Having Kids and Saving Money

I'm sitting here watching Suze Orman and there is a woman on that has $290,000 in different savings accounts. I don't know what she does or her family situation but I was wondering this question:

Is anyone else like us who can not save much or any money most months because of daycare and child expenses? I feel like we are the only ones not saving but the daycare and cc bills (we are trying our best to get lower interest rates and pay them off) are stopping us from saving.

Message edited 7/29/2006 9:27:30 PM.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

I feel you. we both save in our 401k's, but thats about it. We maybe save a few hundred a month tops.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

We arent saving anything as of right now. I guess we could, but we just dont.. I figure in a few more years when our 2 loans are paid off we will be saving BIG TIME!!

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Posted by CheeChee

We arent saving anything as of right now. I guess we could, but we just dont.. I figure in a few more years when our 2 loans are paid off we will be saving BIG TIME!!

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

We're not really saving for college yet but we have a nice cushion of money saved in case of emergency or if one of us lost our jobs.
We just bought a new house though and are waiting for our current house to hopefully sell and even when it does we'll still have some of a second mortgage left which we didn't have on thi shouse so until we get that paid off we won't be saving, we'll just have our cushion in case of emergency.
I guess I don't see the point of saving if you have CC debt or 2nd mortgages because the interest your are paying is higher than the interest you would make by saving (usually).
Our goal is to be debt free in a few years, aside from our mortgage then we'll work on socking money away for college. Also once I go back to work FT money and saving won't be an issue and we'll be used to living on mostly DH's income so that will leave a lot of mine to go into saving.
I think in this day and age its really hard to get ahead of the game as far as having hundreds of thousands of dollars saved at a yound age.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

We HAD a decent amount saved, but DH has been out on worker's comp since January so we haven't adding to the savings since that time (we were able to live on just my salary). Since we had the baby, we've been having to use our savings just to make the monthly bills. I got disability for 8 weeks, but since the middle of June, we haven't had any money coming in. I'm not going back to work until Sept (even that is too soon for me) so that is when we will first start breaking even again. It's going to take a long time to make up the money we've lost since January.

We actually still do have some money in the bank and after watching Property Ladder tonight on TLC, we're considering trying to "flip" a house to try to make some money. We'll see...

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

The best thing we did was set up 529 account for both our kids and have the $$ directly debited from our account each month so that we are forcing oursleves to put that money away for them. Or else we can justnever see ourselves putting money in. We also have a savings account for an emergency as well as our 401K's.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Saving? What's that? Between expenses for Christopher, co-pays and medications at doctor appointments for me, and repairs and new things for the new house I'm actually amazed we're not in debt right now! We're lucky to be keeping our heads above water.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

it's very hard to save money....we have months where we end up with less than $100 in the accounts. We don't have much debt....we have 2 cc and that's it. We've only put very important things on them, like what was leftover medical bills so they would not go to collections.

If we don't have the money for it or we don't need it, we don't buy it.

Again, I LOVE the 2nd hand mentality of the South. I got a GREAT Graco highchair for $24. They sell it at Walmart for $70 I think. All of DD clothing are gifts, bought 2nd hand, or free from the store where I work because they are over the time limit. We don't buy anything for ourselves new anymore.

But we have a roof, food to eat, and clothing on our back. If we truly needed help, our families are there for us, but our pride gets in the way because we insist on doing it ourselves, no matter how hard it gets sometimes.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

we've been dipping into our saving regularly since the baby has been born. we knew this was going to have to be the case there is no way we could make it on Dh salary alone so we saved money before we got pregnant for the very reaseon of us not sending our child to daycare Not saying there is anything wrong with daycare its just not something we wanted plus my salary wouldnt even cover the costs and be worth it at the end of the day. We saved all the money he got for christening and birthdays but thats not ever going to be touched its his as far as we are concerned.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Message edited 2/8/2007 12:48:12 PM.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Posted by anon

saving? what's that?

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

We are having a really hard time saving. In fact, each month we dip into our savings more and more, and only have a few thousand left which is scary -- because it would really only cover bills/rent for a month if we needed it. It is just hard, and I was really upset about it this morning -- I just don't know how we are ever going to get ahead.

I figure we just have to take one day at a time and that things always work out, somehow we always find a way for everything, so hopefully that will continue.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

We stick to a very strict budget, and thats how we are able to save each month. We don't have any cc debt or car loans, so I think that makes a big difference in our ability to save. Once DH gets his raise I'd say we'll be putting away about 1500 per month, and when we buy our house it will be more like 500-800 per month.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Thanks everyone. At least I am not the only one in the "no saving" boat-lol!! I am really trying to do the "need" thing and not the "want" anymore. It is hard but I have gotten better. I just got back from shopping and got my dh shorts (needs them for work), weed killer (really need it in my garden-I worked so hard to make it look nice and now there is grass and weeds growing in it) and floor cleaner (needed). I could have bought a whole bunch of things that I wanted but it is not worth it anymore to me. I hate having bills.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

Thanks, I will check it out. Since we pretty much charge everything I should be able to go back and track things. We are thinking of switching back to cash even though we enjoy the free airline tickets.

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

I saw on Suze once that you should save for retirement before you save for college - you can take out loans or borrow from retirement for college, but you can't do that with retirement

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

We haven't been saving much since I went out on leave, but pre baby, we saved liked crazy.

We also work off a strict budget sheet. DH developed an excel spreadsheet that tracks all of our monthly bills, spending, against our net income. We know exactly where, when and how our money gets spent.

What's killing us is our student loans!

Re: Having Kids and Saving Money

I am anal about saving, so I transfer $$ when we both get paid, which is 4 times a month. Our paychecks get directly deposited into our checking, and then I transfer at least $100 each check. I think for me ,the minute I got my BFP, I started this, should have been sooner. I also realize that I will be paying for daycare come September, so it may be a bit harder to be on top of our savings. Every litle bit helps, even if you can only do a small amount, it will help!