Tag Archives: parenthood

Childcare, Married Life, Savings

On Being A Mom, Financially Speaking

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My son is a good kid, so far. He doesn’t sleep much at night, but we’re working on that. Despite telling myself I will not buy frivolous things for my child I have bough frivolous things for my child… mostly clothes, some toys, and a few overpriced items like a swing that he uses on occasion that last a few months. If my spending patterns in the last two months tell us anything about how much this kid is going to cost me, my whole “I will NOT spend $250,000 on my kid before he goes to college” motto might as well be thrown out the window.

At the moment, living in this one bedroom apartment makes me feel OK about spending some amount of frivolous money on my son (I mean, gosh, those 3 month old clothes on sale at Gymboree are just TOO CUTE.) And, I feel rather hopeless around being able to afford big ticket items at this point, so the $10 shirts are fun to buy. I have hand-me downs from a number of friends (benefit of being one of the last to have kids) but the styles are so, bleh. It doesn’t matter AT ALL but I want my son to look not just nice, but appropriately styled to be my (/our) son. And, $5-$10 for an outfit just seems so cheap, even it it only lasts 3 months. Hey, I’m breastfeeding so at least he’s food is free, right?

What’s most challenging is this massive fear that I will never have a stable job. No job is really stable, but I’ve been in this industry/role type for over 10 years now and I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, and that I don’t deserve my paycheck. in fact, I’m half convinced when I go back to work from maternity leave my boss will see how horrible I am in the role, wait until she’s safe from firing a “new mom” and then poof, I’m gone. I’ve gotten to the point where I think I can probably get another job, but it could take months, and who knows what it would pay. This job happens to pay a lot, especially with my bonus (if I get my bonus), but that’s temporary. How could I ever commit to a monthly mortgage payment for 30 years (!!!) when I can’t imagine holding and keeping a job for longer than 6 months at any given time?

It would be nice if my husband’s income was enough to support our family just in case  I can’t get a job… but that’s not how it is either. He makes $85k a year in consulting income, which is pennies for an area where a basic mortgage with PITI will cost us $5k-$7k a month, and that’s with a hefty downpayment. I know people do it here on “low” incomes, but certainly not as home owners. I’m somewhat ok with renting, especially in a good school district once my son is old enough to go to public school, but my husband really wants to buy. I’d rather buy–for the stability and to feel like I’ve “made it” but I don’t know, I don’t know if I have it in me to make that kind of terrifying commitment.

My networth right now is about $620k and should be closer to $700k by the end of the year, depending on stock market performance (and if I can stop myself from buying more cute things for my son.) For most people, that should be more than enough to provide comfort in financial security, at least enough to buy a house. But it feels like pocket change to me. I’m pretty sure once I get to $1M I’ll start to feel like I an afford to buy a house. That’s still what I think about my home purchase plan… but I’m worried I’ll wait to long as housing prices have already doubled in the last 10 years here and interest rates are going up. Or have I really already missed my opportunity to buy here and the smart thing to do would be to leave?

Besides buying a home, there are lots of things I want to purchase for my son over the years, including a sibling or two. 🙂 Even if I have only one kid, there’s enrichment activities (especially since the school systems do not offer arts education here), summer camps, traveling, etc. We don’t have to spend a fortune but I’d like to give him some semblance of a middle class childhood–one that I had when I grew up. And–if I can keep my current income of $170,000 a year, give or take, and we rent or find a home that is somehow cheap enough to go in on with my husband’s parents (and live with them) that our monthly payments aren’t, like $9000 a month (which I guess we could qualify for but WTF how could we spend $9000 a month on a mortgage when we take home about $10k a month after taxes. Something doesn’t add up.

Well, I feel all sorts of shitty… knowing I’ll probably never make enough money (*consistently, for the next 30 years*) to give my son the life I want to give him. We’re saving now on daycare since my husband is working PT from home and his parents are helping out (which is great) but I still want him to experience preschool at some point in the next few years. If I can keep this job I may be able to make over $300k for this year and the next 3 years. That’s amazing. I don’t want to count on it, but it will be nice. After tax, it’s still not a lot… it would be great if I make $300k a year for the next 30 years of my life, but let’s be real… that’s not happening.

