Now that March is upon us let the Madness begin! Though I believe it is fair to say, it has been a little mad in the Barron household the last six weeks as we adjust to being parents for the first time. No one can adequately prepare you for just how many diapers you will go through, but the count at 6 weeks is well over 450!!!

Also, in case you didn’t know diapers are EXPENSIVE! Not expensive in the sense that they cost a lot of money, but they are more akin to the nickel and dime you to death approach. In this post, I want to focus on a few things that I dived into pretty deeply while I was preparing to be a Dad. This particular topic is one that I think many in the higher education field could benefit from wading into the deep end as well, as we don’t make the big bucks in higher education. The topic for today is money!

Our finances were never so important to me as when I realized I was about to have a child and felt an overwhelming desire to ensure that everything was put together and headed in the right direction for us to welcome a child into this world and take on approximately $12,000+ a year in new cost.

There are five essential tools that I have used that helped me get to a place in which I felt more secure and ready to take on this parenting thing head on. Some of them the wife and I have been using for quite a while, while others are relatively new to us, but early results are amazing.

 

1- The Dave Ramsey Plan – www.daveramsey.com

No matter where you are in your Dad journey, or your financial journey, a solid foundation is always a great place to start. For us, our foundation is the Dave Ramsey approach to money management. I want to begin by letting you know that this is our foundation because we are not the wealthiest of the wealthy and yet we don’t really have any wants, (Other than extravagant vacations, but who doesn’t want that? If you are reading this and have a vacation home you want to lend to us for a while we would love to tend to it for a week) in large part thanks to our foundation.

Many of the things that Ramsey subscribes to are not necessarily the conventional approach to finances in today’s society, and indeed they are not as easy as they look on paper. Heck, it took us three tries at it before it finally stuck and we gained traction. Even with this third time of getting on board with his plan, we have used a modified version that is working well for us. (We still use credit cards but pay them off almost daily, I just like the cash back at the end of the year.)

Dave has “7 Baby Steps” and right now we are still pushing through #2.

Baby Step #1- Have an emergency fund of $1,000. He recommends having a garage sale, mowing some lawns, or, in the case of the higher education professional, teaching an extra service or overload course to get that $1,000 as quickly as you can. Sounds simple enough, and each time it was pretty easy for us to just move a $1,000 into savings and call that the emergency fund (one of the perks of being married to an accountant who enjoys counting money more than spending money). The kicker is that you don’t save any more than the initial emergency fund until you have moved onto Baby Step #3.

Baby Step #2- Pay off debt like it is going out of style! This one has been a beast, but we are making some serious progress towards it. Dave subscribes to the “debt snowball” method which has worked for us. You pay off your debts by paying the minimums on all but your smallest debt. Then you throw everything you can at the smallest debt until it is gone. Once the smallest debt is gone, you roll that minimum payment into the 2nd smallest debt and repeat the process of throwing everything you can at it until it is gone. So on and so forth. Once you start to get momentum rolling on your snowball, it is a ton of fun to watch it run downhill devouring everything in its path. This step takes as long as you need it to though and we are coming up on year 2 of working through this, with a plan to be debt free next year! We cannot wait!
*debt free in the sense that we will have paid off all student loans (1-associate’s, 2-bachelor’s, 2-master’s, 1-almost doctorate with graduation insight!), 2 vehicles, credit cards and our travel trailer (T.T. Stapleton- because he’s a traveler)*

The other steps are the ones I look most forward to, but you should check out his page if you are interested in them. I am always happy to help talk through it if you have any questions.

 

2- Mint – www.mint.com

Dave recommends a budget and giving every dollar a home in your budget before you make it. Mint is the means by which my family creates and keeps up with our budget and just where every dollar goes.

I grew up seeing my dad and his yellow legal pad, and he would budget out things on there every month, this method worked for him. As I came into my own, I tended to go a little more toward the technology side of things, and Mint is the perfect solution.

With Mint I can track nearly every account I have from retirements to checking, credit cards to savings accounts and auto loans. It automatically updates and let me know any expenditures that occurred from that account. From there, I can categorize the transactions and have them work into my budget for the month as well as my goals that I have created. It truly allows me to handle all of my business in one location without having to log in to 12 different screens at one time.

 

*Full disclosure for the next 3 if you like them and follow the link I will get a small referral bonus but the best part is on a few of them you do too!

3- Robinhood – www.robinhood.com

Robinhood is the most recent money tool I have found. It allows you to buy stocks without paying a trade commission! This is something I am only beginning to dabble in, but so far it has been a ton of fun and definitely a learning experience. Plus it makes me feel more like my father, who for as long as I can remember was buying and selling stocks. So in my head, DAD does stocks.

In addition to no commission trading, it has helpful articles and tools that help you to be successful. It doesn’t have all the whistles that the fancy stock trading sites have, but it is FREE!
Click HERE for a FREE stock for both of us!

4- Acorns- www.acorns.com

Acorns is one of the fastest growing savings apps, or as they like to call themselves a micro-investing account! It connects to your selected debit or credit card accounts and rounds up on every charge depositing the difference into real estate mutual funds.

I started using Acorns at the start of the Fall semester. Over the course of one semester, I was able to save $550 without really noticing the impact, because it happened every time I made a purchase with one of my cards. On top of that, I made a little more than $50 in return on last semesters investments! (It was a good semester for the stock market.)

While the returns may not always be so high, it does consistently pull the money out without too much hassle and creates small savings account that we can use for fun trips or putting the savings into my Robinhood account and having some fun with it. I highly recommend it. There is not a bonus for you if you create an account by clicking the link above, but we might get a $1000, and if we do, Biscuit will be tremendously grateful!

5- Walmart Grocery – www.grocery.walmart.com

Walmart Grocery is by far the coolest and most DAD friendly of the money management tools I have picked up over the last few years. There online order and pickup service is much better than any of the other ones we have tried (Kroger). It lets you get almost anything that Walmart has in stock at your local store, you pick your time that you want to drive up and get it, and check in on your phone when you are headed that way! Once you check in ‘Big Brother’ tells you how long it will take to get to the Walmart and someone comes to your car once you have parked with all your groceries in tote! No huss, No fuss! Walmart Grocery has been immensely helpful as we have welcomed Biscuit into our home right in the middle of flu season! We no longer have to worry about taking the baby to Walmart and who might see her and want to touch her with nasty flu hands, or even if we might catch something at Walmart ourselves.

There are two downsides to using online ordering through Walmart. First, you don’t get to pick your produce, but if they give you bad produce you can return it- Walmart takes back everything. Second, you miss out on seeing PeopleofWalmart. If saving time and money sounds like something that would be of interest to you…
Click HERE for $10 off your first order! 

 

These are just some of the financial resources that I learned about and are DADbatical approved! If you have questions about any of them let me know, I am happy to help and have 43 more days of DADbatical!

GO CATS!!!

PS  Click HERE to follow DADbatical on Facebook for daily photos of Biscuit having fun on this journey with me!