I’m starting to realize that before I had a baby, I was pretty much a tightwad.  Since my baby’s been born, I’ve loosened up a little.  For instance, I’ve purchased a few new outfits for her that didn’t come from a thrift store.  I’ve purchased new cloth diapers that I didn’t really need just because I wanted to try them or they are cute (I can also re-sell them if I don’t like them, or when I’m done with them).  We’ve used the dishwasher and dryer more times than I’d like.  We probably aren’t saving quite as much money as we could (but we’re still saving).

I’m happy.  Spending a little money on things that are important to me makes me happy.  Hoarding my money doesn’t do me any good if I’m miserable.  One of my 2012 financial goals was to find a nice balance, and I’m still working hard to achieve that.  It’s a constant struggle for me, because most of the time I think I should live as cheaply as possible in order to save the most amount of money that I can.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming thinking about all the things we need to save for: unexpected expenses, retirement, the baby’s college, new vehicles, etc.  I have to tell myself as long as we’re saving something, we’re doing okay. Life is about experiencing things and living life to its fullest.  Having a baby really makes you have a new take on life, and I never imagined it would be this good.

Even when we were trying to conceive I knew I wanted to use cloth diapers.  When we finally got pregnant I started doing research (basically asking a million questions to one of my BFFs) and decided to go the simple route and try prefolds and covers. Prefolds are the cloth diapers you probably think of- the old fashioned ones your grandmother probably used.  The covers are a lot easier to use now and have snaps or aplix (velcro) that secure the diaper on the baby and keep the baby’s clothes dry.  There were many benefits for using prefolds:

1. They are cheap compared to other diapers like pocket diapers and all-in-ones.  I couldn’t afford $20 per diaper that would get used once and have to get washed. $1.50, I can handle that.  If one gets ruined, no big deal.  If I ruin a $20 diaper, I would cry.

2. They are natural cotton fibers, which come clean easier and rarely have stink issues.  Easy to take care of and wash!

3. There are many sizes to choose from, which makes a nice fit on the baby.

Overall, my biggest factor in choosing to use prefolds was the price.  We cloth diaper to save money, keep diapers out of the landfill, and keep chemicals away from our baby’s bottom.  I wanted to save as much money as possible but still be happy with cloth diapering.  Here is our current stash:

-24 Newborn prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers
-9 Newborn Proraps (covers)
-24 Infant prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers
-1 Bummis Super Brite Small Cover
-1 Thirsties Small cover
-7 Flip covers (one sized- fit baby from 7 lbs to potty training)
-7 BumGenius one size pocket diapers
-A few various covers and diapers I got from a friend

We started cloth diapering when our daughter was about a week old. We didn’t want to have to fool with the cloth when she was still passing meconium, and I didn’t want to be stressed about doing diaper laundry. Before she was born, I went back and forth on whether I would be buying newborn sized diapers because I didn’t know how big she would be. I am very thankful I did, because she is still wearing them at 6 weeks old!

I got over 20 free BumGenius diapers free off a message board I read. I just had to pay shipping. The diapers were very well loved and needed all the elastic and velcro replaced. After I repaired one diaper and saw how long it took, I sorted the diapers and passed on the ones I knew I wouldn’t be using to someone else. I kept 10 total, and still have 3 to repair.

So far we’re loving the cloth diapers. Penny seems to be happy when she’s in them, and even Mr. Money changes diapers! He’s got the prefold folds down, and it’s pretty awesome that he doesn’t complain about it. I’m very glad we decided to try the prefolds and covers right now! I may search for some used diapers if there are some different ones I want to try.

Would you use cloth diapers? Do you have any questions?

So far, I love being a mom.  I love taking care of my baby and doing as much housework as I can.  It’s been tough to get much done around the house because someone doesn’t like to be put down much.  She’s getting much better at it lately!  Here are some things I’ve observed since becoming a mama:

-Sometimes convenience is key.  We’ve done a lot of things that we wouldn’t normally do convenience-wise since we’ve had the baby.  We’ve gotten take out a few times when Mr. Money wasn’t in the mood to cook.  I’m not stressing about it, because we have a brand new baby and it’s not been excessive.  Sometimes you just have to be flexible!

-Some of my frugal ways are harder to execute with a little one.  Hanging laundry to dry and doing dishes by hand are just two examples I can think of right now.  It’s much easier for me to throw the clothes in the drier and run the dishwasher, so that’s what we’ve been doing!  I figure as long as we have clean clothes and clean dishes, that’s all that matters.

-Breastfeeding really isn’t “free”.  I’m eating a lot more food and have had to buy some nursing supplies, but compared to the cost of formula, I’m saving tons of money.  I am so thankful breastfeeding is working out well.  So thankful.  I don’t think I could swing the cost of formula each month!

