There is a new addition in our house, Frugal Girl!
Her favorite activities include eating, sleeping, and pooping. Big brother Frugal Boy is still adjusting to the new family member.
It is still a little too early to tell how much it cost to bring little Frugal Girl into the world. Our preliminary estimate is about $5000 (insurance deductible of $2500 x 2 patients). Of that, Shae’s employer, will cover about $4300, and we will be on the hook for the remaining $700 of the deductible. We can use pre-tax dollars to cover our portion by using a Health Savings Account. Anytime that you have a life changing event, you can change your benefits enrollment through your employer. Having a baby counts as such.
Shae and I did not get Frugal Girl a special birthday gift. Instead, she gets to start life with a jump started college savings account. As soon as we learned that we had conceived, we opened a new 529 plan and started contributing to it every month just like we do for Frugal Boy. Thanks to the bull market and those early contributions, Frugal Girl is already at $3,000. If you figure that investments will naturally double every ten years, we’ve already managed to spare her from roughly $12k worth of student loans.
Relatives are already calling her a princess. A princess would have to marry other royalty, so we might have to start saving up for a dowry. ;-P
