There is a number that most dual-income, no-kids couples haven’t calculated — and when they do, it tends to change the way they think about everything. The number is the cost of raising a child to age 18 in the United Kingdom, adjusted for inflation and expressed as an opportunity cost.
According to the Child Poverty Action Group’s most recent figures, the average cost is £166,000 per child for a couple. But that’s the direct cost. The indirect cost — the career capital foregone, the investments not made, the income not earned during the years of intensive parenting — pushes the true economic impact considerably higher. Some economists put the lifetime wealth differential between child-free and child-raising couples at over £1 million per child, in present value terms.
The Arithmetic of Optionality
We spoke with six DINK couples, all in their thirties, all in the process of building what their financial planners describe as “optionality portfolios” — a diversified collection of assets designed not to fund retirement, exactly, but to fund the ability to stop working whenever they choose.
The pattern is remarkably consistent. Two incomes, aggressively invested, from the mid-twenties to the early forties. A mix of ISAs, SIPPs, index funds, and — increasingly — direct property holdings. An explicit refusal to “lifestyle creep” at the pace their incomes would allow. And a very long time horizon.
“We earn well,” says one couple, both partners in their respective professional services firms. “But we don’t earn hedge fund money. The reason we’ll probably be financially independent by 45 isn’t income — it’s that we’ve had no major drain on the portfolio for fifteen years. The maths just works differently when you have two good salaries and no dependents.”
Where the Money Actually Goes
The portfolio allocation among the couples we profiled skews more aggressively than conventional financial planning would suggest. The argument is straightforward: without dependents, there is no catastrophic downside to a portfolio drawdown that would terrify a family with school fees and a large mortgage. You can take more risk because the consequences of the worst outcome are, in practice, manageable.
The reason we’ll probably be financially independent by 45 isn’t income — it’s that we’ve had no major drain on the portfolio for fifteen years.
Typical allocations: 60–70% global equities (predominantly low-cost index funds), 15–20% in direct property either as buy-to-let or fractional ownership through platforms like Bricklane, and the remainder in a mix of cash ISA, bonds, and — for the more sophisticated — private credit and infrastructure.
The Psychological Dimension
Money is only part of the story. The couples who are doing this most successfully talk about something beyond the numbers — a clarity of purpose that comes from knowing precisely why you are accumulating. They are not saving for a child’s university fees or a wedding. They are building the specific kind of freedom that allows them to say yes to anything and no to everything they don’t want.
Several use the phrase “designing life.” It appears, perhaps not coincidentally, in the tagline of this publication. It is an aspiration that is increasingly available to people who make the conscious, often counter-cultural, choice to remain child-free — and who deploy the resulting resources with intention.
Practical Starting Points
If you are a DINK couple who has not yet had this conversation formally, the simplest place to start is a combined net worth calculation and a target independence number. The standard rule — 25 times your annual expenditure — gives you your FIRE number. Two incomes, properly invested, can reach that number faster than most people expect.
The advisers best suited to this kind of planning are fee-only financial planners who specialise in early retirement or “lifestyle financial planning.” Avoid commission-based advisers for wealth-building conversations. Their incentives are misaligned with yours.
