u/StorageImpossible364

My (24F) fiancé (24M) and I have been together for 7 years, lived together for 2. We are in a really great place. My fiancé just got his masters degree, we’re both two years into our careers, we have been saving a lot, and are getting married in a year.

We both always wanted kids eventually, but after two years of living together, we’re starting to get antsy. The baby aisle at the store is having a bit more of a gravitational pull lately and suddenly our nights are spent watching funny baby videos.

I always grew up around a lot of babies, my sisters were born when I was a teenager and I babysat/nannied throughout all of high school and college. My fiancé knew my sisters when they were little, but otherwise doesn’t have much baby experience. That said, I just know he was made to be a dad.

Yesterday, I shared with my fiancé that the baby fever was starting to get to me, expecting him to say “absolutely not” but his response was “Me too. Do you want to start taking steps to get ready for a baby?”.

Emotionally, the answer is yes. But even though we’re in a pretty stable place, we’re still very young. We need a newer/safer car, a bigger emergency fund, and a house down payment all before we have a kid. Plus we’d need to move closer family first. Looking at the numbers, we’ll need to wait another 5-7 years before TTC.

I wish someone could change the facts and tell us it would be a good idea in the next year or two, but it’s just not. So instead, I would love to hear from others who had a long wait: how did you handle it? How has it been?

Hello! My husband (24M) and I (24F) are on baby step #2. We make about $131k (gross) as a household and a benefit of my husband’s job is that we have free housing and utilities which gives us the ability to save about $3,000/per month (not including retirement) if we really live frugally. We’ve just started with the Ramsey philosophy 1 month ago and will be done with credit cards next paycheck (started at $7k). We have essentially just $1k in savings plus $1.2k in checking right now because we just finished paying for our wedding and my husbands grad school in cash. I also have $18k in a 401k due to a generous company match, he has $300 in a Roth IRA.

Our next step is student loans (the only other debt we have). We have about $44k of loans between us ($17k are mine, $27k are his). Mine are in repayment already and have been for a while, but his are frozen until November. While mine would technically be next in the debt snowball, we figured we should tackle as much of his loans as possible before the payment schedule is set. This would lower our minimum payment later (in case of any emergency and to improve our debt to income for a mortgage down the line) and stop interest before it starts. We’d be able to pay $15k toward them before they’re in repayment.

We’re writing it out and I know it’s the right choice, but it makes me kind of sick to my stomach. It feels so scary and painful to be saving $3k per month and our bank account sees none of it. I can’t help but think about the car or house down payment we could have been saving for, especially since our interest rates are all 2.5-5.5%. Only having $1k in savings feels so risky in this economy. Plus, I know our family is expecting us to have all this cash saved up and my mind keeps worrying that they’ll judge us for not having used this time to save up for a house. They may feel we’ve wasted all this money on low interest / cheap debt.

That being said, we will never have a financial opportunity like this again. (Okay income, no kids, no housing, no utilities, no car payment). So I know we just have to push through the pain and get it done… but if anyone has any encouragement, we really could use some right now.