"...life isn't a competition to see how upper middle class you can get."
That's been on my mind a lot for the last few years. While I'd like to put my (future) kids in a good starting point, there's more to life than rolling around in cash.
Counterpoint: It's really hard to appreciate a day job for what it is until you're filling out HR forms to ensure your new baby has health insurance coverage from birth, and you let yourself appreciate the terror of not having that in a system that will do it's damndest to screw you over for any lapses. I have a friend who had a baby and had a gap between the 30 days during which the baby was covered by her health insurance, and the time he was covered by her husband's health insurance from his new job. The gap was the result, if I recall correctly, of her forgetting to timely fill out some paperwork. In that gap, the baby rolled off the changing table and hit his head. The baby seemed fine, but she faced the sickening choice between racking up a multi-thousand dollar hospital bill or just hoping the baby didn't have any internal injuries. Ultimately, they took the chance and luckily it worked out for them because the baby was fine.
These weren't poor people, by the way. They were students at an Ivy-league school who were in the transition period between graduation and six-figure jobs.
The irony is that the "startup culture" and HN in particular glorifies "rolling around in cash" even more in the form of billion+ dollar acquisition lottery hits, while looking down on moderately profitable sustainable "lifestyle" busineses.
I've been broke before. Not to toot my own horn, but I know what it's like.
There's a long way between "barely not broke" and "upper middle class". I am not particularly interested in struggling my whole life on the way up to wealth, but I am also not interested in living broke and trying to keep myself and my family fed.
That's been on my mind a lot for the last few years. While I'd like to put my (future) kids in a good starting point, there's more to life than rolling around in cash.