Advice on Financial Goals before TTC

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victoriablackwell

New member
Hello all- I’m feeling particularly down about waiting today since my husband and I looked at our budget last night and there’s SO much to save it feels like we will never be financially ready for a baby.

For some context: We’re both 30, working decent jobs (but I work at a nonprofit soooo, not making bank). On one hand, our lives feel stable (careers, pets, married).... on the other hand, our savings aren’t great (hubs was a FT grad student for 2 years recently), we have some credit card debt, and are still living in an apartment. (Trying to also save for a house down payment, ugh).

I’m looking for advice on 2 questions:

1- What savings goal did you set specifically for pregnancy/L&D/maternity leave/daycare before you TTC?

2- How do you cope with feeling like the timeline keeps getting pushed out? Or the wait is longer than you want?

A big part of me just wants to say fuck it—I’m not getting any younger and it’s not like we’re broke... but my planner/responsible side knows that it will all be easier if we are ready for all the costs baby will bring. Please help!! 💗
 
@victoriablackwell One thing I have heard which I thought was great advice is to research daycare rates for your area and start depositing that much each month into a savings account. If you are planning to stay at home, put your entire salary in. That would serve 2 purposes: make sure you can work your budget around daycare, and to save a bunch of money for baby-related expenses. Seeing as you have other savings goals, you might not want to take this approach until your credit card is paid off. (Also you could probably start this AS you TTC, since it'll be almost a year until baby!) My other advice is that babies can be had in apartments if it's too long to save for a down payment.

As for the second question I am waiting more for career reasons (27 and in my 5th year of my PhD) and will still be WTT probably 2 more years. I have filled my schedule up with non-stop fun and travel. While that may not help if you are trying to save money, I found that coping by starting registries, watching baby videos online, etc. usually make it worse rather than better for me.
 
@mandapanda Thanks for commenting! Yes, thankfully I have a friend with two little ones, and she has given me current daycare rates. We are saving over that amount per month total, but it’s going into various buckets (emergency fund, travel fund, house fund, car fund, kid fund). If we put it all toward baby we would have to stall saving on everything else. And yes.... not to mention.... paying off credit cards!! I’m starting to think that we either need to choose baby or house and just focus, or we will be spread too thin. :(

Thanks for sharing what coping mechanisms to NOT do.... I’ve so far just been educating myself on fertility, TTC, pregnancy etc but I feel like it keeps it too top of mind for me and maybe I need to ignore all of it until I can get closer to my savings goals/TTC.
 
@victoriablackwell I know a lot of people on here like to immerse themselves in baby, so YMMV. I think since I have such a long wait it is counterproductive for me!

I don't want to get preachy but it might be wise to shunt some of your savings into paying off CC debt, since the interest rates there are so much higher than what you would get back from investing your savings. Best of luck!
 
@mandapanda Not preachy at all! I agree that having the debt is bad. We paid off a significant chunk this winter but thought about switching focus to savings.... but perhaps that was the wrong tack. I appreciate the input and help! :)
 
@victoriablackwell My husband I bought our house in August because I was adamant that we become home owners before TTC.. but now he is facing being let go due to school budget cuts and it is terrifying. Our cost of living essentially doubled by buying a house and we would be able to save so much more for a baby if we had waited to buy a house until after TTC. I can't go back in time and I LOVE our house.. but maybe you can put homeownership on the back burner for a while? You have your whole life to buy a house! :)
 
@victoriablackwell We’re planning to stay in our apartment because we live in downtown Chicago and won’t find anything this big for this price. I don’t think you need to have a house before baby, but I also don’t know what your apartment looks like. Do you have room for baby stuff? We’re not going to have room for a massive crib and rocking chair and piles of toys and etc., but we know where a bassinet and dresser and stroller will go.

We also wanted to have a 6 month emergency fund in place, and no debt. We were really lucky to have graduated with no loans, so that was a lot easier for us than it sounds. How aggressively are you guys saving right now? Can someone pick up a side hustle like reselling clothes or something?
 