…A big chunk of that income is in options which happen to have increased in value a lot–but they can also decrease in value before I get them and after my options are all acquired, I won’t have any worth that much. I’ll be back to my $170 salary… or less, if I need to find another job (although I made $200k at my last job, when I was interviewing this time around offers were more in the $150k range at startups–where I’m more likely to get hired.) If my husband made $150k and I made $150k, we’d be doing ok… I feel like one can live on $300k joint here, and even on $150k should one partner lose their job for a while. But… $250k, and, $80k (should I lose my job) is not doable. Better yet, we’d both be making $250k consistently… but he hasn’t asked for a raise in years and refuses to take on any other clients (now at least it makes sense since he’s taking care of our son during the day)… and I, well, I’m not moving up at work ever. My title and likely pay is already inflated. I’m just trying to stay where I am and not rock the boat.

I’m scared. Scared, but not too scared, as long as we are renting a one bedroom for $2450 a month. No matter what happens, I feel like we can afford that. We can afford that on his $85,000 self employment income. We can afford that on a job I can find for $100k if I lose other jobs. But any more than that? Even renting a two bedroom for $3200+… I just, don’t feel ready for that. I don’t think I ever will.

Career, Networth

Financially Planning for Parenthood

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Given that I’m going to be an older mother — turning 31 next month and not married yet let alone pregnant — I’ve done a bit of spreadsheeting around how I can afford to have a child. This puts me a little more at ease given that I can live frugally while earning a reasonably high income, save a lot, and put myself in a much better position to have children.

In my chart I noted how much I plan to save each month and have a column for lower average annual interest rates (5%) and higher ones (10%) from age 31 to 40. The chart otherwise includes the following expectations:

1) I will save $5000 per month between now and the time I have my first child (3/1/2017, give or take)

2) I will take 3 months of unpaid leave after having my first child and save $0 per month over those 3 months.

3) I will return to work full time and continue saving $5000 per month (buying less stuff for myself to offset stuff for baby) until baby #2

4) baby #2 will be born 1/1/2020. At this time I have reduced my monthly savings to $0 per month. I may want to work at this time but I want to plan to allow myself to not work and have enough money in our family to afford this. I want to be able to then afford to live off of my husband’s salary while my savings can grow for our retirement nest egg. We’ll probably have to move to a cheaper state at this point.

Based on these 4 constants and the compound interest variable, the range of my networth at age 40 would be $856,634 to 1,271,596 (*not counting my partner’s savings.) And baby #1 will just be turning age 7 or so, which is when babies become kids and start to get expensive… just in time for me to go back to work.

So this all seems rather do-able as long as I keep my head down and focus on the 58 months of saving $5k a month — so 4.8 years, give or take, or $280,000 of savings over that time period (which is a lot… but seems at least somewhat possible.) Given my potential annual bonus is anywhere from $0k to $40k after tax, I could actually get to that amount much quicker if I do my job well. Let’s just say I obtain a quarter of my annual bonus for those four years — $30k per year — that actually gets me to the $24.1k $280k goal much quicker.

That said – I’m not accounting for IVF costs which will likely be needed and will likely be very expensive (I should account for $100k for two kids and it might not even work…)

Thus in order for me to comfortably have children, I must focus on my job — really over the next two years — and attempt to obtain at least 50% of my annual bonus.

Inputting my networth growth with 50% bonus (~20k extra per year) by the time I have baby #1 (3/1/2017) I will have reached my goal of $500k network — with $507k networth with the 5% interest and $560k with 10%. Clearly I have my work cut out for me. But I can do this so the rest of my life can provide what I really want — not “no work” — but choice and flexibility.

Here is my Mint.com goals which I’ve adjusted for January 2016 target dates. I will focus on tracking to these numbers hitting the maximum possible bonus possible to achieve my desired results.

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Children & Parenting, Family, Girl Talk, Infertility

Focus, Time, and the Brevity of Life

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There isn’t a day that goes by when I lack a sense of overwhelm and impending doom. That’s just my style. A lot of this is knotted up in a series of paranoid internal monologues that repeat ad nausem echoing off the corners of my mind.  Yet there’s some reality to the panic. Time isn’t a fake out. It’s this real, visceral, constantly moving stream of invisible life force which makes our bodies wither as the clock of the world ticks on with or without us. Time is the most real of all – because you can’t make more of it, once it’s gone it’s gone.

