- Up at 5 two days in a row. Sleepy. #
- May your…year be filled w/ magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you…kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful. @neilhimself #
- Woo! First all-cash grocery trip ever. Felt neat. #
- I accidentally took a 3 hour nap yesterday, so I had a hard time sleeping. 5am is difficult. #
- Wee! Got included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, again. http://su.pr/2AKnDB #
- Son’s wrestling season starts in two days. My next 3 months just got hectic. #
- RT @Moneymonk: A real emergency is something that threatens your survival, not just your desire to be comfortable -David Bach # [Read more…] about Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-09
Babies Are Expensive
From the comments here. The discussion is on how much it costs to have a baby. Edited for clarity.
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Actual birthing costs vary. We’ve had three kids over ten years and birthing costs have varied from $250 out of pocket to $8500. Our highest and lowest price births were 20 months apart. The highest price birth involved induced labor with an epidural. For the lowest out-of-pocket price, I added my wife to my policy before the birth, so she was double-covered. If one of your policies is less than ideal and there are multiple policies available, I recommend doing this. It saved us thousands. All told, If things go well, you could slide for as little as $1500 total.
For the highest price birth, we threw ourselves on the mercy of the finance department. They have a charity fund to pay the bills of the less fortunate. We qualified…barely. If you have a medical bill you can’t afford, ask if there is a grant or donation you can apply for. Always ask if there is some way the bill could be lowered.
Breast-feeding beats the heck out of formula, financially, but breast-feeding doesn’t always work. Ignore the boob-nazis who insist you are slowly killing your kid by using formula. I’ve got 3 kids, and each had different feeding issues.
Baby formula runs $19 for a big container at Sam’s Club, or a large percentage of your soul at most other big box stores. Formula alone will pay for your membership in under a month. For a big eater, that’s $20-30 per week. For a normal eater, 2-3 weeks. For planning purposes, assume $100/month in formula costs for the first six months, when food starts coming into play heavily. After that, the formula expense goes down, but not away for at least 6 more months.
Diapers are painful. Not just the smell–though that hurts, too, sometimes–but the expense. I currently have 2 in diapers; one is potty-training. Our monthly costs for diapers, now, are about $75. It was easily twice that when they were younger. Figure at least $100 per month in diapers. Unless your baby has irritation problems, go with cheap diapers. Leak-guard is a joke. If you are relying on leak-guard to keep the contents inside the diaper, you aren’t changing your baby often enough.
I couldn’t begin to guess at how much you’ll spend on baby clothes. I have never bought clothes for our kids. Whatever didn’t come free from friends and family walked into the house of it’s own volition, following my wife home from the store.
Toys are an almost purely voluntary expense. You’ll get as much as the kids needs free, as presents. You’ll go overboard and give the kids 10 times that, without realizing it. Don’t. For the first four to five months, its fingers and toes will be entertaining enough. After that, if there are more than about ten toys, it’s too many; the kid will never get attached to any of them. Keep it small. It’s better for the kids and the budget. Little kids prefer boxes to toys, anyway. Give the kid a shoebox instead of a Leapfrog. Really.
Portraits suck, too. If you have to get them done professionally, get a membership that covers sitting fees, and use coupons. I recommend JC Penney’s. Using judicious coupons and the membership, we get portraits for under $20.
Baby food is probably cheaper to make in a food processor, but you can’t beat the convenience of the little jars. If you watch sales, you can stock up affordably. Mix every meal with some rice or oatmeal mush to stretch it, without making it unhealthy. Depending on your kids, and how much you listen to the “experts”, this is a nonexistent expense before six months. Our kids started eating baby food in their second months, at least a little bit.
Babies are expensive. Don’t doubt that for a second, but ignore the polled averages when it comes to expense. Hand-me-downs, thrift stores, and good sales cut the expense a lot.
How do you save money and value with a baby in the house?
Sunday Roundup: Ice Fishing
Update: Something wonky’s happening with this post. If you’re seeing it in your reader again, just ignore it.
Twenty years ago, my grandparents were living in Arizona. They went to see Grumpy Old Men in the theater and, during an ice-fishing scene, they overheard the people next to them talking about how impossible it was. You can’t walk on the ice, let alone drive there! Naturally, my grandparents corrected them.
