Some parents feel guilt about buying used things for their child, and end up spending a lot of $$ on new clothes, crib, etc. for a child that will not benefit from all that extra expense in the least. You don't want to cut corners on, for example, health care or quality food, but things like clothes because they are visible can cause some parents of newborns to spend a lot of money they don't need to. Save it for the things that actually matter.
If you buy a used crib just make sure it's in good shape and hasn't been recalled.
More practical advice: Costco brand diapers and formula are the cheapest we found, but still good quality. Well worth the membership. There are also ways around going to Costco without paying for a membership. You can just google it.
Walmart brand wipes were the cheapest (and not useless) ones we found. We buy them in lots of 1200 at a time for about $20.
I saw that it was a perfect fit so I bought 10 more.
And then I had to return them because my wife wanted variety...
My way of rationalising it is whether she'd rather have us spend all we could on having the best of baby gear now, or whether she'd rather have it in a savings account when she is looking to buy her first house, go to university etc.
Dude - relax! Becoming a parent is a real emotional roller-coaster, and it's hard to keep your perspective, especially with your first, but remember - all kinds of morons have kids, and they're fine. Perfect is the enemy of good in this part of your life too
(my kids, and all my friends' and family's kids, wear and have worn hand-me-downs almost exclusively, except for fancy or special-occasion clothes)
Ask your OB about it though if you want a more professional opinion.
1) Remember at all times that no matter how tired you are, your partner is almost certainly much more tired. Basically, give her a free pass for the first few months, if not longer. (The hormonal changes a few days in are no fun either)
2) There is no point comforting a crying baby - they just don't understand what you're trying to do. Distract the fuck out of them instead. (This from a baby psychologist on a BBC documentary.)
3) Babies are their own tutorial. They start off really simple, with about three things to remember, and then once you've got the hang of those things they start adding new ones on. But you don't need to panic about whether you can do it, it's not complicated, just full on.
4) Bonding - do not panic if it takes you six months (or longer) to fall in love with your child. I certainly felt incredibly protective of Sophia from the moment she was born, but I didn't feel fully connected to her until she was able to smile at me, and we could have some kind of interaction. It's really easy to feel awful because all the TV and movies says it happens instantly, but it can take a fair while, so don't worry about it.
5) Ignore any advice you don't like.
I've had 3 children, and found this to be 100% false. Every crying baby has a reason, and if you build a checklist of things to check, almost all babies can be calmed down. I say almost, because there are exceptions to everything.
It has been years, so I no longer have the list in my head, but it boiled down to making sure everything in their environment is in moderation. Not too hot, not too cold, not overstimulated, not under-stimulated. Are they hungry? Wet? Dirty? Tired? Scared? ... you get the idea. Sure, "comforting" them by telling them things will be OK isn't effective. But finding and fixing problems works. And most of us folk on HN are good at such things.
- Not leaving the baby alone especially when she cries, is simply one of the most important things. The first year is the time of developing the confidence. I recommend this: https://www.parentingscience.com/strange-situation.html
- Later, at age of 1..2 years: limits, rules will be more important. Without limits the child would not feel safe, and often tends to put control in her own hands, which is not her responsibility at that age. Also see: "fear of losing control". IMHO its especially hard if you've done right all the 1st year. :)
- Playing with her is a lot more important than giving toys.
- Tantrum is not a problem, even if it lasts for 30-40 minutes. It is an emotional expression, saying something like "Help, I lost the attachment to you!" A good limit for example: She must not hurt anybody, but expressing emotions is allowed.
- Screen, phone, tablet, Youtube, etc. is forbidden until 5 years, later time-limited (if inevitable). I know that a lot of people are opposed.
Yes, being a parent is challenging.
I'm only mentioning it because with my first (daughter) I would get really stressed and worried if she continued to cry after I did all the above. Just talk to them, play with them, and all will be good :)
it means being very generous
1. Get a health insurance for you and your wife if you don’t already have one. That takes care of large unexpected costs.
2. Make a budget for next 2 years. This will show how much money you might actually need.
3. Build savings from today. You should be able to make good savings by the time your baby is born.
4. Not sure what you do. If possible find a way to build long term relationships with your clients.
5. Doing 2 projects, about half time for each is also a good idea. Gives you a safety net.
6. Choose clients that have good cash flow. Funding or profitability.
It’s important not to freak out now. Your wife needs a lot of support and you should be there. Also, first time dads under estimate the support they will get from friends, family and the system in general. It should be manageable!
> Make a budget for next 2 years. This will show how much money you might actually need.
How much does one need for a child?
