One kid is on the way -- and yes, I have no idea how children are going to affect our lives! I've considered going in two totally different directions: I might go for a high-paying full-time job so that my wife and I can pay for a nanny and all those other modern affluent child-raising tools, or I might try to go full-bore stay-at-home Dad changing diapers and raising the kids to grow their own food in the backyard and make their own clothes. More likely I'll muddle somewhere in between, but I want to go into it with as many options as possible, and a clear idea of what we want for ourselves and our kids.
If you are considering the in-between with kids and work, remember that managing the in-between has it's own logistical overhead (== costs).
For example, if you have a nanny part-time, you will have to figure out nanny taxes - assuming you're doing it the legal way - or pay an outside party to manage the nanny's payroll.
That overhead may be easier to justify when the nanny is allowing you to work a full time high paying job, less so if the nanny is only coming a couple days a week. In this case, you might consider a part-time day care center instead.
And unless you have a lot of energy or hired/family help, you will be so tired in the first few years of your child's life that you likely won't have the energy to do anything beyond growing a few token tomatoes and potatoes, certainly nothing at the scale needed to make a dent in a family's food costs.
For clothing, tap your friends-with-kids network to get into the hand-me-down stream. Babies and toddlers grow out of clothes faster than they can wear them out, and new clothes are $$$.
I find it kind of confusing how you fit this back to the land idea with being an engineer that wants to work on his own engineering projects rather than just scape the cubicle farm.
Also, you mention you have a spouse. I know it is terribly unfashionable to say this, but have you considered being a single income family? Sounds like that would give you the best of both worlds.
In my case, we are a single-and-a-half income family. Once kids go to school, there's no much reason to keep an adult around home all day. I am officially the bread winner, and my wife has the lifestyle job, but considering how much she has accomplished just by working part time, we might need to revisit that decision sometime down the road.
That's pretty impressive. I would have thought that it's only possible to support a few people on that lifestyle. Could you give some more details about how you do it?
We prefer a simple lifestyle so we omit many expenses: no TV, rarely eat out, drive older cars, have no debt payments, eat only a little meat, buy high quality clothes which last through all 5 kids, high deductibles on all insurance, save as much money as possible.
I'd be glad to answer any specific questions in private. Shoot me an email at [email protected] if you want.
