February 2008 Weddings
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.
Baby Bucket List
I think we might have talked about this already but I can't remember.
I have been getting a little bit of baby fever lately. It's so weird because I am not one who has always wanted kids, if anything I have been against having kids. Maybe it's because we are settling into married life or it's all the Juneville babies?
Anyways, before we have kids I want our house to be finished, we have to go on our HM to HI and I'd like to go to Europe. I feel like anything else I want to do in life can be done with kids or after they are adults.
Do any of you have (or had) baby bucket lists, things you want to do before you have little ones?
Re: Baby Bucket List
We don't really have a bucket list...but we have some "goals" that need to be met in regards to organization of our home (and maintaining it...lol). One of our big goals was in regards to my maternity leave time, I already have about 12 weeks saved up, so no worries there anymore.
We'll probably plan some kind of camping trip in the early spring (before it gets into the 100s!) and maybe get a puppy before baby. lol
One of my CWs just finished the Series 7 and it doing 24 now. Y'all are much more patient than I.
do we have to keep him, mom?
thoughts of a smart girl
For me it's mostly traveling. I want to go to India, Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, Greece, Spain, and on a couple road trips before TTC.
Tim wants to buy a house, but I don't know that it's really going to happen living in Los Angeles. (or at least in the areas we want to live in)
We paid down about 90% of our debt, so now it is trying to rebuild a good savings, and still find ways to travel.
I only work part time now (between 7 and 21 hours a week) so we are adjusting to living mainly off of Tim's income because when / if we do have a baby, we both really want me to be a "stay at home" mom.
Of course, if we did get pregnant, we would be thrilled and find a way to make it work!
Love is friendship on fire!
Sonrisas and Sweet Dreams
Blog
I get baby fever sometimes too. Then I remember:
We'd like to do some more traveling. We're hoping to take a killer anniversary trip along with two of our friends who got married last September.
H needs to finish law school (he graduates May 2014), and preferably work 1-2 years first since those will be the crazy ones where he works 80 hours a week and I will want/need his support and he'll want to be around to be involved.
We want to be more financially stable (we're currently comfortable, but H's "income" is student loans at the moment). Our shared car is 10 years old (though it's in great shape), and I'd like a newer, safer vehicle once we have little ones. We also want to be more settled- i.e. living in a city we can see ourselves staying for at least several years in a home/neighborhood we can see ourselves living in for awhile.
I also want to give my career a few more years before adding kids to the mix. I'm a young professional, and my flexibility and ability to sometimes work long hours has really paid off so far. I'd like to work my way up a bit more before going on maternity leave and demanding regular, shorter hours (ideally I don't want to work more than 30 hours/week once I have kids).
I also want to enjoy being the sole apple of H's eye for a little while longer. Once we have kids, they will (rightly) become the biggest priority for both of us, and we worked so hard to get where we are that I'd like to take a little time to enjoy it before adding kids to the mix.
So we're looking at probably 2017 before trying for babies. Luckily I'm young
That said, if the unexpected happened, we'd be overjoyed and absolutely find a way to make it work. Both of us are very excited to become parents one day and the more time that passes, the more prepared we will be to handle a surprise.
We also want to go to travel a little, get the house or at least a babies room done with dry wall because right now we have panneling in every room. We also want to do some more fourwheeling and go to a few music festivals. Things that you just can't do with kids unless you can pawn them off for four days. We definitely have a bucket list and the more our friends bring their 1 and 2 year olds around the better the bucket list looks!
Jason wants to build our savings for a few years. He doesn't really have any concerns outside of money.
I want to get the house painted and fixed up. That sounds kind of shallow but I think I will feel ready for the next step after it's done.
I also want to get a new car. I saved all of my bonus and I'm saving $300 a month to go towards a down payment, then the $300 a month after I buy a car will go towards the monthly payments. My car is over 10 years old and I keep going back and forth between buying a new one soon and just waiting for mine to die. She might have a few years left and I wouldn't get hardly anything for a trade in.
I feel like we need to go on at least one fun vacation before baby.
We have one thing left on our baby bucket list...Josh needs to get a job. He'll be done with grad school this spring and hopefully have a job lined up before then. It will just help us be more financially stable when the baby comes.
Other than that, items that were on our list were:
Jobs-build experience in our careers. I wanted to have a good base in my career before I went on maternity leave.
Money-continue to grow savings. Our goal is to continue to live off of one salary for as long as we can and put the other salary into savings. We started saving for our children's college fund when we got married. We already have a solid start to our retirement and emergency fund is in place.
travel-we've done quite a bit together and before we met, so in terms of that we're ready to add a third traveler
House-we will need to figure out where we're going to land after Josh graduates, and we will most likely rent a house there so we'll have time to get to know the city before we purchase. I don't need to have a house before our 1st baby, so it isn't really something on our list.
Married
Realistically, we're a good 2 years away from TTC. (I'd be about 29, H would be about 30) We have quite a few things on our bucket list.
*Buy a house-which we plan on doing this year (cross your fingers)
*Start/finish my masters in ed. I gave my self a deadline of either this summer/fall. I'd have to wait though until our mortgage approval went through since I can't be incurring/applying for more debt (student loans) during any of that process.
