If you’re wondering what’s the best age to have a baby, I’ve got some very important thoughts for you. Having children is one of the best things you’ll ever do.
Children make like more meaningful. Their love will fill the household. But children are also hard work and your happiness will likely plummet in the initial years due to a lack of freedom and much more stress.
As a 45-year-old dad of a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old, I’m reminded of my old age every time I bend over to pick up my little one. My lower back aches and my knees sometimes dangerously buckle if they bend too far. Oh to be 25 again!
But then I realize that because we are older parents, we don’t have the same stresses as younger first-time parents. We’re not stressed about going over a baby budget because we don’t have to strictly follow one. Further, older parents may be able to spend a lot more time with their children.
Both of us don’t have traditional jobs to commute to. And we’ve built our cozy little dream home in San Francisco. Having more time to spend with our little ones is priceless, especially the first five years before kindergarten.
We therefore have two variables to discuss to come up with the best age to have a baby: The Biological Best Age To Have A Baby and The Economical Best Age To Have A Baby. Then I’ll come up with the ultimate combination.
Given money is the root of all pain and suffering, it’s important to dig deeper into the Economical Best Age. Most articles you read on the subject only address the Biological Best Age.
The Biological Best Age To Have A Baby
We can first approach the best age to have a baby through biology. After all, biology is the most important factor in being able to have a baby.
It wasn’t until about age 35 that I started seriously considering having a baby. My wife was 32 years old at the time, and they say a woman’s oocytes are best before age 35. We were shown a series of graphs like the ones below regarding decreasing fertility rates and increasing miscarriage rates as a woman ages.
Fertility And Spontaneous Abortion Chart
Aafter the age range of 35 – 39, the rate of spontaneous abortion doubles from ~25% to 51%. Meanwhile, the fertility rate slumps from roughly 340 to 170 per 1000 married women.
I don’t have to explain that going through a spontaneous abortion is a psychologically traumatizing event, especially if you’ve been trying for years.
According to one study by Dunson, David B. PhD; Baird, Donna D. PhD; Colombo, Bernardo PhD, the percentage infertility was estimated at 8% for women aged 19–26 years, 13–14% for women aged 27–34 years, 18% for women aged 35–39 years.
Infertility is defined as the inability of a sexually active, non-contracepting couple to achieve pregnancy in one year.
Related: The Difficulties Of Pregnancy
Getting Pregnant And Staying Pregnant
Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is a fertility treatment that involves placing sperm inside a woman’s uterus to facilitate fertilization. The goal of IUI is to increase the number of sperm that reach the fallopian tubes and subsequently increase the chance of fertilization.
The cost for each IUI is roughly $1,000 – $1,600. The success rate for a 30-year old woman with infertility issues is only about 20% a month. For a 43-year old woman with infertility issues, the success rate drops to only 1% a month according to the Advanced Fertility Center in Chicago.
IVF Is Expensive, Painful, And Stressful
In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) is a medical procedure whereby an egg is fertilized by sperm in a test tube or elsewhere outside the body. Below is a chart of miscarriage rates by age after a IVF cycle. Starting around the age of 37, you can see the slope steepen. At around 44 years old, you only have a 50% chance of conceiving through IVF.
IVF is much more difficult on a woman due to the drugs, hormonal changes, and number of doctors visits required. Further, the cost of IVF is roughly $12,000 – $17,000 per cycle. Can you imagine the stress and sadness of not only losing $17,000, but also failing to conceive after each attempt? Devastating.
Based on the data, the biological ideal age to have a baby is in your early 20s, and no later than 40. Of course, having a baby after age 40 can be done, as Halle Berry showed us when she gave birth at age 47.
Just know the chances of complications are much higher, as are the chances of spending tens of thousands of dollars with no success.
The Economical Best Age To Have A Baby
Now that we’ve gone through the best age to have a baby by biology, we should look at the financial aspect of having a baby.
Some will disagree, but I believe it’s best not to have a baby if you are unable to take care of yourself. In other words, if you are drowning in debt, can’t hold a stable job, aren’t saving any money for a rainy day, are hooking up with multiple partners, don’t truly love your partner, and love to snort cocaine every time you go out, it’s best not to be a parent.
Babies are an incredible joy, but require a tremendous amount of time for proper care. For the first several months, my wife and I each spent 20 – 24 hours a day with our little one. In order to do so, we purposefully engineered our lifestyles to live off passive income so we wouldn’t have to work for someone else, ever.
When our baby started sleeping more than four hours straight a night, we finally felt like we could breathe again. Now that both of our kids can sleep through the night most of the time, we have a more balanced life.
Money Stress Kills Happiness And Relationships
If we had experienced money stress on top of baby care stress and sleep deprivation, there’s no doubt we would have a strained relationship. But because our finances were taken care of, we never fought and only went through occassional mood swings when the postpartum hormones on both sides randomly kicked in for no reason.
Let me suggest some financial guidelines you should consider before having a baby. Please note I’m assuming you’ve already found the right stable partner.
