Veronica Ochoa and Jamie Watson, a couple featured in The Globe and Mail's feature on DINKs, cycle along Vancouver’s seawall on Feb. 19.Jennifer Gauthier/The Globe and Mail
On April 24, Globe and Mail reporter Salmaan Farooqui answered reader questions about his feature on how Canada’s child-free couples are spending their time and money. Farooqui spoke to several DINK (dual-income no-kid) couples across the country about why they made the decision to not have children and how it shaped their lives and financial decisions. Some go on regular lavish vacations, while others are setting their sights on becoming mortgage-free.
Globe readers asked Farooqui questions about what child-free couples do in their old age, how to find a financial planner that understands their situation and the outside pressure they face for not having kids.
Here are some of his answers highlighted below (questions have been edited and condensed for clarity).
DINKs commonly get asked, ‘Who’s going to take care of you in old age?’ Is there too much emphasis on that being a disadvantage?
While dealing with care in old age is certainly a concern, I think most advisors did feel that people put a bit too much emphasis on those concerns. On one hand, they say the financial concerns are addressed by good planning, because DINKs tend to have more freedom with their money.
Jay Zigmont, a financial planner that specializes for DINKs in the U.S., said it’s not always clear whether your children will actually be able to support you if you end up needing long-term care.
The biggest emphasis was on keeping your next of kin up to date. Parents can generally rely on their children and forget about it. But DINKs need to continuously update who they’re relying on, both legally and informally, because the professionals or friends you depend on could retire or pass away.
Mr. Zigmont also talked about how elderly DINKs are being proactive about creating households or communities where they stick up for each other and create strong bonds with each other in retirement age. That way, if there are creature comforts you want when you’re dealing with the medical system, people can help provide for you.
Is the only reason people go child-free because kids are expensive?
When I set out writing about DINKs, I assumed that most people would say that expense was a large part of the reason they didn’t want kids.
And while expense was certainly a large reason, I found that it was usually secondary. Perhaps they didn’t want the responsibility of having children, or they just wanted more control over how they spend their time. I even spoke to people who had bad experiences with their own parents or family, and it steered them clear of parenthood for emotional reasons.
All that said – expense was certainly a reason people didn’t want kids. But I really was surprised how often other reasons were even more important.
Why do DINKs feel excluded for not having families?
One of the ways people talked about feeling excluded was really from a financial-planning perspective.
As a DINK, you have a lot more freedom in how you want to live your life and plan for the future, whereas most parents tend to have more a linear financial path. Even the financial planners I spoke with lamented that their industry is fairly old-fashioned, and so people are limited from having great advice that’s tailored for the specific things they want from their life.
How do DINKs manage the pressure of working harder than their colleagues with children? Where does that pressure comes from?
There’s a sociologist I spoke with while reporting this piece that anecdotally found employers were asking a lot more of their child-free employees, especially during the pandemic, when parents found their personal and work lives blending in a particularly difficult way. But this is obviously not necessarily fair to ask of child-free couples.
One of the advisors I spoke with also found this in people’s personal lives: If you’re child-free, you’re more likely to be the one who takes care of your parents in their old age, rather than a sibling who has kids.
The answer of how to deal with this is not a simple one. In fact, some DINKs I spoke with liked working longer hours. But there were also those who wanted to work less, and it certainly has the potential to be a complicating factor.
What about Canadians who are single-income no-kids (SINKs)?
I’ve been thinking about SINKs, and advisors have brought them up too. They certainly are a large portion of the population, and in some ways they miss out on some of the benefits that DINKs get, while also dealing with some of the same worries, such as planning for their old age.
What’s your advice for DINKs looking for financial planners when most often they don’t understand the unique hurdles that child-free couples face?
Mr. Zigmont had a lot of thoughts about this. He’s the only DINK-focused planner he knows, and he even gets Canadians asking for help, though he’s not allowed to help across different jurisdictions.
His advice is to find an advisor who’s at least willing to admit they might not understand how planning will be different for you. That shows a willingness to work with you.
Another tip is to find advisors who already work with unique subsets of the population. Perhaps advisors who work with nomads or people who work remotely. Or even advisors who often work with members of the LGBTQ+ community. Mr. Zigmont said if your advisor claims nothing will be different in your financial planning as a DINK, walk away and find another professional.
Did you speak to any older DINK couples who had regrets later in life? Did their perspectives change?
Over the course of my reporting, I heard from a lot of people, many who didn’t make it into the article. For the most part, nobody, including some of the older folks I heard from, mentioned real regrets over their decision.
I did see at least one person respond to our survey that they did have some regrets later on in life, mostly because they felt a sense of loneliness from not having family around. However, I have to say that the vast majority of people we heard from were very enthusiastic about their decision, and that includes people in old age who found different sources of community around them.
How do you approach allowances for your kids?
Parents, we want to know how you manage giving out allowances for your children. How do you decide how much money to give them? Is allowance conditional on completing chores? Do you give cash or deposit money into a bank account? Or, do you not give allowance at all? Please share your experience and strategy for allowances, or reach out directly to Globe reporter Salmaan Farooqui at sfarooqui@globeandmail.com.