-Money is not everything.  Ever since my daughter was born, I’ve been infatuated with her.  She is just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I’d do anything for her.  Staying home means we’ll have to make sacrifices, but I don’t think I could leave her right now.  It would break my heart.

As soon as we get her social security card, I plan on opening up a savings account for her.  I hope it comes soon! I’d like to get that taken care of. We’re adjusting well to life with the baby, and I feel awesome.  I am so happy, and she was definitely worth the wait!

I had my baby on January 22, 2012!  She was born at home and weighed 6 pounds even and was 19 inches long.  She came a lot earlier than I ever expected (I thought I would have her today!)  Life has been great lately, but more busy!  I can’t believe how much laundry a little person can help create.  We are so in love and couldn’t be happier.  I’m trying to think of a good nickname for her for the blog and the only thing I’ve come up with so far is Penny!

I can see how our money is going to change as a result of the baby- I think our electric bill will be higher because of us both being home and keeping the house warmer for her and also because of the amount of laundry I’ve been doing.  I also know that my gas usage has gone down since I haven’t really left the house too much yet, and that probably won’t change too much.  I’m sure I’ll start going places, but it won’t be as much as when I was working.

I’ll make sure to keep you all informed, and if you have any good nicknames, let me know!

One of my favorite breakfast foods is pancakes. Since going gluten free, I’ve had pancakes less often than usual. For awhile, we were buying Pamela’s Ultimate Baking and Pancake Mix but it got to be too expensive. I just couldn’t justify adding that into our food budget. I had to come up with some recipes that would be gluten free using items we normally had on hand. I have an awesome gluten free pancake recipe that has been tested and endorsed by those who are not even gluten free!

Gluten Free Pancake Recipe

(serves at least 2 people)

-2 cups ground oats (you can use Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Oats for gluten free oats)
-2 cups plain yogurt or full fat milk
-2 eggs
-2 Tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil
-1/2 teaspoon of salt
-1 teaspoon baking soda
-1 Tablespoon of sugar

1.  Mix the ground oats and yogurt or milk.

2. Add the eggs, butter, salt, baking soda, and sugar.  I make sure to let this mixture sit for about 20 minutes so the baking soda will make the pancakes fluffier.

3. Add butter to your cast iron skillet or griddle and cook the pancakes over medium heat.  You don’t want to have the heat too high- these pancakes take a little longer to cook than regular pancakes and are a little thicker.  I check the bottoms of mine to see when they are ready to flip.

4. Enjoy!

Notes: If you have Celiac Disease or are serving someone that has it, please use gluten free oats.  Oats are naturally gluten free but generally have gluten cross contamination during processing.  I grind my oats in the coffee grinder.

For 2012, I wanted to come up with a more accurate budget, seeing that our baby would be born this year and hopefully we’ll be able to control our spending without worrying too much about it. I figured if I budget better, then I’ll hopefully be less stressed about where our money is going. Of course, I’ve also decided I’m not going to be so darn hard on myself because I’ll have a baby and have no clue how that’s going to impact our budget. If it costs us more money than I anticipated, then it does, and I’ll adjust our budget accordingly.

Here’s our 2012 budget:

• Mortgage- $793.19
• Escrow- $215.00
• Energy- $150.00
• Car insurance- $88.00
• Verizon- $40.00
• Cable, phone, internet- $125.00
• Food- $350.00
• Retirement- $100.00
• House Stuff- $50.00
• Gas- $200.00

Some notes:

The mortgage is just principal and interest.  I used to round the payment up to $800 or so, until I found out that the extra money that I was paying was being applied to the next month’s payment!  Talk about annoying.  To make additional principal payments, I have to mail a separate check to a certain address.  What a pain.

We escrow our taxes and insurance ourselves.  We refinanced our mortgage to a home equity loan a few years ago, and the bank will not escrow for us.  We have a separate escrow account with ING.

The reason our energy category is a flat $150 each month is because we budget for irregular expenses by transferring that amount into a separate account each month.

The Verizon bill includes just my cell phone, as Mr. Money has a phone paid by work.

The car insurance went down a little since last year because the cars are older and so are we!

The cable, phone, and internet may get changed this year.  It seems like that’s a high amount for that.  I’m thinking about switching our phone to something like a Magic Jack since I really like having a home phone, and maybe dropping the cable.

I don’t know if the food budget is a reasonable amount our not.  Guess we’ll see after a few months!

