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May 3, 2012    |       16 comments

Baby Stuff

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It has been almost 8 years since I had a newborn baby so maybe I have forgotten just how much stuff parents ask for and receive for the birth of a baby!  I remember my two kids loving the “Exersaucer” and if there was one item I would insist on keeping…it would be that item.  We used the same one for both kids and then gave it to my great nephew when he was born. Have any of you noticed how much stuff parents have these days for babies?!  Is this unique to our culture?  Do they do this in Europe? Asia?  I really don’t know and haven’t cared to research it but as I look at life with an eye toward less stuff…the parents I see even just at the grocery store have a vehicle full of stuff just to get the baby in the store!  Those grocery cart seat protector things were just getting popular when my youngest was in the grocery cart and I never got one b/c they looked entirely too difficult for me to use.  Oh and are they still making those wipe warmer things?

And forget road trips….I DO remember not knowing what to take as a new parent so I took everything we had but with experience I figured it out.  These days there’s just more stuff for the road trips too!

A quick estimate with a groovy calculator on Babycenter.com says the first year of baby will cost new parents $10,000 to $12,000. That’s childcare, diaper, food and miscellaneous items.  I know many of you are expecting a baby or have a new baby and this truly is an awesome time—don’t read this as saying anything else.  For those of you who haven’t yet started families…beware of the baby stuff syndrome!  It can getcha when you least expect it!

The baby phase is so much fun in so many ways, but I am thankful this season is behind us!  🙂

This post has triggered thoughts for my next post…gift registries…

 

May 1, 2012    |       13 comments

New Numbers are Up

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I’m excited to report the $1100 in the Emergency Fund but really wanted to show $2,000 total paid so far.  That didn’t quite happen and I have avoided doing my shell game thing to make myself feel better.  What I COULD have done (but it would have been wrong) is to deduct a payment I will be making in a week or so that would have brought that total paid to the $2,000 mark I really wanted to hit.  No, no, no…keeping it precise and honest is the way to go.  And I can look forward to the good numbers on June 1.  Since I was figuring out how I wanted to update and have agreed with readers that once a month is best…June 1 will be the first month that shows a true full month’s payments on debt.  $500 more and we will have hit our $1600 Emergency Fund goal.  At that point–between the small amounts freed up by the small debts being extinguished….and the amounts we’ve been putting in savings…and the amounts we are saving with new lifestyle choices…we should start seeing some momentum building.

You may or may not notice that the lowest balance credit card increased since last month.  That is a card in DH’s name and thanks to this blog and the new habit of keeping an eye on things…we discovered that some random $19.99 charge hit.  I googled the name of the charging entity and sure enough it appears to be a scam!  We are working with the bank to have that charge removed and then stopping it from being charged again.  Stinks that it happened but I’m feeling good about keeping our eye on things b/c in the past it would have taken us much longer to even be aware of it…so that’s a good thing.  When I was googling and finding info on it I noticed that a lot of people said they had looked back and the scam charge had been showing up for months and they had not noticed!

So there you have it–farewell April, hello May.  Here’s to keeping the focus, finding ways to cut even more and having fun while doing it!

 

 

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