Congratulations! You just found out you’re expecting a little one in your family. You’re on your path to Financial Independence, and you’re more than happy to add to your brood. Here’s our personal account of our journey to try and reach FI with a child.

This is fairly new to us, so we are still updating this post as we go along with various other links to articles that we’re making the journey along the way. 

Reaching Financial Independence with a Child

Chapter One: The Pregnancy Test

When you or your partner thinks that they’re pregnant, their initial thought will be to buy a pregnancy test.

Frugal hack: We bought our pregnancy tests from Dollar Tree.

We bought 4 for a total cost of $4.28. Two were negatives, and one was positive. One was a backup test to ensure the positive one really was positive.

Is the dollar store pregnancy test accurate?

The box says 99% accurate, and in our case, when those two little lines showed up, it was actually true.

We saved a ton of money by buying our pregnancy test from the dollar store instead of depending on the expensive drugstore kind.

All you need to do to ensure that your results are accurate is that you follow the directions on the box correctly, and ensure that the test is not expired. Who knew that these tests expire?

Anyway, the dollar store tests work pretty much the same as the expensive brands: they measure the hCg levels found in your pee. This is like your body signaling that hello, you are pregnant!

Chapter 2: Pre-Natal Care

This is where I’m glad both Peter and I are employed full-time. We get health insurance from our employers.

In my case, I already have an OB-GYN and made sure that my doctor (and hospital) is in network with a quick call to the healthcare hotline.

Always go in-network if you have health insurance. It will save you so much time and money in the long run.

My plan is a high deductible with an HSA. We have been saving and investing money in our personal HSA accounts for precisely these types of scenarios. In theory, we could just keep the receipts of our medical expenses and reimburse ourselves a few years down the line, but we prefer to use the money as emergency funds and use them directly within our healthcare providers to lessen our headaches of filing for reimbursement.

We like the HSA because it is triple tax advantaged: it lowers our taxable income, it grows tax free, and any qualified medical withdrawals don’t get taxed or penalized either. Win-win.

(check out another tax advantaged investment strategy: Mega Backdoor Roth 401K)

Back to health care: my OB-GYN also provides a payment plan which includes 13 visits, the delivery, and a post partum visit which they calculate depending on your insurance.

In our case, we had to pay $351.60 for 5 months, and a deposit of $150 for our payment plan. That’s a grand total of $1,908.

The payment plans don’t cover ultrasounds and other tests (in our case, our first trimester ultrasound costs $152), so you have to plan for it accordingly.

Chapter 3: The First Trimester

Ugh. The first trimester is rough, at least for me. I did not feel like myself at all. I am tired half the time, and queasy and nauseous the other half of the time.

What used to be my old Energizer bunny self after work, became a sapless, helpless person, as I just sit and stare at the TV or onto space as I decompress for the day after work. I felt as if I was dying most of the time, feeling sick a lot, and not being able to do everything that I used to be able to do, which is an odd feeling! 

If I do chores after work, it takes a considerable amount of effort to just finish it. Laundry? Vacuuming? Cleaning? 30 minutes and I’m done for.

I now use my precious lunch hour to type blogs, or catch up on some reading, but it’s still not enough productive hours in my day when I feel like I’m actually accomplishing something. Also, a friend of mine joined the company that we’re working for so our lunch hour is now being used to spending time together and walking – the only exercise I’m technically allowed to do (along with swimming). 

The pregnancy didn’t dawn on us yet until we saw the baby on the ultrasound in our first trimester screen. We are visual people and unfortunately, we are also the “photos or it didn’t happen” type of people. When we saw the tiny blob on screen, we were like, holy crap, it’s real now, and we’re expecting this little guy (or girl!) It’s now getting really exciting! 

We didn’t want to make any announcements to our friends (or to the world), until after our first trimester, hence the delayed nature of this entry. We’ve now crossed over to the second trimester, and with it comes more (new) experiences and expenses! 

Total Running Costs For the First Trimester:

$4.28 – pregnancy tests

$1,908 – OB-GYN Pre-Natal Care payment plan

$152 – first trimester ultrasound scan

The Continuing Tale of Our Journey to FI

This is only the start of our next chapter to Financial Independence. Our next post in this series chronicles our second trimester (currently happening), as well as buying a bigger house (?!!!) for our family (also included is our decision process on why we decided to buy another home). 

Thank you for following our journey to financial independence. We always wanted to have children, and so, we have included the calculations of having children in our FI numbers. 

While we may not retire in our 30s, we are still on track to retiring on our 40s, and if Peter chooses to do so, he can retire in his 50s. 

His mindset has changed — instead of trying to retire in his 40s, he loves his job enough that he will continue going at it until he’s in his 50s. After all, his job is not as stressful as mine, he gets to work from home a lot (therefore spend more time with us, his family), and it gives him the mental challenges that he desires. 

Want to Read More?

Here are a few articles that we’ve written that chronicles our journey to Financial Independence and life in general:

• Ruby’s Journey to Financial Independence
• Guide to Financial Independence
• 2019 Life Updates: We Moved Jobs!