Hello! Newbie & first time poster; not sure if this should go here or under mini-mustaches: (Q for parents)
I'm 30, married, renting in Chicago, working as an RN for 2 years (love!), a natural miser though too flighty to really watch my pennies (could never get past the first step of charting my purchases in Your Money or Your Life). I've had the itch to have kids for oh, about 7 years now, and part of my scheme to have a kid when I was 25 was to find a career that I could work part-time and feel rewarded by (and make a decent income, and break into the field in not much time). Now that I've been making a tolerable income and actually LIKE my job, husband and I are past the wedding (which we saved for ourselves - parents paid about 20% and there was no debt at the end) and we've since saved $36K in an ING account for a down payment on a house or condo...we're at that point where I feel we're kinda sorta nearly ready. Except.
I'm cheap but I still end up spending money on stupid stuff, though I never let my credit cards go without paying down the balance each month (personal spending averages $400-$500/month, between cash & credit card - includes my commute to work, uniforms, frozen food from Trader Joe's for lunch...and the dreaded misc. category, which was probably a mix of stuff from the thrift store, birthday gifts for friends, a necessity like new glasses or an indulgence like a massage or my Android phone). My husband is more of a middle-class spender - he doesn't have the visceral hatred of loans I feel, and he doesn't have a problem with spending money on things I think we should DIY, like haircuts or coffee, though to be fair he also pays down his credit card balances every month (about $600) and contributes his fair share to living within our means (We've invented a complicated algorithm to keep us from fighting about the "personal allowance" stuff, and we do save more than many of our friends and peers, though we're still only at about a 16%-20% savings rate). We still have about $60K in student loans (it was closer to $80K when we got engaged; I've since paid down my highest interest rate loan using grit and some low-interest-earning savings bonds and I am doubling my payments on my 6%, 15 year private loan, which is down to $21K). I sold my car before we moved back to Chicago 3 years ago (where we both have family) and we've since been doing well on one-car, though not having a parking space can be a little annoying at times and he still (!) doesn't have a bike. I love the idea of having more financial independence, but I feel at the rate we're going that might be closer to that when we're what, age 50? My husband is currently taking advantage of his position as an IT employee at a university to get some free/cheap schooling: he's aiming to have a post-bacc. programming certificate by next April, and hopefully a 20K+ salary increase at a new job to go with it. (He earns the smaller salary between us both - he's at $44K to my $58K, and though he's had loads of schooling, including a master's, he has no formal training in IT, only experience and smarts).
My question is really about whether my various get-debt-free schemes are playing with fire when it comes to having a kid. I'm thinking about the choice of a cheap condo in our 'hood (1bed under $100K) versus the whole shebang of a house or 3bed condo (the middle-class path, which would likely leave us in debt for longer - even if the housing market improves I still don't see this as a win to have bigger debts plus our student loans, and we might soon end up with new uglies like a car loan, to boot). See, I figure if we postpone conception for a few more years, we can end my debts (which have the highest interest rate) and maybe even ALL our debts, while paying a fixed rate lower than our current rent for a nicer place, albeit one that might be a bit too small for a three-person family, or at least our ideal three-person family. Husband also wants a new car, and we WILL eventually need one for a family with a kid (ours is a 2003 Tiburon) - I'm done with car loans but I have a feeling we will eventually settle on a Prius, which even used comes to $15K-$18K. Still, we could at this point more-or-less start throwing the bulk of our previous "house savings" at our debt, and then saving toward the down payment for "the big house" after this, while building some equity with low mortgage interest rates. Hopefully, too, my husband will also find his (programming) job more rewarding and also be rewarded in kind with the kind of salary increases I think he deserves - we both want him to be the primary breadwinner when we have a kid, and I'd switch to part-time or even stop working for a year or two. All this can probably be accomplished in 2-4 years with my current number crunching, and then we'd have our kid debt-free on our own terms. However, I'm worried that putting off conception until I'm 32, 33, or even older, means running the risk of a potential heartache in terms of infertility (not to mention my impatience since age 25). I know there are those on these boards who have paid off debts while raising families on just ONE income, but I hate debt so much that I think ending it before we have our own little one will just make me a much better mom, as well as make us both feel more free in our career/life choices. But I worry so much that we might have undiagnosed infertility that I don't want to be cursing myself out for waiting two more years until we start trying. I suppose, if at that point we were super-savers we'd be even more ready to save for the big guns like IVF, but it does make me think "what if?" The worries seem so great on both ends; I'm not sure which goal to shoot for. Is there really that big of a gulf between 30 and 33 to start trying for a kid? To those who saved before kids, and those who didn't - was it worth it? What choices would you make?
And yeah, I know babies don't cost that much money. The biggest expense I've crunched out for us is probably daycare, which we'd still need to pay for sometimes even with family in the area and me on a part-time schedule. Going one-income doesn't feel right to me - even a year away from my career seems too long, and I do earn more than enough hourly to justify contributing to the family pot with the daycare expense added in (though who knows how I'll feel if I'm pregnant and debt-free with a high-earning spouse in three years?). I'm thinking that our spending pre-kid and post-kid will not be dramatically different, and that we'd still be on a good path toward FI...it'd just be way easier if there were NO MORE STUDENT LOANS.
