05 Sep First Year of Parenthood!

My wife and I had a pretty firm rule in our first couple years of marriage, no kids until we were thirty.  We stuck to that rule, basically and our little dude came along in our thirtieth year and sixth year of marriage.  We had a lot of fun in those first years to ourselves. We did what we wanted, came and went as we pleased and never had to hurry home to relieve a babysitter or even let the dog out.  We loved our freedom, and I can’t completely recall what all we did with our time before he was around.  I would think most of our extra time during the week was gym visits after work, playing nine holes after work here or there, and on weekends more of the same plus ice fishing, hunting and other things.

Being a bit more in tune with our finances than most people our age but yet far behind those in the FIRE community, I wasn’t incredibly up to speed on what you can expect to spend on a child and the news can proclaim some lofty numbers.  The good news, you can make it happen pretty affordably.  While there are some things we splurged on, there were others where we were able to be very smart and keep costs very low.  At the end of the day, I love spending money on that little dude and the real struggle I have is finding that balance between giving him a better life than we ever had growing up as kids, while not spoiling him and overdoing it.  I often remind myself that the stability, married parents, cars that don’t break down, and always having ample healthy food in the house is enough.  Yet, once in a while you just want to splurge and get him whatever he wants or something you might want for him.

Overall from a financial standpoint we haven’t felt it hit our pocket book or savings account all that much, however we are strong earners, so I say that while recognizing our privilege.  We always hear that diapers cost a fortune, and surely, they do add up. But I think if we are careful, we can be more strategic about it.  I’ve seen countless people change a baby’s diaper when that little blue line is faintly colored yellow, or yellow line becomes blue, I don’t know I just remember it was two colors.  Anyway, while we didn’t neglect our little guy, we didn’t waste diapers either with every little spittle of urine.  We wiped the heck out of him and got him good and clean, dealt with very few diaper rashes during his diaper days and probably used fewer diapers overall helping save.  The second thing we did regarding diapers was leverage Target, and their sales.  We used Target brand diapers, and I realize they may not work for everyone, but they worked for us, and they are on sale more than other diapers which was beneficial.  My wife always watched out for the “buy 5 get 1 free” or “buy $100 of diapers and get $25 target gift card.”  A target gift card is cash to me, sure it has limitations, but we all know they may as well have just handed me cash because chances are its earmarked for their cash register in the nearing future anyway!

Baby clothes and kid’s clothes are crazy to me, they are not proportionally cheaper to their size as adult clothes because it’s not about the cost of the fabric to make the item.  At the end of the day the time to make a toddler tee shirt is marginally less than an adult tee shirt, while the shipping, packaging, distribution and other costs associated are the same.  The result? Baby clothes and toddler cloths is ridiculously expensive off the rack and thus we lived off the clearance rack.  I realize this isn’t earth shattering news and there are ways to go even cheaper via garage sales, craigslist, thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace but when it came to clothes, we preferred new and stain free stuff that we really liked.  My wife made a habit of looking at the store pretty much every time she went and buying things he needed in his current size or would need in a future size up or couple sizes up.  Every time I saw a bag with baby clothes in it, she would almost instantly jump on the defense and tell me, “I got him like six things today for under $14, I can’t buy him a pair of baby shorts off the rack for $14 so relax.”  Ha!  There’s a great balance between my wife and I, she’s the natural saver, I’m absolutely the natural spender but the added excitement is in my judgement of any spending done by anyone but me.

The greatest expense brought the greatest value by a long shot of my wife choosing to stay home for the first few years.  Our son is a great kid by all marks, and this isn’t a parent gushing about how awesome their own kid is.  People genuinely love having him around, watching him for us when we are gone for long weekends, or having him over to play while we socialize as adults.  He’s a really well-adjusted little kid and can brighten up a room and help keep other kids in check (I’m writing this while he’s two months shy of four years old).  Some would argue genetics, I say sure genetics played a factor, but my wife did an incredible job working with him day in day out, staying consistent and affirming expectations.  We aren’t militant, we are far from it, I think we’re quite laid back actually, but he knows when something is wrong its wrong and not to repeat it.

The original plan was for her to return to traditional paying work about four to five months after he was born and attend an in-home day care that we had lined up for him to be with three other kids with him being the only infant.  We really wanted the one to one time to be higher and thought that was a great fit for us, it took a few places to find that, but we did and put down a deposit of $500 or something like that to hold his spot a few months later.  As we got closer it was clear that she wasn’t ready to return to work, we had hardly touched our savings we had set aside for expenses while she wasn’t earning income, and we contacted her employer that then granted her another four months off to get further settled.  We called and cancelled our day care lady, lost the $500 deposit and I never thought about it again until the moment I began typing this.  During the next three months of that time period my new compensation package at work had come into fruition and we realized I was going to earn a lot more than I had the previous year and were planning to approach her employer for a two or three-day a week return and if they said no she would just resign.  Toward the end of the timeline there were rumblings about layoffs, and she got the phone call and was laid off, while layoffs can be devastating to some this was a celebratory moment for us! I think she received a seven-month severance, a fully vested $2,000 in her H.S.A account, and access to her more affordable healthcare during that seven-month period.  With all that in place, we were eight months into parenthood, and we went to look at our first rental property with my little guy in my arms the whole time and we took the plunge.

While this first year wasn’t the what we had mapped out for ourselves, our preparation paid off and with a little luck we found ourselves in a pretty sweet situation that we can be proud of.  At the time of this writing, my wife went back to work about seven weeks ago full time and my little man spends about half the time at my sister’s house with his two older cousins shooting nerf guns all day long, and the other half of the time with his best buddy from pre-school, his mom, and little brother.  The original plan was four months at home, turned into almost four years at home, our income, portfolio, and net worth grew and here we sit a dual income home again with a happy nearing four-year-old loving life in the fast lane!