68k in NYC, LA, Miami, Chicagoland, Boston, or Washington State would be quite tight for a dude.
$68k in the cities you mentioned isn't going to be feasible, even for a single male with no kids and no debt. Add Washington DC, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle to that list. A $68k earning single male with no kids and no debt will need at least one roommate to make ends meet. This will also not be a great apartment with good logistics for sex after early stage dates and his car won't be great in the metro areas listed where cars matter and public transportation is not prevalent.
It would be possible to live on $68k as a single male in Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Houston, or San Antonio. Even in those less expensive cities, you're still not living exceptionally. Dallas and Phoenix are pretentious and status oriented so a guy making $68k in those cities is essentially invisible to women due to big hypergamy there. Denver also has a bad male surplus, which is why it is nicknamed Menver. Houston and San Antonio are a little bit better in terms of female attitudes than Dallas and Phoenix but they aren't great either and they have other issues.
Both people need to put in 100% in order for a relationship to last. Most do not. However, dudes are waking up and not being caught behind the 8 ball because of So Suave and Youtube.
If anyone thinks making a million dollars a year, help raising the offspring and laying down the pipe the right way will keep a female happy, they are wrong.
Having cash and laying good pipe is better than not having cash and not laying good pipe. Those factors can extend a relationship. There are men with cash and men who lay good pipe who realize that putting a ring on it and having babies isn't the best course for keeping things good for the longest period of time.
You know why marriages fail nowadays? Females just change their mind. That is it. Jesus Christ himself can come down from he heavens, but that would also do jack sh!t. You know why? Simple.. She changed her mind. The only thing a dude can do to protect himself and keep her in check is not to sign the legal document of marriage and have a cohabitation agreement. Then she doesn't have the protection of the state to take YOUR SH!T.
Think of this, you have a house, find a female, she moves in, you get married, then have kids, five - six years later she divorces you. YOU have to leave the house and keep paying the upkeep. YOU have to pay alimony, not her. YOU have to rent or buy another house. YOU have split YOUR assets. YOU have to pay for a lawyer AND her lawyer. Does this seem at all logical? FVCK NO.
How about not even getting married or not cohabitating? I've never gotten married and not cohabitated. At one time, I expected that I would live with a girlfriend. Now? I don't want that. Cohabitating is a way to reduce the passion and the sexual frequency. Keeping the distance can keep the novelty longer. All relationships are transient but not getting married and not cohabitating are ways to extend the shelf life, possibly to what I perceive is the maximum shelf life of goodness in most relationships.
The second you laid in the second paragraph has happened to some men I've known who have gotten divorced. I know one man who got divorced with 2 kids who was fortunate to have a wife who earned more than he did. He was not paying alimony or child support but he moved out of the house they were living in together as a couple.
Divorce/family court is always a bad idea for men.
I wanted to have a baby with my ex but I was so scared she would come after my assets and my family assets that I broke it off. I loved her like crazy, but it was too risky to a new create life with her because of the laws.
The rich powerful politicians designed it this way. If men want to have kids, they have to be ready to be DESTROYED emotionally, financially, physically on the mother’s whim.
If Dr. Dre, worth $800,000,000 US (cash) had a brain aneurysm because of his wife, how well do you a SoSuave member will do if a girl wants to make his life a little difficult?
As a man in the United States, if you want kids, you are staring at unpleasant odds. It is more likely than not that you and the mother will no longer be a couple by the time the first kid turns 18, let alone a 2nd or 3rd kid. That's not a good situation for the children.
Gen X'ers (1965-1981) were the first generation to be the children of divorce. A lot of them have had their families by now, especially the women in that cohort. Younger Gen X men (1977-1981) might be with a younger, more fertile Millennial. The thing about Gen X is that they weren't a large generation. Gen X was followed by the Millennials (1982-1996), which was a much larger generation because they were mainly the children of the large Baby Boomer generation. Divorce became even more prevalent for Millennial children who grew up mainly in the 1990s. Millennials had a poor example growing up for romantic relationships, they've been battered by economic recessions (2008 and COVID), and swipe apps became prevalent in their era. This is a recipe for bad outcomes. A lot of Millennials have stayed childless but the ones who have followed in the footsteps of Boomers and X'ers into married and family life have had similar outcomes to those generations, which have not been good.
Getting married and having kids kinda goes together if you ask me. If I weren't comfortable doing one of those things then I wouldn't do the other. If it's not a woman you'd be comfortable marrying then she's not good enough to have kids with. Whether you actually do marry is another question, not really that important in my opinion, but you need to be comfortable with her to that level regardless if you ask me.
I asked one of my friends who got married in 2017 why he didn't live with his girlfriend in perpetuity. They moved in together in 2015 after an extended amount of time as a couple prior to moving in together. He probably could have kept living with her if he'd wanted to do it that way. He said that they got married for the purpose of raising kids and having a structure of permanence for that. However, that structure is illusionary. It can be ended at any time and it's often the woman who ends it. They still don't have kids.
Personally the best time to have kids (in the Western world) was the 70's and 80's and 90's, when the Western economy was still healthy, people were still employed with good salary, and when the crazy liberal movements were still considered crazy (which they truly are).
But now? Too risky if you ask me. WW3 is prominent. The economy is weak. Societies are being ruled by crazy ideologies. People are poisoning themselves with social media. And the leftards are running the show everywhere.
The healthiest time was from 1946-1970, which coincided mostly with the Baby Boomer generation. The 1970s were a time of upheaval. At the dawn of the 1970s, you had Woodstock, birth control being well established, the Vietnam War, and the Kent State incident. As the 1970s progressed, there were oil embargoes, gas shortages, a presidential resignation, the end of the Vietnam War, economic recessions/stagflation/malaise (these were the Ford/Carter years), and a hostage crisis. The economic issues of the 1970s paled in comparison to the 2007-early 2010s recession and even the COVID crisis.
The 1980s and 1990s were better but still not great. The Carter economic maiaise persisted into 1982-1983, but the birth rate started to uptick in 1982 in the U.S., which was a sign of optimism. That's why 1982 was consider by generational theorists Strauss and Howe to be the first year of Gen Y/Millennials. The national debt in the U.S. exploded in the 1980s. The 1980s and 1990s were the era in which the solvency of Social Security was questioned for the first time. The economy was strong from late 1982/early 1983 to mid-2000 save for a small economic recession in the early 1990s that was serious enough to cost George HW Bush the presidency in 1992.
Since 2000, we've seen the dot com bubble burst, 9/11, the 2008 crash, and COVID. I was in my early to mid 20s in the 2000s between 9/11 and the 2008 crash. I remember saying at 22-23 in 2005-06 that having kids was a bad idea then based on the 2 decade projections once could make then. In 2006, I wasn't even projecting the late 2000s recession to be as bad as it was nor was I projected a global pandemic.
It's not a healthy environment from a political, economic, or social environment to raise kids in Western nations now, and it hasn't been that way since at least the year 2000.