For the uninitiated, in the land of 10,000 frozen lakes, ice fishing is an actual pastime. The ice on a lake can reach 36 inches, which is more than enough to drive on by 24 inches. Ice-fishing aficionados will drill a hole through that frozen mess, drop a line through the hole and find dinner. Last night, I went ice fishing for the first time in at least 10 years, probably 15. On the lake we were on, they actually plow roads across the ice. It sounds cold, but we were in a 20-foot fish house with a generator, a couch, and a TV. The neatest thing was the underwater radar thingy that turns ice-fishing into a video game.
30 Day Project Update
This month, I am trying to establish the Slow Carb Diet as a habit. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.
I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.
Weight: I have lost 29 pounds since January 2nd! That’s 4 pounds since last week. 13 more to meet my goal for February.
Total Inches: I have lost 15 inches in the same time frame, down 1 since last week.
Best Posts
Thinkgeek has a new high-protein, low-carb snack. Did you know that toasted ants taste like bacon? I’m far more tempted than I should be.
On the off chance that somebody has missed the memo over the years, tax protesting–the art of ignoring your taxes because you don’t like them–will not end well for you.
I’ve been fighting an urge to get a Kindle. Over the last few weeks, the itch has been getting harder to ignore. Money Crashers has a list of resources for free ebooks, making the itch that much worse.
That’s two posts on spending money. Here’s one to balance that with making money. Do you know the best time to post an eBay auction?
LRN Timewarp
This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?
Have you ever participated in a financial binge & purge? Budgeting and planning can help you avoid the purge, but you’ll have to forgo most of the binges.
Everybody gets caught by life’s ups and downs occasionally. When that happens, how can you fix the damage to your budget and finances?
Finally, I explained my plan for shopping quickly.
Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled
Brown Bagging Your Way to Savings was included in the Festival of Frugality.
Debt Burnout was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.
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Have a great week!
What do you do?
You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your ******* khakis. -Tyler Durden
“What do you do?”
They typical answer is usually something like “I’m a computer programmer.” Or a DJ, a cop, a barista, a stripper, or whatever.
The answer is always given in the context of work. Is work the center of your life? Is your career the most important thing you have? For many, it is. Our jobs become a fully integrated piece of our identities. Even when we pay lip-service to putting our families first, all too often, we spend more of our waking hours working than actually living.
We spend 40, 50, 60 hours each week at our jobs. It’s natural for that to become a part of us.
We go too far.
I am not my job. I am not my career.
I am a father, a husband, a writer, a blogger, and more. I have hopes, dreams, and ambitions entirely apart from my career.
I hope you do, too.
The next time someone asks you what you do, try responding with your passion.
“I’m a parent.”
“I grow freaking awesome roses.”
“I travel whenever I can.”
“I obsess over politics.”
Leave the tradition work-centric script behind. You’re going to confuse the people who are expecting it. They think they are asking about your job and you are responding with something that truly matters to you.
What do you do?
Small Business Solutions to Aid Expansion
For most small businesses much of their strategy will be tailored towards expansion. The transition between being a small and medium sized enterprise can, however, be as tough as it is important. What makes a successful businessman or entrepreneur is the ability to spot the areas in which their business can effect simple changes which have far reaching implications for the success of their company.
Stability online
One of the first places any entrepreneur should look at is cost-effective and comprehensive insurance cover. Firms like Hiscox – Business Insurance Specialist can aid small businesses by looking at what areas of their current business are vulnerable and need cover.
A common problem for smaller businesses which operate largely online can be the type of server they use. Basic servers do not offer the stability a business needs to thrive. For a small business, time offline can be a disaster. Unfortunately, dedicated servers are often costly and, however useful they are in a number of ways, they tend to provide a service which reaches beyond the requirements of most small businesses.
Shared servers often do not provide the flexibility that small businesses need to make the transition to the next stage. As we’ve mentioned, dedicated servers are rarely a viable option for most small companies; instead, many opt to use a virtual private server which simulates many dedicated server features while remaining integrated into a larger, shared server.
Using a virtual private server is a cost-effective way for small businesses to take full control over their server and to apply upgrades as they see fit. The increased levels of performance and independence that virtual private servers can offer a small business can be vital to the realisation of their expansion dreams.
Be critical when considering opportunities
When your company begins to grow and succeed, things are likely to snowball. It is not uncommon for small businesses to face merger propositions and takeover offers. To many young entrepreneurs, this can seem an attractive prospect. Often such deals will involve impressive, short-term financial benefits that make them look appealing to the newly successful business owner.
