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You had your best-laid plans and then COVID-19 came along and hammered the entire economy. But you’ve got this – if you have the right information. Join Rob Carrick and Roma Luciw on Stress Test, a podcast guiding you through one of the biggest challenges your finances will ever face.

ROMA: Canadians are waiting longer to have kids. If they do, they’re having fewer. And people say money is one of the big reasons they’re going childfree for longer, or forever.

ROB: The average number of children per family hit a record low during the pandemic. It ticked up in 2021, but it’s still the lowest in 30 years. And the average age when people give birth hit the highest ever with one quarter of women, 35 or older at the time of birth.

ROMA: Welcome to Stress Test a Personal Finance Podcast for Millennials and Gen Z. I’m Roma Luciw, personal finance editor at the Globe and Mail.

ROB: And I’m Rob Carrick, personal finance columnist at The Globe. Today, we’re talking about one of the most PERSONAL, personal finance topics. The cost of deciding whether to have children, when and how many. Roma, what does this calculation look like?

ROMA: Well, I want to start by saying that obviously this decision is about more than money. It’s about your relationship status, your body, your lifestyle. It’s also definitely about your career and your earnings potential, your housing situation, your debt levels. So it’s definitely partly about money. And kids will drain your finances from the day they’re born. Well, I don’t know, mine are still draining mine. It’s relentless, really. And the single biggest wealth differentiator I see when I look at friends in their forties, is who have had and have not had kids. The reality is that if you don’t feel like you’re in a secure, stable situation, you are more likely to have a difficult time thinking about bringing a kid into the equation.

ROB: You know what? It’s sad to say, but affordability just looms larger than it ever has. And the decision about how big a family to have.

ROMA: Now, when we wanted to do this episode, Rob, we wanted to dig into this idea of whether young adults were legitimately getting priced out of parenthood. So let’s find out.

ROB: After the break. We’ll meet a woman who is pushing back her plans to have kids until she can afford a home.

LAMEES: My name is Lamees and I am 27 years old and I currently live in Mississauga.

ROB: Lamees has always wanted to have children. She even made a scrapbook with her plans.

LAMEES:  I started the scrapbook maybe when I was about 12 or 13, and obviously there were revisions to it every year. But, you know, the main thing was that I had imagined that by 25, I would have found the person I love and want to spend my life with. I would have started talking or thinking about kids, that we would have owned a house somewhere nice, and that I’d be working my dream job, which at that time was working with probably Beyonce or Kim Kardashian. So we can say that maybe I’ve achieved some things where I’m really happy to say that I work in comms today. I have found the person that I want to be with for the rest of my life. I actually got married last September. You know, on that front, I feel very blessed and happy and almost like if we think about manifestation, I made it happen. But at the same time, I guess I am a little bit disappointed that I didn’t get the house. And as a result, now I’m thinking about delaying the kids.

ROB: Her family immigrated to Canada in 2010. Her parents emphasized the importance of home ownership, but Lamees and her husband can’t afford to buy.

LAMEES:  It was kind of important for me because I always imagined that my house would be something I purchased with my partner, just because it would be our first huge purchase. I mean, we had imagined that, you know, we’d be secure in our relationship, literally, in the sense that we were married and then secure in the fact that literally and physically we had a house to call our own. It would almost seem that the next natural step was to then expand our family, which is part of our plans. But the whole thing was to have security, security for where they’re going to live, security of where they’re going to grow up. Is it close to, you know, a good school, groceries, all that sort of stuff? Obviously, as life progresses, if you don’t end up in that dream job, you don’t end up in the dream house, you don’t end up maybe in the dream country, whatever it may be, you just take it as it comes. But I think at the same time, we try our best to plan for those situations. And in this situation, when we said that we wanted a house first, we had an open dialog about what that would look like. Would that look like us rushing to have kids as soon as we have a house? Does that mean that we are now delaying our plans here?

ROB: Plus, Lamees and her husband have other goals besides buying a house. They spend their money on travel, comedy shows and supporting their parents. She recognizes their spending habits will change once they have kids. She’s also concerned how children will affect her future earning potential.

