There's nothing more exciting than a new addition to the family but that amazing time is often overshadowed by money worries. Kids are expensive and a new baby is going to put a huge strain on your finances. When you’re hardly sleeping and you’re trying to manage a new baby on top of the family you’ve already got, you don’t need the extra pressure of worrying about how you’re going to afford all of this. That’s why it’s absolutely vital that you prepare yourself financially before the big day comes. Follow this simple checklist and you’ll have nothing to worry about.
Clear Debts
If you’ve already got a pretty tight budget, you might have to borrow some money to cover the costs of your new baby. You should avoid it if you can but sometimes that’s not possible. If you’ve already got debts and you borrow more on top, you risk digging yourself into a hole that’s hard to get out of. Before you start thinking about another baby, it’s worth speaking to a debt relief company who can help you consolidate all of your debts into one easy to handle repayment. It makes clearing your debts far simpler and once you’ve paid it all off, you can start putting that extra cash into a savings account to help cover costs after the baby is born.
Leave From Work
One or both of you are going to be taking a big chunk of time off work once the baby is born so you need to account for that. Work out exactly how much paid maternity or paternity leave you’re going to get and put together a rough estimate of how much you’ll need to spend each month. More often than not, you’ll find that you’re going to struggle. The only way around it is to start saving money beforehand that you can use to cover general living costs while you’re not at work.
Medical Costs
If you want to go private when you give birth it’s going to be one of your biggest costs so you need to work it out beforehand. Before you start thinking about getting pregnant, find out how much it’s going to cost. Start putting that money aside in enough time and once you’ve got a big enough chunk of it, start trying to get pregnant. That way, you won’t have to rely on borrowing to cover all of those medical costs. It’s also important that you don’t forget about insurance for the new baby once they arrive. That needs to be factored into your monthly budget as well.
Borrow Wisely
Like I said before, you’re probably going to need to borrow a bit of money. That doesn’t mean you should go to the bank and take out a huge loan right away. If you’re careless with your borrowing you’ll end up getting into a mountain of debt that you’ll spend the rest of your life paying off. The best thing to do is get an interest free credit card and make sure that you only use it for emergencies. Be strict with yourself and only make purchases on it if you absolutely have to. That way you’ve always got that safety net there but you don’t end up running up huge credit card bills.
Making these preparations far in advance will make things so much easier when the new baby is born.
