<p>Am I supposed to feel sorry for people who have more children than they can support. If things are tight and you have 4 kids (in the case of the couple in the first story they had 4 kids in 6 years) and in the second story the lady had 2 kids in their 20s and 2 more under age 10. Why???
I feel bad the lady is sick and she should be able to get medical care, but if you marry a guy who is much younger than you and your kids are grown and he is supporting another child, why would you have 2 more kids??</p>
<p>I read the article -- people make bad decisions all the time, some are more costly than others. I do wonder about $9000 for health insurance (seems like state farm would have a better deal). $750 for a group plan for a family seems awfully pricey.</p>
<p>In our area, the guy's 9k for insuring his family is bit more than 50% of cost. We pay about 15-16k for our group plan (H is self employed). That is the reality in our area of the coutry! </p>
<p>As far as private school, I know someone who paid this bill for 3 children (religious reasons). It has been and continues to be a huge financial strain. They spent more than this family on private school tuition (a lot more).</p>
<p>Geez, I really can't relate to big family situations. I am an only child, and still need to be pretty frugal, mom and I.
I guess its pretty crazy living in crammed space for some of those big families. I know I can't adjust to situations like that.
(Now I only hv to learn living with a roommate in college (:)</p>
<p>montgomery county public schools are among the best in the country. maybe sending the kids there would save a lot of money and stress and they could easily and more cheaply attend church services and be involved in catholic religion classes outside of school. it does seem that they made a few poor choices and it sure is easier to see others' poor choices than your own!</p>
<p>the family with kids in Catholic school is in Montgomery county PA. it has good schools. Why move out there if you are going to drive 100 miles to work and send your kids to private school and not be able to afford it.</p>
<p>those are good schools. Had they moved to near where the husband works, their house would have been far cheaper and they could have afforded private school easier.</p>
<p>the other woman (who is 47 with a 3 year old) lives in a poorer area in Delaware County in PA, not DE. I am making an assumption that the 2 youngest kids were not brought into the marriage (since the articles says the husband pays child support).</p>
<p>Well, I do have some sympathy for the commute/gas costs issue. I was laid off from a small professional services firm last December after having been there for 13 years. After 2 months of unemployment and active job search, I accepted an absolute dream job, at a much higher salary, but with a 90 mile round-trip commute each day.</p>
<p>We did calculate the additional cost of gas; it is horrifying. But the new job also offers health insurance and a 401(k) that I did not have available before (northeast...my husband is also self-employed and our self-paid health insurance premiums were also $15000/year; now they will be about $4000 and include dental which we had never had before!). With one in college and one about to be, just getting another job was crucial. Can't do much about the commute, as we wouldn't move at this stage of life.</p>
<p>archiemom, we also do not have dental for that premium. Drove me nuts when we needed to pay nearly 2k dollars for wisdom teeth extraction out of our pockets, and we still have another mouth that will need the same (younger son should be ready for that in a couple of years too).</p>
<p>My DH has a long, expensive commute also - but he's happy to have this job, after being downsized twice in 3 yrs (IT industry). He recently spent months recovering from open heart surgery and it's tough to change employers (if they'd even consider you) when you might risk losing benefits because of pre-existing conditions. While unemployed, our COBRA health insurance costs were over $1000/month. Even with that insurance, we have enough out of pocket medical bills to deduct them every yr on our taxes. Unfortunately, we have some serious medical conditions to deal with and getting "cheap" insurance isn't as easy as some of you assume. For those of you fortunate enough to only go to doctors for checkups, consider yourselves lucky you can make do with the basic insurance policy...</p>
<p>It's easy to judge others, but sometimes there's more to the story than you know.</p>
<p>Just count us as another family whose employer group health insurance runs $369 every other week for a grand total of $9594 a year (which comes to 25% of gross salary from this employer)! And, on top of that there's a $1000 deductible for each of the 4 of us, and a $60 copay to see a specialist, and a 30% copay on allowed amounts. Yup, we're ****ing our money away alright.</p>
<p>wow -- I had no idea that insurance plans were uniformly so expensive. My husband has been unemployed on and off for about 5 years, so we didn't qualify for cobra anymore and just didn't have health insurance. His last job offered group health insurance for $890/mo for the family with $1000/deductible. We simply couldn't afford it -- his salary was only $30,000/yr -- so we just didn't have any insurance. His new job offers great health insurance (I just didn't realize how great it was) I will tell him to make sure he keeps this job!</p>