LAMEES: Mat leave is something that stresses me out. I think when you’re in your early twenties, you don’t imagine that you get to your twenties or early thirties or whatever it is. You kind of imagine that you’re invincible and tomorrow’s problems are tomorrow’s. But eventually you close your eyes and wake up and tomorrow becomes today. I’m stressing about the trajectory of my career right now, where I am, it’s built for upwards growth. If I step away right now, will I be able to step back into that same position when I come back? And moreover, especially being a woman, I have heard this from so many women across the board, but when they come back from work, they’re almost stripped of their responsibilities and given, you know, menial administrative tasks, things that maybe their assistant or coordinator was doing before they came in. And that’s a fear I have that everything that I’m working on and worked for, are they going to take that away from me? Because I’ve chosen to have a kid? I can confidently say that the company that I work for right now is very supportive of parents from what I’ve seen, but I know not everyone has that security.

ROB: In her scrapbook, she envisioned herself having kids right about now. So when will she feel financially ready for children?

LAMEES: I don’t have a confident answer. I want to be able to give them the, you know, these hypothetical children the best that I can, you know, to take care of any security, giving them the life that almost I grew up with. So it makes me think if I’m not able to do that, is it really fair for me to have these kids? So it’s it’s hard to answer that because I do feel really proud and secure in where I am with my career and the same for my husband. I feel content with the savings we have, but they were fine for a market maybe two years ago. I’ve had agents literally talk to me about this and answer, “Oh, that’s a cute number”. It makes me think like we’re good, but we’re not good enough. I feel comfortable right now being able to, you know, like I said, plan those trips or those excursions or go out for a nice dinner or, you know, maybe go to a grocery store and not use the fliers to price match. It just comes down to that. I feel good, but I don’t feel good enough.

ROB: Still, she’s hopeful they’ll be able to buy a home and have a kid by the time she’s 30. Even if they don’t ever feel ready.

LAMEES: This is literally something I’ve actually said to my husband that will we ever really be ready. If that kid explodes his diaper? You’re never really ready. You just kind of take it as it comes. So that’s where we’re at, where, you know, we understand that regardless of whether we do this now or later, there will be some sort of issue that comes up that we will have to face together. So I do feel comfortable with that just because I feel that’s applicable with a lot of things. But at the same time, culturally, the expectation usually is once you get married, you then move into the next phase of your life automatically, which is to have kids. I’ve had elders on both sides of our families come up to us and say, you know, “you’ve crossed a year. It’s maybe time you think about expanding”. And when I say that we have other things that we want to get in order before we do that, they always say that, you know, the child will bring destiny with them like something mystical, you know, where you’re just like, that’s really nice, but you’re not going to be helping with this kid’s RESP or whatever, you know? So it’s a nice idea to think that everything will work out. But at the same time,  if I can avoid those issues beforehand, I would rather do that.

ROB: Next, we hear from Maria who doesn’t want to have kids at all because of money.

MARIA: Nice to meet you. My name is Maria. I’m 28 years old and I live in Vancouver. I decided that I didn’t want to have kids after I used to work as a nanny. And I loved my job. And I actually worked with at least five different families. And I stayed with them for a long period of time. So I really got involved with the families and I became part of their family. So it was very lovely and I adored it. But there were many things that I saw going on in the family that I realized I didn’t want to be in that position. So after realizing all these things in the job, I decided it was kind of the beginning of the reason why I didn’t want to have kids.

ROB: Maria has also seen her sister, who’s an intensive care doctor in Spain, struggling to pay the bills as a single mom.

MARIA: This is going to sound really selfish, but you have to put other people first before you. Having kids is lovely, beautiful. But I don’t think we live in the same times like we used to. And how expensive it is, I don’t think it’s something that I want to put myself through because I work hard for it. You know, I immigrated to Canada nine years ago and I’m finally in a place where I’m really happy, where I’m at. And then I’m also at the time where people think, Oh, now is a time for you to have a baby , because later it’s going to be too late. Your body is not going to be the same. And all of these things literally go through one ear and leave the other one. It doesn’t affect me for a second because of the comfort that I have now, I don’t want to keep it up because I work hard for it and I don’t want to end up like my sister. And I’m so sorry, but I don’t want to end up like my mom who had so many kids that they don’t know what to do with all of them. I am choosing myself and I am choosing to live the life that I want.

ROB: Maria married young and tried to start a family in her early twenties, but they divorced after three years. She’s grateful they never had a child. She’s happy with the flexibility she has living child free, even if the West Coast is pricey.

