Saturday, August 4, 2007

Bill-Me the Kid (Part 1)




The mounds of flimsy white envelopes with the celophane window now consume the space in our mailbox that used to be occupied by Glamour magazine and the occassional card from Mom.

Yep, the hospital bills are here.

Chris and I knew babies were expensive, but holy hannah. Let's just say we're experiencing a bit of sticker shock. (Hmm, maybe that whole Rent-a-Baby plan isn't such a bad idea after all.) The sting of poverty really hit home when one of Chris' coworkers (who had a darling baby girl the week after we did) announced that he and his wife hadn't received one bill, instead they actually made money on their tiny bundle. The hospital cut them a check!!

In an effort to make some sense of our financial future, Chris has worked diligently(umm, worked obsessively is probably a better description) all week to create a monthly budget for us. He's created spreadsheet after revised spreadsheet, color-coded each little section and alloted all of our funds to this bill or that ... down to the last dime. (He even has each of us on a bi-weekly allowance! What? No more mad dashes to the baby department for Coop or the shoe section for me? Poo.)

I'll be chronicling our progress - what tricks work (which ones don't), how we're coping, yadda, yadda. Who knows, if we stick to this budget, we should dig ourselves out of the money pit just in time to start on baby No. 2. =)

-smell you later-
Coop's Mom (aka Tessa)

1 comment:

Liza on Maui said...

I first saw you post at working mother blog (I'm in working mother blue - i want to but back my working hours so bad but I don't know how to tell my husband. Anyway, I saw these posts about debt reduction and thought I'd share my previous post with you. I hope you get encouraged by this :)

http://lizas-eyeview.blogspot.com/2007/07/works-for-me-wednesday-paying-credit.html