Anonymous wrote:After hearing for the millionth time re finances and kids "if you wait until you can afford them you'll never have them." Of course I completely disagree, because I am a planner, andI got a lot of crap for waiting to be totally debt free with a 6mo emergency fund before starting TTC. Did you do the same? We're you on the other end of the spectrum? Interestibg to me how people's tolerance for risk varies.

Ha! My husband was still in law school when we started trying, so we hadn't even started paying off his loans and he didn't even have a post-school job offer yet. It took 10 years for us to pay off my business school and his law school loans, so I would have been 38 instead of 28 if we'd insisted on being debt free. We were fine, things were obviously a little tight the first few years with day care costs and student loans, and it was pretty stressful during the pregnancy until he got a job (which was only a one-year clerkship, so then it was stressful again until he found a permanent job with the gov't). A big advantage is that we never felt like we had to "dial back" our careers or standard of living...our incomes went up a lot at the same time we were starting a family, so it just was what it was.

No debt besides the mortgage, and mortgage was pretty modest for our income. 7 months of expenses in savings, plus another 30k saved for car replacement/home improvement. We were also living off of DH's income and banking/investing mine. don't think that is necessarily a must-have, but it was something we wanted. I wasn't sure if I'd want to be a stay at home mom, but I knew I didn't want money to be the deciding factor, so we had lived accordingly for 2 years prior to TTC.

We're savers by nature and were in good shape financially when we started TTC. We had about $30k in debt (student loans/car), but were in no rush to pay it off because of the super low interest rates.

We were in pretty good financial shape, but DH still had some law school loans to pay off and I was still in grad school so earning very little. As fate would have it, it took us 8 years and $50k in DE costs to have our first kid. The only upside is that by the time we had her, DH had made partner and I was earning a pretty high salary. $50K later for the second DE kid and we are pretty wealthy and our family is complete. We started TTC at 31. Not how I wanted to spend my 30s, so I would suggest starting right away. You just never know how anything will turn out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Interesting reading the responses because both my husbands ideas and my ideas are represented. DH thinks we should say nada and let her sweat and say straight up no if she ever directly asks. I think we should just make it clearly known it was a one time payment because of circumstance and will not be repeated. I think I will go the route of asking if she has any questions about the public school and remain up beat and positive.

whoops wrong thread sorry!

I was so confused.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Interesting reading the responses because both my husbands ideas and my ideas are represented. DH thinks we should say nada and let her sweat and say straight up no if she ever directly asks. I think we should just make it clearly known it was a one time payment because of circumstance and will not be repeated. I think I will go the route of asking if she has any questions about the public school and remain up beat and positive.

whoops wrong thread sorry!

OP here. Interesting reading the responses because both my husbands ideas and my ideas are represented. DH thinks we should say nada and let her sweat and say straight up no if she ever directly asks. I think we should just make it clearly known it was a one time payment because of circumstance and will not be repeated. I think I will go the route of asking if she has any questions about the public school and remain up beat and positive.

No time to save up money. I was already 36 when we decided to go for the 2nd one. We were renting, I had been laid off few months before TTC and had ca $20k in credit card debt.
2 years have passed, baby is 16 months old, we bought a condo, I'm back to work and my cc debt is $8k at 0%. Don't need daycare as I work at nights and my DH works from 8 to 5.

I was in grad school. It was a stupid time to do it and the period after giving birt saw job loss, expensive surgery, a cross country move out of necessity and several other financially and emotionally draining events.
That being said, if all that happened before I had a kid I probably wouldn't have ever had one and he is a great source of joy.

I was 30 when I got married so I didn't really have a lot of time to waste when it came to having kids since I wanted more than one. But getting married later, that also meant we were a little better off financially since we had slightly higher salaries and already had some savings and retirement established so we didn't spend much time trying to build more savings.

When we started TTC, I had enough sick leave to cover my full 12 weeks FMLA and enough in the bank to cover me for an additional three months. I wanted to stay home as long as possible.

As fate would have it, we were unable to conceive on our own and ended up having to burn through some of our savings to pay for IVF. Fortunately, I had excellent insurance that covered a significant portion of the treatments but it made a big enough dent in our savings that I changed my plans for staying home. Best laid plans...

My children are 3 and 4 and we don't make enough to really even cover our daycare costs. Payraises have been non-existant and rising insurance costs have slowly eaten away at our take home pay. For awhile we were making less per month than we were when we first got married. But there's light at the end of the tunnel as daycare costs will end soon as well as a few other recurring expenses.

All that to say...you just don't know what life's going to throw your way. Plan as best you can but don't get too hung up in those preparations. Give yourself a nice savings cushion and then have at it.

Anonymous wrote:Do you include mortgage or student loans in "totally debt free?" I think those are more reasonable.
We only had a mortgage when we were TTC but also only had about an extra $1500/mo for daycare costs... so things were tight for a while and we weren't saving much. We already owned a house though, and salaries increased soon after.

No student loans. Mortgage is okay.

We were in a good situation when we had our first child. Prior to having her we saved six months of income and paid off all of our credit card debt and both cars. I think it was the smart thing to do because my DH ended up getting laid off and had to take a lower paying job. I do think it's reasonable to wait to be in a good financial situation before kids as long as that doesn't mean waiting until you're at an age where fertility is more likely an issue and then you're having to spend thousands on IVF.

Just started TTC in December. Finances are looking very good, but more importantly I'm at 12 weeks for sick/annual leave. We are definitely debt free and 6 mo emergency. Own a house and two paid off cars. We're planners.

Do you include mortgage or student loans in "totally debt free?" I think those are more reasonable.
We only had a mortgage when we were TTC but also only had about an extra $1500/mo for daycare costs... so things were tight for a while and we weren't saving much. We already owned a house though, and salaries increased soon after.

After hearing for the millionth time re finances and kids "if you wait until you can afford them you'll never have them." Of course I completely disagree, because I am a planner, andI got a lot of crap for waiting to be totally debt free with a 6mo emergency fund before starting TTC. Did you do the same? We're you on the other end of the spectrum? Interestibg to me how people's tolerance for risk varies.