1) A Net Worth Target Before Having Kids
According to the US Department of Agriculture, the cost of raising a child is roughly $233,000 from 0 – 17 starting in 2015. If you add in expected inflation, the cost rises to roughly $284,000. And if you add on college tuition, room, and board, the figure easily jumps to roughly $500,000. However, if you have a baby in 2023+, it might cost you over a million dollars to raise him or her through college.
Most of us want to send our kids to college. Therefore, have a net worth target goal of between $233,000 – $500,000 before having kids. This way, you will have a net worth equal to at least the cost of raising one kid through college. Yes, of course you can have kids with much less wealth and be fine. I’m just providing some guidelines for those who enjoy analyzing for the future
Related: Target Net Worth Goals By Age, Income, Or Work Experience
Greater Net Worth Targets In Expensive Cities
Because I started my career in NYC and ended my career in San Francisco, the cost of living was much higher than average. As a result, my colleagues and I punted around the idea of shooting for a $1 million net worth before starting a family.
We definitely didn’t need a $1 million net worth, it was just a fun target to shoot for in order to make sure we could properly take care of our spouse and little one in case we were the only income earners.
With the median home price at over $1.6 million in San Francisco in 2023, a $1 million net worth doesn’t seem that unreasonable. Luckily, expensive cities are expensive due to stronger income opportunities.
2) A Career Milestone Target Before Having A Baby
Having a baby may or may not derail your career progression due to workplace discrimination and necessary time off to take care of your little one. I’m completely for each parent taking a minimum of three months parental leave, and working from home a couple more months if possible. Understandably, some employers don’t see it this way given how competitive business is today.
For any aspiring ladder climber, your 20s is a time to earn your stripes. You’re generally a cost center to the company, which means you don’t come from a position of strength. Only after you start generating more benefits than you cost will you gain negotiating power. And only after your company has promoted you to a certain level will they believe in your value.
Third Promotion To Ensure Your Career Isn’t A Fluke
Given this logic, you might consider having a baby only after achieving a third promotion or greater. The first promotion doesn’t count for much since you’re going from junior bottom feeder to senior bottom feeder. But by promotion number three, it’s clear you’re actually creating a lot of value for your organization.
Three or more promotions is not a fluke, which means you should feel confident knowing that you’ve actually got good enough skills other companies want too.
My career milestone goal was to make Vice President (Analyst, Associate, VP, Director, Managing Director) before seriously thinking about family. After getting promoted to VP, I felt a tremendous sense of relief because I knew that if I was ever laid off, I had a high chance of getting hired as a VP at a different investment bank.
Related: How To Get Paid And Promoted Faster
3) An Income Target Before Having A Baby
According to Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman, $75,000 is the income level researchers have deemed where happiness no longer increases the more you make. They partnered with Gallup to survey 450,000 Americans in 2008 and 2009. Thanks to inflation, I believe that income level is closer to $100,000 a year in 2023.
I argue the ideal income level for maximum happiness is closer to $250,000 per couple, especially if you live in an expensive coastal city like San Francisco.
According to the US Department of Housing and Development in 2020, a San Francisco family of four with an income of $105,350 per year is considered “low income.” In San Francisco, you can actually qualify for subsidized housing if you make only $100,000 a year.
Therefore, I recommend making $100,000 or more as a household if you live in the heartland of America, or $250,000 if you live in a coastal city before having children. With such income, you’ll be able to ideally afford to buy a home, comfortably pay for children expenses, and save at least 20% of your salary for retirement.
Related: How To Make Six Figures At Almost Any Age
The Best Age To Have A Baby
At what age range can you come up with a $233,000 – $500,000 minimum net worth, get your third promotion, and earn $88,000 – $250,000 a year? The answer is somewhere between 30 – 35 for focused couples.
Combine the biological factors found in the first part of this post, and the age range of 30 – 35 seems like the best age to have a baby.
If I were to choose a specific age, I’d choose 32 as the best age to have a baby for a woman or man because the parent will have roughly 10 years of post college life experience. It takes time to mature as a working adult.
10 years of doing anything should give you enough confidence to take the next step if you so choose. You’re still in a biologically low risk zone and have had plenty of time to get your finances in order.
Whatever age you feel is ideal, start one or two years before that ideal age because it takes on average 7 to 8 months to conceive if you have no issues.
Divorce Minimization
It’s also important to think about minimizing divorce/breakups after having a baby. Getting a divorce is a net negative for children.
One would think that the older you are, the more you know what you want and don’t want in a partner. The more relationships you go through, the higher the chance you’ll find one that sticks, although not always the case.
The cost of having many children isn’t just the money. It is also the stress of raising children and what might happen to children if neglected.
However, there are some unexpected financial benefits of having children as well. Overall, we are “saving” about $100,000 in expenses we thought we’d have to spend by now. Further, we bought two properties to house our growing family in 2019 and 2020. As a result, the real estate equity has increased tremendously.
