Monday, September 13, 2010

Once In My Lifetime

I forgot I had a wedding blog until Labor Day weekend when we were in San Antonio for my Opa's funeral. I got to see extended family that I had not seen or heard from since my wedding. Wendy hugged me goodbye and said she had enjoyed reading my wedding blog. That's when I was reminded.

Afraid to find out that it has disappeared from the Internet, I have put off searching for it until today. But I found it -- my wedding site is still there. Blog, photo albums and all. I am relieved, but now I need to go home and download it like I should have done a long time ago. It was great to go back and read some of my posts. It feels like just the tip of the ice berg though - reading it brought back more unwritten memories.

Fortunately, I'm not that attached the past and although it's nice to be reminded of things I had forgotten, I'm not sad I didn't write down every last detail. It's just a little corner of 8 months in my life that I plan on only having once. It serves to remind me of what it was like to be almost married (c:

Now, I put this to a vote, not so much for myself as you might think. Should you wait til you can afford to have kids to have them? And if so, how do you know when you're there?

2 comments:

  1. Oh man, the affording kids question... you always hear "if you wait till you can afford kids... you never will." There's a point to that, but that doesn't mean there should be no planning, obviously!

    I guess here's my thoughts on figuring out if I (or anyone) can "afford" or have enough money to have a baby with as little financial worries and strain as we can. Different costs I can think of:
    -Pre-natal care and other such things before the baby is even born (dr. visits, vitamins, special food, medicine perhaps)
    -Cost of a new wardrobe (maternity clothes... maybe could be borrowed or at least bought used)
    -"Cost" of any unexpected (or expected) sickness like morning sickness. This may lead to not being able to work and so would have to be able to live off one income (or have enough saved so could live off one income + savings)
    -Cost of giving birth (depending on how/where you have it)... general birth and midwife/doctor costs plus more if there are problems, baby is premature, c-section, etc

    After baby is born:
    -clothing for baby
    -food for baby
    -place to sleep for baby
    -place to change baby
    -car seat, swing, and the like
    -diapers
    -bottles, containers, etc
    -other stuff that isn't as necessary but still nice to have (toys, decorations, etc)

    My plan has sort of been to add up these different costs, try to figure out the cheapest way to go about things (esp. in regard to clothes and baby products), and go from there. In my opinion it would be best to be able to live off of one income in case you are unable to work during any stretch of time during the pregnancy (and you'll have to take maternity leave anyway), and/or have enough living costs saved in addition to baby fund moneys.

    So... yeah. I think ideally for us, before we'd have a baby we would have:
    -Student Loans paid off
    -Stable job(s) that we can comfortably live off of (preferably able to live off one)
    -Money saved up for both pre-natal care and a baby fund to contribute to

    Those, of course, are ideal goals. We already basically live off one income, so I'm not too worried about adjusting for that. I suppose the main goal for us right now is to keep working on Student Loans, then start saving once those are paid off. But who knows, we may change our minds and want to try starting sooner than that!
    However, student loans probably won't take us more than 2 more years to pay off, and it may very well happen in another year, so that's not really too long to wait,and it would be a great burden to get rid of and not have to worry about. Then our money would be free to focus on what we wanted it to.

    Anyway, those are just some of my thoughts! Of course, if we randomly got pregnant right now, we would make it work somehow, although it would probably be pretty difficult and tight. Planning is all well and good, but at a certain point, you gotta just not worry about every little thing!

    Wow.... sorry that was so long!! :B

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  2. Wait! When you can say - Hey, where did this extra money come from? - then you can have the precious baby :)

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