Same here!

I grew up very poor. My dad got a small settlement for having his knee permanently damaged at work -- we're talking no more than $4,000. Yeah, he must not have had a good lawyer. Anyhow, I was strongly attracted to computer programming from age 7 when I first saw one at school. I knew that's what I wanted to be when I grew up. But I couldn't get my hands on a computer at all. There were no used options, garage sale computers, raspberry pi, none of that. Computers were super expensive and beyond my family's price range. Believe me, I checked the classifieds (in the newspaper) and we couldn't even afford a used one. Also, we had no friends or relatives with a PC either, that I could borrow or even "use at their house". I spent 8 years in that state. I was so desperate, I even wrote BASIC programs on notebook paper, looking forward to the day I could type them into a computer!

Thanks to that settlement, we ended up finally getting our first PC in 1992, when I was about 15. I think it was $1200. It was an older closeout deal, a computer package. A Laser 386sx 20 MHz with 2 MB RAM, 100 MB hard drive, no multimedia (no sound card or CD-ROM), 14" color monitor, dot-matrix printer, and a modem *that you had to install* and by install, I don't mean pop it in and it's done. No, you had to be a super nerd to install it. I had to have a classmate install it before it would work! The computer had DOS and Windows 3.1. I never booted Windows 3.1, since it was fluff garbage, and quite slow on our severely underpowered PC. All my computer time was spent in DOS.

As soon as I found Qbasic on that PC, that was all I ever did. Then I signed up for my first programming course in High School (they wouldn't let you take it until Sophomore year) and I borrowed the Quick Pascal 1.0 install disks and installed that at home. Then I switched to Pascal. I wrote SO MANY games (text, DOS) during that couple years, basically I taught myself to program. It was so simple and 2-dimensional back then. No complex libraries, no repositories, multiple versions, no APIs, none of that. That's what I fell in love with.

But I thought the same thing as you -- what if my parents hadn't provided me that PC? Would I still have had a way to make a living? I did by my own first PC only a few years later (went into debt actually -- one of those "6 months no interest" deals at Best Buy) so maybe that would have been God's backup plan, if my folks hadn't cooperated.

But still, you only have so many years in school, at home, with tons of free time to leisurely explore and really learn DEEPLY certain skills. Once that time is gone, it never returns. It's never the same once you're an adult, with sweethearts, families, spouses, full time work, etc.

Yes, it seems as though we have very similar stories, having spent time at seminary and then getting into programming.  After seminary, I did want to become a professor or teacher (High School) of Greek and Latin, so I went to grad school and finished the coureswork toward the Ph.D.  I had taken side jobs teaching at public High School (Latin), but it was a horrible experience, and I wasn't really teaching anything as only one or two kids actually wanted to learn.  But I also realized that I couldn't make enough money at a "Catholic" High School to raise a familiy.  So High School was out.  Then I was put off by the prospect of needing another 3-4 years to take the two sets of exams and do the disseration that would be required to get the Ph.D.  The Catholic University of America had one of the only Greek and Latin graduate programs that allowed you to specialize in Patristic Greek/Latin and Medieval Latin, but the downside was that they insisted on your taking two sets of exams, one for Classical, the other for Patristic/Medieval ... each of which by itself required proficiency in a reading list that would by itself suffices for an ordinary Ph.D.  So double the work.  At which point, I switched over to programming.

So I got this Atari 400 in 1978.  But all it came with to save data was a literal magnetic cassette tape (the same tapes you'd record music on).  It would take an hour to save out a few kilobytes of work, and an hour to restore it.  I spent nearly the entirety of one summer working on a computer game, and at the end of each day, I would "save" the work.  I got up one morning only to realize that my work wouldn't restore from tape.  I tried repeatedly, tried cleaning the tape ... to no avail.  So I had lost weeks' worth of work.  At that point, I wanted to save up for a Floppy Drive.  This was an external drive that was the size of small DVD player today, that used 5 1/4" Floppies.  This thing cost $250, so I had to save my lunch money for months to pay for it.  You can get one of those later (while they were still being made) for about $10.  Today you can get a thumbdrive with 1TB on it for $20.  Before I got a proper programming job, I worked repairing computers, and occasionally we had to swap our old hard drives.  These things were the size of a 3-4 large suitcases stacked on top of one another, and they held a whopping 40MB of data.  Of course, a lot of the original games required only 16-32K of RAM to run.  And some of the programmers did amazing things with that amount of memory.

