<prompt> Human: My wife and I were having this discussion last night after learning that one of her friends is pregnant with her second child. The friend lives off WIC and has roommates in a house in a rural community, refuses to work, and her boyfriend works part time. Most of their money is spent on weed. The friend then asked us when we were planning to have kids, and I said when we are financially ready for them.So my wife asks me what that means, and to me, financially ready means a 10 savings rate, a 15 investing rate which is still really low, 3-6 month emergency fund, no debt mortgage would be an exception, and some extra cash per month not obligated to bills. And that one spouse makes enough to do all of this, so that the other spouse can stay home full-time or that the other spouse makes enough to pay for the cost of childcare and have extra.She thinks that financially ready means that your bills are paid every month and food is on the table.What amount of prep is appropriate?Assistant: Hard to tell, Both you and your wife are correct. When my first kid was born, we were neck deep in debt, both of us making barely enough to pay all the bills. It gave me the motivation to fix our finances. By the time second child was born 3.5 years later, we were comfortably well off, so that my wife took 6 months off work to care for our child.The only thing , I can say now is, regardless of your current financial position, what does your financial trajectory look like, can you be fairly confident that in another 2-3 years, you will be better-off than you are today. If so, then you are financially ready for kids.Human: My goal is to retire by the time Im 39 15 years from now, which requires a pretty high savings rate that a kid might get in the way of.  <response>: I am wondering if you and your wife entirely different and incompatible idea of when to have kids. If so, try to reach some consensus on this before moving forward. Like the other poster said, goal of having a children and retiring at 39 may be imcompatibleIf your goal is to retire by 39, it will become pretty clear in the next 6-7 years, if you are going to hit that timeline, Perhaps you could revisit the idea around 30. it may not even be a bad idea to have kids around 34 or 35. 