Well friends and neighbors, it’s official.  We are expecting a Baby Burrito Bowl in late December.  On August 3rd we found out our future little bundle of emotions will be a girl.  We are incredibly excited, and the proper amount of terrified, about the whole process.

This will be a fun little case study on how to go about planning for a child with financial independence in mind using ourselves as case study subjects.  Will we crush it and prove to ourselves that having a child doesn’t have to cost a small fortune?  Will we abandon the FI ship and run gleefully towards consumerism, small child in tow?  Only the gods know at this point.

We know becoming parents will certainly push our FI clock back. With some planning and intentional choices we hope our FI clock change will be more like a daylight savings hour back rather than a cross continent day to night change.  Either way, we are excited to see where this road takes us.

Hey Girl…How You Doin’?

The first choice we had to make was when to actually get pregnant.  Obviously we had no way of knowing exactly when we’d get pregnant but we had to initially choose when to, ahem, pull the goalie.

[Camera pans to Mrs. Burrito Bowl slapping her forehead]

As far as financial independence goes the longer we could put off having a child the better.   That said, we aren’t getting any younger and want to leave time to have at least two kids, maybe three if I get my way.

I’m 32 now, but I won’t tell you Mrs. Burrito Bowl’s age because that’s impolite.  She’s a month older than me though.  That’s all I’ll tell you.

We made a conscious effort to attempt to start a family now instead of waiting until we were financially independent.  Now the question is how do we continue down this path we’re on without going completely off the rails?

Saying Goodbye to the D.i.n.k. Days

We were chatting with some friends while we loaded up their old baby stuff, that they graciously donated to the cause, into our car.

“Say goodbye to the dink days. Double income no kids.  Out the window, man.”- Our friend andy

Oh yeah.  We’ve been D.I.N.K.s this whole time.  Double income and no kids.  It’s been awesome.  Shit.  We’ll get hit with the double whammy of all the expenses that come with having a baby and Mrs. Burrito Bowl will, most likely, go down to working part-time.

We don’t like having to work. We want to be financially independent so we can do whatever we want all day.  We are saving our money like crazy so that we can spend more time at home raising our kids and less time laboring away on someone else’s project.  We aren’t financially independent yet so we have to keep earning incomes.  How is this all going to fit together?

I’m excited for the challenge.  I think having little offspring running around will give us  more street cred with this whole financial blog thing.  Not that that’s the reason we’re reproducing.  I imagine a lot of people see we have no kids and good jobs and disregard any money saving tips or tricks because, “of course they can save money, they don’t have kids!” Ha. Not for long.

Preparing for a Baby with Financial Independence in Mind

We’ve been preparing for our girl’s arrival physically, mentally, and emotionally.  We’ve been getting rid of as much of the nonessentials in our little apartment as possible.  That seems to end up meaning lots of my stuff is getting donated or sold.

"Maybe you can try combining your two drawers of clothes into one so we can use one drawer for the baby..."- Mrs. Burrito Bowl.

"Wait, what?  I only have two drawers total. And one of them is socks and underwear. The other one is the rest of my clothes.  You have a drawer of just blue jeans." - Mr. Burrito Bowl

"I don't know baby.  I don't make the rules." - Mrs. Burrito Bowl.

We have a seemingly endless list of things to do before December.  All of the usual first time parent stuff will need to be figured out.  We’re also trying to figure out the most FI way to accomplish everything.

Luckily we have a lot of great friends who already had babies who want to pawn their stuff off on us.

"Ha, look at all our old baby stuff we're pawning off on them. Suckers." - Our friends

"Ha, look at all this practically new stuff we're getting from them. Suckers." - Us.

We haven’t bought anything new for the baby.  Our first place to get cool stuff is from our wonderful friends.  Our second place is from strangers on websites like Craigslist.  We’ve found that once we go to someones house to buy a baby item they get so excited seeing Mrs. Burrito Bowl’s belly that they just give us a bunch of other baby things for free or real cheap.  We don’t have a lot of extra room though so we are very particular about what we take.

In addition to purchasing adorable outfits and car seats we need to figure out some work logistics.

Who among you will watch our child?

