> At the risk of sounding callous, starting a family before you can afford it is living beyond your means. I don't live in the US so I don't know if this applies to some contexts within the US, but in other contexts a family (partnership with one or more people and raising children) is sometimes a neccessity for survival: you share food and lodging and save money, a shared income, shared tasks and responsibilities and, in the absence of a retirement plan, your children will help you when you get old or sick. Raising children is a tough job so you had better start young, when you still have the energy to juggle the big amount of work that requires.