Hellobee Boards

We knew we were in a good place financially but we didn't do any sort of budgeting. I don't even know how you would budget a baby; there are so many unexpected expenses!

We had a financial goal but we are ttc and are short of our goal. At the same time, we know we are financially stable enough that it isn't an irresponsible decision. We can live off of my husband's salary so the plan for now is for me to stay home or work part time but we have the wiggle room for me to go back to work and be able to contribute financially.

We always budget for everything, so we were very comfortable with our finances when we started TTC.

Surprise baby made us get ready.

Budgeted. We knew we could afford her.

The "you make it work" strategy makes me crazy!

We made sure we were debt free and had the means to raise a child before we got married and it was a good thing since we brought a whoops baby home from our honeymoon.

I to am a TTC planner but the older I get the less I hold on to my plans. However, there are a couple of things that we needed to do financially before thinking about kids. To me it was really important that we bought a home first and my husband wanted our debts to be minimal. We worked toward our goal and we have a lovely home and our debt situation in comfortable for us. When we do have a baby I would like to say home, so in the mean time we've been saving money for the unexpected so that we can stay out of debt.

Once someone I admire gave me some advice to not worry about it so much because when the baby is there you figure it out because you have to.

We're in the middle. We don't really budget now, we just put money aside for bills and savings automatically and spend the leftover money as we like. So serious budgeting for the baby wasn't really on our radar. However, we waited to TTC until we knew we can afford baby expenses with mainly just adjustments to our dining out/hobby/play expenses (which we'd expect to change post-baby anyway).

Honestly? I budgeted down to the dollar. DH and I don't make enough for us to fudge it, so I ran endless budgets to figure out if we could afford a baby. We planned out how to save a small nest egg for maternity leave, and stuck to a strict budget...until I got my new job and a 20% raise! Despite the extra money, I'm so glad I planned as much as I did. DH and I felt way more comfortable TTC once we knew we could provide for a LO!

We didn't budget because we're lazy and don't ever track anything. However we had a good idea of what our expenses would be and knew that a LO wouldn't impact our lifestyle.

We save almost 30% of our combined after tax salaries without trying too hard. So, assuming we will cut back on travel and restaurants, I figured there would be plenty of wiggle room. Swinging childcare plus college savings will be tight, but we will make it work. We both have good jobs and get paid decent bonuses too, so there is usually a way to make things work.

We were budgeting for it for a while by accomplishing other financial goals we had that were before saving for a baby (paying off debt, savings goals, affording life insurance, etc.).
But our girl surprised us with a BFP 6 months earlier than we planned on TTC. So, we were in a place where we knew we could afford it but didn't meet some goals we would have liked to and cut some fun things we had planned like travel. Though I was 35 weeks pregnant when the trip was scheduled so it was an easy choice not to fly across the country and save the money.

We definitely budgeted and made a lot of plans before TTC. I'm glad we did because we have spent a ton of money on fertility treatments. We wouldn't have been able to afford them of we hadn't prepared before TTC.