Thursday, December 13, 2007

Follow-up to "Our Saving and Spending Plan"

Someone left the following comment regarding my post Our Saving and Spending Plan:

How much, then, would you say your financial situation is driving the timing of when you plan to have children? Or, is it the other way around?

I've often heard it said that if you wait for the "perfect" time to have children, you never will. I think the same holds true for starting to save for retirement or starting to pay off debt. You can always say to yourself, "I'll do that after..."

While it will be nice to have 2-3 years of saving before I become a stay-at-home mom and we lose my income, saving is not the driving factor in our timing. There are two main issues that made my husband and me decide to wait to start our family.

1. Our marriage. My husband and I just got married in July, and we only dated for a year before getting married. We would like to have a few years to build a strong marriage before adding children to the mix.

2. My mouth. I have an underbite that was never corrected when I was a kid. My dentist has been encouraging me for years to get this fixed, as it is doing long-term damage to my teeth and gums. I am finally going to do this, starting right after our honeymoon at the end of January (the first appointment is already scheduled). I will have braces for a year and then oral surgery to break my jaw and reset it. Fun, huh? Needless to say, this is not something I want to go through while trying to care for a newborn at the same time!

As you can see, while waiting a couple of years before starting our family will be very beneficial to our savings balance, it really isn't the main reason that I'm still on birth control. ;)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Goodness yes! I once met a woman who had a young baby and her mouth wired shut. I don't think she was very happy, but it was hard to tell... :/

I'm also in the newlywed camp and I'd like to spend a year or two living with hubby before adding kids. We dated for 5 years, but we were mostly living 2 hours apart...so it was rough sometimes.

Peachy said...

I'm also newlywed, and same thing. We want about 2 years before having kids.

Good luck with your blog.

Jessica said...

I must say, I am having a fun time reading through your blog!

I completely agree with waiting for kids. This is going to be a question that you get often now that you are a newlywed.

I have been married for almost 3 years now and I still get the question all the time. I think that it is important to really enjoy the time with your husband to learn all about each othe, and pay attention to each other. Otherwise you may miss out on something because you have someone else to take care of.

For now, I like taking care of him. And, having the freedom to go out and do things whenever we want :)