<prompt> Human: Crossposting from raskparents since this seems to be a more relevant place to ask:Hi all, my wife has reached a point in her life where she really wants to have a child, so I decided to try to predict the costs involved, and see how it impacts our budget. After plugging in the relevant data covering one time expenses related to birth, and taking cost data from wikipedia USDA data, the spreadsheet showed that we would have to basically have to move our retirement date by about 10-12 years, as well as completely eliminate our vacation budget, which sounds like a recipe for disaster. How do so many people have children and still manage to save for retirement AND have any kind of travel budget Assume middle-upper middle class income?  <response>: People make sacrifices. 