Expecting a Child and Your Finances

One of the things I found quite strange when we were expecting our firstborn was the number of people who tried to convince us that the first years of being a parent were not that expensive. It is the latter years that really cost. I think these people really miss the point.

When you have your first child, you will lose one of the incomes that you and your partner used to enjoy or rely on. Its not the expense of the additional mouth that is expensinve, it is the loss of this income. Depending on your particular circumstance, this could be for the period of time your partner is on maternity leave, or a longer term. It could even be for the rest of your lives together.

 

Financial concerns can be quite a daunting thing to face when you find out you are going to have a baby. You are given about 8 months grace and in that time you must sort out your finances so your income will stretch far enough to support at least 3. During this 8 months, you also need to spend a significant amount of money to set up the nursery. (and lets face it, we all want the best for our first)

 

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It can be quite a challenge, particularly if your pregnancy was not planned. (Planned pregnancies, while facing the same challenges, will obviously have more than 8 months to prepare) In my case, I set a personal goal to pay off my 2 swelling credit cards and a tax bill that snuck up on me, before our first was born. This was on top of decking out my study with baby furniture. My logic was with those debts paid off, it would free up a degree of cash to replace what we lost with the second income.

 

Regardless of the success of my specific goals, setting these stretch targets certainly helped me develop a financial discipline which I previously did not have. And in retrospect, developing this discipline proved to play a greater role in managing finances post birth than my financial condition at the birth of our first did.

 

And this is what the finance section of our website is about. How do you develop the financial wisdom and discipline you require to support a growing number of mouths, with a shrinking combined income? It is here we will post a number of tips and articles which specifically address this issue. And if you have any specific questions about your circumstances, remember, you can post these in our forums, where a growing number of Dad's who have faced all the same challenges would love to help.

 


 

 

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