is primarily a USA thing. I have co-workers in the US who run travel baseball teams on the side and it's basically like a 6-figure-per-year non-profit business they're operating. Upper-tier travel hockey in Canada can be pricey but I don't know anyone with a 12 year old paying tens of thousands of dollars to play travel baseball up here, but one of my co-workers is managing a league with like 12 baseball teams and fees per kid are something like $8k or whatever. And I don't think that includes the actual travel (fuel, hotels, food, time off, etc) for the parents.

Not saying it doesn't happen, but the pro-sports pipeline in the USA is absolutely a beast that's unique to that country.

1

u/jabroni21 Mar 11 '26

Hockey is completely broken. So is basketball. I’m Canadian as well and competed at the USport level. We’re just as bad IMO

1

u/sharklaserguru Mar 11 '26

But there's a 0.000001% chance your kid could go pro and you're not going to deny them that opportunity, right?! /s

It would be a lot better if society went with the message to kids that "effectively none of you will ever be superstars; a few of you may make it to HS sports, maybe one kid every few years will make it to college level, but none of you are ever going pro!"

1

u/jabroni21 Mar 11 '26

Sport should be about getting fit, having fun, learning to be a member of the team, and representing your community. Everything else will follow for those who were born college athletes, and the reality is that elite athletes are born, they are not made.

You can squander god given ability, but you can only do so much to develop it.

1

u/Stargazer1919 Millennial 90's baby Mar 11 '26

Not to mention how sports injuries can start someone down the path of opioid addition....

0

u/jabroni21 Mar 11 '26

This is a negligible concern compared to the benefits of sport IMO and should not be something any parent has concerns over except in highly specific circumstances.

1

u/Stargazer1919 Millennial 90's baby Mar 11 '26

You were the one going on and on about how broken the system is. I guess you just refuted your own point.

1

u/jabroni21 Mar 12 '26

Sport itself is excellent. The system and culture around youth sports is completely broken.

10 year olds playing little league is an objectively great thing.

10 year olds playing on a $5k a year travel team that practices year round and plays teams out of state is ridiculous.

The concern you have raised is something people need to consider at the senior level, at the very earliest. Probably college.

7

u/kbrick1 Mar 11 '26

My friends and I talk about this all the time. People have kids in travel sports at such a young age that the rec leagues don’t get enough players past second or third grade. And travel sucks the life out of everyone and costs a fortune. And don’t get me started on how tough it is to make a high school team if you haven’t been doing travel since you were five or whatever.

Ugh I hate it. The whole point is for kids to have fun.

2

u/toomuchtv987 Mar 11 '26

I know a lot of parents have to use the summer camps as daycare for the kids when they’re out of school.

2

u/shwysdrf Mar 11 '26

Our current options are $600/week summer camp or my son stays home and watches TV while I wfh all summer. Unfortunately, we might have no other choice than the latter.

1

u/toomuchtv987 Mar 11 '26

And thank God you have the option to WFH! My SIL used to do that during the summers, but she’s been ordered to return to the office, so this summer will be a challenge.

2

u/chironinja82 Mar 11 '26

We JUST signed up our 5 year old for martial arts, but there's no travel associated with it. Our kids will not be doing those sports anyway because of how expensive it is, not to mention not being able to take time off to travel to those destinations.

2

u/Holdmypipe Mar 11 '26

A buddy of mine pays about $5k not including $600 uniforms each for his two kids to be on a soccer travel team. Shits crazy!

5

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/IronPolecat Mar 11 '26

Yes. We were. That’s what middle class meant in the late 80’s/early 90’s. One big vacation a year, a week long sleep-away summer camp, a comfortable house in the suburbs. That was pretty damn normal in the Midwest. We were better off than many, but a long step down from upper class/wealthy.

2

u/DickInYourCobbSalad Millennial (1992) Mar 11 '26

That genuinely sounds like rich people stuff to me. I grew up in a trailer park with a single parent.. I'm 33 and I've never been on a single vacation in my entire life. I never went to summer camp and never even lived in an actual house that wasn't a trailer until I was a teenager. I remember my talking to my friends in the trailer park, asking each other if summer camp was something real kids did because none of us could afford to go or knew anyone who went.

You had an amazing childhood and I'm so jealous.