I quickly crossed off "teaching" from my career possibilities, post-seminary.
I had heard from other ex-seminarians (let's face it, many are "teacher material") that you simply couldn't earn a living wage as a teacher, especially in an SSPX school.
I took his word for it, and never looked into it for myself.

It's a great topic for another thread: how an increasing number of objectively important, useful, great skills are USELESS for career purposes. No one reads anymore, so writing a book, even a good one, wouldn't support you. And so on. History, music, poetry, singing, pretty much anything Liberal Arts UNLESS you want to go into teaching/academia.

Not only at SSPX schools, but NO Catholic schools either.  Public school "teachers" could do well after some years ... but there was no actual teaching going on there.  Since they were public employees, their salaries were posted online, and there was a Kindergarten teacher in the suburb I lived in at the time making well over 6 figures after 30 years of seniority.  It's all unionized that way.

4-year universities / colleges are a TOTAL SCAM.  I could go on for hours about that, but probably digressed on this thread enough already.

Lol the calculator maxes out at 3 kids. 

Lol the calculator maxes out at 3 kids.

Lol probably because these sorts of calculations are built around overindulgence in luxuries. Most people these days will go into debt to have nice cars, or RVs, or boats and then claim they can't afford more than 2 kids.

Our Lord doesn’t require you live frugally.  He requires you live without sin. As Fr. Novak said many years ago “If God wanted you to sew your own close, milk cows, raise chickens like little house on the Prairie, He’d have created you in 1842.  When asked “What are we allowed to do in this world?” St. Don Bosco replied “Anything but sin”.

How much do you need to raise a family depends on how you want to live your life.  You may opt to delay starting a family until you are able to provide and live the life you think is best.  Many Saints were wealthy and many were poor.  Pray to know and follow Gods will. It is only by following His will that you can reach heaven. 

You missed the point ... entirely.  If by opting to "delay" starting a family you mean, NFP after marriage, then negatory.  If you mean waiting until you've save away something financial, of course you can.  But God sometimes brings the right person into your life before then, and circuмstances differ for everyone.  Question wasn't whether you COULD wait, but whether you were REQUIRED to wait.  So you swung and missed several times in a single response.

As for living extravagantly, of course it's not sinful by itself, but it's contrary to the evangelical counsels and militates against perfection, our true goal in life.  If we spend a lot of money on frivolities while our neighbors suffer from great need, will we be judged as those who when Our Lord was hungry, we did not give him to eat?  While it's possible for the rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, Our Lord said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.

There's a huge range between sewing your own clothes / milking cows and living in a 10-million-dollar mansion while your neighbor is in dire need.

You may opt to delay starting a family until you are able to provide and live the life you think is best.  Many Saints were wealthy and many were poor.  Pray to know and follow Gods will. It is only by following His will that you can reach heaven. 

You may opt out of the marriage, but to enter marriage with the intention of refusing God's gift of a child would be a slap in the Face of God. You won't necessarily make the grade if you make decisions which are not yours to make. 

You may opt out of the marriage, but to enter marriage with the intention of refusing God's gift of a child would be a slap in the Face of God. You won't necessarily make the grade if you make decisions which are not yours to make.

Yeah, the "opting to delay a family" remark made me go.... 🤔

Pay more attention to married Trad men who are doing it...and less attention to things like the MIT calculator. Those figures are crazy in my experience. They say each child costs a million dollars to raise to 18. News to me! I have 9 kids.