We’ll have to really start saving for retirement ourselves, as I won’t be participating in my 401k plan at work, and Mr. Money’s employer doesn’t offer any retirement savings plan.  I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

The house stuff we’ll have to play it by ear with. We’ve done a lot of work to the house over the past five years, so we’re not anticipating any huge expenses like new flooring, etc.  I would like new counter tops and flooring in my kitchen, but that’s not a necessity so we’ll have to see about that.

Gas will go down from our monthly expenses since I won’t be commuting to work and back every day. Yay!  This might be too much budgeted, but who knows at this point!

Of course, I won’t know how this budget works for us until I’m actually staying at home with the baby.  I’m just glad we’ve got a general idea of where we’d like our money to go.  I feel like there are a few categories I’ve forgotten, but it’s a flexible budget, so that’s okay!

Have you budgeted for 2012?

2012 is already here, and I’m a little behind on our financial and life goals.  I’m a little uncertain about what I should aim for, as we’re going to have a brand new baby and will have to adjust to the new expenses and life with a child.  My goals this year will be attainable (I hope!) and I am crossing my fingers for the best year ever.  It certainly will be interesting and a lot different than past years!  Here are some of the goals I’d like for us to accomplish:

1. Set up a savings account for the baby. The baby has not even been born yet and already has a stash of money.  I’m going to open a custodian savings account for the benefit of the baby.  I will also have to research 529 plans in case that’s the way we want to go.  I’m thinking it would be easier just to open the UTMA (Uniform Transfer to Minors) account and wait until the money accumulates and then go from there.  We’ll see.

2.  Figure out life insurance. I had life insurance through my employer, but I’m not too sure what’s happening with it since I’m leaving the bank.  That’s something that we really need to address, especially with the new baby coming.

3. Change beneficiaries. I’ve got various family members listed as beneficiaries on our retirement plans and life insurance, but I would like to change it to the baby.

4. Make more money blogging/working from home.  I’d like to be able to contribute financially to our household as much as I can.  In addition to blogging and writing, I can shoot photography if I have time.  Of course, this all depends on the baby, as that’s my first priority.  I’d like to stay at home for at least the first three years of the baby’s life, and it would be awesome if I could make enough money freelancing to do so.

5. Stay debt free.  This was on last year’s goals as well, but I think it’s important enough to stay on this year’s.  I will have to say, if there was a good reason that we needed to borrow money, I probably would do it.  I don’t think debt is the worst thing in the world as long as you’re responsible and borrow money for the right reasons.  Mr. Money’s not going to get the 2012 Mustang he wanted for instance, but if we needed to take out a loan, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.  I’m going to do my best to avoid it, though!

6. Finish up all house projects that need to be done.  We need to repaint the cement on our porches, paint the shed, figure out what to do with the dining room flooring, and redo our master bath.  I’m going to do as much as I can to make the house look really good this year.  We’ve done a lot, but I feel like there’s still so much more to do.  These projects shouldn’t cost a ton of money.

7. Learn to relax and not worry so darn much.  One of my best friends gave me some great advice when it comes to money.  What’s the point of having a ton of cash in the bank if you are miserable?  I’m not going to worry about saving every penny where I can like I used to.  I want to be happy.

What are your 2012 goals?

Friday, January 6 is my last day of employment with the bank.  I’ve been an employee there for over seven years, and it’s been a really tough decision, but I’ve decided that I’m going to quit and be a stay at home mom.  I’ve always wanted to do that, so this is the path I’m going to take.  I can always return to work if I have to.  When considering being a working versus stay at home mom, I considered many factors.

1. If I kept working, I’d have to pay daycare.  Full time day care is expensive, costing anywhere from $600-$800 a month!  That would consume more than one of my paychecks.  Also, if my baby was in day care there’s a much greater chance of the baby getting sick and me having to take time off work.  That would stink!

2. I’d have to buy disposable diapers.  I plan on cloth diapering my baby to save money, and if I had to put my baby in day care, I’d have to buy disposables for the baby to use while in day care.  For Seventh Generation
newborn disposable diapers, it would cost 25 cents a diaper!  That’s $75 a month if the baby uses 10 diapers a day.

3. It would be more difficult to exclusively breastfeed, and I’d probably be more likely to give up, meaning we’d have to buy formula.  It would make me very sad if I couldn’t breastfeed my baby exclusively at least for the first full year.  Staying at home will give me an advantage that I’ll be able to breastfeed successfully.  By staying home, I also avoid having to buy an expensive breast pump!

4. I’d have to pay for new work clothes, gas to get to work, more lunches out, etc.  That isn’t a huge deal, but our gas budget will decrease from me staying at home.

The biggest reason I decided to quit my job and be a stay at home mom is because this has always been my dream.  I’ve always wanted to be home with our babies, enjoying them and raising them myself.  I truly believe that it is such a personal decision, and I would never judge another mother for deciding to work or stay at home.  I think every family does what works best for their family.

