In our Parenting Diaries series, we ask everyone how they financially prepared for children. I found the range of responses comforting and illuminating.
- Here’s what everyone so graciously shared with me.
“We moved from Chicago shortly before having my daughter and were relieved to see how much further money goes here. We started saving for our family as soon as we found out we were pregnant (we were saving before, but that money was allocated towards a house, car, etc.). We did not really plan for it – we were blessed to have the ability to start a family without restrictions.”
“We didn’t. We went in blind.”
“You don’t realize what it costs until you’re buying berries every three days. LOL”
“We thought we were prepared. We paid off our cars and student loans. We purchased a modest home. But honestly, we underestimated childcare costs and just in general, costs of raising a child.”
“I don’t think you really can. We both prioritized our careers and sought to get to an earnings level that could sustain the childcare expense and give us flexibility during these early years. Prioritized our careers and saved aggressively in our 20s.”
“When we got married- we started slowly and added more and more until we were mainly living off of 1 income and banking the other. I stayed home for a little over 2 years and then went back to work.”
“We got married young and began planning early for a growing family. We intentionally bought a home that was large enough to start our family, while keeping our housing costs under 30% of our take-home income to preserve flexibility in our budget. We built a fully funded emergency savings account and felt confident in the structure of our retirement accounts and additional investments.
Because of those early decisions, we were able to welcome our first child without making major lifestyle changes. As our family continues to grow, we may adjust our budget accordingly, but the financial foundation we put in place has given us stability and options.”
“We had kids later than many of our peers (our first at 35 and 37), so we were well established in our careers and felt financially prepared, though I don’t think you can fully appreciate how much money it takes to comfortably raise kids until you’re in the thick of it.”
“Worked as much as I could and saved.”
“We both worked.”
“We didn’t really, we were struggling financially in some ways.”
“I had money saved. I spent almost $100k on adoption fees, so had to aggressively save to rebuild my savings with lots of new childcare costs.”
“We didn’t and regretted it LOL.”
“Ha! Can one EVER financially prepare for kids?! Just kidding, but we did purchase a lot with plans to build our house, which we finally did, and I’m still in it today!”
“We didn’t (and didn’t really need to).”
“We saved up a lot in prep for the newborn stage. Newborns are so expensive!”
“Savings, budgeting to ensure that we could afford all the things that we might need.”
“Did not really prepare.”
“We both worked our full time jobs until our first was 1, refinanced our mortgage to save money, which allowed me to start my business for a more flexible work schedule.”
“We waited until we had no loans or debt, had enough savings that if we lost our jobs we would be ok for a few months, and bought a house with a very manageable mortgage so we’d never be house poor.”
“I wouldn’t say we financially prepared at all, but we were in our 40s and had a good nest egg.”
“Honestly, not much prior to our first child since it was a surprise! But after, we created 529 plans for colleges and budget tuition payments for their private school with my husband’s annual bonus.”
