It’s truly time to do something I never do — write out a budget. On paper. Something we can try to stick to when the baby arrives and all of our spending priorities change.
Right now, our “budget” is in my head. I just know what we can spend, and what we can’t. We manage our finances well, so it’s not too difficult at the moment. Although I have been spending more on groceries lately, due to my voracious appetite.
But once diapers, doctors visits and all of the “preparatory” spending come into play, it’s a whole new ballgame. And then there will be infant daycare, the costs of which are going to be more than $1,000 a month, most likely. I’ll have to start pricing that out and making phone calls soon, too.
I have dreams of convincing the hubby to drop some of our ridiculous platinum-level Verizon FIOS features — the movie channels alone cost $30/month, but I know that’s Mr. NSF’s biggest interest. He doesn’t have hobbies, unless you call watching every move ever made a hobby. We do have four cable boxes. We can easily get rid of two of those, the basement and in the bedroom. That leaves our main television in the living room and the one in our four-season porch room, which is going to make a fantastic playroom, thanks to a door I can close and lock away all the toys and clutter — obviously, when the baby isn’t back there.
So I need to stop planning and start doing when it comes to this budget.
It’s incredibly humbling to know that every financial step — and misstep — that we make will have an effect on our daughter. And that encourages me to become even more frugal in our everyday lives, so that we can meet all of her needs and spoil her a bit.
I think watching TV is a pretty cheap hobby, but blogging is cheaper. Maybe you can get him to start blogging 🙂
You need to get your hubby onto the wagon of using the Internet for movies. Yes, it is not the most moralistic method, but Netflix is a more legit option and it streams right to your TV instantly.
I have a budget in my head as well, I have been going well the last few months with it there, in my head. I am just horrible at actually sticking to a budget so I have been slow to make it official. I did, however, significantly decrease the amount of alcohol I consume, which has been huge on my budget.
@Doctor S: Oh, we get Netflix, too, but through the mail still. He’s thinking about the streaming version. And I remember the days of going out a few night a week — boy, bars are total money-sucks.
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