Some Paternity/Maternity leave budgeting ideas!
With our 3rd child just days away, we've been talking a lot around the house how to make our money stretch a bit more over the next 3 months. I say 3 months, since the plan is for us both to take a 3 month leave from work when the baby is born, then me return to work at that time and then her continue to remain off.
At the best of times I'm really damn cheap, but it's time to take it a notch and get my wife involved as well.
This isn't financial advice, but maybe it'll help a couple people. We are also open to any suggestions anyone else out there may have!
Food
When looking at our bills, this was one of our biggest expenses we could change. Our first idea was to finally start working our way though the pantry and freezer, with all the food that's been there forever. It will force us to finally pay more attention to what's in the house and do some meal planning which has always been a struggle for us.
The second plan to help with our food budget is of course the meal planing above, but we are also going to take a good look at all the loyalty points we are sitting on and start using them up as well. Our grocery store here has a pretty good points program and we have actually accumulated almost a thousand dollars worth in the last few years.
Vehicle
We are still debating this one a bit, but we currently have two vehicles, a small car and mini van. We both work opposite shifts at the hospital and need to cart the kids around, so we will need two long term, but in the end we made need 2 vans with 3 small kids. So we are giving consideration to taking the car of the road early and even selling it and going down to just one vehicle over the 3 months of our leaves.
Those are our couple big ideas, most of the other expenses are otherwise pretty set, but we will save on fuel and daycare being home
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If you're working opposite shifts could you have a van/suv and a small car? The bigger car to cart children and associated crap around and the small car as the runabout to and from work? (I'm assuming you need to have the two as there was no mention of being able to PT to work)
Good luck with the budgeting XD
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Comment by @killerwhale. This is a opt-in bot.
excellent friend, it is good to plan for everything and even more in terms of finances and our home, I can give you tips that will help you if you want to now a few more coins, based on your plan I can tell you to make a list of the things that are of real necessity in a house, like for example in the food that is what more is spent here in venezuela, begin by making a menu of meals, from Monday to Sunday, where they place balanced food, but that is more economical to you, limit to eat in the street since that's where the most money is spent, to vary the weekends use homemade hamburgers, all according to what is less expensive, and as for the vehicle if they can use one, and get rid of the other, not sell it unless they need the money from the vehicle for other things, but they can stop using it for 3 months so they can save on gas, and schedule some domestic purchases during those three months before so they do not have the need to spend money in those days, if you can friends, here in Venezuela we have 5 years in a difficult economic situation, and we have learned to survive with what little we earn, success and many blessings.
Firstly, congrats my fiend and wish nothing but wellness for you and your growing family!! These are very important thoughts and usually when finances start being looked at there are two main areas where money is wasted. The first is food as you noted. The second is needless purchases. A big part in this would be entertainment expenses such as the movies or other outings. We try to do low budget or free family time like nature trails and such. Just my thoughts and thanks for sharing!!