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3rd Trimester
JuddandJessica
member
Jumping in: Lets talk $
JuddandJessica
member
Hi girls! DH and I are intrigued. For those of you that had planned the timing of your baby, how did you determine that you were Financially ready? We realize that maybe a part of you is never actually ready for the real thing but how did you determine when your finances could handle it?
TIA.
BPF 1. Baby Girl "Petri" 12/22/11 Said goodbye 12/27/11
BPF 2. Baby Boy "Roo" 1/20/12 Heartbeat 160b/m 2/15/12 Said goodbye 2/20/12
BPF 3. Rainbow Baby Boy "Creed" 4/28/12 Born healthy and alive 1/5/13
BFP 4. "Rainbow 2.0" 8/17/14 due 4/28/15
"Darling don't be afraid. I have loved you a thousand years. I love you a thousand more."
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Jumping in: Lets talk $
THIS, i don't think anyone is ever $$ ready for kids.
You want my honest (flameworthy) response? We didn't.
We jumped first and thought second. I am of the mindset that you will never be 100% ready for a baby (financially, I mean). You can always save more money, etc.
We weren't drowning in debt when we decided to start trying and DS had just turned 2. We knew we could make it with 2 kids, but we've never been the kind of people to have thousands in savings at any given time.
We're not very smart with money, I guess. We plan for the short term (aside from 401Ks) and not the long term.
Good luck, though!
We saved up, bought a house, payed off all our debt. Then we started TTC... TTC on our own did not work out, we had to go for infertility treatment. 3 IVFs later, 30k in debt and now we have a child.
All well laid plans...
So in hindsight, I am just glad both of us were well secure in our careers. Oh wait, H got laid off when I was 7 months pregnant.... Scratch that.
You make it work? Not exactly how we envisioned it. But I would not trade this for anything.
After 7 years trying to concieve, 3 failed IUIs and 2 failed IVFs, my third IVF was a success!
My Christmas baby turned into a turkey bird! Dillon Richard was born at 34 weeks, 5 days on November 28, 2009 after 10 weeks on bedrest for preeclampsia.
<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v705/arriinthere/PJ/?action=view
Sounds a lot like us.
Our requirement was being able to live off DH's salary so that I could SAH. We also wanted a year's worth of expenses in savings. Once the baby comes we'll have to stick to a fairly strict budget, but we shouldn't have to dip into savings unless a major catastrophe happens.
Someone told me you'll never be ready, and I agree.
Finances weren't a huuuge part of our decision. We are fortunate to have good jobs, little debt, and a great family support system. I think out of all those things, the last one was the most important to us.
If we had waited until we felt like we were financially ready, we wouldn't ever have planned to have a baby.
Our jobs depend on the economy and we all know how that looks right now.
We certainly planned ours as she was conceived through IVF but the truth is we didn't even really consider how it would work out financially. We just knew we would make it work.
I will stay home and DH will bring home the bacon :-)
Ditto. We've been married for 8 years! We've had a lot of fun in our marriage. We've done a lot of things and seen a lot of places. We've saved a lot but we also spend a lot on "stuff" and vacations. Giving up the "stuff" is how we're affording to have a baby! I've always worked part time and we've never lived off anything I've made. When we bought a house and new car we just considered DH's salary. The little money I've made has always been fun money. Since I'm going to be home for awhile, me not working doesn't make much a difference.
This is so true. (And, made my pregnant self tear up a little bit!
)
So well said!
TTC #2 July 2014
Me: 35 DH: 36
FF Chart
DD1 Feb 2010
This ...
Us too. We both make decent money but have never been very smart with it. Now that we know that I'm going to be off work it has given us the motivation to actually put some $ into savings.
We wanted no personal debt from credit cards, all of DH's student loans to be paid off, our own house, and for me to be able to be a SAHM (since daycare is $2k/mo where we live). Took us about 10 years to get to this point, but it was worth it. I'm lucky I got pregnant on our second month of trying.
We would like to move next year into a bigger house, so our baby can actually have his own bedroom, so we're not realllllly all that ready.
We're just comfortable. Or since we have a small house, cozy.
This exactly.
:::In My Life, I've Loved You More:::
CHARTS
I've been poor before, especially as a child - so I guess my personal goal would be to make sure our kids wouldn't have to hear us having whispered (or not whispered) discussions on how to afford rent, food... always having hand me downs, never vacationing, being told the ice cream man isn't in the budget, that sort of thing. I still remember my mother and stepfather arguing about this all the time.
