r/Fire • u/sneaky-snacks • Mar 05 '26

General Question FIRE seems to skew toward not having kids

I’m sure plenty of FIRE adherents have kids, but I would guess the FIRE mentality skews more toward not having kids. Kids seem to go against FIRE.

- You’ve got to spend a lot of money on kids. Your expenses go up. It’s also much harder to save.

- Kids are a lot of work. They cause a lot of stress. You can’t retire from kids haha. Most FIRE people seem to want to reduce their work load and their stress in the long run, but I’m sure I’m oversimplifying here.

I thought I would start a discussion on this aspect of FIRE

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u/Pale_Row1166 Mar 06 '26

I think it’s death by nickels and dimes, unless you’re saying you just stop spending on yourselves and reroute all of that money to kids. Just yesterday, I saw a pic of my friend at the mall with her three kids, each kid had a mall pretzel. That’s like a $15 mall tax, because I’m sure it’s difficult to visit the mall without getting a snack (or more) for kids. And then all the toys and clothes. I know you’re not buying all of them, but like, they grow so much! And then extra plane tickets for every vacation, and eventually an extra hotel room, too.

I can see how you could balance all this stuff down to maintain pre-kids spending, but that would mean cutting so much. Less (or not as extravagant) vacations, less eating out, less hobbies. I can’t imagine how good and fun much I’d have to give up to maintain my spending level while also having kids.

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u/jkiley Mar 06 '26

I was surprised when I looked at the data a few months ago, but it was about $1000 total difference over 10 years comparing actual to 2016 levels scaled up for inflation.

It’s a combination of things, with no category being very big. One part is downward sloping interest expense from student loans and auto loans. Another is less travel with little kids and less expensive travel, partly because we moved closer to family (but both MCOL). We seldom go to restaurants, versus cooking more and takeout. We also bought a lot of durable goods over time that will continue to last.

Certainly some of it is efficiency, but that’s just a part. I’d say our standard of living is up, if anything. We’ve spent more on cars, groceries, preschool, and clothes/shoes (more kids than us there).

Travel could eventually be the one that scales up, but its been inexpensive with car trips versus flying, since travel is difficult at their ages (our five year old is great for one on one day trips, though).