Your post was great. You are right, I want to spend as much time with my son as possible and hope to have another child someday. I worked my tail off until just days before I delivered my son so that I could save some extra money and extend my maternity leave.
I completely agree that there is value in teaching your children what it is like to live without. My father’s approach to sending us to college was very similar to your experience, I even remember donating plasma every 2 weeks for a few months 🙂 My father raised us to believe we were poor which was hilarious because we lived in a fairly affluent community in the mid-west. I remember thinking, man, how do we live here even though we’re so poor??? It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20’s that I realized my father was just stashing away the money to pay the tuition for 5 kids (we’d pay our own living expenses and books- that was the deal).
So in response to some other posts, we’ll definitely be working on our discipline and try to redefine ourselves as savers instead of spender. We’ll look into refinancing when possible 6.25% on 650K is huge, I realize that.
I’ll completely ditch the idea of a FP and just come here for the wisdom of the piggs! Thanks for diversity of opinions and perspectives.
