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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?

 

Quality Time – The Best Way to Enjoy Time With Your Kids

A photograph of the children's version of Monopoly
Image via Wikipedia

It’s hard to know your kids.

We live in a world of constant distraction.   Working full time, chasing the kids to whatever activities they’re enrolled in, play-dates, and other commitments all conspire to chase you away from the one thing that truly matters: your family.  It’s not enough to be merely present, you have to be engaged.

How can you carve some time out of your hectic schedule to spend time that your kids will never forget?

We play a lot of games in my family and we start far younger than the recommended ages on any of the games we own. I taught my oldest kid to play chess when he was 4 and he caught on well enough to teach his grandmother within a few months. If a game doesn’t require reading, the recommended age is complete fiction. A two-year-old can count, so Sorry! is a good game. 5-year-olds can add, so Monopoly is a good choice that reinforces math skills.

To keep it fun, we have a few generic rules for playing games.

1.  We play for blood. Nobody gets to win a game without earning it. It took my son 5 years to beat me in a game of chess. Two years later, he’s still bragging about it.

2.  Losers don’t cry. Sportsmanship is important. It’s no fun to play with someone who throws a tantrum for losing. My son’s friends learned that lesson in a hurry.

3.  If you’re not a good winner, you won’t play the next game. We talk a little smack when we play, but it’s only in fun. When someone gets mean, their gaming privileges get suspended.

4.  The TV is off. We don’t need more distractions.  No TV, no texting, no phone, no nothing.   Game time is about family time, not about letting the outside world in.    Guard this time with your life.    I even hesitate to bring in other friends.

5.  Video games don’t count. You get far less interaction when you’re staring at a screen.   The goal is to have a good conversation while you’re playing and really get to know your family.  You can’t do that when the only words coming out of your mouth are “Ack! Zombie Nazis!  Shoot him!”

Board games and card games are relatively inexpensive.   Settlers of Catan costs less than a trip to the movies.  The games don’t wear out quickly, though we are on our third copy of Phase 10.   For the price and the time, you don’t have any excuses.

How do you spend time with your kids?

Magical Thinking

dark alley 8698
Image by korafotomorgana via Flickr

A few weeks ago, on my way to work, while merging onto the highway, a soccer mommy in an SUV decided that she was going to accelerate to fill the opening I was going to use.  Not before I got there, which would have left her in the right, if still a jerk, but as I was moving into the lane.

The entire reasoning was that she could be rude and dangerous under the assumption that I would be more civilized and back down, allowing her to indulge her little fantasy about how the world works.  Luckily I saw her speed up, and had time to move out of the way.  Physics very nearly taught her an expensive lesson.

This is similar to the people who think they’ll be safe because “nothing has happened before” or think “He won’t hurt me because I;m a good person” when confronted with a mugger.

This is magical thinking. Basing assumptions of other people’s actions on nothing more than your personal hopes and biases.  The truth is,  your halo does not provide a shield.  Your luck at dodging criminals while strolling through bad neighborhoods does not circumvent statistical likelihood and your jerkface attempt to run me into a  guard rail had better be backed by the stones to deal with a wreck.

Magical thinking, wishful thinking, and baseless hope are not rational methods of running your life.  Criminals hunt for victims who wrap themselves in a smug, yet naïve, superiority.  Murphy’s Law is waiting for someone arrogant enough to think that the laws of physics don’t apply when you’re commuting.  The only rational means of predicting the behavior of others is to look at the signals they are actually producing.

Someone tentatively trying to squeeze into an opening in traffic is far more likely to submit to your passive aggression than the guy who merges with a  turn signal and the gas pedal.

Someone in the park after hours in a hoody is more likely to hurt you than the guy in running shorts.

The guy lurking in the shadows of the parking ramp, refusing to make eye contact is a more likely mugger than the suit trying to find his Lexus.

A million years of evolution have given us an incredible ability to detect danger.  A few hundred years of relative peace at the end of a few thousand years of relative civilization have not erased that ability, it has just convinced us to ignore our instincts under the mistaken assumption that all predators live in the jungle.

Fear has survival value.  Don’t allow your rational brain to override your lizard brain completely.  Let your fear keep you safe.

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What’s in it for me?

Fez (video game)
Image via Wikipedia

Lately my son has been in full-on greed mode. It seems like every time I talk to him he asks me to give him something buy him something, do something.

“Dad, can you buy me a Yu-Gi-Oh card?”

“Dad, can you buy me a videogame?”

“Dad, can I get this?”

“Dad, can I get that?”

That is really kind of obnoxious. My response has turned into “What’s in it for me?”

Really, he’s constantly asking for stuff and he’s trying to provide no value back.  What kind of lesson would I be teaching him by handing him everything he’s asking for?  So, I’ve decided to make him come up with a value proposition: “What’s in it for me?”

Now, when he asks me to buy him a video game, I ask what’s in it for me.

Sometimes, he comes back with “Well nothing, you just love me.” That is garbage.  I’m not going to buy him stuff just as because I love him and teach them that you can buy someone’s affection or that you should be paying for someone’s affection.

Other times he comes back with “If you buy me video game, I will clean all of the poop out of the backyard.” (We have a dog.  I’m not messy.) That seems like a much better deal.

Other times, he reminds me that I owe him back-allowance.  That one’s a given.  If I owe him more than whatever he is asking for, he’s going to get it.

Sometimes, he’ll say that he willing to do a bunch of extra chores or something, but he is learning that he needs to trade value for value instead of assuming that every whim he’s got is going to be indulged by me just because I’m his parent and I’ve been generous in the past.

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