Oh my…daycare is like a second mortgage.  It’s literally more expensive than our rent.  We’re looking into finding another couple to do child-sharing with. Maybe do nanny sharing?  We’re open to any hacks any of you all have.  Will Mrs. Burrito Bowl cut down on work in order to spend more time at home?  Sweet baby Jesus daycare is expensive in Portland.

One aspect that’s hard about planning for a baby is most other couples aren’t thinking about the most cost-efficient way of doing all these things.  We have several friends who also either have small children or are expecting small children in the next few months.  We could all get together and co-op this whole thing!! We could save thousands.

If you’re not consciously thinking about saving money though the natural choice is to put your baby in daycare and complain about how much it costs.  Which, even being conscious of the cost might be what we end up doing.

Luckily Mrs. Burrito Bowl’s work has a daycare facility built into it.  This would be super convenient as she’d be able to look at our baby whenever she wants during her workday.  That will no doubt ease lots of unrest in Mrs. Burrito Bowl’s mind.

The downside of that option is it’s the most expensive daycare.  It’s not so much more expensive that it feels worth the extra headache and heartache of dropping our girl off at a cheaper, but further from us, daycare.

Will we get a second car or upgrade our car situation?

So far the plan is to keep Perry (Our Honda Fit) until the wheels fall off.  That being said once those wheels are carrying a tiny human combination of us we might feel like swapping the ol’ Honda Fit out for a sweet mini-van or some such thing.

As of now we think we’ll be fine to keep our current single car set-up.  We are seriously considering a Honda Odyssey though.  In that case we’d sell our Honda Fit and use the Honda Odyssey to go car camping a bunch.

Will we move to a bigger apartment?

Our apartment is comically small.  Few would fault us if we decided to upgrade our living situation to a more spacious abode.  Actually, more people would probably fault us if we stayed in our little apartment and added a third human to the mix.  So, will we look for a bigger place?…

…Nope. We sure won’t.  That’s one FI thing we are doing differently than most of our peers.  Our apartment is one bedroom and it’s tiny.   Any sane person would be looking for more space.  We aren’t any sane people.  We’re crazy like a financial independence chasing fox.  Space be damned, our apartment is cozy and doesn’t cost us very many of our hard earned dollars!

Will we pick up a side-hustle to offset expenses?

Raising a child is expensive.  Childcare, loss of work hours, food, clothing, doctor visits, etc.  The difference in overall savings from a year with a child vs. a year without a child is staggering.  We’re going into this with our eyes wide open.  We know the costs, both financially and mentally, are going to be more than whatever we initially think.  We are expecting the unexpected, so to speak.

These are all things to consider when deciding how many hours of each day we want to devote to work once the baby arrives.  On the one hand our baby girl will only be a baby once.  We don’t want to miss this time by working multiple jobs just to earn a few more bucks.  On the other hand, because we are squirreling our money away, and not spending it, any additional money we make now will buy us more freedom later.

Spend more time with her now vs. spend more time with her later?

This is a huge consideration we are mulling over.  Should we focus on working like crazy over these next 5-7 years and reaching Financial Independence as soon as we can? OR should we pump the brakes for several years and wait until our kids are in school to pick up the chase? Is a mixture of both the right move?

If we sacrifice time at home now, maybe that means being able to watch her play sports more often, or go to her plays when other dads are stuck on a job site.  On the flip side, what if I choose to spend the time working overtime now only to find out that we would have reached FI without that extra work.  If that was the case then it would have been better to work less.  Everything is a trade off.  We aren’t financially independent yet, so we can’t just quit work and spend all day everyday with our family.

Conclusion:

We are incredibly excited for this new chapter of our lives.  There are a lot of questions that every new parent has to answer.  How much should we work now?  What kind of childcare should we opt for? How will we choose to raise our kid(s)?  Will she be a social pariah because her parents are frugal weirdos?  Will she have the confidence to not listen to the negative voices?  Will she end up liking ABBA?! Hopefully we mostly make the right decisions.  The most important thing is our little girl will be loved and she’ll know jiu jitsu.

Related:

5 Great Ways to Teach Your Kids About Money

Pay Off Your Credit Card, Kid

The Burrito Bowl’s Go to Walmart- The Untold Story

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