You Want Children To Be Part Of Your Life For Longer
Here’s another important insight on the best time to have a baby.
When you have your baby, you will love him or her like you’ve never loved anyone before. Therefore, you will wish you had your baby sooner, so you could have spent a greater portion of your remaining life together.
One of my biggest regrets is not having my children five years sooner. But I can’t go back into the past. I can only help those of you who are thinking of having a baby to consider all the variables.
Once your baby is around 9-10-months old, you mind find yourself wanting to have another baby. This is because everyone is sleeping a little better and a mother’s body has healed or almost fully healed. Evolution, I tell yah!
Therefore, if you want to have multiple babies, you must plan ahead and best start before age 35.
Having A Baby During A Pandemic
Despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, I’ve found that having a baby during a pandemic is actually pretty good. We had our daughter in mid-December 2019. Given we were going to stay at home anyway, a pandemic didn’t change our plans.
First of all, hospitals take extra safety precautions now due to COVID. Therefore, you may actually feel safer during your hospital stay.
Second of all, going for your baby checkups also feels safe due to all the precautions. You’ll likely get more space and fewer crowds.
Third, you likely won’t be traveling much for the first 3-6 months of your baby’s life. Therefore, not leaving your house is not a big deal since you weren’t going to leave much anyway.
Finally, a greater percentage of both parents get to spend more time with the baby. This is probably the biggest benefit of having a baby during a pandemic. If you can work from home and take care of your baby, you are double winning.
Loading ...Recommendations For All Parents
1) Get term life insurance.
If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us is that tomorrow is not guaranteed. All parents need to get a term life insurance policy to cover all liabilities and expenses until their children are independent adults. The easiest way to compare quotes is by checking rates for free on Policygenius.
My wife was able to double her life insurance coverage (to match mine) and pay less with Policygenius. Policygenius gets qualified life insurance carriers to compete for your business.
As a result, you can see multiple customized quotes all in one place. The pandemic has hammered home the importance of having life insurance to protect our families. I felt huge stress relief after both my wife and I were able to get new 20-year term life insurance policies.
2) Stay on top of your finances.
College tuition is now prohibitively expensive if your child doesn’t get any grants or scholarships. Therefore, it’s important to save and plan for your child’s future.
Check out Personal Capital’s new Planning feature, a free financial tool that allows you to run various financial scenarios to make sure your retirement and child’s college savings is on track. They use your real income and expenses to help ensure the scenarios are as realistic as possible.
Once you’re done inputting your planned saving and timeline, Personal Capital with run thousands of algorithms to suggest what’s the best financial path for you. You can then compare two financial scenarios (old one vs. new one) to get a clearer picture. Just link up your accounts.
There’s no rewind button in life. Therefore, it’s best to plan for your financial future as meticulously as possible. It’s better to end up with a little too much, than too little!
I’ve been using their free tools since 2012 to analyze my investments and I’ve seen my net worth skyrocket since.
3) Read The Best Personal Finance Book
If you want to start a family, you need to get your finances in order. Pick up a copy of my instant Wall Street bestseller, Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom. The book will help you make better decisions and build more wealth for your family.
You can buy a hard copy of BTNT on Amazon right here. I’m positive the book will provide you at least 100X more value than it costs! The book is based off 25+ years of experience working in finance and writing about finance.
Related posts on family and babies:
The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Married Couple
How To Survive The Pressure As The Sole Income Providing Parent
Readers, what do you think is the best age to have a baby or best age range to have a baby? At what age did you have a baby? Note: If you plan on having more than two children, then I think the ideal age goes down about two or three years per extra child e.g. three children = 29-30. Consider adoption as well.
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I’m 33 and already think I’m too old for kids, not physically but financially. I’m single now so I’d like to get to know somebody for a couple years before having a kid(s) with them…so realistically if I met someone tomorrow, there probably wouldn’t be a kid entering this world until I’m 36, and add at least a year for each kid past the first…which should that relationship not work out that forces me into child support payments until I’m 54+, which effectively ruins my plans to retire around 40.
It kind of stinks that I’ve come to look at it this way, but I know way too many guys who have gotten crushed in divorce and/or who have gotten the crappy end of the custody/child support stick for me to think rolling the dice is going to work out well in my favor. Rotating shifts + working lots of overtime is like a double whammy in family court…apparently all the judges see here is high income so you can pay a lot of child support and that you have a weird work schedule so the amount of time you get your kids ends up super limited. Should you want to cut back on overtime to spend more time with the kids its a whole new expensive, time consuming court battle to get things adjusted to your reduced hours/income.
If I end up having kids it probably won’t be til around 40. I’ll just retire and move abroad and have kids in a foreign country where its much cheaper to live(which is my early retirement plan even if kids aren’t in the picture)…that will allow me the best of both worlds…I get kids and an early retirement. Luckily for guys we have time on our side. Its a lot easier for a 40 year old guy to have a kid than a 40 year old woman.