Today I visited two of my good friends who are both now parents and either my age or younger. A few friends back on the east coast have had their second children already. And I’m turning 31 in a smidgen over a month. The reality is that given my PCOS issues it’s going to be challenging to have kids of my own. Yet today I want them more than ever. The longer I wait the harder it will likely be. But when is the right time? My career is finally starting to take off. If I were to have a child now I don’t have the foggiest how I could also work my job. Well, it would surely be impossible to commute four hours a day and fly at a moment’s notice as a new mother. But would I even want that as my toddler grows from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and enters his or her own childhood without a mother around?

Clearly I’ll have to work if/when I have kids. I never though I wouldn’t have to and it’s fine to be a working mother and all. I’m fortunate that my boyfriend is more than willing to be a stay-at-home dad. Still… I just worry about waiting too long. I know, I know, it’s not the end of the world if I can’t have kids, or if I only have one child… but I just want two or three children. Probably two though I feel like three is a good large enough family without being too large. And while that’s a nice thought the likelihood of it happening is shrinking by the day.

So my boyfriend and I should be getting married in spring 2016 when I’ll be 32 and a half. I mean… that’s getting old. Let’s just say I have trouble getting pregnant because I probably will. IVF clinics won’t even seriously consider you for treatment until you’ve been trying to get pregnant for a year with no luck. So that gets me to 33-and-a-half. And who knows if I can get pregnant or how fast – even with the best treatment out there. And that treatment is expensive and can quickly burn through the savings that I’m working so hard to build up so I can afford what happens after I have kids.

With this scenario I’ll be lucky if I’m pregnant by 34 and have my first kid at 35. I really would like at least two kids if I’m going to have one. But then that leaves me at being a new mother at 35 going on 36 and knowing that I need to try immediately to have my second kid… all while being the breadwinner of the household and attempting to not only keep my job but grow in my career and move into a serious management position. I just can’t make sense of it. It all makes me think that if I actually do want kids – the logical thing to do would be to say screw “marriage” (which I’m not sure makes sense anyway due to the tax penalties) and just start trying to have my first kid now. I mean, that would suck in terms of work, but it’s not like I’d get pregnant tomorrow. But if I start trying at 31… that leaves me eligible for IVF at 32… and that timeframe just looks a whole lot better. If I have my first kid at 33 I can have my second at 35 or 36 and if I decide I do want a third then I have time for it, or at least I can just have two without feeling incredibly rushed.

I just think it’s so crazy how fast time goes by… and how judgmental I’ve been of all the girls who got married young and had kids in their 20s. That’s what the uneducated people do, I thought, brushing off their happiness with a reminder to myself that I’m getting my shit together first, saving up a good amount of money, preparing myself to be ready for kids. Well, it might not be too late yet but time is definitely running out. My 20s disappeared in the blink of an eye and my 30s will surely be equally as fast paced. With the amount I plan to work and focus on my career it will be easier to forget to focus on the things that matter in life and just running ahead blinded to the truth.

The whole marriage and wedding thing is just for show, what really matters is family… a family that I maybe already have waited too long to have, or at least one that is going to take a whole lot of headache and heartache to make possible. And I’m terrified of that journey that is to come.

Career, Class & Wealth, Culture, Dating and Relationships, Girl Talk, Life as I Know It

I’m turning 28 and craving babies. Yes, I said craving.

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Hello biological clock. I hear you loud and clear. Every time a family walks by with a little itty bitty one, you can’t help but smile and get that gooey feeling, like you really ought to be popping one of those out yourself any day now.

Lately, I can much picture myself as a mother much easier than I can envision myself a bride. Apparently, among Millennials, I’m not alone in this notion. We value parenthood more than marriage.

Today’s 18- to 29-year-olds value parenthood far more than marriage, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of attitudinal surveys. A 2010 Pew Research survey found that 52% of Millennials say being a good parent is “one of the most important things” in life. Just 30% say the same about having a successful marriage — meaning there is a 22-percentage-point gap in the way Millennials value parenthood over marriage.

What scares me is another report by Pew that finds the average age for U.S. mothers who had their first baby in 20062 was 25, a year older than the average first-time mother in 1990. Among all women who had a baby in 2006, the average age is 27, up from 26 in 1990. The prime child-bearing years remain 20-34 — three-quarters of mothers of newborns are in this age range.

I feel so far behind, even though I wasn’t ready to have kids until now, and really, a lot can be said about how I’m not ready now either. Now doesn’t mean this second anyway — it means in the next few years. Continue reading I’m turning 28 and craving babies. Yes, I said craving. →