We have always made sure that we only needed DH's income to live on. We have never depended on my income. Any money I made went into our savings account. We decided that we were financially ready when DH could support us and still be able to put a few thousand dollars into savings a month. We also wanted to make sure that we had at least 6 months of mortgage payments in our savings account.
We also discussed what we would do if DH lost his job. We came up with a list of what things (cable, eating out) we could so without and when we were on the same page we decided it was time.
Money wasn't necessarily part of our decision as we feel rather stable - although that can change in an instant.
We did discuss that we wanted to have 6 months of expenses in the bank, own our home, and be debt free (other than the mortgage). But we already had done those things when we started talking about TTC.
However, I doubt that those things would have stopped us from TTC even if we hadn't checked them off our "list". I feel like somehow everyone "makes it work".
I think there are ideal "making it works" and not ideal "making it works" though. I would be very, very stressed if I knew I didn't have the money to buy good health insurance for our family and baby, or enough life insurance for my DH and I. So I think that while you can "make it work" any time it does pay to sit down and look at your finances so see what kind of mindset you will be in when LO gets there. GL to you!
Well we could always have less debt and more money...what it came down to for us was...
1) We were no longer self-employed and therefore self-insured.
2) My new job provides excellent benefits including awesome health insurance (my baby will cost us $75 when it's all said and done) as well as paid maternity leave, 100% matching 401K, etc.
3) We had reduced our cost of living by moving to a different state. That, along with new jobs, afforded us to be able to pay off some debt and free up some money.
4) I turned 35 in November...we decided due to my age, delaying TTC was no longer a great option. So in January 2009 we decided that it was time to take the plunge and we did!
Previously we had hoped to be home owners before TTC but when my DH decided to go back to school fulltime we decided that a baby wouldn't care if we were still renting when it came...so we were okay with changing that plan.
TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
Financial security is really important to both DH and me, and even more so when we were thinking about having kids. We wanted to be able to afford to have me SAH if I wanted, start college fund(s), and keep up substantial short-term and long-term savings for our own retirement.
We did a lot of planning and running scenarios of monthly expenses. We had a goal of how much money we wanted to have in savings so that we had a good cushion once we were on one income. We cut out a lot of unnecessary expenses like eating out, going drinking, etc. I called around to daycares to see what they cost before I even got pregnant, so we had real-world numbers of what it would cost us if we decided to go that route.
Things are definitely a lot tighter on one income, but if we hadn't done the planning we did, I think we would have felt a lot more pinched and stressed.
For us, it was really important to know ahead of time *how* we were going to make things work, rather than just trusting that they would. It made both of us feel as prepared as we could be.
DD1, 1/5/2008 ~~~ DD2, 3/17/2010
We didn't plan all that much before having our daughter. We knew we had enough to pay for TTC out of pocket (about $7,000 total) and therefore could afford daycare (about $10,000/year for an infant in our area). We figured everything else would work itself out, and it has.
In retrospect, our lives would have been a little easier if we'd purchased our home before having our daughter, but we ended up choosing a modest home with a modest 30-year fixed mortgage, so it was actually a blessing to know exactly how much we needed to budget for childcare. If we were in a more expensive home, it would have been hard to have one child, let alone two.
Adding another baby (and his daycare expenses on top of our daughter's school tuition) to the budget is going to be challenging for awhile, but I know it will all work out in the end. I know that we could have done a better job of planning, but I'm okay with how everything has worked out. I would choose our family over extra money any day.
This child was planned, and in our planning, financial concerns were secondary. We're both older and knew we didn't have a lot of time left to try to have a family. We both came into the marriage in good financial positions, so we felt comfortable that we could handle the additional expenses of having a child.
Then, right before I got my BFP, I got laid off, which brought some initial worry, but we worked out the finances and we're still okay. We had already saved to pay for the maternity, birth and first year's expenses. I got a severance package, which we saved for unexpected expenses. I'm on unemployment, too, which helps. I haven't even been able to find temp jobs, though, so unfortunately I'll probably be staying on unemployment another couple of months. We paid off DH's car, so now both vehicles are paid off and our only debt is our mortage.
However, even if things had been worse financially, we still would have tried for a child...we knew we both wanted a family and we knew we had a limited amount of time to try, so we would have done whatever we needed to adjust our spending to be below our income. I think it's more important to be mentally, emotionally and spiritually prepared for a child. Yes, financial security helps...but love and attention and good parenting are more important IMHO.