Our debt payoff story got a little bit of exposure in the press last week, and with the exposure- we started to get a lot of questions about how we got into debt in the first place. We have told that story plenty of times on this site, and a large part of what pushed us over the top was medical expenses related to the pregnancy and birth of our third child. This revelation led a few different people to ask, “Why did we decide to have a third child, if we weren’t financially prepared to handle the related expenses?” Let’s dig into that a little bit.
Who Can Afford to Have Kids?
I’m quite certain that if everyone followed the sage advice, “Wait to have kids until you can afford them”, that the human race would be well on its way to extinction. Life just doesn’t work that way. Is there really a magical number that people should have in their bank account before they start trying to get pregnant? According to CNN Money, the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 reached a staggering $245,000 in 2014. Without the help of the Powerball, few couples are going to find a way to bank that much before jumping into parenthood.
What’s ironic about the whole thing is that money isn’t even close to the most important thing that you need to have before becoming a parent. While I love being a dad more than anything in this world, I don’t think it’s for everyone. If you are not yet prepared to pour a large portion of your time and energy into someone besides yourself, then perhaps you should just continue on without having kids. Being a good parent involves developing patience, empathy, and unconditional love. But in no way, shape, or form does being a good parent mean that you need to have a lot of money. I have met great dads who are struggling living paycheck to paycheck, and I have met horrible dads who make hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. You certainly should have the means to keep the new baby safe, warm, and well-fed– but that’s just a piece of the puzzle.
Our Situation at the Time
Stepping back to the question at hand, could we have been better financially prepared for the birth of our third child? Looking back on where we were at the time, I would have to answer “Yes”. We knew that becoming a one-income family once again was going to be a challenge for us, but I do believe that we underestimated our margin for error. We hadn’t even heard of the concept of an emergency fund before that point, and we really had no way to tackle the unexpected medical expenses once they started piling up.
Truthfully, the decisions that my wife and I had to make about having a new baby were not unique to us or our financial situation. I have talked to many couples that find that the high costs of child care make it completely impossible for both of them to keep working full-time. This is especially true when families have more than one child under the age of five. At the same time, I have met other couples who choose to have both mom and dad continue working, because neither of them feels prepared to spend all of their days at home without any adult conversation. For our situation, we knew that my wife wanted to stay home, and we both agreed that we would find a way to make the finances work.
The Cost of Having Kids
When our second child was born ten years ago, I worked for a different company and our health insurance covered nearly the entire bill. I switched jobs in the years that followed, and at the same time, medical costs in the US started to climb rather dramatically. A recent feature at Nerdwallet referenced a study by Truven Health Analytics stating that the average out-of-pocket cost (with insurance) for childbirth in 2014 is about $2200 for vaginal births and $2700 for cesarean.
Large as those numbers might be, our total out-of-pocket costs ended up dwarfing those numbers after some prenatal scans revealed some concerns about the pregnancy. These issues required for us to undergo many additional rounds of testing, and tripled the number of doctor’s visits that we were required to make. We likely could have absorbed the cost of a “normal” pregnancy, but the unplanned additional expenses ended up playing a large role in our financial troubles. Thankfully, our daughter is now as happy and healthy as they come, and we count our blessings every single day.
Stepping Forward
From that point, of course, we had a few other major setbacks that led us to the point where we started this blog, cut our family spending, and started climbing out of debt. We continue to share our story to try to help others who are in the same situation find hope that they can turn their family’s finances around. No matter if it is medical bills, a job loss, or poor choices that helped to dig that hole, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Were We Too Broke to Have Kids? is a post from: See Debt Run