We didn’t get married until we were both 30 and had our kids at 32 and 34. The financial stability was not there when they were first born but it was by the time our oldest was 7 or 8. We love the fact that we can afford to travel with our kids to places like Europe and Austrailia and have no problems paying for their private college tuition which starting soon will run six figures per year for at least a couple years. If we would have had kids 5-10 years younger there would have been much financial stress I’m sure but we would have made it work. We are actually a bit worried about becoming empty nesters next year in our early 50’s!
Hi Eric,
IMHO, Parenting is NOT a 2 generations issue. But between 3 generations.
You, your kids or would be kids, and your parents.
After all, your own parents to you is same as you being parents to your kids.
In your case, how are your own parents?
Personally, I wish I could take care of my kids earlier so I could have time for my own parents. Right now, its a tussle because kids are in critical stage of their education, and so are parents with their health.
If I had kids earlier, I and my parents could have enjoyed their growth much better, and my kids would have been independent adults by the time my parents needed me.
Thanks.
That’s a good point. How about go Hawaiian style, with three generations looking out for each other under one roof or on a compound? That’s what I’m hoping to do, but not sure if my parents are willing.
I’m the youngest of 3 kids and my parents are not alive – my mom died 10 years ago when I was 41 and my father passed 2 years ago. My dad did get to enjoy his grandkids. He made it just about every one of my 2 nephews sporting events all the way through high school.
You are lucky. To each personal situation, it can be different. For e.g. I have seen cases where the youngest in family is 10 years younger than the oldest kid. Imagine, you were 41 but your oldest sibling could be 51 with kids in college. Completely different situations. Sam asked for the ideal age, but its really dependent on too many factors. I have also seen folks not having kids because they are perfectionists! They want to have perfection in life, ask any parent – and they’d laugh at you. Anyways, I dont want to judge, because everyone is unique and so are their circumstances.
I’d end this topic by saying – I salute the ones who adopt.
Regards.
IMHO, the best age to get married is 25, and the best age to have a baby is 27, assuming both are college graduates.
One is NEVER ready, economically or mentally. The reason why older wisdom pushes their next to have one.
I was economically more than ready by age 36. Just took a while.
I resisted marriage. I think its because it was going to be arranged, and a logical mind fights it. Its more of a decision of brain, than of heart. I wanted at least 5 kids. I was worn and torn, after our first. We decided on the second child ONLY because to give company to our first, after we are gone.
Now, my 15 year old daughter is convinced that she does not want to marry at all.
If you notice the pattern around the world, folks are following their bucket list in their 20s, have live-in relationships, most of my friends stop at 1 kid, and the next generation has started questioning if marriage is even needed.
Thats the reason I said – one is NEVER ready mentally, given there are no other medical issues.
But everything being normal – I’d say that 25 is for marriage (if you want to at all get married), and 27 is ideal for 1st kid (if you at all want to have one). Down the road, when you are in mid 40s-50s – and your parents start dying, you’d thank yourself to have done the hard emotional work earlier in your life.
Of course, there are no thumb rules.
As for you Sam, you were financially ready after you got your job at Goldman, at least as per conventional wisdom of many previous generations! :-)
Anyways, its all in the mind. When the doctors asked us to take our daughter back home within 36 hours of her birth – we were like – are you serious? How are we going to take care of this baby if not in hospital?
Parenting is NOT a science, finance, or logic.
Its like throwing new parents in a lake, who do not know how to swim. But they survive.
They have no choice.
It is ONLY before parent-hood that folks analyze it – am I ready? Or am I not? What will happen when A happens? What if B happens?
All meaningless.
I like the concept of a safety net.
The one thing I would tell you in your “getting by on 200k” analysis is to get a better tax accountant. With the expenses you listed, your marginal tax rate maybe 35% (fed and state) but your effective rate should be about 20%. Frees up 20k a year….
Let us know exactly how you can legally reduce effective tax rate by 15%.
No need to talk to an accountant if we have you who believes it can be done. Thx
sure, in your expenses you had the following itemized deductions:
35k mortgage interest (700k house, 5%, meshes nicely with the 36k you listed)
8k RE tax on above house
2k charity
7.5k state income tax (based on 5%, no idea what state you live in)
Basic Itemized Deductions Approx 52.5
So 182 – 52.5k = 129.5k
Less 12k Exemptions (4k * 3, you, the mrs., the little one)
117.5 TI
Using IRS tables, fed tax on that is about 21k.
You probably wont get any credits due to income, so leave the 21k fed. + 7.5k state + 8k payroll tax = apprx 36.5 in total tax.
Over 182k you get an effective rate that is basically 20%. This is WAG math but the point is the tax rate is a lot lower.
So in your example, you free up an additional 20k to save/invest/blow on beer.
That said, love the concept of the article. Personally, the wife and I had kids in mid 20s. Need to be relatively young to crack heads, if necessary, when daughter starts dating :)
Good stuff. Who needs an accountant right?
They pay about 10% California state tax and then they have Social Security and Medicare tax of about 6.4% on the first $128,000 in income.
