Speaking of money

I remember when we had our very first Fertility Babies meeting on 14 November last year my babies were a mere 4 months old.

I remember the date because we got the SMS that Caren's twins (the ones in the middle in these pics) were born while at the meeting which I think is really cool - I just LOVE when things like that happen.

Of course one of the things that came up in the discussion was money as at that stage we were spending between R10 and R12 000 a MONTH - normal stuff plus the paed, opthalmologist, audiologist, vaccinations, etc. Crazy!

I couldn't see the future as my life was craziness at home plus swipe, swipe, swipe of the credit card and a very rapidly diminishing savings account.

One of the more experienced mothers whose twins were 17 months at the time said that it gets better, both physically and financially. When the babies eat proper food and drink milk, they also go through fewer nappies (diapers). ALL round win-win.

Well, despite my misgivings, it happened. And sooner than I thought. From month 6 our bills started going down.

The night nanny left, 3-monthly paed visits instead of every 2 - 4 weeks, no more opthalmologist or audiologist, no doctors and cheap vaccinations in the form of my lovely Sister Carla up the road.

After 12 months, no more formula, and despite Dr S saying we could stop baby vitamins, I still continue - I'm scared to mess with a good thing. But that is the only thing that is exactly the same as when they were tiny babies - vitamins in their morning milk.

And these days we're spending so little money on the babies (*fingers crossed*) that we were able to buy their car seats from our normal "baby budget" last month.

Granted, I am not the most extravagant mother but I have loosened up on the clothes (I still prefer not to have more than 8 changes of clothes per size per baby - doesn't always work out though) and book spending (just this week I bought 5 love languages of children for me and 3 Priddy books for them, on MandyE's recommendation).

We have a budget where we pool all money, save separately and together, and both have discretionary spending money. We've used this system for years and it works VERY well (I even coach clients to do the same).

I have a separate category for "baby stuff" which includes nanny, clothes, toys, nappies, pharmacy, medical and other. Those categories work for us.

I like having a separate baby budget so I can see if we're going crazy in one area and why. In Sept we went over by R57 (unlike me) but when I went back to see why, it was due to the car seats. Which actually means we did really well.

Do you budget? How do you budget for your kids?

In other news, my bedroom is a normal colour again (Plascon Fragrant Days) and we both love it! I got the painter in on Tuesday, exactly 4 months later so you can't say I didn't give it a good bash at living with the new colour. Next up my study... then pics!