MARIA:  It’s not news that Vancouver is very expensive, but at the same time I find that here I’ve got more opportunities than anywhere else, and I love the flexibility more than anything. I believe you shouldn’t be stuck in a place that makes you unhappy. So Vancouver is the place where if you don’t like your job, you switch to something different. If you don’t like your address, you don’t like where you live or something, you find ways where you can move. Different circumstances, right? But in my experience, it’s been like that. I’ve changed homes. No problem. But having a kid will change that completely because not only is it extremely shocking, like rent the how much you have to pay for that. It’s also diapers. I worked as a nanny. I know how expensive it is. My salary was just a little bit under the last person that I worked for. And then the mom told me that she was making pretty much the same that I was in. And I wonder why on earth don’t you stay at home with your kids? But she had room to advance in her company, so she had to. There’s absolutely no way I could do that. I can do it myself, and I can give myself a great life. I can pay for transportation, I can pay for food. I can pay my mortgage. I can pay for utilities. I don’t have that extra. I have that extra for traveling and saving for the future. But I don’t have extra for diapers and for, you know, like formula and childcare. I know it’s not possible. It’s not possible for me.

ROB: For Maria, money isn’t the only reason she doesn’t want to have kids, but it’s a big one.

MARIA: If my financial situation would change, then I would choose to adopt instead. Because I think there’s so many kids out there that need a family. But at the same time, depending on the partner that I have, I would be open to it only if there’s a guarantee that I could have a live-in nanny and all of that. But I also fear putting my body through the stress of it. I’ve seen it. It’s not fun. I go to the gym, I eat healthy, I take care of my body, and I’m going to go again to the selfish topic, but I don’t want to mess with this. I am okay with this. I love how this is working out for me. And I have a cat. I love my cat. And all of my family’s having a bunch of babies. I have all the babies in the world to take care of and be the cool aunt. Now, at his point in my life that’s what I want to be.

ROB: After the break, we’ll hear from a personal finance expert on how much kids cost and why people are delaying the expense or avoiding it altogether.

ROMA: Melissa Leong is a personal finance expert based in Toronto. Here’s our conversation.

ROMA: According to the latest data, Canada has a record low birth rate. We also know women are delaying having kids. I mean, obviously, people make decisions like this for many reasons. But is money one of them? And how big of a factor is money in this decision?

MELISSA: Roma, you hit the nail on the head. This is a complicated beast, but money is the head of the beast. It’s largely about money. You know, research and surveys reveal that when you ask women why they’re delaying childbirth, the leading reason is money. They don’t have enough of it or they’re waiting until they make a higher salary. And many millennials, many young women, clearly face this terrible choice between financial security and having children. I believe that this choice is harder for this generation than any other generation. And we talk about it all the time. Women today are very aware of the price of having children. We tell them the price of having children. You know, we talk about the wage gap. We talk about the motherhood penalty in this environment where we are told so many things and told there are so many pressures against us that we need to swim upstream and that we need to battle. We’re legitimately stressed. Young women are legitimately stressed about money and about this choice between delaying, having, you know, growing a family and trying to be stable financially.

ROMA: Okay. Obviously, we know kids are expensive. What are some of the biggest costs when it comes to them? And not just for babies, but over the years.

MELISSA: The biggest cost is childcare. So I don’t think that enough people realize that depending where you are in major cities, licensed daycare, if you have aspirations to return to work, you know it can cost up to $2,000 a month. That’s a massive, massive amount of money for a family to try to grapple with if they have not done any kind of research, if they’re not expecting it. That’s something that I think that more parents, more would be parents, aspiring parents should look into as they are in the planning phase. Just to get an idea. So it’s just not so much of a shock.

ROMA: One bit of good news is that there’s relief in sight with the roll out of $10 a day daycare across Canada. Now, Melissa, can you think of any other maybe surprising issues parents are grappling with?

MELISSA: What surprised me was the “mom shame”. Mom’s shame is real. And it’s not because it’s done maliciously or on purpose. But this generation reportedly spends more time and money on kids. I think they call it intensive parenting. Roman, you know, where you’re just all in and you’re just involved with everything and you want them to have everything. And, you know, the mom down the street has put the kids in all sorts of programs. And this is $300. And you want to put them also in drumming, and it’s $50 an hour for a lesson. I mean, I didn’t have those things when I was a kid. My parents said, go outside, play. Here’s a book, which is probably why I became a writer. But this generation, and especially with social media, you see what everyone else is doing and you feel bad. You feel like you’re not doing enough. You feel like you’re doing your kids a disservice if you’re not giving them what your peers are giving them.

ROMA: I read and hear about this from time to time. It’s out there, this narrative, you know, people citing money as the major reason that they’ve decided not to have kids. They’re simply too stretched. They’re in too precarious of a financial situation to give them the childhood they want. To your point, there are people saying, you know what, I just can’t afford to have kids.