I was 28, 30, and 32 with my three. We definitely didn’t plan financially the way we should have, but thanks to the economy, we invested SOMETHING and that has grown nicely. I have heard of people doing side gigs with newborns to put 1-3K in a 529 right off the bat to grow itself to almost a full college cost. I wish we would have been thinking about a 529 right at birth as their ages have snuck up! I think you are in a great place, Sam! Not many parents have the stability and time that you two do.
Congratulations on your new addition. I’ve been a reader of yours for a few years now, and I have been hoping for an article just like this. My wife and I fall into the late 20’s-early 30’s group and are now 8 weeks pregnant. It’s a truly exciting time.
When my significant other shared the news I was overcome with joy, then immediately struck by a moment of realization. I recognized that though we were already well organized and situated, there was still so much to do from a financial side. I had to start writing a financial to-do list of things like: setting up a will (to establish custody in the event of both our passing-it happens); increasing life insurance; updating medical insurance; researching 529 plans; and revisiting our budget to include new baby related recurring expenses for after their arrival.
Over the last few years, we realized that it is always easier to delay having children. However, we both wanted to enjoy spending time with our child without being restrained by our own physical limitations. For us, this is the perfect time from a financial and biological perspective, and we are getting quite excited to embrace the joy and chaos of our new addition.
Thanks for all your contributions and efforts.
We are having issues conceiving. I really want a child and have wanted a child or two of my own for as long as I can remember. My husband however, wanted to wait, wait, wait, and wait some more. We are finally on the same page about 2 years ago but then ran into conceiving issues (that is more than just ‘keep trying’). I’m 32, and with no cure / end in sight, I currently am of the opinion that the best age to have a baby is whenever the biology happens.
You can plan, save, be FI and be finally ready for that baby. And never get that child. All that planning in the world will not allow you to make a biological phenomenon happen if it doesn’t want to.
I know I’m in the minority, at least for this audience, but I had my first child at 18. She is now 12 and I am 31. Of course it was not the ideal time to start a family with my then 20 year old girlfriend but things have a funny way of working out when you keep faith and and put your whole heart into something.
My daughter brought so much value to my life at age 18. Instead of heading off to my $50k/yr school to party, I went to the local community college and worked 2 jobs part time. I was able to write a check after earning my bachelors and paid off the 25k in student loans I had at the time.
We also had a lot of help. Since we were so young, so were our parents and they were up to the challenge of helping out so that we were able to get and education. My girlfriend and I both learned so much about ourselves and we grew together and became very motivated as a team.
My then girlfriend is now my wife of 5 years and we have a 4 and 2 year old at home as well. We both have master’s degrees and a net worth together of about 500k. There are many pros and cons to our situation which have been discussed already. Life wasn’t and still isn’t perfect but anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves.
My point is, there is no perfect time or situation – so make the best of it!
We had our first when I was 27 and second when I was 30. The reasoning behind it is that both my husband and I wanted to be finished raising our kids before we are 50. We understand that they will be in college, but for the most part, we will be done. We are hoping to enjoy the last few years of working and then retire around 55 if possible. That being said, we didn’t have a massive amount of net worth then, but 11 years later we are close to $1 million. Consistent savings is the key and even with kids we knew we would never stop saving.
I had my kids at age 24 and 27. I’m 33 now and I’m so glad to be done with late night feedings and diapers. I’m currently a full-time grad student, and I accomplish my schoolwork during the kids’ school day.
Another thing to consider is that if you have children younger, you are more likely to spend less on raising them. Not necessarily a bad thing! : )
A lot of people talk about women’s decreasing fertility with age but ignores the biological problems with older dads. I think one commenter talked about the problems with passing on defective genes. As we get older, our gene replication process becomes more and more statistically likely to produce errors, and more likely to propagate errors.
Older moms are likelier to have spontaneous abortions and hard time conceiving, in addition, they are also likelier to give birth to a baby with Down Syndrome.
Older dads are likelier to have children with psychological and/or mental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia. This is because women have finite number of eggs that are all created at once while women are still in utero, whereas men produce sperm throughout their lives. Every time a sperm stem cell begins the process of spawning new sperm, it has to divide, creating opportunity for mutations to form. The sperm produced by older sperm stem cells will have greater load of mutations.
The cost of fertility treatments, adoptions, and raising a child with special needs can quickly outweigh/erase wealth and stability that a couple has preciously generated.
In short, every couple (and individual) will have to evaluate their own wants and needs, and their risk tolerance when it comes to planning a family.
My mother raised five children alone (not by choice) on government academia income, her children today are successful engineers, accountant and physician with no debt. Growing up frugally taught me the value of money and how to save more aggressively than my American peers. I’m not saying I would prefer to raise my own family that way as I do not have as generous a pension scheme my mom is on, so I need more cushion. I think it would be ideal for women to have children between 26-32. We all had this magical ability to stay up all night and work all day in our 20s, and most of my friends and I wasted it on going out. I think in my 20s I had the energy to raise 3 kids and run 2 companies – Basically half Elon-Musk. I’m in my mid 30s and would like to have children some day, but honestly I’m so very very tired.
