One Baby: Free to Good Home, Some Upkeep Necessary

I get some warranted grief from my wife from time to time - sometimes about money. I do most of the budgeting for us and have set up pretty regimented line item expenditures. Then I don't pay attention to them. For every time I've said that we should buy our alcohol in bulk or ration what we have to last a week, I trot home from the beer store later that week with a six-pack. It happens.

As DINKs, that's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that less money is being saved per month. As future parents, well, that can be sticky.

This is not a post of me bitching about money (at least, not too much). We all have money problems in some form - we want more, we have less, we should be saving, we owe too much, you name it, and the average American faces it.

Since we put our noses to the grindstone to save money for a home (pre-conception), we were doing pretty well. Now, however, the money is still there, but it has places to go.

That's the funny thing about a baby. For the most part, they are free to create (unless you are this couple). But once they pop out, well, the budget changes.

The government estimates that raising a child to age 18 costs upwards of $180,000 - not including college and not adjusted for inflation. Yikes.

Last year, I wasn't thinking past the weekend; today, I've been thinking about moving this spring, buying baby furniture this summer, giving my baby all it will need this fall, and putting my baby into daycare this winter. Rattles and cribs and bibs, oh my!

Much as I think I drink like a champion, I don't think that cutting back or down on my weekly beer will spread the money around for my family. The cuts will run deeper than that. Fortunately, the line items "Eating Out" and "Entertainment" will be replaced with "Leftovers" and "Watching My Baby Smile," which are free.

Hey, does anyone know a mortgage that accepts baby smiles?