Monday, July 6, 2009

Life with a Baby Gazelle= Little Blogging

Does anyone still read this blog?! lol... I have a 6 week old child- will that do for an excuse for lack of posts?
By way of personal finance, we made it home from the hospital without having to pay a dime! What was going to cost us between $2000 -$3000 ended up being waived by Kaiser. I was admitted on May 28 and discharged on May31 and the Baby Gazelle was discharged the following day. Additionally, I was given a card to present at any appointments or at the pharmacy waiving charges until 7/15/09! I have used that card well- 4 appointments for myself in the last 2 weeks including the dermatologist and the eye doc!

On the baby front- I've not had to buy a single diaper. I have exchanged some sizes for larger sizes, but that's it. Baby Gazelle never used newborn diapers, and about 3 weeks after birth was in size 2. I think I shall be taking about 4 Huggies jumbo packs in size 1 back to the store to exchange for size 3!
One thing I have had to buy for baby is health insurance. $88 a month buys a plan with a $2700 annual deductible and the copay is $75 for any visits that are not scheduled Well Baby visits. While I have secured this plan for the moment, I'm working on my final option for inexpensive child health care. I sent in the application for this other plan last week. I'm crossing my fingers that we'll be approved- dropping our premium to about $15 a month.

After the baby was born, Hegazelle took off work for 3 weeks and I took leave for 6 weeks. Each of us received disability/family leave payments from the state, paying us each about half of our wages. We use about $500 from our emergency fund to supplement these payments, but have since replenished that $500 that we used. I'm very thankful that things worked out this well.

We're excited to teach the Baby Gazelle the proper handling of money. Baby's only 6 weeks old, but listens to Dave Ramsey almost daily. I'm sure baby is already contemplating retirement. ;-) The first step in the right direction has been made- Baby Gazelle is the owner of a bronze piggy bank. Thanks to some great friends (that also attended Financial Peace University with us) they bought baby's first piggy and filled it generously with silver coin and a few coppers. When baby is old enough, we will introduce baby to Financial Peace Jr!

1 comments:

Payne said...

Yes- still some of us out here! Thanks for the post!