Thanks for bringing up the point about father’s sperm becoming more defective as well as men age. What do you think is the ideal range for men to be fathers?
My specific age of 32 is for both women and men.
I’m 43 and surprised with an unexpected pregnancy.
My male partner is going to be 50.
Reading comments like yours that are extremely pessimistic and focused on all that can go wrong with the developing fetus makes me sad. Yes I’ve read all that fine and time again, but thee are a lot of healthy babies born to women over the age of 40 who conceive naturally. Some of us have taken good care of ourselves and it’s best not to focus on all that could go wrong. FYI there is a semi new blood test that detects traces of abnormalities with the embryo/fetus within the mothers blood. It’s 99 percent accurate and if it comes back as positive then you can decide if you want to do the aminocentesis.
I don’t mean to be harsh here with my tone, I just think if you focus your energy in that direction in all that can go wrong then you might just manifest it.
I’m staying positive and am scared as hell quite frankly. My boyfriend is a bartender and I’m a skin care professional. Our work is physical and he already has three kids from a previous marriage. They are older teens. Our work is physical and I read Sams blog in hopes to learn a few tricks so I can figure out a way to retire one day. I just st started my own business this passed year and I’m making slow but steady steps to secure a better financial future.
I’m going to have all genetic tests done and if something isn’t right and it doesn’t abort itself as I’m approaching only 8 weeks then Im going to welcome and enjoy this new addition to my works and hope that it makes me an even better version of myself than I imagine myself to become.
Sam a good friend of mine just had a new baby at 43 and we have been discussing his feelings of being an older parent. He said he just doesn’t want to become decrepit on him.
I have been compiling a long list of people who have become parents later on male and female, some gave birth and some adopted……George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Sharon Stone, Adam Jones (guitarist of Tool), Maynard James Keenan ( lead singer of Tool), Alec Baldwin, Jimmy Fallon, the list is long, but inspiring. I think ultimately if your happy and keep your stress levels low and stay active and don’t smoke, and wear your seatbelt you’ve got the odds in your favor to enjoy your new babies for at least a few decades.
Staying Positive
Congrats on your baby, Sam! I had no idea. Very happy for you!!!!
We had a baby when we were 37. That’s a bit late, but it was about perfect for us. Most parents in our kid’s class are a bit younger than us. We’re still in the same age range, though. This is a relatively wealthy area and I don’t see any teenage/early 20s parents. Most educated couple wait a bit to have kids. A baby is much easier to handle when you’re comfortable financially.
Needing $500k income to have a kid is ridiculous, though. Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying being a dad. It’s an awesome feeling.
“I argue the ideal income level for maximum happiness is closer to $250,000 per couple, especially if you live in an expensive coastal city like San Francisco.”
My wife(26) and I(27) are expecting and we decided to start our family after we hit the $250k income. I would say $250k was our entry into happiness for the two of us. With $250k income, we make enough to cover our bills (mortgage, property insurance, etc), save $30k a year for retirement, and $35k a year to start saving for our suburb house when we move out of the SF.
I would argue that we would need to make at least $500k a year to enter our happiness level for a family. I say $500k since we would like to buy a house in the Penninsula which goes for around $2m for a 2,000 sqft house. There’s no way we can afford that mortgage or down payment with our current income of around $260k.
Hmmm, that is kinda sad isn’t it? It’s one of the reason why I want to diversify AWAY from SF Bay Area real estate and into the heartland. Requiring a $500,000 income to afford a normal 2,000 sqft house is ABSURD IMO. There are plenty of great places in the country to live with decent salaries that are so much cheaper.
I was just in Moraga, East Bay this weekend. Lots of nice homes for “only” $1.4M if you’re interested!
Related:
Scraping By On $500,000 A Year
Why I’m Investing In The Heartland Of America
I am grateful to parents and grandparents for many generations that had my ancestors when they had no money! I’m glad that we started our boisterous family when we had no money in our 20s, too. Babies are blessings and God provides! While a plan is awesome (we weren’t without degrees) many people don’t have the motivation to have a plan in our selfish society until they get a very powerful motivator: a next generation that they are responsible for. We weren’t thinking about much of any of that before babies ourselves and while you probably have a very responsible and reflective readership, I don’t think that holds true for society at large. I know I don’t speak for everyone, but I’ve known many people that didn’t take the future seriously at all before procreating.
Wife and I had our two kids in our late 30’s. We had already been married for 7 years and had built a great life. We were already financially set, mortgage almost paid off, household income at that time was around $350-400k. We had done a ton of travelling and enjoying selfish DINK life. Finally got pregnant, woohoo! From day one we had lots of time for our kids, neither of us having to race off to work in the morning as we were both in sales related careers and top performers with our firms so zero micromanagement from our bosses. We had zero family nearby for help or babysitting so it was good to have lots of flexibility. Wife took long maternity leaves, both over a year. Fast forward 9 years and wife is retired early, I’m running my own business making more than double what I was in my mid 30’s. We take a lot of great family trips, spend countless hours relaxing as a family in our insanely nice backyard with a pool, have more patience for our kids than we ever would have in our 20’s. Money is never an issue which eliminates any stress around paying for trips, sports, camps, activities.