I’m going to have to be careful with our money to make sure that we can afford for me to stay at home, but we’ve saved up a little bit of money to use in case we need to, and we’ve been careful with our money all along so I don’t see it being a problem.

I will admit, I am a little nervous about the transition since I’ve spent the last ten years working.  I think it will be quite the change at first, but it will be something I can adapt to and I think I’ll end up loving it.  I’m hoping my next boss will be as good to work for as my current one at the bank!

Would you consider staying at home to raise children?

At the beginning of 2011, I set some financial and life goals for myself and Mr. Money. Here’s how 2011 played out for us:

1. Keep up with the clutter and declutter 365 items from our house this year. SUCCESS.

I know I decluttered and donated a lot more than 365 items from our house this year.

2. Pay at least $3,000 down on the principal of our mortgage. FAIL. We did pay off $2679 off our mortgage prinicpal, so I think that’s pretty good!  Our extra money this year went to our savings account.  Honestly, I’m not too concerned with paying down our mortgage aggressively at this point.  We’ve got other priorities.  I do wish our mortgage balance was lower, but we can chip away at it.

3. Travel to somewhere fun and exciting.  SUCCESS? We took a trip to Colorado when I was around 20 weeks pregnant.  It was our last trip as just the two of us.  I really wish we had gone to Hawaii last year for our fifth anniversary, but I was a tightwad and didn’t do it.  Oh well.  The nice thing is that we saved money by not going, allowing me more flexibility to be a stay at home mom.

4. Get knocked up. SUCCESS. I am most proud of this goal, as we’ve been trying to have a baby for quite some time.  We are really excited to welcome our baby in 2012.

5. Live on one salary. SUCCESS.  We did successfully manage to live off Mr. Money’s income.  My income did pay for health insurance and retirement savings, so we didn’t factor that into the equation.  I’m okay with that.

6. Make more money from side hustles. SUCCESS? I did make money blogging this year, although it wasn’t enough for me to quit my day job.  I’m hoping 2012 provides more money making opportunities from home for me.  Of course, I’m going to not stress about it because I’ll have a new baby.

7. Stay debt free! SUCCESS! We did stay consumer debt free this year, and only have our mortgage debt.  It feels like in the past few months we’ve been spending money like crazy, but we’ve saved for this, so it’s okay.

For 2012, I’m going to make some realistic financial goals.  I have no clue how our budget will be affected by the baby, but I’ve decided that I’m not going to be too hard on myself.  What’s the point of having tons of cash in the bank if my life is miserable?  I’m going to do my best to find a nice balance in 2012 between budgeting and living life.  I’m anticipating it to be the best year of my life ever, so that’s a positive start!

I need to decide what to make our 2012 goals and come up with a new budget for after the baby is born. Fun!

Overall, I’m happy with the way we spent 2011.  I’m very thankful we didn’t have any huge expenses (well, minus paying for the baby’s birth ) and that we were healthy and happy throughout most of the year.  I feel very blessed, and am sure that feeling will stick with me throughout the next year!

Happy New Year!

Yesterday morning I asked Mr. Money to go and get the mail, as we were expecting a card from his dad.  He went out to get the mail, said there was nothing in there, and not an hour later did we get a knock on the door.  It was one of our neighbors down the street, bringing us mail that had our address on it that he found in the ditch. Nice.

He found a card that my aunt had mailed to us, ripped open, card and envelope in the ditch.  There was also an empty envelope from our bank.  Great.  I figured out that it was actually our credit card statement, completely missing.  I do feel better that it wasn’t a bank statement, as those have our full account number and other information on them.

I called our credit card services company to cancel our cards.  She said we shouldn’t be too worried because the full account number is not on the statement, and if anyone tried to purchase anything online they would need the security code on the back of the card, which they wouldn’t have.  Also, we’re not liable for any fraudulent charges that anyone may make.  I still canceled both my card and Mr. Money’s just to be safe.  What stinks is that I was planning on ordering our crib this weekend and now I’ll have to wait until we get the new cards.  Ugh.  What a pain!

I made sure to enroll our bank statements in paperless statements now so that there’s no chance that anyone can steal those.  I feel better about it, and will just have to make sure I print one each month, or at least back it up digitally.  What a pain!

I’m a little freaked out that they stole something else that I have no idea about, but I guess there’s not really a way for me to know that.  I’m pissed because I feel like I’ve been violated.  What idiot goes around at Christmas time stealing stuff out of people’s mailboxes?!  They’re lucky I don’t know who they are.

Mr. Money has suggested getting a post office box, but I don’t really want to have to deal with that headache.

Do you think we should take any other precautions?