This seems to be a very Canada thing.

I know people in the states, the UK, and Croatia who don’t even know the term “work life balance” because none of them live this non-stop grind to keep your head above water. People just live, they aren’t debating whether they should work a second job and how much they see their kids lol.

All of them are professionals in their careers, but nothing crazy, not business owners, etc. and they all take vacations with their families, are home at night, etc.

The quality of life here is non-existent for a lot of people.

If I wasn’t in the position I am, I certainly would not be in the lower mainland just grinding to try and make it work. What a shit life that would be.

I'll be in my 60's when my kid turns 17 :heckno:

gross. you started too late.

if i told my wife to shit one out right now, that piece of shit would be 20 and ill be 60.

COOL GRANDPA!, no man thats my dad....

What a nightmare

ill be already in my cocaine hooker days and that piece of shit will still be living in the household, barely finding a job, and probably causing all kinds of horseshit problems for me and the old lady. If its a daughter, she'll be the most spoiled cunt on the face of the earth then she'll bring in some neck tattoo motherfucker all the while i blow coke up a hookers ass

On another topic, what's the optimal age for marriage and/or kids for you guys?

Seems like nowadays, that number depends on your financials, aka your own place, car, savings, and then guys start to think about kids.

The math on having kids by 25 - 33 seems nice though, they'll be 20 by the time you're 45 - 53.

I'd argue my work life balance is a lot better than the last generation. We were just chatting with an old lady at a restaurant because we were hauling our 1 yr old around with us to go out for lunch (WFH perks). She was interested in our case cause my wife is on an extended mat leave.

She said she worked at the bank when she had kids, she would request to take half a day off to go to her kids recital and would be denied. It's not just immigrants who had to grind but white people too.

Work life balance has come a long way in the last 20-30 years. We bitch about it because Vancouver has retarded living costs, but if you can stomach living in Calgary, the housing prices are easily 1/2 to 1/3 and you won't really hear about this two job BS as much.

If anything the States is much much worse. We have a friend who works for Microsoft who had 100% paid two months off after giving birth. And that's supposed to be generous, most people are back at work a week after giving birth. I asked them about their costs, they said out of pocket it was a few hundred, but the bill was around 20k USD. That's because they had zero complications and everything went smoothly and they were out of the hospital quickly. Everything sounds like a shit show if you don't have coverage.

Hold on... the USA???

The USA is almost third world bad for workers rights... 1 week for maternity leave? If you're lucky? No holiday time. I don't know what people you're friends with in the USA but that place is a fucking nightmare to work in, especially if you're in Finance or Tech holy shit... like zero rights and piss poor benefits.

They literally finish at the bottom of any survey for any first world nation on work/life balance.

Big tech in the USA have gold plated medical insurance plans I'll take anyday over Canada's free healthcare.

You'll need it after you do 10 consecutive 80 hour work weeks

Marriage is a wash, some people don't believe in it and if you boil it down the absolute basics at the end of the day it's just a piece of paper, a 5 figure dinner party, and an excuse to party. Legally being married is almost no difference from being common-law nowadays

For having kids, it's work/family life balance in play. We had our first kid at 32, but we've done a bit of traveling already and seen a bunch of places, and really kicked the one thing off my bucket list by doing a Euro Delivery.

Were we finished traveling? No, not at all, but also we didn't want to have our first kid after 35. We didn't know if we would have a hard time conceiving and wanted to give ourselves some time before our own cut off.

Well life happens, we got pregnant on the first try. We had a miscarriage but was again successful right after that.

We are actually the first couple in my friend groups to have a kid, wife's friend group has a few already but we were still in the top 3. In terms of optimal age I'd think I'd prefer to have had the kids a little earlier, but then I wasn't ready. I still wasn't ready but the balance made more sense at 32 vs 30.

We talk about how our parents are with the grandkids, and how we would be like if our kids ever decide to have kids. My dad is 70 and I'd say borderline physically being able to deal with the kids. (Mindset is another story as my dad is useless with kids and also stated he's not interested in being a babysitter). If our kids have kids around our age, we'd be around 65-70 which is the golden age to have grandkids. You are just retired (given you can financially retire at 65) but yet still physically capable enough to deal. Any younger you'll still be working, too much older you may be too slow and frail to chase after the brats when they get older and you are inching towards 80.


@xxxrsxxx how is it to have kids in your 40's? My uncle had his first kid at 43 and he said he can't keep up. He's a cop too so he's physically more fit than others. My youngest cousins are closer in age to my kids than they are to me.

Therein lies your mistake.

I would think 30-35 is prime to have kids. let's say you have your last one at 35, you'd stop taking them to lessons and driving them around by like 50'ish. Freedom!

Sounds like selection bias to me. YOu're not likely to know Joe-six pack from Tulsa or Johnny Bean from Turdchester who are working 3 jobs to make ends meet and posting their shit on r/antiwork during their free time. You're going to meet people who have leisure time either to travel abroad or to visit you in Canada. Whereas we both will be exposed to a multitude more people from different socio-economic stratas by virtue of living here.