MELISSA: You know, women are far more educated. We were in past generations and we graduated with a ton of debt and were pressured to pay it back to push the boundaries of our career. You know, when you look at the labor force, there are more women in professional jobs. And all of my best friends, we were reading Lean In, we were told to smash that glass ceiling. And so we feel that burden and that conversation around, okay, do we want to have a family? Do we want to have kids? Will we have to wait? We have to wait because we have to work. We have to build ourselves up to a point where we have so-called enough or where we are established in our society that glorifies work culture. Every meme on Instagram is about the hustle. And in my twenties and in my thirties, it was all about the hustle working to the bone. And as the daughter of immigrants, myself and my sister, who was eight years younger than me, we followed the same path we put off having children until we were after 35. There are few policies that help us balance work and family. We knew that. We saw that and we thought, Well, we should do this first. This is how we take care of ourselves first. And now, as a mom who was fortunate enough to have children when she wanted to have children, because I also have friends who did wait to be on 35 and then struggled and then had to spend money. Their savings on infertility are on fertility treatments. Now, I do have that conversation with my friends saying, well, okay, I have to, but I don’t know if I could afford to keep this lifestyle if I had three. And I have friends who say, well, we have one and we don’t think we can afford another.

ROMA: You know, which brings me to an interesting question. You know, in older generations, let’s say boomers hear this, they would say, well, it’s always been expensive to have kids. I mean, what’s changed from then till now?

MELISSA: I don’t think it’s been this expensive to have kids. I think it’s completely different. You have more women in the workforce and that’s a cost. That is a cost in time. That means you have one parent who is not at home, who is not expected to be at home, which saves you, which has saved people on child care, the expectations of what your kids were supposed to do in terms of how their time was spent. Universities, post-secondary education was not that expensive. You did not graduate with this amount of debt so that you needed to spend more time paying that back before starting a family.

ROMA: Okay, we can’t talk about kids without talking about the cost of housing. And that’s a huge difference between older generations and younger ones. Today’s unaffordable housing market. It’s obviously playing a factor. You know, do you think that, you know, younger generations are hanging on to notions like, you know, you can’t raise kids in a condo or you need to own a home before you start a family. How big of an impediment is that to their idea that, you know, I’m ready and able now financially to have a kid.

MELISSA: That is so huge. When I talk to family members, when I talk to friends who are starting out in their career, who are younger, they have this massive checklist of what they think they need to achieve to become, quote unquote, adult. I am adulting. I have these things. But the truth is, those things that checklist in this generation at this point in time are infinitely harder to achieve. You know, you want to buy your first home in Toronto. That is a huge undertaking as a single person coming out of school with debt, starting a career. You know, you had different aspirations for your job. You thought you’d get out and have, you know, this kind of career path. And that was also different from the past. You know, now you find that you’re really relying on the gig economy. So you’re just starting to sew together all these little pieces, but you don’t have any benefits. And so you have this large amount of money that’s there. There’s that as well. There’s just a lot more work that has to go into that checklist. And I can imagine that people think, well, before I have a family, before I bring a child into this home that I’m creating for them, I want these things to be checked off.

ROMA: You’ve touched on this a number of times. Having a kid isn’t just about paying for that child. There is a cost to your career. How much of a consideration is that for people trying to decide whether to be a parent.

MELISSA: I was keenly aware of the hit my career might take and the idea that if I took time away to be with my kids, that my salary would be affected because the month before I left, I think I had written an article in the Financial Post about the motherhood penalty. And so I was interviewing all of these women lawyers who told me that when they came back, they were told that they were being passed over for opportunities, for projects. They couldn’t travel as much, so their other colleagues got promoted. And I felt all that. I felt fear around that legitimate fear. You know, I had written this stat, and I kept looking at it when I was pregnant, was that according to stats, mothers who took more than three years off earned 30% less than childless women at age 40? And there is research that shows if you take that break later in life, that salary described discrepancy is not as pronounced. So I just had that hanging over my head. And, you know, I wanted to be thinking about little cute, chubby feet. But meanwhile, I was thinking about how much this was affecting my income aspirations. That’s something that we all talk about. And I think that that fear is legitimate and it is real. I want to see more companies, more h.r. Professionals, more managers being proactive about seeking tools and resources. I’m trying to understand how to manage this transition for moms and for parents in general so that we can deal with some of these biases, that we could deal with this issue in society. I want more men and women talking about this in the workplace.

