Mrs. WonderMeal and I had our first of three at 24.
It's great right now because we're youngish, and it's going to be great down the road because our last kid will be out of the house when we're in our mid-40s. But having kids before the 28-34 sweetspot can have some pretty big social, career, and financial impacts.
Social: We were the first to have kids in our friend group. It's harder to do fun things like hang out, fly for nine days to Kauai w/ your pals, etc when you have a little one.
Career: If you don't work with people with kids, it can be hard to do things like dropoff/pickup from daycare, miss work for doctor's appointments, not go to every happy hour, etc. I guess you could be a jerk and make your spouse do all that stuff, but this can be a real problem if you want to be a good co-parent and don't have anyone at work that understands your responsibilities at home.
Financial: see below.
I think the best financial advice I could give to beginners is: don't have kids until later in life. I mean, kids are great and whatever, but they make the following things more expensive:
- Rent/mortgage (need bigger house)
- Insurance (family vs. individual plans)
- Food
- Day care (about as expensive as a rent payment, depending on where you live)
- Random other stuff (food, doctor co-pays, clothes, etc)
If you have kids young, that severely limits the advantages of compounding interest 40 years down the road. So save that cash now.
