Family Matters
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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.
Timing is Everything?
In 3 months my husband and I are to begin the ups and downs of baby making... We had decided some time ago that the beginning of 2012 would be start to us really trying to have a baby. We are both excited, but yet scared of what the future held, but this is going to be the next step in our life, our family. This past weekend there were many in depth conversations about finances, specially mine. Without going too in depth, there is a significant amount of debt in my name due to my father's carelessness. My husband new of these financial problems well before we got engaged. When we got married and the topic of children came up finances were always in the topic of conversation, but we never went too much into detail until recently. Partly due to want to sell our home, the other due to the fact that in just a couple months we will be going down the path of starting a family... when finances really matter. While our finances as a married couple are very good, as we looked further into my debt and the future of it... it became clear that over the years of trying to clean it up, by my father, has left us years later with little too no change. We finally came to the realization that we may need to take this into our own hands, and deal with it... but if that is the path we choose... baby making is a no go. My husband firmly believes that if we cannot fix this now, it will be impossible to fix it with a child... and the future of wanting to buy a home, etc. will be hard. I do understand his point of view, but it angers me so much that I must hold off from starting a family due to the effects of my father's stupidity and negligence. While things are still up and the air, and we don?t know what will happen now, we know that decisions must be made, and while we thought the timing was perfect for starting our family, it may not be anymore? How can you truly know? Is timing really everything? Can you truly time out baby making, pregnancy, family perfectly? Finances will never be 100% unless you fortunate enough to have a lot of money and a perfect life? I?m looking for some piece of mind.
Re: Timing is Everything?
I don't think you need to put it off for a crazy long time but I think your husband is smart for making a plan and putting that into action before trying for a baby.
Timing is never going to be perfect, you'll always find excuses to wait if you want to but at the same time timing can get pretty near perfect and your situation does not sound great right now. Deal with this problem first, You don't need to pay it all off before the baby but right now it doesn't even seem like you have a plan.
On a side, I don't understand how your dad caused this much grief in your name? You must have agreed with him to put something of his in your name, why didn't you put a stop to it before it got SO out of hand?
This.
finances are ALWAYS important.
how was this debt created? how was it linked to you? is your dad supposed to pay? what's the whole story?
how old are you and DH?
if the debt is large and will be difficult to take care of now then yes, I agree wtih your DH that it needs to be done before ttc. i'm sure it does make you angry but you just have to deal with it. what's the hurry for a kid? why woudlnt' you want to be in the best position possible financially? why would you be in such a hurry to have a kid then the worry about this in addition to it?
i dont have a perfect life yet our finances are, in fact, 100% perfect. it can be done. it hink you're using that whole 'you can't ever be ready enough' as an excuse to avoid putting off TTC-and that's a bad thing. you must do what you can to be in the best position as possible-that means if something is really holding you back the responsible thing to do is take care of that first, not later, because that goes against your plan.
Like many parents in college my father started building my credit by opening credit cards in my name and some with his too. I was not aware of to what degree until many years later. I had one credit card through most of college, that was rarely used. There were times where the credit cards would not process, leaving to believe that it was maxed out. At this time I was asked to give it back to him so he could give me another. This happened a few times, I didn't think much of it. I thought it was building my credit... Some charges here and there. That he was making payments as they were used.
While in college I signed up for student loans per my father's request. I was aware of them, but it was his obligation and that was always made clear. Then came after college, trying to buy a car, getting a job, and looking at my credit report for the first time in years. I was overwhelmed. I don't believe he did this with the intention of it getting this bad, but in the long run it has caused me so many problems. This has caused a huge strain on our relationship.
While there have been times my anger has gotten the best of me and I wish I could sue his ass... I know he didn't want it to end of like this. While he left me with a lot of broken promises in regards to this, I am still hopefully.. It's an unfortunate situation which leaves me today with many decisions to make.
Say what now?
No, college students don't routinely have their parents take out credit cards in their name to help them build credit - that is called identity theft. Doesn't matter if the person pretending to be you is related to you.
College students get credit cards in their own names - just like adults do. And if they use them responsibly, they build their own credit. Is your father the one who told you that he should have control over the credit cards in your name?
But to your question - no, timing and finances will never ever be 100% perfect for having a child.......you'll always wish that you had more money. But make no mistake - having a child is EXPENSIVE. You have some control over the cost, sure........you don't have to buy them the most expensive stuff and there's a lot of stuff that they plain don't need. But even the basics are expensive - health care (increase in health insurance costs, anything that your insurance doesn't cover, co-pays), start-up costs (crib, carseat, etc), childcare (or the loss of your income if you SAH), clothes (yes, you can buy secondhand, but you will essentially be buying a whole new wardrobe every season for years because kids grow so fast, and that still adds up), diapers, food........the list goes on.
Without knowing how huge your debt is it's hard to tell you whether you should wait or not. But if making payments on it is a struggle now, it will only get much worse after having a child. And it is typically MUCH harder to save money once you have a child, so if you do have big financial goals to reach I'd suggest doing them now while you still have a larger amount of disposable income.
My parents never opened up credit cards in my name. I opened up one in college that my dad cosigned with me for so that I could start building my credit, but if your dad was opening credit cards and maxing them out, then he had a serious financial issue. I hate to say it, but if you had cards getting declined you should have been asking questions, just in the interest of watching your credit.
I would make sure that he doesn't have access to opening things in your name anymore. It sounds like he's not on the ball financially, and he has a history of opening credit in your name and running it up. You can sign up with credit agencies to put a watch on your report in case something else tries to get open. Hopefully he wouldn't do that anymore, but better safe then sorry.
He left you in a really bad state, but it sounds like you were aware of everything he was doing (even if it was with the understanding that he would pay it all off). I'm not a lawyer, but with everything being in your name and having no sort of legal paperwork with your dad I doubt if you'd get anyway suing him.
It really, really sucks that you have to put off your life plans to clean up this mess, but is there any way that you and/or H could get a second job for a few months to help pay down the debt? With the holidays coming there's usually part time work out there. I don't know how big your debt is, but is it possible to talk to the credit card companies about writing off parts of the debt? That would hurt your credit, but if it sucks anyway, that might be an option. I would also have a frank discussion with your father and say that you need to know if he honestly has any plans to pay down the credit card debt that he ran up under your name as you need to make plans for your future. I would work on him paying that off instead of throwing in the student loan debt as well, since that debt is at least for you.
Yes, your father INITIALLY put you in a tremendously horrible situation. I DO recognize that as a college student you were willing to believe in your father.
But by the time you graduated, you should have had a handle on your finances and life. Your own words "looking at my credit report for the first time in years" indicates that you KNEW you should look at it, so the onus after school is all on you. You could have dealt with your over extended credit YEARS ago and not have this hanging over your head now.
Your only have two options. Filing charges against your father or figuring out how to get out of the financial mess YOU are partially responsible for.
And no - you should not have a child in these circumstances. Your DH is correct.
My suggestion, depending on how much debt has accrued, is to take a personal loan out from a bank with your car as collateral or something (im sure they will require it, have your husband co-sign if he has good credit) and pay off those credit cards. Call the credit card companies first and see if they will make a deal with you to pay off a lower amount than what is owed (some of them will). Paying a loan to a bank at one low interest will get paid off much faster than different credit cards.
It would be smart to hold off on ttc to you can at least figure this out. Not only for financial reasons but for stress reasons you dont need to put yourself or your future baby through.
GL!