The rule of 3 in time management & productivity.

I don't think you're intending to flaunt the fact that these are realistic goals for you but not for others. But it is very easy to read this as such. Some of that turns on what you mean by "financial independence" — if you mean something other than a full-time or multiple part-time jobs, it entails a whole other set of preferences and priorities which are relatively narrow.

A key piece here is that there is a hard deadline, at least for women, and if you have a partner & intend to someday have kids, that needs to be on your radar. A bunch of probabilities re: outcomes of pregnancy start to change as a woman OR man gets older.

There's also relative age of parents to children. Like it or not, your energy level and resilience will change as you progress past your 20s and into your 30s. You could make a decent case that young people are in some dimensions well-suited to raising kids.

And don't forget about your own age relative to your child as an adult— there's a relatively large delta between 60 years old and 70 in terms of mobility, health, etc.

Human beings are also incredibly resilient. It's not something to be proud of, that people who're struggling can somehow make things work, but the reality is that what may seem completely infeasible to you can still work. There's a vast range of outcomes which could arguably constitute "success" or "failure," to the extent those terms have any meaning.

Finally, remember the adage that happiness equals reality divided by expectations. Just as expectations can be too low, they can be too high. You can try to control for every possible outcome, setting up an optimal parenting situation, but it's all a gamble. Shit happens, incl. kids themselves. And while it may look to you like other people made suboptimal choices, maybe try to remember the foregoing.

Except I'm not an American English speaker.

Anyhow, no "jerkishness" intended, this was mostly an observation after yesterday's thread "Where do you find the time for side projects?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7117131 where many parents chimed in on how they squeeze family time here and there between working and juggling side gigs, great for them, but I could not do it without burning out, and I would owe it to my family not to risk that.

So long as I want to work long hours and risk my livelihood building things on the side and use my free time hacking, fine, I'll be on my own. The day I'll be able to afford a family (money-wise but particularly time-wise), I'll do so.

the part which resonates with me is your first one - financial independence. Starting a business isn't for everyone, and it can be hugely risky, but before money came 2nd or 3rd behind career development and maybe challenges. Now stability of income is probably no.1, and it's changed the way I run my business.