Only downside to waiting longer is we will be getting long in the tooth by the time we ever become grandparents. I also plan on retiring in less than 5 years with a 12 and 14 year old at home. Looking forward to it. Might pull them out of school for a semester and take an extended trip somewhere. Good to have options. Will be spending winters in Florida by the time my kids are late teens headed off to college.
My wife told me that she wanted a puppy or a baby about 3 years ago. We picked up Col. Stars and Stripes from the shelter 2 weeks later.
We started trying for a baby when I was 35 and my wife was 30. We felt it was the right age / stage of life, both biologically and financially. BOOM, twin boys, done and done. We toyed with having a third, but twins are pretty intense and as you said, much more difficult than expected. A third kid would require major lifestyle changes, bigger car, etc. But mostly, we just feel that to have another baby, we should be certain that we want another baby, and we were honest with our reservations. Twin boys it is. I’m only 41 now but their energy is astounding.
I have a buddy who just turned 46. He and his wife had one boy, and wanted a 2nd. Took them a while, so they got IUI, and … BOOM BOOM BOOM, triplets. Triplets. So now he’s 46 years old, has 4 kids, and lives with his in-laws so they can help with feedings and so on. Just unreal. His life just took a big turn. He’s happy, but tired.
What I’ve learned about having a family is that any decision before having a baby pales in comparison to actually having a baby. As Jim Gaffigan describes it: “Imagine you are treading water in the ocean, trying to keep from drowning, and then someone throws you a baby.”
I’m not sure there’s a “right” way to go about starting a family, as in age, finances, etc. But I do think there’s a suboptimal way. If one doesn’t feel good about relationships, career, educations, and so on, adding a baby to the mix is probably not the best plan. Just my opinion of course.
My wife and I were in our mid thirties when we had our first kid and 17 months later we can say that for us being around your early to mid 30s is the best time to have kids. That along with being in a stable financial situation really helps. For me, when I was in my 20s i never had the thought of having a baby just because i wasn’t financially ready yet and didn’t meet my wife until i was 29.
Being a SF resident as well we had to save more and be a smart spender go get a pretty good net worth. It was a long road for us financially and now we are ready to buy a home and hope to find one the in Bay Area so we can build memories with our baby.
I’m definitely the outlier in this group. I got married at 35 and we had our one and only daughter a month short of my 41st birthday. My wife was 37. This next week we send her to the East Coast for her Freshman year in college and in October I turn 60. Where in the world did that time go?
I think early to mid-30’s probably is the optimum age. For me, I’m glad I didn’t marry sooner because I don’t think I had the maturity to be a good husband and father much earlier. I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer. My daughter and I have been very close so I don’t think to have her later in life impacted our relationship that much. The downside is I probably won’t get to see my future grandkids grow up to adulthood and that will be a bummer.
I’ve had many conversations about this lately with my wife. I’m probably overly anxious about wanting to have my future kids college, daycare, braces, healthcare, etc all paid for before their born. I’m probably a bit unhealthy in that regard.
Since we want 3 kids and also to be involved grandparents who are healthy enough to shoot hoops or go on a hike with our grankids, we plan to space kids out at age 27, 30, and 33 (assuming our bodies allow us to).
We are 26/25 now, and have $3,000+/month in passive income that we have built specifically with the goal of paying for added child costs, so our savings does not stagnate when we have kids. NW is about $450k, but I focus very little on net worth, more on passive income.
Hello,
30 and 33? You might be 60-65 when your kids have kids. Then
With luck you see them get to 15-20 years old. So ..
Great post. Love how analytical you are on these kinds of decisions! The data / charts are terrific as well.
We are parents are 4 kids that we had from ages 27 – 35 (26 – 34 for my wife). We had only 5-figure net worth when we had our first child (long graduate school programs, unfortunately), and definitely feel like young parents relative to a high-education peer group.
For most people, there’s *no perfect time* to have kids. I’ve observed so many friends waiting and waiting and waiting for that time to come, only to realize by mid-30s that you have to just pull the trigger at some point. Thus, if you know you want to have kids and you’ve found the right person, just go for it. Having kids in late 20s has been such a blessing for us, despite the weaker financial ability at the time (which did cause stress from time to time, but we made it just fine!).
All things considered, I think Sam is right on target with the trade-off considerations, but I lean slightly younger for the final answer. I would say 27-34 being the optimal age range for females and 30-37 being the optimal age range for males. When to get started also depends a lot on how many you want to have (since you’re constrained by age).
Super post – hang in there new dad!
I’m glad you mentioned infertility and treatment, just consider that it might delay the timeline significantly – and most people never expect it can happen to them.
