Meet the typical DINK: They have over $200,000 in the bank and aren’t paying for pricey childcare

DINKs are not a huge share of the population, but they’ve been on the rise. Around 5% of the country’s total population was cohabiting couples who do not live with a child under 18, and around 29% of the total population are married couples who do not live with a child under 18, according to 2022 American Community Survey data.

Among unmarried couples, that figure is slightly up from 2019, per ACS, when 4.4% of the population was cohabiting couples not living with a child under 18.

The US Census Bureau also finds that the aging population is increasingly childfree — as of 2018, over one in seven women were childless by the time they were between the ages of 40 and 44. That’s higher than the one in 10 women who were in the same boat as of 1976. And 16.5% of adults 55 and older were childless as of 2018.

Indeed, more millennial women don’t think it’s worth it to have kids after the economy they’ve weathered. A Pew survey of 9,676 Americans from October 18 to October 24, 2021 found that 44% of non-parents ages 18 to 49 said they were not likely or not at all likely to have kids someday — up from 37% in 2018.

If you want to grow your nest egg, being a DINK is a strategic move. The median net worth of a couple with no children is $250,600, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances — far higher than every other type of family structure the survey tracks.

Meanwhile, couples with no children — a category that does not specify whether both partners in the couple are income earners, but are likely to be when viewed in the context of the high employment rate among working-age Americans — have a before-tax family income of $101,610.

That might reflect the dilemma that some of those prime-age potential parents are facing: Having babies has essentially become a status symbol. As Gen Zers and millennials parents previously told Business Insider, high costs and unaffordable childcare have left them feeling financially crushed. For DINKs, a child-free existence means being able to afford more expensive rent and travel.

“Deciding not to have kids, and instead deciding to just focus on our interests and our desires and what we want out of life has just given us a little bit more freedom, essentially, to take advantage of the world now, versus having to wait until our kids are grown or until we retire — if we retire,” Nicole Valdez, a 37-year-old publishing publicity manager and DINKWAD, previously told Business Insider.

DINKs aren’t just living it up now. They’re ready to retire well and have the savings to prove it. DINK’s retirement accounts are far more robust than any other family structure: They have, on median, $135,000 stashed away for their golden years.

That stands in stark contrast to the potential retirement crisis that some younger workers face, as Business Insider previously reported. A 2022 Census Bureau report found that, as of 2017, almost half of adults ages 55 to 66 had no personal retirement savings.

However, Americans who are married are more likely to have retirement savings than those who have never been married. And both men and women who have been married once, but did not have biological children, were more likely to have some retirement savings than those who were never married, per the Census Bureau report.

That later-in-life stability might speak to one of the big appeals of being a DINK: In an increasingly uncertain economic landscape, where traditional adult milestones like owning a home, paying off student loans, or retiring, can feel out of reach, banking on a double income lifestyle might provide at least a bit of a cushion down the road.

Are you a DINK, or aspire to be one? Contact this reporter at [email protected].