Fathers 4 FathersWhere Dads help Dads be Dads
Preparing For Children, What Do You Need?
Once you find out you are expecting a child, you typically have 7 - 8 months to get your finances in order to manage your new life situation. A big part of this financial preparation is purchasing all the nursery furniture and things the baby will need at birth. There will also be a number of things you will need within the first year.
One of the financial goals I set myself in preparation for my firstborn included buying as much of the baby gear I needed for birth and the first 12 months after birth, prior to my partner leaving her job. If successful, this would mean we would not have to worry about any of the first year items after we lost our second income, and we had 12 months to prepare for year two.
One thing you can do to help achieve such a goal, is set up a baby gift registry at the Land of Nod. This means that you have the opportunity to direct the gifts people want to buy you, to help set up for your firstborn. We found this much better than receiving all the lovely, pretty things which, while nice to have, were often duplicates of things we already had and did very little to help our family prepare for children.
To help you prepare for these purchase, I gathered together a panel of 3 couples who were new parents. I asked each of them to write for me a comprehensive shopping list for preparing for your firstborn. From these 3 submissions, I prepared the ultimate shopping guide for your firstborn. I actually used this myself with out first. You can view it here:
Once we had prepared our final list, we realised that buying all the furniture, clothes and provisions for our firstborn was still going to be quite an expensive experience. We employed a nifty tactic which minimized the impact these expenses had on our lifestyles in the months leading up to the big day.
Both me and my partner are paid fortnightly. We simply put $40 each in a jar every fortnight when we got paid. When we accumulated enough money, we went and bought an item off the list, starting with the most expensive through to the least expensive. I had to sell a few of my old toys on eBay to see us over the line, but that by and large did the trick.
One of the benefits of this logic is gifts tend to come in the form of the less expensive baby items. So while we were buying the furniture and car seats, our family and friends were supplying the clothes and bunny rugs. We all met somewhere in the middle with a month or so spare to go.
I hope our shopping list helps, and really do recommend the baby gift registry at the Land of Nod. This can be especially handy if your partner is going to have a baby shower, or similar event with her girlfriends, along the way.