Life Update

Wow how time flies, I might have said that before.  It's crazy to see what we have accomplished over the last several years.

We struggled with infertility for four years before going through IVF.  We were eventually able to have boy girl twins who are now 2.5 years old.  We also recently had another baby girl - meaning I'm on maternity leave with three kids under three.  Pretty crazy to think that a couple of years ago I didn't even know if we would ever have children.

Our infertility journey cost us about $20,000.  Most of which we cash flowed, but my husband ended up getting laid off while I was pregnant with the twins.  We struggled with him being laid off and me having a reduced income on maternity leave.  Eventually he started a new job out of town, but was only able to come home on weekends, leave me alone with the newborn twins.  Life was pretty crazy and our budget was not my number one priority.

After maternity leave, I went back to work and my husband stayed home with our twins, leaving our budget still pretty tight.

Our dog got really sick and we decided to pursue treatment, however after a year battle, she passed away from cancer.

After staying home for eight months, my husband went back to work and we started paying for childcare.  That alone cost us around $1800/month.  It made me seriously wonder what we were spending money on before we had kids!

Now we have money on two lines of credits we have been paying off.  My original goal was to have the first line of credit paid off by the end of 2018.  My updated goal is to have it paid off by the time I go back to work in September 2019.

We've been on and off the debt train several times over the last several years.  We need to up our emergency fund.  I've found every time we get trackers there has been another major expense that has really knocked us off our horse.  We have decided that we need to up our emergency fund at the same time as paying off our debt and creating sinking funds.  This year we have been making pretty good progress while keeping a balance.  I'm looking forward to updating our journey and how its fitting into our crazy life.