@roars Thank you for your response! We could stay in our apartment.... it’s a one bedroom but has a big bedroom and there’s a little nook where a rocking chair/playpen/toys could go. Not perfect, not impossible. The one thing that makes it hard is we have a puppy and not having a yard has been tough.

We both unfortunately have student loans, which is not helpful. We are aggressively (for us at least) saving for house/emergency fund, and less so for a kid, although I’m conflicted if we should switch the house & kid savings around. I do have a very casual side hustle (I pickup event shifts, but it’s very intermittent). I have thought about doing Uber, but I sit all day in an office so I’d like something more active/are from home. If you have any good ideas please send them my way!

6 month emergency savings goal is helpful (we also have that goal but are just starting.... although I have a personal emergency savings account that’s at $3k).
 
@victoriablackwell Our apartment strategy is the same; we’re also counting on a big bedroom nook! I don’t know why cribs are so big, so let me know if you find an apartment-sized bassinet!

For side gigs, I found a small nonprofit who needed someone to manage social media for a few hours per week. Maybe ask around to see if someone needs something like that? Even offering to design flyers online could work! There’s also TaskRabbit kinds of sites where you can offer all sorts of weird things like assembling IKEA furniture or cleaning services.
 
@roars So this crib is expensive but it can go from bassinet, to crib, to toddler bed, to big kid bed! It's designed to be 0-10 so that type of flexibility could be worth it! And it is so dang cute!
 
@roars Also live in Chicago (north side) and have we have a 1 bedroom. It's cheaper than downtown, but I don't know if we can afford a 2 bedroom in the area. We've looked into some suburbs but it's hard to decide where else we want to live that works for both our commutes.
 
@martod Commute is definitely a thing for us too. I don’t want to move out to a neighborhood or suburbs when I’m on a direct bus line to work. Also, I selfishly love living downtown and don’t want to give up my access to restaurants and nice view lol
 
@roars Another Chicagoan here :) We just made the move to the suburbs, which I was extremely reluctant about for the same reasons you mentioned. I have to say... it's been a much easier transition than I was anticipating. And I'm still downtown daily for work, so I don't feel "disconnected" like I feared.
 
@victoriablackwell 1) Our goal is $10k in our “baby savings” (which is separate from our life savings/emergency fund/investments). We weren’t highly scientific about the number, honestly. This money would cover start up baby costs like stroller, nursery set-up, car seat, clothes, medical costs, etc. We are also mostly debt free, besides one car loan and our mortgage. We recently bought both the car and house, which were important to us TTC, but obviously plenty of people have babies in rentals!

If chipping away at the CC debt isn’t happening as quickly as you’d like, I’d strongly suggest prioritizing that pre-TTC. Paying off a CC won’t get easier later, and you’ll breathe so much easier when bigger recurring bills like daycare come. Holy shit the cost of daycare scares me (like $15k a year for the CHEAP OPTIONS where I am).
 
@gallinal Thanks for replying! $10k in “baby savings” is awesome!! Yeah I really want a house before trying for a baby but I’m also scared of waiting too long for the baby, y’know? I’m thinking maybe sticking in our rental is a better idea... I just hate not having a yard! (Since we have a dog.... it’s a pain).

Thanks for suggesting paying down debt first.... I was wondering if that was the smarter option. If we didn’t save at all we could pay down debt in the next year, although then I’ll be 31 before even saving for a kid....

And yeah the cost of daycare scares me too, although at least in my area it’s not quite as expensive!! $15k/year is CRAZY!!!
 
@victoriablackwell An hour south of Seattle. $24k a year for daycare. I will be staying at home since my whole salary would be used up in daycare and commuting costs. I would essentially bring home $0 so it's cheaper for me to stay home. Some are not able to do this but DH makes a pretty good salary (slightly sub 6 figures) so we should be ok. We are also paying off all our debt in the next few months in preparation for TTC.
 
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