Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited.

Switch from DINK to SIWK: How do people afford kids?
I see three areas of concern for your budget: This is way high.  I am not sure how much of a house you live in, but the total of these two numbers should be around 25% not 41%. I am a person that considers giving an important part of wealth building, and gives to my local church.  But as one other person has rightly said, this amount is irresponsible.  I am okay at 12%, but would like to see you at 10% until you are in a little better shape.   That is pretty vague for a significant portion of your income.  What makes up that other category?   You are doing pretty darn good financially, although I would like to see some contributions to investments.  I think you are kind of failing there.  Your debt management is spot on.  That is okay, we can all get better at some stuff. There needs to be some numbers behind these percentages.  The bottom line is if you make an average household income, say around 55K, you are going to struggle with or without children.  If you guys make about 110K, and your wife makes 50% of your income, and she quits work to take care of the kidlets, then you will be in that "boat". Having said all that I find 37% of your income as questionable.  At least 5% of that should be invested, so we are kind of like at 32%.  That is a significant amount of money.