Important things to remember: 1) kids want your time, not the crap you buy them. 2) you will make mistakes, just try to learn and move on. Anyone who says they did not is not being intellectually honest. 3) start reading and numbers as soon as possible. ABC 123 from day one.
We walked away paying nothing where friends in the same hospital had to pay a few thousand.
You can always change your plan after the kid is born or at the next open enrollment.
Nowadays, I'm gainfully employed at a rate that disqualifies me from public assistance anywhere, and I have gotten all of my software jobs through Angel.co and Hired. I'm not the world's most talented engineer or likable person, but I've managed to work alongside some very talented and likable people. I think most people with an in-demand skill like software engineering can do what I did and make their way to a stable income that they can raise a family on.
This is where a membership to a wholesale place like Costco becomes a no-brainer. Diapers, wipes and formula are best bought in bulk.
Get the calculator out and do the math. With coupons I often bought the smaller packages and saved money. Then the next month the bigger ones. When we had kids we often bought diapers at Toys-r-us / babies-r-us, but I think they are out of business. In the end shop around. Ask others. Friends and neighbors will save / grab coupons to help you out.
This is not the case with most discount or offbrand diapers. We did try one of the diaper online services (not the big one) and found the quality to be off putting.
I've been avoiding costco my entire adult life, but I finally find the membership worth it.
You could switch to a corporate job for steady income and it usually comes with decent benefits.
Honestly, you really want to budget very well. We are planning on having a child sometime next year. We created a plan. Bought a house, remodeled. Now, we are going to aggressively save $50k, so we can survive 12 months without any income if we ever need to. After we save $50k, we will focus on aggressively paying of the house, and investing 1k a month. My health is so so, therefore I am not sure how much time I got.
As far as career goes, I will most likely start consulting in a few years, as I have experience with the full life cycle of applications, even forcefully extracting requirements.
I had my business start to fail while my second was born. I thought I wouldn’t recover it. I did. It is survivable.
I now have three, but my income is still significantly down. Thriftiness and creativity will do you wonders. Budget and save, even if it’s a little bit.
Some wise financial advice I received as a young man went like this...
Those that make little but save a dollar are better off financially than those that make more but spend a dollar.
The stress of debt will do more harm to you than anything. Try to stay out of it, enjoy these next years, you’ll never get back your children’s early years, but you will always recover finances or a career.
Good luck!
What happened was that I stopped doing anything that did not pay me and started working all my hours on the most profitable and constant stream of work (in my case a 20 hours a week gig for $20usd an hour while working from Colombia where minimum wage was $2 usd an hour at the time). In my young mind this was the equivalent of kind of failing: not doing the most interesting stuff and just going for the money.
But this worked out pretty well, all of the sudden the Django skills that I had got in 2007 doing not for profit projects were in full demand in Enterprise by 2012 and onwards and I got to $60, $80, $100, $120 usd an hour as I did more specific projects for bigger clients.
Short version: Go for the boring stable job because the most important thing is providing roof and food for your family. It will work out, God permitting.
Diversify the income stream. If you make most of your money freelancing, consider doing some pluralsight courses or writing a book. I highly recommend reading this article [1] from Troy Hunt (creator of HaveIBeenPwned) on some of the finance lessons he's learned.
You might also look at working part time with a regular client at a cheaper rate, or modifying your contract to ensure more regularity, especially if you can manage to get benefits.
[1] - https://www.troyhunt.com/10-personal-finance-lessons-for-tec...
Assuming you and your partner live together-- you will have a strong hint if you're having a boy or a girl by how the pregnancy affects the woman. Girls generally are a sleepy pregnancy. Boys are generally energetic pregnancies. This has to do with the fetus producing sex hormones which affect the mother.
Being a parent is a marathon, not a race. I burned myself out before the baby was even born trying to be everything to everyone. Trying to keep my wife happy, trying to keep an employer that could never be happy satisfied. Let me repeat this point. You need to separate yourself from things that can't be satisfied. From employers whom you can never work enough for, from people who use all of your time and energy.
From now on, your life will be about stability. Children thrive on stability, and you will too. When you enter the stability mindset suddenly whole swaths of society make sense.
You're going to have a hard time getting a job with a child. You won't have time to study interview ephemera. Your hair will turn gray from lack of sleep. You won't have time to participate in the latest fads, or to get drinks after work, and you will be judged for that.
But all the meanwhile, you'll be doing something vastly more important.
I would like to add - stop worrying. Yes you don't have a predictable income, but your constant worrying about it will hamper your ability to have one. It is a vicious loop. Be calm, keep improving your skills and producing better results. In your anxiety to provide for your kid, it is easy to forget to actually "be" with them, love them. Children can easily pick these things in you. Read/tell them stories every night. Goof off with them - this is your chance to be a kid again !! It is surprising how easily you can get away with "my kids insist I do/play this with them" :)!. The world can wait, it will be there still, when you return to it.
