Saturday, March 14, 2009

Are the babies on budget?

The girls turned 5 months old this weekend. As part of that milestone, I wanted to answer a question that some of my friends ask me: are the babies on budget?

Of course they are – 53% below budget in fact. Well… kind of. The only explicit forecasted budget we had was for diapers. We came across this site: http://tinyurl.com/5bbxrg, which seemed to have reasonable numbers. Edna has whittled down purchases by buying in bulk (we are talking months at a time), and the girls have taken to frugality in diapers like ducks to water. So both price and volume are doing better than expected.

But diapers are only 20% of our total cost since inception. Equipment was 40%, clothes 20%, Food 10% and the lots of other things for the last 10% (see Exhibit 1). The trick to budgets here is economies of scale (i.e., does it cost 2x as much to have two, or just a little more). We didn’t set a specific budget for these categories, but looking around the USDA, and MSN, here is a guess on where they stand.

On equipment the girls are 10% below budget for one child, or 55% below budget if you assume two kids takes twice the stuff. One great perk of living out East is that moms have their kids later in life. After having twins, they don't plan on a another set and are happy to sell you top-of-the line stuff, two at a time, at bargain-basement prices. So being connected with the Mothers of Multiples here has helped quite a bit.

These fiscally fit girls took it even one step further: they have also been self-financing so far. If you take the budget surpluses from the recreation and dining out categories (because its a lot harder to get out with the girls), we have broken even across those categories and the baby expenses. Who said children were expensive? Go team.

The girls are also 17% below budget on clothes, and 83% below budget on food (which probably assumes formula where we did not have that cost). The clothes are a little embarrassing because the other reason he girls are so fiscally mature for their age is you. The many, many gifts we received were not included in the numbers. Thanks again, I still have many of you on my thank-you list, which is getting older every month that passes by.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Valentines, eating, teeth, and splashing

Valentines

This Valentine's day the girls and I made John a Valentine. Since most of our days are quickly consumed with eating, cleaning, and playing, the girls and I took just over two days to get this done.


The girls opened presents for the first time.


Eating

And we started feeding the girls solids. This is how they each reacted. Things are going much better now.


Teeth

The theme of the family this week is teeth. John and I both went to the dentist after a two year hiatus, and Macy cut her first tooth last Saturday with her second appearing a day later. Here she is Saturday night with just one tooth. No teeth for Camy, but she likes her feet


Splashing

For the last few weeks I've been waiting for Macy to start splashing in the bath. That girl has so much spunk that I expected that she would enjoy splashing. It turned out I was right. Last night I was about to pull the plug on the bath when she gave a few little kicks that quickly progressed to flailing arms and legs, and soon we had a half empty tub and a wet kitchen. She had so much fun that I just had to laugh with her and leave the mess for later.


And here are the girls dressed up for church. I think that smile shows about how much Macy enjoyed her bath. Camy is a very smiley girl, but not for cameras.