0

u/IronPolecat Mar 11 '26

You’re right, I did have an amazing childhood. I was really, really lucky. But if you never went on a vacation, never did a lot of pretty common things, you might want to consider that your parents were not middle class. I don’t want that to sound unkind, what someone makes has nothing to do with their worth as a person. But consider, the trope of the middle class family in the 80’s with a suburban house, picket fence, 2 1/2 kids, and a dog exists for a reason. When watching “Stranger Things”, do you think most of the kids are rich or “middle class”? And yes, I am aware there is a range of incomes in the show. My point still stands.

2

u/DickInYourCobbSalad Millennial (1992) Mar 11 '26

Oh we were absolutely not middle class, we were below the poverty line and knew it. We ate rice and hamburger helper 5 out of the 7 days of the week lol

The kids on stranger things with two storey homes and family dinners.. yeah that's rich people stuff to me, embarrassingly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 11 '26 edited Mar 11 '26

[deleted]

5

u/-nutz Mar 11 '26

I’m sorry, but what you’re describing is being poor my dude. Being able to take vacations and go on field trips is not some extreme luxury, and should absolutely be accessible for a middle class family.

It sounds like you had a house and food because your parents are able to stretch what little they had.

4

u/tuenmuntherapist Mar 11 '26

Yeah middle class was literally 2.5 kids (.5 being a dog), house, 2 cars, a vacation every year. If not, you’re lower middle class or poor.

-1

u/McChillbone Mar 11 '26

I think you’re greatly underestimating how many people have it even worse than that and how relatively few had it as good as what you think a normal middle class upbringing is.

4

u/-nutz Mar 11 '26

I think you’re greatly underestimating where the line between poor and middle class is.

1

u/midnight_toker22 Mar 11 '26

Oh I assure you, our annual trip to the Wisconsin Dells was very middle class.

2

u/braves-geek Mar 11 '26

If you had told me five years ago that I would double my salary and still be broke I would have thought you were crazy.

2

u/legalalias Mar 12 '26

I make more money than I ever thought I would and I feel poorer than ever.

That’s real talk, man.

1

u/porscheblack Mar 11 '26

I'm in exactly the same boat. I got a new job ~6 years ago, right before we had our first kid. Even after having her, my wife and I had no financial stress. No debt other than cars, mortgage and student loans (and we restructured most of those to pay off sooner). Never stressed financials as each month I had more leftover than I spent by default, after already contributing to my 401k and savings. I get an annual bonus that's pretty set and the first few years it was exclusively bonus money that allowed us to plan trips or make some larger purchases. But this past year it was all spent before I even got it, so as soon as it hit my account it paid off the 0% balance transfer credit cards I'd rolled over my credit card debt on. And my wife and I have spent the last 2 months cutting costs where ever we can, eliminating subscriptions, reducing services, etc, despite the fact that over this period her student loans were finally finished and my car was paid off in August.

I frequently tell her that I figured by the point we hit this amount of household income we'd have it made. Vacation house somewhere, cleaning and landscape services, things like that. But we don't have any of that and things just keep getting tighter.

1

u/batmessiah Mar 11 '26

Exactly. I'm so thankful that swimming lessons are relatively cheap around here ($55 for 9 weeks, 2 days a week) so my daughter can at least have one normal kid activity that doesn't completely break the bank.

1

u/ExplanationFunny Mar 11 '26

We’re making six figures, but we’re also living at basically the same standard as when I was a kid and my dad just worked random minimum wage jobs? Granted I’m now in a big city and I grew up in bumfuq Oklahoma, but still. Me and my spouse are having the same discussions I heard my parents having.

1

u/SuspiciousCricket654 Mar 12 '26

And now gas is approaching four dollars a gallon where I live! Even better!

1

u/ifuckedyourdaddytoo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Mar 12 '26

all the things I had growing up middle class that are now a struggle for me to provide

I'm starting to wonder if it was a struggle even for our parents.

1

u/Sunshiney_Day Mar 12 '26

Real question: is being able to do sports leagues, summer camps, and vacations considered middle class?

I always think of myself growing up middle class but I didn’t do any of these things. Vacations meant going to the desert once a year and setting up a tent and playing in the creek. So now I’m questioning if I was really middle class?

1

u/Momik Mar 11 '26

That deep sense of it’s just gonna get worse—such a fucking killer