19 Comments

  1. As the medical bills started rolling in (I think It took 3 rounds to get them correct) I was pretty happy we planned ahead and could cover everything.

    We started a FSA at the begging of this year so we will be able to pay for a little over 2/3 of our bill with tax Free $.

    Hopefully you don’t have any insurance issues, it is a pain in the ass!

    • I think the only insurance issue we will have is the pre-registration/pre-certification. I’m pretty sure that you and I talked about this on Twitter. I dodged a $200 fee just by being persistent. I already have a breakdown of exactly what HP *should* cost in terms of medical expenses and our deductible and co-insurance maximum. But you never know what else could crop up. So until then, save, save, save.

      Good for you for using an FSA. We (stupidly?) don’t have one. The only thing I’m looking forward to regarding the bills is to post a breakdown online. It’s so fascinating to me to see what babies cost in different states/countries and even on different types of plans.

  2. Great job with the baby fund!

    When we adopted Zap, we had budgeted $400 for his adoption, supplies, and first vet appointment. Since we adopted from a shelter, we actually got quite a steep discount, so we came in under budget with our fur baby. 🙂

    We do plan on having kiddos, but our plan is to pay off our student loans first. Once that happens, we want to do a few home improvements, and then we’ll start building the Picky Babeh Fund.

    • I love it! Though I will say, we never felt like the “time was right” in terms of money. There was (and still is!) stuff to do around the house and more grad classes to take. But then we finally realized we weren’t getting any younger (how old do I make myself sound?!) and how this is one of the things in life that you can’t really plan the timing of necessarily.

      Still, crossing off as many things from your money lists as possible is really smart!

  3. What a great job you guys are doing! You’ve made some good choices, and that should hopefully cover you guys for quite a while.

    I was pretty lucky in that my boss decided to offer paid maternity leave for his management team (although unfortunately, he did not extend it to his hourly workers.) That combined with a low deductible and good health insurance meant our regular savings had enough money to cover everything, even after a C-section.

    • That’s incredible that your regular savings covered everything. That’s definitely our hope. Then, we’ll be left with a nice chunk of savings to kick off college savings and to add to our own money goals. But just in case 🙂

    • Haha, yes! This baby will be wearing Aldi diapers, I think! I’ve actually heard really good things about them.

      Thankfully, we received FOUR diaper cakes from family and friends. So we have a good start with newborn, 1s, and 2s. Though it did kind of pause my cloth diapering considerations. But I’m honestly OK with putting that experiment on hold for a few weeks or months.

      And you should probably be well on your way to sainthood for working at Toys R Us. Holy moly!

  4. Actually, $100 a month is sufficient for baby consumables if you manage to keep formula to about 20-25% of feedings. Daycare is the real killer cost, but you might escape the killerness of it due to Grandma daycare which will probably also keep half pence from getting sick all the time too.

    • Yes, we will do grandma and grandpa daycare for a while. We are going to pay them (if it kills me or if I have to bury the money in their backyard), but I know we won’t be able to get them to accept anything near what an actual daycare would cost.

      And that’s really good to know about baby consumables. We are going to try to limit formula, but I have no idea what the reality will be, especially when I go back to work.

  5. It’s been a long time since I’ve had babies in my household, but believe it or not, I don’t recall doing any special saving for them. As far as I remember, insurance covered the medical costs (yes, this was a different era), family and friends gifted us lots of goodies, and the kids had a stay-at-home mom to take care of them. It sounds like you’ve made some smart moves in saving up for baby, and I’m sure that will serve you well. These days when I want to save up for something big, I pretty much follow the same system you do…throwing all extra income and rewards toward it and paring down the budget.

    • I think my insurance is actually going to be quite reasonable. I plan to share the expected cost next week, and then I’ll do an update after the bills actually arrive. Glad to know my plan works for other expenses, Gary!

  6. Wish I was as smart as you guys when we started having babies. We had a little savings, but certainly not even close to a fully funded emergency fund, let alone baby savings. It would have made life sooo much easier overall (not to mention less stressful in an already life altering time of life). Congrats on the great savings! 🙂

    • Thank you, Amanda! The emergency fund is great, and everything else is just icing on the cake. We’re probably going overboard with the extra savings, but I’ve never not collected a paycheck before. So we are going to stretch some of that money through my maternity leave as well!

  7. Your talk about the cost of delivering a baby in the US makes me once again really thankful to live in a country with universal health care.

    It sounds like you two are doing an amazing job of preparing financially for the arrival of Half Penny! He or she is going to pick up some great financial wisdom from you.

  8. Bonnie

    The diaper cake was one of the best gifts I received! Formula, diapers, and wipes cost us at least $200 a month (and this was buying those items at Sam’s–we did go with brand names because I found that the cheap diapers gave baby a rash and didn’t work as well, and the formula was the only one that sat well with her).

    Congrats on meeting an amazing savings goal that you will most definitely need and use!

    BTW, my OOP costs for my unplanned C-section and hospital stay, etc., were at least 10K. Hoping yours are much less!

  9. Jeff

    Biggest mistake we made was not taking advantage of my wife’s HSA. Biggest thing we did to help was calling the hospital to arrange payments over two years. So technically we still don’t own or baby yet ?.

    • Ha! That’s a hilarious way to look at it. I was just joking that I wonder if we have enough time to apply for a new credit card to get some points or miles for Baby 😉

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