How do North Americans afford children?

When I was a kid, I erroneously thought that there was a difference between a charge card and a credit card. So I paid my charges off every month, and never bought anything that I could not afford. I used the card simply as a convenience, to have a record of purchases, and so that I would not have to walk around with a lot of cash in my pocket. As a result, I have never paid a penny in credit card interest, for my entire life.

I know that this is not so amongst the young people. They are buying the kinds of things in their twenties, that I had to wait until my forties to have. They then become swamped with credit card debt.

Not the case with all of us. I'm 30 and I am giving roughly that amount to help support my parents. I have not had a credit card for the past 12 years. If I can't pay for it I don't need it.

north-americans
certainly do have a credit card - as a matter of fact , we have four .
instead of paying interest to the banks , we have the banks and department stores pay us , for being gracious enough to use their cards .
we collect about $200 to $ 500 a year from the financial institutions and department stores - sears canada has a particularly lucrative credit card , they pay as much as 5 % .
if i can postpone paying for a purchase for a month or two - sometimes a ayear - , we can keep the money in the bank and earn interest .
certainly works for us . hbg

Fortunately, my children, who are hovering in age near thirty, are basically self sufficient. They don't take from us unless in extreme emergency, then they try to make it up later.

"added to these flat-lined paychecks and high costs of living, tips people over the edge."

^-- even without credit card problems, people can struggle. Last year, our average monthly home heating bill (oil) jumped from about $200 to $450. Salaries do not go up anywhere near as quickly.

Well, I pay my ONE credit card up every month because sometimes it is simply a matter of convenience, ehBeth. I do help the kids out occasionally, but that has come to a screeching halt since my husband died.

I agree with Sublime, however. If you can't pay cash; you can't afford it.

Jes, I cannot believe that you paid that kind of heating bill. I thought my all electric was bad, but at least it is a one bill utility except for the water bill.

book marking, because I have to get my broke butt self to work..

Yep, that's what we pay. The house is large and we close doors and shut heating vents to unused rooms and it does not seem to matter much. And, BTW, this is better than it was or at least it was better before the huge increase, as we had gotten some insulation up on the third floor a few years ago. But those gains are long gone, due to the price of heating oil.

We are also whacked by gasoline prices and public transportation (yearly T pass for RP) is up, too, and going up even more next year. We're lucky, in some ways, since we bought the house before the housing bubble and have a decent interest rate, but it has been an eye-opener. We had a discussion this morning of the minimum annual amount we can live on where we can pay all bills and make 13 mortgage payments per year instead of 12 and set aside a paltry $25/week, and the figure was a lot higher than we'd thought (no, I will not share the figure). We have no children and I have no idea how we would afford them if we wanted 'em.

children
jes wrote : "average monthly home heating bill (oil) jumped from about $200 to $450. "

wow !!!
living in eastern ontario , it gets plenty cold here (and hot and muggy in the summer). the oil bill for this heating season will come to about
CAN$ 800 . the oilprice is now about CAN cents 85 perliter - about
US $2.50 / gallon ?
perhaps our house is on the small side - about 1,050 sq.ft. with a full basement . we found that our heating oil use has dropped by about 20-30 % over the years . added a lot of insulation in the attic AND also insulated basement walls ; double-pane windows all around ; several years ago we also had aluminun siding put on two sides of the (brick) house - it also keeps the house cooler in the summer ; finally , we usually keep the daytime temperature no higher than 68-70 degrees and set it at 60 overnight .
btw the local utility is planning to switch to "interval" metering for electricity use ; that might eneble us to use electricity at off-peak rates if we are smart . hbg

I'm planning on selling my house when my youngest daughter goes away to collage and moving out-of-state to a cottage big enough for two people and our cats. I've put my children on notice that I will help get them through college but then they're on their own. I'm fairly sure they won't want to move to Virginia, or wherever I end up, but only time will tell how much I have to stick to my guns when they get older.

Exactly what I told my kids, J_B.

We helped Hermione through undergrad and now she is on her own at
grad school. So far so good. I hope the same is true for Nigel. He's
junior in high school now and looking at colleges. Clive, my middle child
has a boatload of challenges so college has not been an option. But he'll
be with us for a while.

Afford it? I can't.

Re: children


We have a 6 BR, 3 story house built in 1896. It's expensive to heat.

afford children
sometime in the late 1970's i had the idea that we shold buy an old motel attached to an old house in the country - just a stone's throw away from the st . lawrence river ...
mrs h suggested that she would consider having me "certified" ...
we didn't buy the old place ; i didn't become "certified" .
we still live in the same house about ten minutes from lake ontario ; we can walk to the shopping centre , the bus stops 500 fet from the front-door , library is a ten minute walk AND we can afford the utility bill !
i am thankful to mrs h !!! hbg

Mr. Noddy and I designed and built our retirement house to be energy efficient. Even so the Oil Crisis--both heating oil and gasoline--is cutting into our discretionary spending.