Should I Buy A House Or Have A Baby? (Ep99)

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Should I buy house or have a baby? Two major decisions and major things that you do in your life, buying your first home and starting your family. When you’re in that point where you want to do both at the same time but maybe can’t afford to do both how do you know which one you should do?

Should you buy your own house first and create that security for your family or should you go out and have a baby first and start your family and work out the finances along the way?

The subject I’m talking about today is in a pretty close to home because it’s a conversation that me and my wife had before we went ahead and had our first child. I now have two children and… did we decide to buy a house first or do we decide  buy baby first? You’ll have to listen to find out.

I Can’t Tell You What To Do…But I Can Help You Figure It Out

So I cannot  tell anyone that you should do this, you should do that,  you should buy a house or have a baby because it is much to big decision for someone else to make for you and really  you need to make this decision yourself.

So instead of telling you what to do I got some questions that will help you understand in your own mind  where you’re at and what you think it’s going to be best for you. So let’s get into it.

This Is A Big Decision And It Shouldn’t Be Made Lightly

Firstly I just want to say that this is a big decision to make and so don’t make it lightly. You don’t need to make it right now while you’re watching this video, you don’t even need to make it today or tomorrow or next week or next month.

Take your time to make this decision because once you go ahead and purchase a property, once you go ahead and have a baby- they’re not really decisions that you can take back. So understand that it is a big decision and it’s okay to take your time with this.

Will The House Actually Provide You With The Security You Desire?

First question: will house actually provide you with the security you desire? A lot of us have this feeling before we have children that we need to be safe, we need to be secure, we need to have a safe and secure home  to provide for our family…  and I need to buy a house in order to do that.

But why? Let’s question the obvious- why do you need to buy a house to feel secure? What is it about owning your own home that makes you feel secure?  I have seen a lot of people purchase their own homes as a way to feel secure but then it is global financial crisis hit so they lose their job, they can’t afford the rent or repayments and thus they have to sell it.

So realistically the home isn’t providing the security that they desire. So it is a good question to ask whether or not the security that you are after can best come from a home or if you can find that security from somewhere else. Maybe it’s starting a side business that generates a little bit of extra income so you know that if you lost your job you could run this side business.

Or maybe it’s going out job hunting and even though you’re not actually looking for a job, finding out whether or not you could get another one so you know if this situation occurred where you lost your job, you would feel secure. So there is other ways to create that feeling of security, a home doesn’t necessarily have to be it, but maybe it is for you.

Will Owning A Home Limit Your Options?

Question number two: will owning a home limit your option? Since I’ve been married, I’ve been married five years, I’m 25 and I got married when I was 20, so I am 26…I just turned 26.  I have moved twelve times in five years and I have relocated from the different areas three-times.

So I’ve lived in Sydney, I lived in the Central Coast which is just north of  Sydney between Sydney and Newcastle  and am now living on the Gold Coast. So I’ve done three relocations and lived in twelve different houses in that time. I see a lot of friends, a lot of people who have decided to buy a house first, decided that that’s what they want to do and now feel trapped.

They feel like they can’t move, the house isn’t exactly what they want or they hate their job because they just don’t like it anymore. But they feel like they can’t get out of that job because they have a mortgage to pay.

For us, we’ve kept our expenses low and to answer the question we decided to have a baby first. But that gave us more options to explore and to move and to follow our dreams and do those sorts of things. So will a house limit your options and how can you buy a house in such a way that it won’t limit your options?

When me and my wife lived on the Central Coast we were saving for our first home and we wanted to purchase a home in such a way that if we did want to relocate to the Gold Coast which we knew was in the future (we thought would have been five years away, not now) but if we did want to move how could we buy a home in such a way that when we rent it out it will cover all the expenses so we wouldn’t really have to worry about it. And so throughout our saving process we were thinking about that so purchasing a home wouldn’t limit our options.

Are Young And Do You Have Time To Wait?

Question number three: are you young and do you have time to wait? This works for both houses and for children. For me, I was extremely young when I had my first child- 22, so that gives me a lot of years to build up my financial well-being.

And it also gave us a lot of years to wait and have children if we wanted to but that amount of time and the fact that we had time ahead of us allowed us to really think about that decision and to make the decision that we felt was best for us at the time and that was to have a baby first.

So if you’re young and you have time to wait then great, you can take time making a decision so you know you’re making the right one.  And if you make either when you’re old or when you’re young it doesn’t matter so much because you’ve  got time to catch up either on a family front or on the financial front.

Is Your Clock Ticking?

The next question, is your clock ticking? If you are getting older and you’ve just recently married or you’ve decided now it’s time to have a baby, maybe you’re getting on and given the fact that as you get older it becomes harder to fall pregnant, there’s more risks associated with pregnancy,  maybe you want to bite the bullet and have the baby now.

Because now, there’s nothing like today and you want to prepare now to give your baby the best chance. And so if age is an issue then you do want to consider that maybe favor having a baby faster over owning your own home. Because even if you’re 30, even if you’re 40 you can still go ahead and buy a house later in life, it’s not  then to the world.

Do You Need To Pay For Your IVF?

Fifth question is do you need to pay for IVF? So  when asking do I want to buy a house or do I want to have a baby a lot of us don’t take  into consideration the fact that we might have trouble  having kids. Some people they get pregnant on the first try, other people it takes them years and they have to do IVF.

Friends of mine, also young, were trying to have children since they were 22-23 so talking about twelve months to fall pregnant twice but for both of their children took them over year to fall pregnant. And another couple that we know had to go through IVF to fall pregnant but then they fell pregnant after IVF. They have been trying for years, three years or something like that, and IVF is not cheap.

You’re looking at $10, 000 for an attempt and it doesn’t always work, there’s no guarantee with IVF. So you need to consider the fact that maybe you will have trouble having children, maybe you will need to pay for things like IVF and so forth. And is buying a property the best decision for that? Because will that give you the funds through growth and equity to pay for IVF or will it strip all of your funds that you need to have for children?

Personally I’m of the decision that I would spend every dollar that I had in order to have children over being rich and financially free but that’s my personal opinion, it depends on you what’s more important to you.

Why Not Do Both?

So I am going to lay down some  advice  that comes from me: I’m 26, I got two kids and I’d love  property, love property so much. So my advice is again more questions, why not do both? Why not have a child and get a house at the same time? Why does it have to be either OR, why do you have to look at do I do one or do I do the other? Why not question it and find a way to do both? It’s not going to be an obvious answer.

If you say “well how can I do both”, it’s not automatically going to come to you and you know that this is how we can do it. But by constantly asking yourself this question “how can I do both, how can I do both” and coming up with multiple answers eventually you’ll find a way where you can do both.

And I don’t want to go into too much detail with this, the main thing I wanted to get across was those questions to ask yourself about whether you should buy a house or have a baby. Because as I said at the beginning, at the end of the day it comes down to you and what you want for your life and these questions should help to stimulate you to help you understand exactly what you want from your life.