While mergers and acquisitions can benefit all parties involved, it is important to remain level-headed when considering offers from other companies. For example, in Bain & Company’s 2004 study, they found that shareholder value did not increase in 70% of mergers. A further study conducted at Paris’s Sorbonne found that in excess of 90% of European mergers failed to meet their financial targets.*
Independence and success
The business world has changed rapidly in recent years with the inclusion of social media sites into many businesses’ marketing strategies. With this shift in marketing procedure, the playing field from which businesses are able to reach out to customers has been levelled. This has positive implications worth considering for the small business owner.
It is now possible for any small business to reach millions of people without spending a penny on advertising. Thus, the need for smaller companies to accept stubborn deals from larger companies is lessening. This is not to say that mergers are no longer a viable option for small businesses. Often the resources available to larger companies are indispensable to the smaller company. Instead, this shift in the market could well see small businesses being made more attractive deals by larger companies with a vested interest in the takeover of young and growing companies: just look at the recent Facebook purchase of Instagram.
If your business is facing a similar request or even considering the takeover of a smaller business, speaking with specialists is an invaluable option. Experts can offer advice on the way that such methods of expansion will affect your business and the premiums that you pay.
Utilize Social Media
The establishment of a successful business in today’s climate requires a shrewd and thorough reading of the options available to you online. With a huge proportion of business, small and large, creating a presence on social media and networking websites, this is an area that no small business can afford to ignore.
While business accounts with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are already seen as somewhat necessary tools to the success of a business, use of social media need not stop there. Entrepreneurs who want to get their business on top will be looking to new services such as Google Plus, ensuring that they are the first amongst their competitors to join. Whichever social media platform your business deals with, it is essential to keep your account active, positive and efficient.
*http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/05/21/merger.marriage/index.html
This is a guest post.
Fall From Grace
When you accumulate a certain level of debt, it feels like you’re wading through an eyeball-deep pool of poo, dancing on your tiptoes just to keep breathing. Ask me how I really feel.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m in debt. We have gone over this before. The story isn’t one of my proudest, so I’ve never talked much about how it happened.
Our debt was entirely our fault. We messed up and dug our own poo-pool. There were no major medical bills, no extended unemployment, just a strong consumer urge and an apparent need for instant gratification. Delayed gratification wasn’t a skill I’d considered learning. The idea of it was a thoroughly foreign concept. Why wait when every store we visited offered no payments/no interest for a year? We didn’t give much thought to what would happen when the year was up.
We got married young. We bought our house young. We started our family young. We did all of that over the course of two years, well before we were financially ready. Twenty years old, we had excellent credit and gave our credit reports a workout. Credit was so easy to get. By the time I was 22, we had a total credit limit more than twice our annual income. We fought so hard to keep up with the Joneses. A new pickup, a remodel on our house. Within a month of paying off the truck, I got a significant raise and rushed out to buy a new car.
Every penny that hit the table was caught in a net of lifestyle expansion. I was bouncing on my tiptoes.
Four months into my new car payment, I was laid off. There’s me, hoping for a snorkel. A week later, we found out our son was going to be a big brother. Our pool had developed a tide.
We killed the cable and cut back on everything else and…managed. Money was tight, but we got by. I got a new job, but had we learned any lessons? Of course not. We got a satellite dish, started shopping the way we always had. Times were good, and could never be bad. We had such short memories.
Fast forward a couple of years. Baby #3 is on the way while baby #2 is still in diapers. Daycare was about to double. Daddy started to panic. I built a rudimentary budget and realized there was no way to make ends meet. There just wasn’t enough cash coming in to cover expenses. That’s when I made my first frugal decision: I quit smoking. That cut the expenses right to the level of our income. It was tight, but doable.
There was still one serious problem. Neither one of us could control our impulse shopping. For a time, I was getting packages delivered almost every day. It was never anything expensive, but it was always something. Little things add up quickly.
Last spring, I realized we couldn’t keep going like that. I started looking into bankruptcy. Somehow, we managed to toss ourselves into the deep end of the pool. We had near-perfect credit and no way to maintain it.
While researching bankruptcy, I found our life preserver. We put together a budget. We cut and…it hurt. It’s taken a year, but every bill we have is finally being tracked. We have an emergency fund and we are working towards our savings goals. It hasn’t been an easy year, but we are making progress. We’ve eliminated 15% of our debt and opened out budget to include some “blow money” and an occasional date night. We are always looking for ways to decrease our bottom line and increase the top line. Most important, we are actually working together to keep all of our expenses under control, with no hurt feelings when we remind ourselves to stay on track.
We are finally standing flat-footed, head and shoulders above the poo.
Update: This post has been included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
