Birth Control: A Twenty-Something’s Best Asset Class

http://blog.futureadvisor.com/birth-control-a-twenty-somethings-best-asset-class/

by vonnik • 12 years ago

33 25 12 years ago

blog.futureadvisor.com

klochner2• 12 years ago

Infinite ROI: stop having sex.

jackmaney2• 12 years ago

That's a failing business model, and I suspect you know it.

wolfgke• 12 years ago

Not necessarily: Why do you think porn sites exist?

chc4• 12 years ago

Only if you value things very differently than most people, I believe. For most people, foregoing romantic relationships seems to be a pretty steep cost.

klochner2• 12 years ago

That was basically my point, the article is absurd - you don't calculate P&L on having kids.

angersock2• 12 years ago

Are you kidding?

Where are you going to get the next generation of freemium mobile game and social network users from, eh?

sliverstorm• 12 years ago

No; more importantly, who are you going to sell them to?

When your livelihood depends on "a sucker born every minute", you need to keep that flow going!

incongruity• 12 years ago

This also makes the point for why access to (and use of) birth control/family planning (and, even abortion) are so important for the financial wellbeing of lower-income individuals (women in particular, due to the imbalance in biological burden).

xdissent• 12 years ago

Observation unrelated to article content: For some reason this site hijacks the swipe-left and swipe-right actions on a magic mouse, preventing Safari swipe navigation. It scrolls up and down instead.

angersock2• 12 years ago

Note: this was (briefly) flagged as dead, either through automagic or mods.

This is exactly the sort of article that I like seeing on HN: funny, well-written, and with hard (snicker) numbers to back up its assertions.

vonnik3• 12 years ago

Thanks, angersock. Not sure why it got modded. We were pleasantly surprised that it climbed to #9 on organic upvotes, disappointed when it got knocked to #54. I posted it. I manage the blog where it was published, and I don't know what we did wrong...

roc• 12 years ago

Delaying having a child for ten years also implies that the associated costs of having that child will have continued to climb over the intervening ten years.

As many of those costs (healthcare, childcare, education) have been growing at similar (or greater) rates than plausible investment returns, the calculated return of the birth control investment may be overstated a bit.

roymurdock• 12 years ago

Depends on where that 20-something lives. Children are considered valuable assets in many developing countries where they start generating income for the parents at an early age for a relatively low cost.

Would also be interesting to factor in some non-tangibles: Non-parents get more sleep, are healthier, have more financial and career freedom, lead better social lives, get to enjoy their favorite music and TV shows more, worry less, have less general stress, and are less likely to say they are very happy than parents. [0]

[0] http://qz.com/262645/people-without-kids-live-better-than-pa...

carsongross2• 12 years ago

And this is why Idiocracy will end up being prophesy: when your society makes having kids the dumb thing to do, you end up having lots of dumb people.

I have three kids.

vonnik3• 12 years ago

We're not saying having kids is the dumb thing to do. Kids are great. Kids with smart, caring parents are even greater. What we're saying is there are consequences to being careless with birth control. An unplanned pregnancy can be traumatic both emotionally and financially. People who want kids should think about when they'll have the bandwidth to raise them. If you want to spend your 20s raising kids, then by all means. If you're not thinking about it, and behaving carelessly, then maybe this article will make you wake up.

carsongross2• 12 years ago

You are saying it is dumb to do from a financial standpoint. And your analysis is entirely correct. Mr. Money Moustache made effectively the same point in a recent blog post (although he of course had to rationalize having one child since that's what he did):

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/09/10/great-news-youre-a...

What I would note is that this is also the analysis at the start of Idiocracy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icmRCixQrx8

I believe that the second and third order effects of this analysis, which Idiocracy points to, are negative in the long run. Idiocracy is prophesy.

I know this strikes many people as flippant, and I do find it quite funny, but I'm entirely serious.

Birth Control: A Twenty-Something’s Best Asset Class

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