Men who got married and had kids at a young age, how did you keep your head above water? Did you find success?

7 comments

1. I didn’t do that. I did the opposite: I got married and had a kid at an old age. However…

   The best way to make that work is to have a real partnership. One partner focuses on earning money, the other takes care of hearth and home. Good luck. Unless you are BOTH committed to working hard, being a team, and being truly kind to each other, it’s not going to work.

2. Break everything down into necessary, and preferable categories.

   If it isn’t necessary, forget about it for now, but keep the list. And if everything off the necessary column is complete, then you can consider it.

   Keep on top of your health.

   Make sure you and your wife can communicate well

   And then, use caffeine, and the fact you’re young, to simply power through what seems like impossible feats.

   (If you’re fit and 23, I would bet money happily you could be 2 days without sleep for example if you caffeine and time to go for a run etc)

   You definitely can’t at 40, so make the most of the fact your young and can recover quicker and have better tolerance.

   To translate that into real world

   I worked 2 jobs, one 8-5, one 6- 2 Monday to Friday and went to the gym every night when I finished to stay healthy.

   Then, on Saturday I worked on my own business, trying to get it off the ground.
   Once I had momentum I started dialling back on job and replacing it with business time.

   Sunday was a day solely spent with my wife and kid, focussing on letting her rest and have a lie in and just chill out from a week basically parenting the kid solo.

   That’s how we agreed to do it, it worked for us at the time, a year or so later I was able to quit everything and just run my business.

   Now in my 30s and have a few different businesses, and 3 more kids, and can do whatever I want in essence.

   In essence:

   Just focus on doing the hard shit now. It sucks, but every year you delay it, it gets harder as you get older and lose the superpower of being 20 something.

3. At the beginning it’s hard. We had nights to either eat or pay the rent/utilities. I will tell you one thing, it you married a good woman she will stand by your side at hard time. Now after 20 years, I look back and appreciate the woman that I married as she always stood by my side.

   Like anything else in this world, it will take time and very hard work but you will be able to pull though.

4. I got married last year (24 years old) but we are living together since I was 18 years old. I’m a lawyer and civil servant, I’m living a good and stable life.

   I have a house, a car, a boat, a nice gaming PC and a lot of guns and fishing equipment.

   We don’t have kids yet.

5. First couple of years were hard financially. Took awhile but we got there. Things were much easier once the kids were off to school. Good thing is I’m still relatively young at 45, with a 21 year old.

6. Unexpectedly got my gf (now wife) pregnant when I was 22 and making shit money as a mechanic. Then got her pregnant again 14 months later after losing our health insurance. It was a mess. We had no money, a $20k hospital bill, and 2 infants.

   I sucked it up, started working as many hours as I could (around 80) as a mechanic and went back to school to try to earn more money. After a few years of pain, I got my degree in computer science. I got my first job in tech and continued to work 2 jobs to pay off the student debt. Then I started my own company. I went from having no money and 2 kids in my early 20’s to making mid 6 figures and working from home in my mid 30’s.

   It was rough. But I kept my head down and worked hard. I got lucky but if you focus on the long-term goal even though you are tired and feeling like it is a long shot, you have a good chance it will work out in your favor.

7. I regret it every day now. But still swimming