We were trying for a year without success, then underwent 9 more months of testing and failed IUIs before conceiving via IVF, so that’s a delay of nearly 2 years just to have our first child – I’ll be 33. (And for some couples it takes multiple rounds of IVF, or have multiple miscarriages, etc., prolonging the process).
The upside is we now have extra embryos in storage, so hopefully #2 will be easier.
I think yes, be financially stable, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “upper middle class comfort.” Due to disciplined financial habits, we were stable and ready at far below your recommended income range.
The woman’s job situation is pretty important to consider – does she get any leave? Paid or unpaid? If she stops working, can you survive on one income? If she goes back to work, will your budget cover day care, which can be expensive?
Planning is key, as is having a decent cushion of savings… So start preparing long before you actually want to have a kid!
ummm…regarding last comment that ‘I’ll regret not having my baby sooner because I will wish i spent more time with him/her’ or something to that effect: NO way! I loved having my 20’s to build my career and friends and have fun. had my first baby at 32 and was so happy I had an established career and marriage by then. I suspect you added that quote at the end Sam because you had a baby in your 40’s.
Well of course. I did start the post saying I’m an old new parent at 40, and ended the post saying 32 years old is the ideal age and in my opinion.
Is having your first child at 32 years old and being happy different from the ideal age of having your first child at 32 years old as indicated in my post?
You don’t wish you had your child when you’re earlier at 31 years old or 30 years old?
Talk about over thinking it. If you are reasonably responsible have kids after marriage and at least one job. Have them sooner rather then later, because the job can be exhausting.
They don’t have to cost ten million dollars each. If you remind them (and yourselves) that they could be poor and alive or rich and unborn what do you think they will choose?
P.S. Low income/low wealth doesn’t have to equal ‘poor’.
What do you think are the downsides of planning given the cost and time required to raise the child? When did you start your family and how was your financial situation at the time? Thanks
I don’t think one needs $1 million to give birth to a child. I had much less, but I was doing well in my career and we’ve had money to provide and then some. She’s almost 6 now. We have another on the way in a week or so. This one was IVF; we did multiple IUIs when we lived in Florida but didn’t work, one IVF that didn’t work, they tied her tubes and cleaned scar tissue (probably why the IUIs didn’t work), and second IVF worked. The cost was covered by employer’s health insurance (hence a good reason why I moved, even though they forced me to leave FL).
Forgot to add, I’m almost 42. I do wish I had children sooner, however, for #1, wife had a lot of health issues before that, and before that, I couldn’t find a girl. For #2, we had been trying for 3 years, and with 5 IUIs and 1 failed IVF, this is how long it took.
I think the age could be somewhat different for everyone, it all depends on where you are; you need to be mentally and financially stable (enough), and ready for it.
I had my first kid when I was 32, which kinda worked out for me.
On the flip side, if you’re mature enough but don’t have the finances completely figured out, then that’s still ok. If you’re ready to have a baby, you’ll figure out a way to make it work. Priorities shift once you’re a parent and $5 lattes and avocado toasts go out the door (had to throw than in there :)).
I guess what I’m saying is that different strokes for different folks, and you gotta do what works for you.
I think the best time to start having kids is at about age 28 and on. This allows enough time to enjoy adulthood and start earning money at work. It’s not necessary to have a very high net worth at this point since there are many years left to let it grow.
I love how gangsta the kid in the feature image looks. She’s just chillin’ in the pool like, “sup?”
I think your decision to have children after financial independence/retirement is ideal. You kind of hit a sweet spot of money and fertility. It’s not something that everyone has the option for, but for those that have it, it’s smart.
In older/traditional societies, grandparents typically played a large role in raising children, and homes weren’t so “nuclear”, and instead were multi-generational. This allows for younger, less experienced parents to have kids, with more people around to provide guidance and assistance.
In today’s developed society, where household size keeps diminishing, where it’s hard to support a household with one income, and where student debt is a 10x larger issue than it was even 10-20 years ago, I couldn’t imagine the financial burden and stress of having a child in my 20’s, especially since I’m already supporting a parent while in my 20’s. Supporting two different generations at this point would be tough. Even now with a high income, while doable, wouldn’t leave a hefty savings rate after all that.
I’m infertile unfortunately, but my partner and I have considered the idea of adoption when we’re maybe in our early forties. My finances are really solid right now but I would not want to be responsible for children until I’m like 200% financially independent. Neither of us seem to have a very strong maternal/paternal instinct right now.
And this article totally reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwZ0ZUy7P3E
Hilarious! I had never heard of the movie.
I think the ideal age is 32, therefore eight years late. But now that I have him, maybe it’s just the right time. I’m just hoping to live long enough so that he become an independent man. So only in the end will we know what the right time was.
I became a first time father at 36. Now in my 40’s I somewhat wish I had them younger. Physically I feel the body breaking down already and wonder what it would’ve been like to have them 10 years earlier.
I’m 37. Every time I bend down to put my son in the crib I am hear my joints cracking…