Hello ParentERA,
My girlfriend and me have always been indecisive about having a kid for the past 5 years we've known each other. We like our relaxing life of just watching tv shows & movies, playing video games and going outside once in a while.
But now that my girlfriend just hit 35, and also the fact that we've seen her sister's cute baby hit 13 months and seeing him growing up over the months... it's making us think otherwise honestly. We're only his uncle & aunt and we love that little bundle of joy & cuteness(now that he can almost walk and show more emotions and "talk", it's even better), and then we imagine if we had our own kid...and we're like, we would love the heck out of him/her and be proud to raise him/her!
And we're also getting "old". We can't just wait another 5 years to make a decision or else it's going to get too risky... but one big hurdle still really really make me hesitate. The money.
I make like 45k a year, no debts, am able to save money in the long term for stuff like traveling, casual dining restaurants, or even a console or parts for a gaming PC, which is great... but my girlfriend make less than half of that and live paycheck by paycheck to pay her bills and debts.
Which mean that if we do get a kid... I probably will be the one paying almost everything that gets a little too expensive(and everybody knows, that happen very frequently with kids & teenagers) and that scares me. I'm afraid I'm going to end up living paycheck by paycheck and start getting debts like my girlfriend, just to be able to put my kid to school and college, for cloths, for food, for games...
And I also have to forget about ever getting out of my current old 4 rooms apartment, since anything more recent or bigger cost 300$ or more per month than what I pay right now. A house? Ha, keep dreaming. So we're probably going to continue to live in this old apartment(or worse, be forced to get a cheaper apartment because we can't afford it anymore) for ~20 years.
Was any current parents in the same situation I am? How did it go once you got a kid? Is my financial life going to be a crisis for 2 decades? I really would like some encouragements lol. I would love to have a kid, share all those precious moments during the first 12 years, be proud/supportive/discouraged/angry during the next 6-8 tenuous teenage years and finally see him/her become a proper adult and who knows, maybe become grandparents. But I can't stop thinking about how hard it's going to be financially...
I know a lot of people say "if you keep thinking about being ready financially, you'll never have a kid", but you also can't just ignore that either...