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Last calendar week I was out walking with a friend when she admitted she was scared she would never take kids.

"Nosotros'll never be able to afford them," she said as we made our fashion around the block and up the adjacent street. She and her hubby are almost our age (and not getting whatsoever younger), and I could tell she was worried.

"Oh, I'm certain you'll figure it out," I said as I tried desperately to alter the discipline. That was terrible advice and I knew it, but it was the aforementioned advice someone had given me several years earlier. (And probably for the same reasons.)

When It Came to Having a Infant, I'1000 Glad I Followed Bad Communication

Having a baby

It has been over half-dozen years at present, but I still call up information technology like it was yesterday. I was working at my onetime job in the mortuary and surrounded by a agglomeration of senior ladies who made upwardly our widow'southward outing group. We were chatting upward a storm when the conversation turned to kids and if I always planned to have them.

"I honestly don't know," I said.

We didn't accept motherhood insurance through work at the fourth dimension, and I knew it was prohibitively expensive. I also knew that we weren't saving much at all, which was a shame since our income looked good on paper. As I explained my concerns to the women, they but smiled and nodded. I wanted kids, I told them, simply I was agape of what it would hateful to our bottom line.

Strangely, it was equally if they already knew what I was going to say before I said it.

"Please only have children," said ane of the ladies, laughing as she spoke. "You'll thank us later."

The unabridged tabular array then broke into a fit of laughter every bit I saturday and listened to a group of women who seemed to know something I didn't.

"Don't expect for the perfect time," said another friend. "Information technology doesn't exist."

Throwing Caution to the Wind

And that's exactly what nosotros had been doing. We were waiting for the perfect fourth dimension to come without realizing that nosotros might end up waiting forever. And so after some soul-searching, we decided to go ahead and try for our first child. And subsequently applying for several types of maternity coverage, I finally found a programme that would accept me. Finally.

Then I waited nine months until my coverage became "active" so that my pregnancy would indeed be covered by insurance. (This was in 2008 — earlier the passage of the PPACA and when pregnancy was seen as a pre-existing status.)

The await was awful, but I was lucky. Within a few weeks of trying for a infant, I found myself significant and spending the majority of each day with my head hanging low, trying not to throw up as I hobbled through my responsibilities at piece of work and at dwelling house.

I was sick — very sick — but I was soooooooo happy.

Unfortunately, I was also clueless. The truth was, I merely had a vague idea of what having a baby would cost us. And sadly, I was in for a rude enkindling. For starters, the maternity rider on our insurance climbed to over $500 per month at the one-yr mark of my coverage. And that was merely for the maternity rider. Information technology didn't even include our regular health insurance coverage.

Second, my insurance deductible was over $four,000, an corporeality of money that we barely had saved at the time. And third, I hadn't even considered the cost of daycare, formula, or what kind of pay cut I would accept during maternity leave.

With All the Balls Up in the Air

Fortunately, the ladies were right — things actually did work themselves out.

Due to some minor miracle, we got raises around the time our beginning child was born. Christmas bonuses from work paid our insurance deductible for the hospital stay, and we managed to absorb the cost of daycare and everything else without as well much problem.

On the other hand, we weren't doing also as we probably should take been. Nosotros even so had student loans, auto loans, and credit carte du jour debt subsequently all, and we also lived in a fairly big home that cost a pretty penny to maintain.

In a lot of ways, we were barely keeping all the balls up in the air — robbing Peter to pay Paul, raiding our meager savings to pay for basic necessities, and sacrificing tomorrow in order to afford today.

Only then, of a sudden, everything changed.

2 Mouths to Feed

Earlier I knew what hit me, I was pregnant with my second child. The clock was ticking. Nosotros made information technology piece of work the first fourth dimension, simply now things would be different.

Nosotros once again had that $four,000 health insurance deductible to pay, and I would once again need to continue maternity get out at half-pay. Simply now I would accept 2 kids in daycare, 2 mouths to feed, and two children to care for financially and emotionally. Something had to give.

So nosotros embarked on a journey to get our financial house in order. We started past creating a zero-sum budget to rail and monitor our expenses and we whittled our monthly bills downwards to merely the bare necessities.

All those modest things made such a huge departure to our bottom line that debt repayment became nearly painless. And over the adjacent few years, we paid off $60,000 worth of unsecured debt, paid down our mortgage to a reasonable level, and stashed away a cash emergency fund for the start time always.

What I Gained From Post-obit Bad Communication

It'south pretty amazing when you call up about it: The biggest financial gains we take made during our marriage came at i of the most expensive times. In a sense, our kids actually made us snap into reality and have our financial lives seriously. They gave the states a purpose; they gave our marriage meaning. And I now realize that they were the motivation we needed to straighten things out.

Did my friends give me bad advice? You bet they did.

Simply at present I realize that information technology was the only communication that made sense.

But as I suspected, they knew something I didn't. They knew that having kids has a way of changing everything. They knew that seeing my children's innocent faces would strength me to take life seriously in a way I hadn't earlier. And they knew that there truly is no perfect time to have children; but that if you want something bad enough, you'll detect a way to make it work.

And most of all, they knew that information technology would all be worth it — every dollar spent, every tear shed, and every sleepless night.

And they were right.

Take you lot ever made an important decision based on bad advice that turned out for the best? Do you call up at that place is a perfect fourth dimension to take children?