Monthly Archives: June 2009

Seven Things I’ve Learned Since Becoming A Dad

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It’s been just under two weeks since God blessed us with Baby Beagle, and there have been a lot of changes. Here are just a few of the things that I’ve learned since the arrival of our son.

  • How to change a diaper – I actually never had changed a diaper before. Let me just say that you catch on pretty quickly.
  • You need more diapers than you could have ever planned for – Baby pees and poops more than I think we had ever thought possible. I actually went out on my first ‘diaper run’ late last week as we were running low on his size.
  • Hours seem to simply disappear out of the day – I think that once a baby comes, the laws of time change and there are only 21-22 hours per day for parents. It’s the only way that I can explain how every single day since the arrival has seemed to end much more quickly than they did in the past.
  • Don’t plan on getting things done with any sort of efficiency – My wife will love this one. See, before the baby came I had this list of things that I wanted to get done in the week following coming home from the hospital. A lot of different projects for the house, the cars, and my blog were on the list. I figured that the baby needs attention but since it sleeps 20+ hours per day, there will still be plenty of time to get things done, right? Wrong. Somehow there is always something to do, whether it be laundry, dishes, changing towels, planning for bath time, whatever. I got a few things done from my list, but probably 25% of what I had hoped. Still, the week off was amazing and time that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
  • Sleep schedules change – Gone are the days of sleeping through the night, at least for a while. Feedings and diaper changes are the new order of business. Our son is actually doing very well at sleeping in his crib without fussing, and about going back to sleep once the business is taken care of. Still, I was unprepared for what a drastic change would occur in sleep patterns.
  • Everything changes in an instant - Oh, I knew well in advance that things were going to change once the baby arrived, but nothing could prepare me for how much it does and just like that. Your entire heart opens up, your priorities are completely shifted, and your joy and awe reach heights that you could never have thought possible, all in a heartbeat.
  • Mrs. Beagle is amazing - It’s true that men could never go through the pain of childbirth. My wife is a truly amazing woman for carrying our son, delivering our son, and how she now takes care and loves him in a way that only a mother can.

What a blessing!

Net Worth Review: June 2009

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June was another positive month for our net worth. That’s three months in a row that we’ve seen an increase, which is the first time we’ve seen three consecutive monthly gains since a four month stretch between November 2006 – February 2007!

Property -I use a combination of Zillow and CyberHomes. I make a small adjustment based on what I’m seeing things sell for, and I remove 7.75% for expected selling costs. For the month, the value stabilized, which is a rarity, actually going up a small fraction. I’m not sure how long that will continue, given that Michigan will most likely see further battering with the GM bankruptcy, but we’re not going anywhere, so no big deal here.
Autos - The value of our two cars has held pretty steady the last couple of months as the used car market has heated up. We saw a modest decline, but nothing unexpected.
Investment Accounts - We had a good month, going up slightly above 5%. Still for the last 12 months, our investment account balance is down over 35%. Still, I feel like we’re hopefully in a good re-building mode that can continue the positive strides made.
Cash Accounts - We continued to slightly add to our cash accounts raising another 2.66% for the month.
Retirement Accounts – Our retirement account went up 7.6% for the month. The total value is down roughly 14.5% over the past year. My employer stopped matching, but we’re still contributing 10% of my salary at this time. Unfortunately, we’re not maxing out our retirement, but I still feel like we’re moving in the right direction.
DEBT:
Mortgage - Nothing special, just the monthly payment. Our mortgage is a 30-year loan at 5.875%
Car Loans – We paid off our car 11 months ago and we have no outstanding car loans!
Credit Cards – This is the balance that’s accrued since the last statement. We pay our credit cards off every month. We have a little lower balance than last month but still quite a bit higher than usual (as evidenced by the increase from 12 months ago) simply because of the added costs of our newborn.
Student Loan 1 – This is the loan that had a higher balance and a higher interest rate. After paying the car loan off, we concentrated our debt payment on this loan. We’ve paid 60% of the balance from a year ago, which just thrills me to pieces! We got a decent chunk down this past month as a portion of our federal tax return went to paying it down.
Student Loan 2 - This is the second loan but it is at a very low interest rate. We make the minimum payments on this loan. After Student Loan 1 is paid off, we’ll have to decide whether to snowball the payments toward this loan, or switch to something else (such as the mortgage, investing, or adding even more to our retirement)
Overall, our net worth went up 8.2% for the month, and is down 24.8% from a year ago.
I think it was a good month. I’m still extremely happy with how we’ve transitioned into a single-paycheck household. Our next challenge will be to add the month-to-month costs of a newborn into our budget.
I think we’ve made some great strides and am keeping my fingers crossed that we continue to positive momentum built over the last several months.