ROMA: You touched a little bit on this, which is the steps we need to take to help. Is there anything that governments or companies should be doing to help make parenting more affordable?

MELISSA: Universal daycare. More flexible family leave policies, you know, in other countries have implemented paid leave. You know, fertility rates among childbearing, women have risen. And meaningful conversation about it. You know, there was all this hoop theory, all this celebration around, yeah, you get 18 months now versus 12 months, but you don’t get more money. You get the same amount of money but just squeezed out over more time. How does that help me? Exactly. And that doesn’t necessarily help perception doesn’t the perception of working moms in general. It doesn’t help the fact that working environments are less supportive. It doesn’t help the hiring bias. And so, you know, strides that we thought that I think we were making prior to the pandemic, it just I just worry that it didn’t go in the right direction. And I feel frustrated. I feel frustrated.

ROMA: Well, I share that frustration. And I suspect that that is some of what these parents are feeling. And how about at this point, you take out your crystal ball. Fast forward ten years. How do you expect Gen Z will view parenthood? Do you see any major differences in the way that they will approach this question?

MELISSA:  I want to be hopeful and say that there will be strides in made in society that will make it more that will it’ll feel safer to want to make these decisions that you can follow your heart, as opposed to listening to the worry in your head and the voices that tell you that you need to chase your career and be all that you need to be. And I hope that we will be more supportive of women and each other when it comes to all the choices that we want to make, including starting a family. But I don’t know. I don’t know, because it took decades to get things that I thought were basic, basic needs for women to be able to afford having a life. And there are still a lot of women who struggle.

ROMA: Melissa, for our listeners that are maybe wrestling with this decision of whether to have kids. What kind of guidance do you have for them?

MELISSA: I think people say to us, you can have it all, but not at the same time. There is a time frame, right? I think that pressure makes people feel terrible. But all you can do is in the moment. Make your small, your big, your short term and then your long term goals and try to chip away at what you can control in this moment. You can’t control inflation or the right your rising interest rates that may perhaps make your dream home unaffordable at this moment. But life is about the moments, the small moments, too. And so taking those things to take care of yourself, things will happen. It will happen. Just try not to get overwhelmed. And we get overwhelmed when we look at the big picture and think, oh, man, look at all the things we need to do and how far behind I am. And look at all the pressures flip, and wage gap and this and that. And in the micro, just in the moment of what you can do in the moment for yourself, small things when it comes to finances, just automating a small amount of money for the future, for an emergency, for some sort of plan, spending, flexing that muscle. It’s a small thing, but in the small things, they can have huge ripple effects for your future.

ROMA: You know, the sappy mom part of me wants to say that what kids really need is love and support. Maybe not all the lessons and not the latest technology, but, you know, to feel that they’re loved and you’re there for them.

MELISSA: I tell myself that every single moment my kid yells about a new toy, he wants just, yeah, I want the new Paw Patrol, this or that. And I know. No, you want my love, you want my time. Let’s just hang out.

ROMA: Melissa, you wait a number of years and they’ll be shopping for sneakers online. That’s what I’ve got happening.

MELISSA: They do not get my credit card. I am going to clear my cash.

ROB: A big thanks to Melissa for joining us. There are lots of reasons to delay having kids or not have them at all. But if money is the primary thing holding you back, Roemer has three takeaways for you.

ROMA: 1) Approach having a kid with the same due diligence you would when buying a home, map out the big, weekly and monthly expenses and make sure you can afford both child care and rent or mortgage payments.

2) Aspiring moms. There’s no perfect time to have a baby. So if you know you want to have one and you’re financially stable, just do it.

3) There’s a lot of pressure to spend money securing all kinds of things for your kids, from sports and camps to holidays and birthday parties. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide what you can and can’t afford. Chances are, your kid will turn out just fine.

ROB: Thank you for listening to Stress Test. This show was produced by Kyle Fulton, Emily Jackson and Zahra Khozema. Our executive producer is Kiran Rana. Thanks to Lamees, Maria and Melissa for joining us.

ROMA: You can find stress tests wherever you listen to podcasts. If you like this episode, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends. Our stress test team would like to give a special shout out to baby Naomi, the new daughter of our producer, Emily. Congrats to the whole family.

ROB: Next up on Stress Test, our last episode of the year. We started this season talking with renters in this volatile real estate market. We’ll finish it by speaking with recent buyers, ones that regret their variable rate mortgages and others that got a deal when prices dipped.

ROMA: Until then, find us at the Globe and Mail dot com. Thanks for listening.

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