Hi everyone,
Sorry I haven't responded lately—my daughter and I both got horribly sick for over a week with a nasty cold and we're just now recovering. Thanks for the continued ideas!
I do worry that it seems some of the most recent responses are a bit harsh/judgmental about us. I was definitely asking for advice, critique, ideas, etc, to try to achieve my goals here and I'm not easily offended. BUT I don't see why so many people think wanting 18 weeks at home with a newborn is so crazy—maybe it's not typical in the United States, but the United States has the worst maternity leave in the developed world. Breastfeeding and being at home and bonding with baby is really, really important to me, and I'm asking for ideas on how to achieve that rather modest goal, not slice it down. If someone in this forum was asking for ideas on how to retire early to spend more time with their kids--would everyone suggest early retirement is silly and they should just keep working?
Every baby and mom is different, but my daughter was still nursing around the clock every 1 1/2 to 2 hours (which is totally normal for a nursing baby) when I returned to work after 11 weeks with her last time... I could barely function at work. Time with a newborn is more precious to me than delaying our other financial goals by a few months, and I would hate to go into debt, but I know we'd be able to pay it off quickly if we had to, we've done it before with our loans and such.
Someone asked what the priorities were between daughter's medical treatment, 18 weeks of maternity leave and going into debt. I'm not going to choose between the maternity leave or daughter's medical treatment—kids come first. Look, if we HAVE to go into debt temporarily, we will -- even if somehow husband did not find more income by the time the unpaid portion of my leave starts (which I doubt--he is bound to find SOMETHING in the next few months), we might rack up $3,000-$4,000 in debt at most over those unpaid 9 weeks. Which totally sucks, but we could pay it back in less than a year if we had to, and in the end we will have maybe delayed saving as much for retirement as we'd like, but we'd be OK.
Obviously we need to do something to make things better and we have been a bit in denial and made some mistakes here... but—I'm not sure how "on fire" our hair really is here at the moment. I'm more trying to prevent our hair from catching fire and seeing what we can do to fix things. As I mentioned a few times—we have low rent, NO credit card or student loan debt (we used to have over $50,000 in debt about 5 years ago and finished paying it off last year before trying for a second baby), no car, and a decent (if not amazing) chunk saved for retirement. Aside from our high grocery and medical bills, we spend very little and are finding ways to spend less. (And we are HEAVY users of the library, the great outdoors and other free entertainment).
I think someone else implied that we are somehow not using birth control carefully--that's definitely not what happened here. Both kids were fully planned and decided on, and we spaced them out by four years for financial reasons (we waited til all our debts were paid off older kid was in free public school before trying for younger) ... it was just that the unexpected medical bills and higher grocery bill hit right AFTER I got the good news on my very planned second pregnancy.
Someone else mentioned they thought husband looking at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, etc. was a bit fancy or whatnot—he didn't apply there because of name brands, but more because those places pay better by the hour than many other retail jobs around here.
And as for a general update — we did get the December grocery bill bumped down from last month's by nearly $200 by being a bit more careful to avoid convenience allergy-free foods. Husband has a few job leads though no offers yet (Trader Joe's wasn't hiring unfortunately either) and is still looking (last week was rather a dead week due to the holidays). He also brought in more freelance income in December than previous months—$1,100 instead of $400, which isn't amazing but still an improvement.
Anyway, will update on how things are going when I can — I'm 37 weeks along now, so might not post much for a bit when baby arrives.