Also I'm not close with anyone that works 2 jobs or more. I mean they might but they don't make it obvious. I really just brought up this overemployment thing as something that was trending online and I suspected some of my younger coworkers were doing it cause they were generally non-responsive. I can't say 100% for sure. Everyone I know well is generally home at night, takes vacations, eats out, etc. The only people I see really hustling are recent immigrants, TFW and Int'l students. And I guarantee you the vast majority of "Overemployed" on r/overemployed working 2 jobs are Americans tryin' to hustle.

If you work in tech, it's pretty easy to bullshit multiple jobs.

I have a few buds that mostly do Python related project work and builds, they're technically a FT employee for multiple companies, without any of these companies knowing so.

As a result they're pretty much working 2-3 FT gigs, but definitely not putting in 100 hour weeks or anything.

The amount of money they're making is frigging insane.

I thought about doing something similar myself, but I'm too damn lazy.

Yeah, for the privileged few the American health care systems beats the free one we have but I'll take the free one over the my whole lifetime over the short period of time I work for a top employer who can afford to spring for gold plated healthcare - care that would have locked me into a job.

America is kinda a shit hole country - their life expectancy sucks, their infant mortality rates are of a third world country, poverty rates are ridiculous, and most of their metrics around quality of life are terrible compared to other "first" world countries. If you're privileged enough you can live away from a lot of that but most people can't.

I haven't done a lot of travel into third world countries but I did visit the Chinese countryside (outside of Shanghai) about 20 years ago and it was nicer than many parts of the US - I've never seen a bigger shit hole city than New Orleans in my life and it's not like New Orleans is the worst they have to offer.

It's not just laziness either. I'm somewhat of an anxious person and the thought of being duplicitous for 8 hours a day/5 days a week on top of putting on my "corporate face" is what exhausts me the most thinking about it.

I turn 48 in a couple weeks and my kid is about to turn 5 in April. I expect that she'll just be hitting high school by the time I retire in 7-8 years.

It wasn't ideal to start a family that late but it beats no family. Ideally I'd tell people to do it in their early-mid 30s - hopefully by then you have an established career that provides a steady income and you can afford to pause your career ambitions a bit while at the same time you have the energy to chase kids around or work late at night.

I have a friend the same age as me who is about to send his 2nd kid off to university this September and he'll be an empty nester - I'm jealous of that but I can't imagine how difficult it was for him in his mid-20s trying to manage 2 kids while both sets of grandparents lived in different cities.

One should also look at the co-pays for many of these "gold-plated" benefit plans.

It's not unheard of to have a $3K-$5K annual deductible amount until your coverage truly "kicks" in. I've seen some as high as $10K.

My wife has asked me, "Would you ever cheat on me?" and my response is that I can barely deal with her so where would I find the time and energy to deal with another woman?

I feel the same way about a 2nd job whether I do it at the same time or after my first job.

That's when you know you're getting old. Don't have the dick energy to satisfy that many women at once. Hard to be juggling women when you become a one-pump chump.

Leave that shit for the youngins :lol

Thought the difference in BC is that marriage = split of assets after a certain amount of years without prenup.


Whereas common-law, you keep all pre-existing assets pre common-law and split the gains post common law.

But have a kid together and you're pretty much married.

When do ya lose the dick energy :lawl:

When i was in middle school everyones parents were like 35-40, i had one friend and his parents were straight up 60 just like you said hahahhahah

I remember him always saying, "my parents are old as fuck, they eat at 6pm and sleep by 9" or something along those lines hahahah. We always found it weird that his parents were pretty much "grandparents"

Dont let my comments insult/discourage you, nothing wrong with the above

I’m pretty sure my boys are dead. Thank god
https://i.imgur.com/kQVoZ.gif

we are late. we are trying to have kids in our 40s and it's just tough.
IVF is very common among freinds and its an emotional toll. We'll see how wife deals with lack of sleep if we are ever blessed with a kid.

we all play the the same deck of cards and hours in a day. It's the attitude that guides everything.

I'm immature as fuck and have a child's mind! I'm totally ready with that mindset for a 40+ baby!

(Not mocking you, I'm serious)

All the power to people having kids later in life but for me, like legit it would be a fucking nightmare and I’d probably fall into a deep depression if it happened to me lol

A friend of mine just had a kid in a completely unstable situation which is degrading further and further. I honestly couldn’t imagine being in that situation. I’m 37 and I feel like I wouldn’t be ready for a kid -ever- let alone having to deal with a toddler etc in mid 40’s

I look back at people I grew up with who had kids shortly out of high school, man, what a completely different trajectory their lives took as opposed to my own. Most of them never got to do shit, maybe a Mexico vacation a couple times in their lives

My brother in law just had a kid and he’s in his 40s. The little fucker is driving him up the wall. He totally regrets it now and basically lives like a zombie.

The only cool thing would be when he’s 65 that little shit will finally be driving age and can drive him to his prostate exams.