Need to make that dolla dolla

Ugh, it's 6:30 and I can't sleep.  I think part of every married (or unmarried) guy's life is wanting to take care of your wife and family.  We shoulder that responsibility and burden and probably die early because of it.

So we rent a house, a nice house, but still, we rent. We've been talking about buying a house for years and with us being pregnant, I decided to call a broker last week and crunch numbers.  As part of the process, I gathered up all the account balances and spreadsheeted away.  It turns out that my wife blew threw the budget for the wedding and had accumulated about $14k in debt.

The debt I can deal with, so we buckle down and tighten up and pay it down.  The problem is, she isn't a numbers person and doesn't understand why we can't buy a house.  Like literally, foot stomping, "I want a house.  Why can't you borrow money against your 401k?" type of stuff.  As if I'm going to leverage us further out to buy a house we can barely afford right before we have a kid.

I have no idea how much having a kid costs.  I believe my wife when she says she will want to go back to work, but I've worked with enough women who've said that and then can't bear to leave their children in someone else's hands to know that can change.  So best case, she'll be on disability and earning less than 100% for at least a few months, and then we'll have to figure out child care and pay for it as well.  Worst case, we'll just have my income.

Either way, I can't see a house working right now.  Not without more cash for the down payment.  We're in the Bay Area, a decent house costs at least $550,0000 so for 10% I need at least $55K.  Plus closing costs.

In the meantime, live goes on.  A hose fell off my radiator last night and my car needs to go into the shop.  My wife wants books on pregnancy and needs money to get to work next week.

They say there's never a "right time" to have a kid.  But I've focused my whole life on making sure I was one of those people that could afford a child, and it feels like I got caught on the wrong side of the spreadsheet.

So here's to a weekend with an angry wife and one car so we'll need to work together.  At least I've got a half a bottle of vodka and a mountain bike trail head 3 minutes from my house.

The baby is supposed to be the size of a poppyseed right now.  From what I've read, the brain and spinal chord develop quickly in these first few weeks.  My job is to encourage her to eat a lot of protein and fat to help her body do that.  We had pizza last night :/