*Travel just the 2 of us at least 1 more time
*Pay down more debt/save more
*get a new car to replace at least one of our sh*tty ones
My Crafting Blog
Married Bio
I'd like to wait at least 4 years before TTC, especially now that it looks like I'm going to do a PhD. During that time, I want H to establish a career and pay off his massive amount of debt, I'd like to pay off my student loan from my B.A., and then once that's done we can start saving for a house and a baby fund. As for fun stuff, I also really want to do more traveling. I've hardly been anywhere! I've only been on 3 vacations in my entire life and 2 were to the same place!
I know we would be able to handle it if the stork surprised us, but I feel like our child would have a much better quality of life if we were a little more settled before becoming parents.
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home D
We're both 27, and we want to wait at least 2-3 years before TTC. There are definitely things that we need and want to do before TTC.
* Pay off all of H's credit card debt
* Take a European cruise (HM)
* Vacation in California
* Have a fair amount of $$$ in savings
Chelsea Gets Married Blog
Married Blog
Our bucket list is mostly just goals related to finances and education. We don't have a lot of traveling stuff planned because neither of us are big on travel, and realistically it would take years upon years for us to save up that much money for the bigger trips we'd like to take. Starting a family is more important to us.
-Education: for me to graduate with my MA, complete my specialization, and take all of my certification exams (I'd like to be certified in a couple of different areas). All of that should be accomplished by July 2013. DH is also in school, but he has a ways to go, and we are thinking the flexibility of his being in school might be easier than both of us working and needing day care arrangements.
-Finances: we have an e-fund goal that we'd like to reach, as well as finish paying off CC debt (which should be set late this year). We also need to buy at least one new car; neither of ours have been reliable as of late.
-Buying a house is tentatively on the list, but I think that as long as we are well on our way to saving a down payment, we wouldn't mind waiting to purchase while our future LO is a baby or toddler. Our rental house is small but we could fit one more little being.
We also kind of have a bucket list.
I want to do some more traveling. The only real vacation DH has been on was our honeymoon. All the other "vacations" they took when he was younger were to visit family. And in my opinion, that is not a vacation. Then, we want to pay off most of our house. Yeah, the one we are buying right now. We want to have a good amount of money in savings. I'm pretty sure I want to take 6 months off after baby, so we need to have some money saved. While we can, and are, living off one income, that may change when we move into the house.
So, I'd say we are 2-3 years away from TTC. We're already 27. So, I guess we're looking at being around 29-30 when we TTC.
When we were engaged H and I thought that we would want to wait until we were married 1 year to start TTC. After the wedding when baby fever really hit we decided to lay out some more defined goals.
Our main goal before TTC is to pay off a large amount of our student debt. We already paid off two big loans last year and we are on a roll now. We live completely off H' salary and use mine to build up an E fund and pay off the loans. That way when we do have a baby I will be able to stay home for a little while.
We bought a house in February of last year so we feel comfortable there. We also both have newer cars and only 1 car payment. We do plan on moving closer to H's family after we have a baby most likely but that doesn't affect our timing of TTC. We won't make that decision until late.
Most of the trips that H and I would like to take are group trips with our friends and really most of our friends just can't afford it right now. My Dad just bought a vacation home in Las Vegas so we will probably visit there often and we can always bring baby with us and have a build in babysitter!
We both have great jobs/ career and the company I work for is amazingly flexible with Moms and maternity leave if I do decide to stay at work.
To us starting a family just seems like the most important thing to us right now. We want to me young parents and have our parents be young enough to be active Grandparents. I am 25 but will most likely be 26 before we have a baby and H is 28 and will be 29 before baby most likely.
Tim and I are trying to find a way to tack on Belgium when we go to Spain late this year or early next year.
Love is friendship on fire!
Sonrisas and Sweet Dreams
Blog
I am still unsure if we are going to have biological children. For us the biggest concern is timing but in an unusual way. There are a couple of different scenarios that we have considered.
1.) Caroline being our only child. (This is my preferred plan)
2.) Adopting Caroline then having children. (This is Thomas' preferred plan, only I'd be around 32 and he would be 35. This is not such a great idea to me. If I am going to way 10+ years I want to enjoy her and her baby-ness)
3.) Having biological children first and then adopting Caroline. (I feel as though there is a lot of risk with having children up front. Children are little money pits! I want to be able to afford to adopt!
I want to go to Paris...and hopefully create Baby J there
Also, I want to be done with school and have a job. We both graduate with PharmD's on May 3rd and nothing yet on the job front.....
Other than that, my goal was pretty much to be a mom!
I want us to go on our "official" honeymoon to Hawaii, with the help of you ladies!!!!
Save at least the amount of money we spent on our wedding if not more.
Work on the few dings we have on our credit so we can get a better rate on a house than the 4% I have now, if it's possible.
Pay off at least one of our cars, mine is the closest, Dec 2012, here we come.
Hopefully get converted from contractor to fte at the company I work for now.
And maybe a trip to Costa Rica or Spain, that may have to wait.