Can I afford to raise my baby?
Backstory:
I'm 22 years old, and my fiance is 24. We were planning a wedding in May, but I then found out I was pregnant back in January. So, for a myriad of reasons, we will not be going through a big ceremony/party like we initially planned. Instead, we want to put that money into a bigger apartment and into our baby's needs.
Our families are pretty conservative, and we will probably be given plenty of "how are you going to do this?" talks and "we are disappointed" talks, once we announce the pregnancy.
The numbers:
Combined, my fiance and I have an annual income of $72,000. Which looks more like $55,000 as a gross combined annual income. We both work full time, hourly jobs right now. We have 2 weeks of paid time off, each, and we have maternity/caregiver time off as well. We also receive medical coverage through our employers. I think we'd only need about 3 days of childcare (if we had opposite days off) each week, meaning he had, for example, Sunday/Monday off and I had Tuesday/Wednesday, baby would need Thursday/Friday/Saturday care. My fiance and I would also only have about a 4-5 hour window between when I left for work and he got home from work on those 3 days.
I'm no stranger to budgetting, and my fiance and I are both hard workers, so I think we could make it work. Might suck for those first few expensive years but hey... you do what you have to, I think.
I don't have any friends or coworkers or relatives I can talk to about this, so I was hoping someone here might be able to offer advise or comfort that we (fiance and I - and of course baby) will hopefully be okay.
Thank you fo reading.
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