Re:The 'Buy Now, Pay Later' Bubble Is About to Burst
by grishka on Friday January 13, 2023 @12:29PM
(#34370917)
So, uh, you can barely afford your own needs and have no savings, but you decide to have a child?.. No offense, I'm just trying to understand your thinking and priorities.
Re:The 'Buy Now, Pay Later' Bubble Is About to Burst
by asoneth on Friday January 13, 2023 @02:36PM
(#34372766)
The person you are replying to had a job (likely in tech), a house, a car, and a chance at promotion when the child was conceived. That seems like a better position than most.
If your implied threshold for conceiving a child is that you must have acquired all of these things plus enough savings to weather unexpected medical events and extended job loss then that seems like a threshold that the majority of couples will not reach during their childbearing years.
I personally hate debt and when possible I pay everything with cash up front.
My wife got pregnant, and our spending, specially on health was already sky high, so I did 5 months of overtime chasing a promised raise and possible promotion.
Then I got fired.
My last day of work was mid December. Child will be born soon. (Maybe even today, we are hoping for natural birth).
The medical crew we hired (back when I had a job and was chasing that promotion) want way more money than what I have left.
I will have to take a loan, because as far as I know I can't tell the baby to wait until I have a new job before coming out of the womb...
Need clothes, medicine, furniture, prepare the house (it is my first child, house is not kid friendly)
Also: I erased most of my savings buying a "cool" car and of course a lot of people criticized me for it.
What happened was:
1. My house is on the top of a huge hill in an rural area, only way to reach the house in practice is with a powerful car. The car I had before was barely powerful enough, if there was more people in the car it would fail to climb the hill.
2. Someone totalled the car I had, and my wife job was literally in another city, her workplace also in middle of nowhere.
3. I needed a new car urgently, options were: cheapest European or US cars were double the money I had saved. Asian cars (like Hyundai and Chinese ones) were 1.5 the money I had, but weaker that the totalled car, they certainly wouldn't climb the hill.
4. So I bought a used Mitsubishi Lancer. It is a cool flashy car? Yes it is. But it was 100% my savings (instead of 200%), powerful enough to climb the hill, and big enough to fit baby chair and all the stuff a baby needs. The corolla or the civic, used, were 200% my savings, new were 300% my savings.