How to retire early?

We had one car and one driver…. Dad.. and 5 of us,

We learned to swim when a pool opened locally, we didn’t do music lessons or anything outside school. Until we were 9ld enough to cycle we didn’t leave the area much.

Only my brother did GAA. We didn’t do any sports and all our friends lived locally so we walked everywhere parties etc weren’t in play centres in industrial estate miles away.

My grannies helped with childcare when my brother needed therapy for over a year. Mum took 2 busses each way with him while granny minded the rest of us, every week. My granny took 2 busses each way to get over to us. The therapist used to say to mum that brother was stressed and so was she.., no kidding!

Life is different now,
 
We’ll have to disagree on that.
One of my kids was crap at sports (dyspraxia) so we found other activities for him, music and dance. Martial arts. We tried lots of things.
My mum wouldn’t have done that. She couldn’t have managed it.

My aunt couldn’t take her disabled kid to therapy so he lived all his life in hospital. We wouldn’t do that now.

So life is different we understand more about the impact of kids being left out, or missing life changing therapies,


So if you’ve 2 kids with differing interests and needs you might need 2 cars. It’s not a given but something to bear in mind
 
There are other solutions to buying 2 cars (go cars, electric and cargo bikes) but it depends on your logistics and of course it changes over time. Until kids are of school going age there tends to be less activities....looking back we were eager to start some at 4, but we could have held off and it would have been fine. We have always gotten by with just one car but live in suburbs so easier to co-ordinate lifts and can walk/public transport in some cases. Not as easy if you live more rurally.