Money Matters

Trying to sort out monetary issues for maternity leave is a big deal. It's an even bigger deal when baby doesn't give you as much time to plan as you expected. Although her early arrival means I actually get a holiday (yay!) it seems I miscalculated in other areas, so I'm going to use up every last stitch of leave I had. It's about this point where I want to kidney punch myself, just to give them a good "what-for". I used a LOT of time in my first year here going to kidney doctors and getting treatment, so I'm left with very little leave and it's a pain in the butt. Fortunately I can borrow 6 weeks, so I'll be getting full paychecks for a little while before I go completely for broke. Of course I won't earn any sick leave for 2 years attempting to pay it back. You've got to love the maternity leave we get in this country - oh wait, we don't. And I can't even get a short term disability policy through work. So I'm exhausting (well into the negative) my leave and using leave without pay. I am, however, extremely grateful that I make enough money that we could get some into savings to prepare, and so I can still take 11 full weeks off to be with my daughter. Would it be easier monetarily to take less time? Yes. Hell yes. But I'm not sacrificing that time that she and I get to spend together just being mommy and daughter.

And, as he's wont to do, the Lord has blessed us with a 3 paycheck month for me in March! So while it's a pain that we owe the government $1200, we've been provided an opportunity to pay for it without taking nearly as much of a hit. And, A paid off all but 1 of his credit cards, and I paid off most of mine, so we have some wiggle room there. And after fighting since AUGUST we FINALLY got our reimbursement from Aetna for some of the medications from our IVF cycle. May is going to be tight, and who knows what's going to happen after that with A and his job. We're still not planning on putting E in daycare, but if they give him enough incentive we might do 2 day a week, with my mom watching her two days, and A watching her one week day, and me on the weekends and at night. I don't mind putting her in daycare part time. I like the structure at the school near our house, and the activities and interaction she'll get, but I don't want her to go full time because I want to have the most influence on her. That's not to say I find anything at all wrong with putting your kids in daycare full time, but it's cost-prohibitive for us anyway.

Another positive is that because we're so incredibly blessed with loving friends and family, pretty much all of our big ticket items have been purchased, and so we won't be shelling out hundreds and hundreds of dollars a week for furniture and things like we have been. We're getting the monitor (with gift cards and other money we were given as gifts) this week, and that's the last big necessity. I still want a rocker and a better carrier, but those can wait. It'll be nice to have that money to sit in the bank and maybe, once we pick brands, stock up on diapers and formula to get us through the upcoming times when we don't have a lot of extra. Aaaaand to take E on fun excursions like the zoo when the weather warms up.

It wasn't too long ago that I was awful with money. We don't have a ton in savings now, but we do have some. I was overdrawing my bank account on the regular (something I haven't done in well over a year). We were absolutely living paycheck to paycheck, checking the account every time we made a purchase. A few times leaving the account with number like $0.04 as a balance. Things have definitely changed, and I'm proud of myself and A for coming as far as we have. I feel like we're a lot more responsible which makes me feel a little more prepared for E. We're far from perfect, but we're making strides. And I guess when it comes down to it we're lucky. I know sometimes I seem like such a pessimist. The timing of my kidney problem seemed so terrible, but I think it's really not so bad after all. And we can definitely make the best of it because we've worked so hard to get to a point where if we needed money we could make things work. I think that's something to be thankful for. Yeah, I might sing a little bit of a different tune in the end of April when we're not able to go spend willy-nilly... but we'll get through it, and with some good plans in place.