As a young man, I find the responses in this thread very encouraging. Though I haven't used that silly calculator, I recall being exposed to a certain absurd video back in 8th grade in which similar claims were made about the cost of raising children. One particularly memorable statistic was that, apparently, the cost of a single child was the same as a Ferrari!

Such lies, along with others that I have encountered on the same subject, made me naturally quite cynical about starting a family. The greatest antidote to this insidious propaganda I can recommend to my fellow young men out there is to meet and pay attention to the married Trad men who "are doing it", as Matthew put it.

Their example will inspire you, and (in the case of those like myself, who were not born into the traditional Faith) you will begin see family life in its proper light and dignity.

I found these two posts on Telegram, and though (from my guessing) they were not written by a Catholic, there is truth in what he writes:

https://t.me/remnantposter/2238

The idea that homeschooling isn't viable because "both parents need to work" is a load of BS. Chances are, one of the two parents makes more money. The one who makes less money—usually the woman—should stay home.

If you can't find it in your budget, then something about your budget needs to give. For instance, if you have a big car payment, sell the car. If it's your only car, sell it and use the money to buy a cheaper car outright. Owning a paid-off car is a HUGE pressure release valve. Auto loan debt is one of the biggest sources of personal debt in the US and it's more avoidable than you think it is.

You don't need a new car, or a flashy car. If you drive a pickup truck and you're not using it for your main source of income, you almost certainly don't need it. These guys paying $800/mo for their $70k pickup truck so they can drive it to their office job are the biggest clowns out there. Even if you really needed a vehicle like that, a used one in good working order would do the work just fine. There's no reason it has to be new.

Yeah, I drive a seven year old car. It runs fine and serves our needs. I am not concerned with status BS about having a newer or fancier car, because saving my kids from being brainwashed is more important to me.

There is almost always something you can cut in your budget. Do you go out to eat a lot? Stop that, because it costs you a shocking amount of extra money. Like, hundreds of dollars per month just to eat out once or twice a week, easily. Buy whole ingredients and cook meals at home. Stop buying prepared meals, whether it's a restaurant or the freezer aisle. They're almost always loaded with garbage ingredients anyway.

What about dumb entertainment stuff? Do you have ten different subscriptions for soybug brainrot streaming services? Cancel them, that's another $100/mo right there. And forget about cable. You can get an internet connection for $50/mo and get whatever entertainment you want for free using that.

On top of all this the cost of putting your kids in daycare or private school, along with your higher income taxes, will likely cancel out most of the "extra income" you get from a dual income arrangement anyway.

If your wife makes $50k and you spend $30k of that on private school, or $20k on daycare—conservative estimates, btw—is that really worth the extra few thousand dollars after taxes? Because homeschool is practically free. You might spend a couple thousand per year on materials, but that's preferable to paying strangers to raise your kids for you.

https://t.me/remnantposter/2240

Stay at home parents are also free to take care of chores and errands during the day, allowing more time for the family to relax and enjoy each other when the working parent is home for the night or off on the weekend.

Mom can get the shopping and house chores done during the day and when dad comes home, there's no more housework to do. Everyone enjoys each other's company and a good meal. The weekend is free to do whatever the family wants.

Contrast this with the dual income households most Millennials and Zoomers have grown up in; kids are shunted off to school or daycare, parents both rush off to work, house is empty all day, chores and errands don't get done. Now they must be done either after work or on the weekend. Everyone is tired all the time, nobody gets a moment to relax, and the family spends very little time together.

It doesn't take a genius to see why this is horrible for family bonding, and the scientific research bears that out as well. Kids who are cared for by a biological parent have lower levels of stress hormones and fewer emotional development issues than kids who are put in school or daycare with strangers. Families who eat dinner together on a regular basis have less stress, stronger ties, and the kids face lower risks of things like crime, drug abuse, and teen pregnancy. It's the "No Shit" Effect at work; stuff that should be obvious that we don't need studies to prove it, yet it's also nice to be vindicated.