Like others have said, lower your costs - increase your savings. Keep increasing your Savings Rate. Drop things that cost but add little/no value. Convenience has a cost - Embrace inconvenience. Prefer buying used things, learn to invest at a low cost. Stay healthy. Parks and libraries are free, use them over other forms of entertainments.
It really depends on your current situation, so to be more helpful please answer these:
1) how much savings do you have?
2) assuming a spouse, will the spouse continue to work? Do you have parents nearby who can help with childcare?
3) can you clarify your earnings, maybe with yearly breakdown of the past 5 years?
4) where are you located (country at least)?
Option 1) Get a regular job with health benefits. If you're a programmer in the US with some experience, $65-80K should be readily attainable. Certainly much more depending on location and abilities. Likely the least stressful but more boring option.
Option 2) diversify the income as vorpalhex said. This will be more stressful. You do need to figure out your "minimum expenses" and budget for that. You can't afford to go 1 year without making anything unless you've got significant money banked.
One datapoint: in a US midwestern city, a conservative baby/toddler budget is running me about $4-6K not including increased medical. Set a budget just assuming you're going to max your out-of-pocket every year. 1 birth + 1 ER visit will usually get you there.
I don't mean that you should oversleep - since you want to balance your time in order build up as much cash as possible NOW...What I mean is: don't go out and party much now. You will not have enough sleep when your baby arrives, so sleep now.
Beyond cash and sleep, begin to work out a system (AHEAD of time) with your partner - including who will sleep while the other is on pager duty - er, I mean, feeding/diaper duty. In addition to organizing duties, communicate, communicate, and communicate with your partner NOW, DURING, and AFTER your baby arrives. Communication is so important during projects, and this is vastly more important than other projects, so it makes sense that communication with your partner is essential.
You (and your partner) are about to put a dent into the universe; cheers, congratulations, and best of luck!
It's scary becoming a new parent. Having children is world changing, because you no longer have to think only about yourself — there is someone else who loves you, and depends completely upon you. There is no one that I've ever spoken with has ever said that they felt ready for this change. That's completely normal, and that's okay.
My wife and I were relatively young — age 21 — when we had our first son. Our situation was somewhat similar to yours in that we had a financial challenge; we learned how to utilize what was available to us. As others have said in this thread: your community and relationships are extremely valuable. It takes a village!
My advice is work hard. Knowing you have provided for your family is one of the great joys of life. Whether that means the $20 second birthday dinner you paid for or helping your twenty year old through uni. Provide what needs provided.
My journey was being the photocopy guy in a school, advertising fixing computers in the newspaper at night, getting a degree with the Open University, being an IT Technician and now leading an Infrastructure Team for a saas company. I also have a sideline which my company let’s me work on one day a week. Do what you have to do :-)
I use YNAB, and they have a bunch of articles / videos / podcasts about variable income, such as https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ynab%20variable%20inco...
Regarding consistent income, one of the companies I work for offers part-time, fully remote contractor work conducting technical interviews. I use it as a way to keep a stable income while I pursue riskier ventures outside of that company and a lot of the folks working on the platform have very young families. I plan to use it as my sole income when I start a family of my own. It might be a good fit for you since it sounds like you'd want to continue doing your own contract work.
It pays $100 USD per 90-minute interview -- if this type of thing is interesting to you (or anyone reading, for that matter) -- feel free to send me an email! Details are in my profile.
The best investment I ever made was to get a night nanny. This is someone who comes to your home at night and changes diapers, feeds the baby (or brings them to the mom to nurse without waking you up) and may also do basic domestic stuff like laundry and dishes while your partner adjusts to their new routine as a parent.
The cost is going to vary dramatically depending on where you live and whether your kid has any kind of special needs (e.g., if they're a premie you might want a night nanny who is also a registered nurse).
They will basically double your productivity during your waking hours since you will not be suffering (as much) from sleep deprivation.
It's a good idea to have a list of must have's/nice to have supplies for the baby. Stick to the must have's, skip the others. You will spend less money and avoid having too much stuff afterwards.
The money you save this way you can use it as a buffer for the periods with limited income.
* Make sure you have a good health insurance plan.
* 529 account - the day my kids were born I started a recurring deposit 100 with some extra deposit on events like tax refund/bonus etc. I want to have enough to support public college tution.
