North Florida Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
s/o Financially ready for kid(s)
I think this is such a relative statement. I see both KristinandAdam's point as well as jenhappy's point on this.
I think expectations of what is financially ready are skewed by where we live and what are neighbors have and how we feel we compare to them.
If our parents waited to have kids until what we feel is "financially ready" I wonder how many of us would be here today.
Re: s/o Financially ready for kid(s)
I hear you. I see and respect both of their points. DH is more of the planner and I am the one that throws caution to the wind. He wants to be more financially stable before #2, but really what does that mean? You still have a credit card, car payment, future house. Are we waiting until that is paid off or down before having another? I think not. I am the person where you do it and think about it later. It is worked this far.
I wouldn't be. And my parents wouldn't be struggling to pay their bills, and wouldn't have struggled to keep food on the table for 2 kids. It wasn't a calculated sacrifice for them, though. And the fact that I like being alive doesn't necessarily make me think they wouldn't have been better off if I weren't.
But I totally agree about it being a relative statement. I absolutely see the point of the notion that you might have to get creative and cut back on luxuries, but it would be worth it to have children.
My tirade is more about people who aren't just cutting back on eating out, but ppl who already have astronomical credit card debt and insufficient (or barely sufficient) income to pay bills BEFORE deciding to have a baby-- things that significantly impair your ability to handle the sh!t that life dishes out oh-so-well because you're broke. THAT is what I find to be irresponsible and somewhat infuriating.
ETA the rest of the post since I clicked Post way too soon.
I agree that it's very relative. As long as people are supporting themselves and their family independently, the sacrifices they're willing to make in order to have kid(s) is none of my business. I personally would not have kids if I couldn't maintain the same lifestyle without sacrificing much at all. But I'm also not desperate for kids and they won't make or break my life. If other people feel differently and are willing to give up cable, vacations, eating out, whatever else - more power to them.
Note: This is all based on people who are supporting themselves. If you literally cannot afford to have children without relying on public assistance or credit cards, then yes I'm all for waiting until you can afford it.
As for if I would be here of my parents had waited until they were financially ready, no I wouldn't. I was an oops, my parents weren't going to have children. Then I came along and so did my brother. My parents really struggled while my brother and I were growing up. I don't want to have to tell my children that I can't afford for them to go on trips or buy them new clothes.
We have significant financial goals related mostly to our housing situation. If we waited until all of that was taken care of, I would be much older than I'd like to be when starting a family. So we'll probably start before all those goals are met. But having children won't put us in a bad financial spot, it will just slow down things a little bit.
I've certainly thought about it though. Every month longer we go without daycare is another month we can put that money toward our mortgage.
So, I guess what I'm saying is there's a difference between not being financially stable/ready and just not having met all financial goals yet. We would fall in the latter.
My Ovulation Chart
Yes, this to me is the huge distinction between the two. We were just talking to my sister & BIL about this. She's having their 2nd daughter next month and we were talking about daycare. I told Cris that besides the fact that I don't WANT a baby right now, we couldn't even afford one. Daycare is insane.
My sister commented that they can't afford a 2nd right now either, but they made it work. No, that makes zero sense. They're able to make it work because they CAN afford to. They just moved some stuff around. My BIL is a financial planner and they're responsible with their finances. Maybe they're making sacrifices, but they CAN afford it. For Cris and I to have a baby right now we probably couldn't contribute any extra money into savings each month and at the bare minimum, that's where I would draw the line. To me that = not being able to afford it. Moving around a few budgets and cutting back on frivolous expenses is not the same thing.
My parents were very open with us talking about finances, since dad is a CPA, and how they planned for each of us. They did, actually, wait until he had taken his CPA classes, gotten the prerequisite experience, and passed his licensing tests, which took 4 years, as well as paying that education off, and had purchased a house and paid back their parents for the loan of a downpayment. They were still pretty young when they tried for me (25 and 26), but that seems really responsible to me. Then they waited another 4 years to have my brother so they could space us out in school, as we were in private schools until high school.
That's not to say things weren't really, really tight growing up--dad was a junior manager in his department and didn't make much at all, and mom stayed home with us. But we also learned to budget with envelopes and that toys and money didn't grow on trees, so I think their priorities were very fair.
DH and I are older than they were by 10 years on my side and 15 on his, but we followed the same general guidelines on getting established and going in a forward motion before starting to try, although there will always certainly be bills to pay, and that fact in itself wouldn't stop me. But if we still had major goals to accomplish that would make me feel more secure, I think it's fine to focus on those first.
I don't think jen and I really disagreed, especially after reading her reply here. I agree there is a big difference between really not being able to afford it and not being able to afford it without making some changes. If you can't afford a kid without government assistance or racking up a ton of credit card debt.. then yeah, I'd totally agree that you should probably wait to have a baby. If you can't afford a kid because you don't want to give up your Saturday afternoon shopping spree's.. then that's a totally different story.
When we started looking at our budget when we decided we were ready for #2, we both thought there's no way we could swing 2 in daycare. We moved some things around and worked hard to pay some things off though and while it was (and still is) a sacrifice, it is worth it to us.