* whatever I have left after mortgage and monthly expenses, I contribute to each of my accounts in specified order, going to next account only when I reach max limit for that account
- Checking account (limit 2 months of expenses)
- Online savings account for emergencies (limit 6 months of expenses)
- Roth IRA for both my wife and me (limit IRS prescribed limit around 6K per year)
- Retirement accounts (Robo advisors : regular investment account/IRA)Getting the baby to sleep through the night is something you want to do as soon as possible.
Your also going to want to get really good at time management. With one kid, you are allowed one hobby. Once you have two kids you can have a hobby once in a blue moon.
If you can get a stable gig, I would recommend it. Diaper prices recently went up.
With that level of income I could save for the trip, home, car, the works. It opened up a huge market for me and ultimate gave my everything. Try that platform to find work I'm assuming you are a programmer or something related since you're on HN.
Also, try not to freelance as much, it's too unpredictable for children.
I went to a daddy bootcamp, breast feeding with my wife, baby-care, etc... All of which were extremely informative and helpful.
Congratulations!
Get a steady gig. Life is about to get real. (BTW, kids are the greatest.)
If you're freelancing, and sometimes you get paid and sometimes you don't, you need to work on getting clients to pay up-front (most are happy to do the first payment up-front at least), or at minimum make sure your contracts are solid and you're billing and following up for the work you did. (This is the bane of freelancing, and it gets more complex the more clients you have.) Fixing your contracts and invoicing will keep things consistent. Cut any client that doesn't pay on time, and never lift a finger to help someone who is behind on payments -- so many times people try and be "nice" but if they don't pay, they're just using you.
Generally speaking, so many issues are sorted out for you if you take a job at a bigger company. Stability, insurance, consistent pay... this is a huge draw for a lot of people. Freelancing is fun for diversity, and the pay can be better, but in the long-run most of my friends who work at big companies seem like they have more time for their families. Something to consider.
Savings is going to be key, and it's impossible to retroactively save, like it's impossible to retroactively diet, so you just fix the issues as you see them and try to avoid mistakes and stay healthy going forward. You need to find a way to get money saved up. It'll help with your stress. When I freelance, I try and keep 6 months of cash for all bills on hand. My mortgage, car payments, etc. -- should work dry up, I want runway to fix it.
The prerequisite to the above is having a budget. A lot of people just sort of spend what they spend, and don't think about it. This is lazy and wasteful. If you eat out a lot, set a budget... and consider scaling that down. When I first started tracking, I realized I was spending about $600 a month eating out. I cut that to $300 -- it was a bit harder at first, but I like cooking and meal prep, and within a year I went from eating out almost every meal to almost never eating out at all -- unless it's for work.
Once I had a budget, and my target savings goals, I got there by auditing my spend, and cutting expenses. Then putting aside 10% of my paycheck (for a few years), into paying off all debts and building savings. Once I hit the "cushion" goal, I still take 10% and put it into a 1) rainy day fund, and 2) retirement fund. The rainy day fund is for bigger purchases... things like, "Oh crap, I need a new AC," type stuff. It's invested, but it's more liquid -- I can turn it into cash inside of a week if needed.
For debts, it's not rocket science. Pay the ones with the higher interest rates first. Generally speaking. Credit card debt is horrible, and will doom you. Get it all paid off as quickly as you can. Then work on things like student loans, mortgages, etc. Keep in mind a lot of this debt helps you with your taxes... set up some time with a professional tax consultant and see what they say.
For a retirement account, and for a kid's college account, I just use a three-fund portfolio approach. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio It's simple enough, and I've beaten the market the last 10 years. Let the machines do it, I wasted money on a money manager for years... kicking myself. They always took 1% of my money... not just the profit. It was a rip off. And you can do this stuff yourself. (=
Setup some time to chat with a banker, but y'know... understand that they're out to make money too. If you're new to investing, they can help you with some of the basics... a Roth IRA, for example, if you don't already have one. Keep away from places like Edward Jones, the strip-mall shops have literally the worst returns vs. fees vs. risks (vs. environmentally friendly investment) ratios.
Anyway look, financial health, like fitness, or anything... isn't something you just do over night. It takes planning and effort to get where you want to go. Don't beat yourself up for past mistakes, learn from them and adjust going forward. Cheers!
Now in the SF Bay area, you've got to look at 2.5-4+ to keep that quality of life.
Useful salary, to some extent, is geographical.
The rest of what you're talking about, I've got nothing to add.
That's what ruled out Seattle, SF, LA, and NYC for me. I'm in Austin -- not the cheapest place in Texas, but your buck goes a long way here. Not as far as it went 15 years ago, but property investments have really paid off for me here.
https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2019/06/24/studywhen...